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Why society needs to change - maybe it is (?) CAT Members Conference, October 2014 Tom Barker The beginnings of the green movement With apologies to Eve Balfour • Human scale; • Small communities; • Challenged globalisation before the word was coined; • ‘Cult of bigness’; • Meshed with E.F.Schumacher. 1957 • Questioned the status quo; • Extermination of insects, birds and mammals by agriculture; • Shocked the world. 1962 • Depletion of resources; • Environmental debt; • Social & political shock; • 750,000 copies, 17 languages, debated in Parliament; • Led directly to the creation of the green movement. 1972 • Why sustainability? • Social, economic and environmental reasons for change; • The third environmental best-seller. 1973 • “ I recall clearly the autumn day in 1973 when I threaded my way up through the thick rhododendrons from what is now the car park to the level area where the Centre for Alternative Technology (or The Quarry as it is popularly known) now stands.” Gerard Morgan-Grenville, Founder of CAT. 1909 – 1994 1907 – 1964 1928 - 2009 1911 - 1977 What was the response? • Kohr – minor academic shuffling of papers; • Carson – shock, denial, outrage, DDT; • Goldsmith – horror, study & industrial economic – political denial; • Schumacher – popular and media acceptance, economic & political dismissal. 1989 Euro-election • Labour 6 million votes (39%): 45 MEPs; • Conservative 5 million votes (33%): 32 MEPs; • Greens > 2 million votes (15%): no MEPs; • Lib Dems <1 million votes (6%): no MEPs; • SNP 0.5 million votes (3%): 1 MEP; • No UKIP (National Front got 1,500 votes). i.e. the Greens won! The enemy within! The response? Conferences, ‘Think Tanks’, research: • ‘There is a real problem and the public recognise it’; • What action can we take to avert an environmental disaster? What can • ‘Campaign of we do about misinformation, slurs, the threat scare stories in the press from the and overall: ‘greenwash’ Greens? Stepping up another gear The Rio ‘Earth Summit’ aka United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) • 116 Heads of State, 172 governments: – alternatives to fossil fuels; – Climate Change Convention; – moves away from private cars; – protection of indigenous peoples; • Led to: Remember the leaves? – Kyoto Protocol; – Convention on Biological Diversity. Grey versus Green The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, 2006 • Gordon Brown: “Climate Change? – let’s ask the economists”; • Nick Stern (Vice-President World Bank) “Blimey, it’s serious!”: – Climate change will be expensive; – It will ruin the economy – It’s much cheaper to mitigate; • The Stern Review converted Nick Stern (now Chair: Grantham Inst. CC, LSE). Zero Carbon Britain TEEB - a ‘Stern-like review’ of ecosystem services Aims: • Inform economic policy (about its impacts); • Incorporate nature’s values into policy, planning & economics; • Find ways to integrate ecology & economics; • Speak to the economists, industrialists and politicians who are unaware of the connections between what they do and the consequent loss of nature. Government listens to academics Academic interest (in the peer-reviewed literature) • Slow interest, increased after books & reports 1950s-1970s; • More so after climate change was evident; • Government interest follows academic conclusions; • Increased after Rio and Kyoto; • What is the science saying now? Academic confirmation of the importance of environmental change Google Scholar results for terms Sustainability "climate change“; 120000 1970-71: 107; 100000 80000 1980-81: 306; 1990-91: 1,960; 60000 40000 2000-01: 15,600: 20000 2010-11: 111,000; 0 In one year 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010 Meanwhile 1990 - 2008 CO2 emissions of developing countries doubled (Annex A stabilised), but .... CO2 in imported goods to Annex A countries ~ doubled (Peters et al 2011); Global emissions rate increase: 65% (industry), 17% (inefficient fuel use), + 18% (decline in C sinks) (Canadell et al. 2007); Already-built infrastructure will emit 496 Gt CO2 between 2010-2060, forcing warming of 1.3oC (~430 ppm) (Davis et al. 2010) (Doesn’t include feedbacks) Wiki Commons Published Sept 2014 • 2013 CO2 conc. were 142% of pre-industrial; CH4 (60% anthro): 253%; N2O (40% anthro): 121%; • CO2 2012-2013 greatest since 1984 – fastest for 30y; • Between 1990 and 2013: 34% in radiative forcing (80% CO2;NOAA Annual GHG Index); • Ocean acidification appears unprecedented for the last 300 Ma; “The laws of physics are non-negotiable .... We have the knowledge and we have the tools for action to try keep temperature increases within 2°C” WMO Sec-Gen Michel Jarraud 1990 baseline. a) All GHGs BAU; b) = CO2 BAU but 80% of other anthropogenic GHGs; c) = 80% in CO2 but others GHGs BAU; d) = 80% in all anthro GHGs Is the establishment catching up? “The government will ...” • The Carbon Plan: Delivering our low carbon future (UK govt. 2011); • “Insulation, condensing boilers, heat pumps, ‘green’ jobs, cheaper energy bills, new efficient cars, nuclear, Carbon Capture & Storage” – many of the things that CAT has been saying for 40 years, but 20 years too late; • CO2e reached 479 ppm in 2013; 130 ppm too high, and it’s still rising fast. Huffington Post What are academics saying now? (Conclusions of Beddoe et al 2009) • Worldviews, institutions and technologies all need to change; • Need to avoid locked-in thinking and decisionmaking; • Should create a new cultural context to maximise sustainability & well-being; • A whole system approach at multiple scales is required, aimed at sustainable quality of life & natural capital, not unlimited growth; • A transition will occur anyway, driven by crises. We have to manage it, not be buffered by it. A whole system approach? • ‘Fundamental societal transformations are required’ (Eriksen et al. 2011). • ‘Today’s environmental problems require x10 factor change, thus deep-structural change’ (Roggema et al. 2012); • ‘Challenges of climate change are such that many familiar ways of life & patterns of consumption are fundamentally unsustainable.... new forms of living, working, and playing will have to take hold across all sectors of society’ (Shove 2010). IPCC 2014 • Resilience adaptation is not seen as enough; • Purpose of transformation is to create climateresilient social and economic structures; • Options are incremental and transformational adaptation. Incremental or transformational? e.g. in agriculture (Park et al. 2012): • Incremental adaptors use: limited data, reactive actions to maintain systems, harvest earlier, drought-tolerant varieties, efficient use of water. Satisfy investors (short term). • Transformative adaptors use: more information for decisions, weigh up stressors, manage drivers of change, question long-term viability. Relocate to cooler areas to win longterm contracts, purchase additional plots in cooler areas, then adopt incremental actions. What does societal or cultural transformation mean? • Effective responses to climate change entail parallel processes of decay and the radical unmaking of unsustainability (Geels 2008); • We need to simultaneously make new and erode old ways of life (Shove 2010); • Transformation is a change in the fundamental attributes of natural & human systems. It could reflect strengthened, altered, or aligned paradigms, goals, or values. It is sustainable, & includes poverty reduction (IPCC 2014). Deep-cultural change as part of adaptating to environmental change • Transformational change is an essential part of society’s adaptive and mitigative response to climate change; • We need to critically re-evaluate existing structures, institutions, habits & priorities in terms of climate change risks; • Some transformation will be forced on society (as a last resort), some will be voluntary, positive and anticipatory. (Rickards Nature Climate Change 2013) Deep cultural change? or ‘Windfall’? • Some see it as a market opportunity: – Opening up of Greenland & Antarctic; – Sea water desalination; – Floating islands; – Snow making machines; – Protective walls; • Big profits, for some; • Other options for creative entrepreneurism? • Who will governments be backing? Another turning point? ‘Liverpool One’ Academics favour ‘Old economics’ increasingly is being undermined by ‘new’, e.g. Stern, TEEB, academics. Will sustainability; governments heed the call? Will governments?