What would the result have been, do we think, had the Plane Stupid protesters put their arguments to a referendum of passengers delayed and dismayed at Stansted the other day? Just a guess, but I suspect that the very sound case against unrestricted air travel, airport expansions and planetary degradation would have taken a hiding. A lynching might have followed.
What would the result have been, do we think, had the Plane Stupid protesters put their arguments to a referendum of passengers delayed and dismayed at Stansted the other day? Just a guess, but I suspect that the very sound case against unrestricted air travel, airport expansions and planetary degradation would have taken a hiding. A lynching might have followed.
A shame, no doubt, but not surprising. Climate-change deniers, duped or devious, these days form a diminishing minority. Most people know, or think they sense, that global warming is neither a fiction nor a joke. But what has long been open to question is the extent to which they are prepared to accept real, permanent sacrifices as a consequence.
That was in the good times. Now ask yourself: what will those same people accept when the pit of recession looms? How will attentive politicians then respond? And where will that leave environmentalism? Greens tell a compelling tale. A catastrophe involving the very viability of human society is something we might wish to avoid. The suffering likely to ensue thanks to unchecked greenhouse gases will one day make the problems of international banking look like small change. Besides, there are excellent reasons, social, economic and political, for changing our behaviour.
So try selling that to a mass global audience this winter. All those well-intentioned people who were off-setting their emissions only a few months ago have worked out that unemployment reduces a carbon footprint faster than anything. Repossession can really cut down on your home energy use. You may not regard these as prices worth paying, just at the moment.
Some greens, though not all, would disagree. Most would certainly say it is better to make a lesser sacrifice now than wait until the disaster does a real, definitive job on human complacency. Greens offer a vast recession of their own, it is true, but they believe it can still be "planned". Yet how many among the majority, in 2008, want to hear, choose to hear, or believe they can still afford to listen? Prophets of doom rarely attract a crowd. And environmentalists tend not to specialise in good news.
The emergency changes they demand will only come, in any case, when the majority are prepared to listen. This is not the optimum moment, and sacrifice feels like an unaffordable luxury. Before long, in any case, the governments lashing out trillions to prop up banks, support companies, preserve jobs and prevent a recession from turning into a slump are liable to agree. Their green rhetoric, never too convincing, will disappear as they struggle to keep an economic show on the road.
Emergency now or catastrophe a generation hence? There should be no argument, but neither politics nor public opinion is built that way. Gordon Brown or David Cameron can say right-sounding things about green technologies and "green-collar" jobs, but these tend to be "aspirations". The recession, like the environmental disaster, is happening now. Which to choose if one impacts upon the other, if action on the environment conflicts with jobs, mortgages, or - a standard infrastructure project - airport expansion? I think we can guess. Detroit's big three car firms are going to the wall. They are begging for federal funds. They have been offered $25bn, but that was intended to help them build cleaner cars. Detroit says it must have more just to stay in business, with luck, until the spring. So the question is already being asked: what about the $25bn set aside for "fuel-efficient" vehicles?
President-elect Obama will probably resist, and look for still more billions from somewhere. He wants corporate America to clean up its act. He, too, is keen on green technologies. But he has already said that the car giants must not be allowed to go bust. So how many more billions from a vastly indebted government? So what happens if there is a choice, next year, between money for clean-car technology and the three million jobs "at stake"?
That won't be the last time the question, or one like it, is posed in the months to come. Environmentalists say action on climate change is urgent, overdue and essential: I believe them. For politicians with their backs to the wall, however, the money involved is liable to look like discretionary spending. For many voters it is liable to look like money better spent elsewhere. Your planet or your home: nice choice.
In a sane world, it would be a false opposition. The insane amounts still being spent across the world on the arms trade could easily be diverted to mortgages and climate change alike. Britain, amid these crises, is still earmarking double-digit billions (at minimum) for a pair of aircraft carriers. But defence workers have votes and homes too, and politicians always see a need for weapons. A century ago, Lloyd George was inventing supertax because it was the only way to pay for a fledgling welfare state and Dreadnoughts.
That was just a small fiscal crisis, not a recession, and the then Chancellor had not heard of climate change. Still, humanity is not best-suited to long-term thinking. Fossil fuels are a disaster: most of us know this. A high oil price is the best thing that could happen for the environment. But ask a western driver to choose: crude at $147 a barrel, or at $40? Ask him just to look beyond this month's bills and salary.
Cutting carbon emissions will cost. Emerging economies are baulking at the price at the UN meeting of energy ministers in Poland this week. They may be acting out of self-interest - all governments do - but that does not make them duplicitous. Scotland's government, meanwhile, has noble aspirations for renewables. But if targets can be achieved - a big if, as The Herald's Alf Young explained yesterday - it will require, on a Scottish Council for Development and Industry analysis, "unprecedented" investment.
Good, says an optimist: lots of jobs created. President-elect Obama takes the same view: as ever, he has seen a better future. On his first day in the White House, nevertheless, he will be living and working in the present, with no time to lose, head of an administration presiding over unprecedented spending of its own, with diminishing room for manoeuvre. He, like every other leader in the world, needs to begin to create jobs tomorrow.
Environmentalists have a growing problem in this, if they will forgive the pun, climate. Distracted people don't listen hard. They worry about the things they believe they can fix. The passion or self-righteousness (take your pick) displayed by the Stansted protesters won very few converts, it seems, at the airport. Are deep, lasting cuts in energy use, the direct, daily consequences of real emissions reductions, liable to produce a better effect?
What is the difference between a planned recession and one brought about by the incompetence and greed of bankers? The optimistic answer: the former might just preserve life on earth as we know it. The honest answer: none whatsoever for those stuck in the middle, wondering why they should pay the price for two calamities at once. Greens need better propaganda, and soon.
