-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Ann Pettifor on climate change - Green movement forgets its
politics
Date: Thu, 08 May 2008 11:24:50 +0100
From: Chris Keene <[log in to unmask]>
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7385615.stm
Green movement forgets its politics
VIEWPOINT
Ann Pettifor
Organisations campaigning on climate change need to learn the lessons of
the anti-slavery and anti-apartheid movements, says Ann Pettifor. By
focusing on individuals rather than governments, initiatives such as the
recent Energy Saving Day are bound to fail in their bid to reduce
emissions, she argues.
Climate change is the issue of the day.
Scientists finally agree on the threat to the planet posed by rising
temperatures. Books on the subject proliferate.
Campaigners, like those at Plane Stupid, do amazing things to bring it
to public attention.
Big business frets too. The world's giant investment funds join green
groups in demanding drastic action.
Paul Hawken, author of Blessed Unrest - How the Largest Movement in the
World Came into Being, writes that "there are over one - maybe even two
- million organisations (worldwide) working toward ecological
sustainability and social justice".
And yet... and yet... there is no real climate change movement. There is
no organised effort leading society towards a legislative framework that
would urgently drive down greenhouse gas emissions across the board, and
begin to sequester carbon dioxide.
Not in the UK, or in the US, or internationally. The "movement" that
Hawken refers to is, he notes, "atomised" and "largely ignored".
Green organisations... fail to highlight the need for the kind of
change that can only be brought about by governmental action
Yet in September 2007, a public opinion survey from Yale University (in
conjunction with Gallup) found that "nearly half of Americans now
believe that global warming is either already having dangerous impacts
on people around the world or will in the next 10 years".
The authors noted that this was "a 20-percentage-point increase since
2004", representing "a sea change in public opinion... and a growing
sense of urgency".
If there is a "growing sense of urgency", why isn't there a climate
change movement in the US?
Low level lighting
The reason is that green organisations focus on individual ("change your
lightbulbs") or community ("recycle, reuse, reduce, localise") action.
They fail to highlight the need for the kind of structural change that
can only be brought about by governmental action.
Governments helpfully collude in this atomisation and fragmentation of
action and reaction.
Throughout history, social movements have focused on the need for
government action.
The anti-slavery movement sought to change laws that permitted slavery.
The suffragette movement only ensured votes for women once
discriminatory laws had been displaced; the anti-apartheid movement was
only successful once apartheid laws had been removed.
In the US, the black civil rights movement campaigned from 1947 until
the introduction of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights
Act to end discrimination in certain spheres.
Today, as the UK government's hesitancy in dealing with Northern Rock
reveals, governmental action is unpopular and out of fashion.
Not just with big business and neo-liberal economists, but also with
anarchists and many green campaigners. Minimal government is now
ideologically dominant.
The failure of anti-war demonstrations to halt the Iraq war is often
cited as evidence of the failure of governments to respond to such
popular pressure.
However, as the civil rights movement demonstrated, a successful
campaign does not stop at one defeat. It moves forward inexorably over
time, in pursuit of its legislative goal.
Fair shares
The population at large instinctively understands that they alone, or
even in community, cannot deal with the threat of climate change.
They are acutely aware that while individuals may take action, others
may become "freeriders".
Parliaments fiddle while the planet burns, and individuals are
pressured to take responsibility
They know a fair legislative framework is required to share the burden
of adjusting to climate change equitably between rich and poor.
Burden-sharing has several dimensions; between those who live in
Bangladesh and those who live in Zurich, those who drive 4x4s and those
who cycle, those who take foreign holidays and those who do not.
In the UK, Ipsos Mori polled public attitudes to climate change in July
2007.
Seventy percent "strongly agreed" or "tended to agree" that "the
government should take the lead in combating climate change, even if it
means using the law to change people's behaviour".
Green organisations in the UK support the government's very cautious
climate change bill by lobbying for a stronger legal framework - but not
much stronger.
The call by UK NGOs for 80% cuts in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 -
now accepted by government - lacks ambition, and underestimates the urgency.
Furthermore, the call for action by 2050 is so distant that the
government feels under no pressure.
Switching off
Growing scientific evidence of accelerating greenhouse gas emissions,
melting icecaps and the shrinking capacity of "sinks" to absorb
emissions means we need bold, urgent action by government to drive down
emissions to zero.
Britain's only Christian campaign dedicated exclusively to climate
change, Operation Noah, pressures government to take much more radical
action - to cut emissions by 90% by 2030, not 2050.
We may not have got it right, but we are trying to pressure government
to act urgently, and to mobilise society in the way that Jubilee 2000
mobilised millions of people to cancel third world debt.
In other words, we are pressing for governmental action by a deadline.
To succeed, climate change campaigns first need first to unite - at both
national and international levels.
Secondly, they must unite behind a radical goal that requires structural
change, regulation and enforcement that will urgently drive down
emissions and sequester carbon dioxide.
Thirdly, they need to exercise leadership by mobilising society in a
concerted way behind this goal. This will intensify pressure on
politicians and governments.
It ain't easy, but it has been done before; witness the Jubilee 2000
global campaign.
As things stand, the movement remains disparate, atomised and marginalised.
This frees politicians to expand airports and increase road capacity.
Parliaments fiddle while the planet burns, and individuals are pressured
to take responsibility for global climate change by "switching off at
the wall".
And so, inevitably, the Titanic's deck chairs are rearranged - and
energy use goes up, rather than down, on Energy Saving Day.
Ann Pettifor is executive director of Advocacy International and
campaigns adviser to Operation Noah
The Green Room is a series of opinion articles on environmental topics
running weekly on the BBC News website
Do you agree with Ann Pettifor? Do environmental groups focus too much
on individual actions, forgetting the political picture? Do governments
encourage this as a way of deflecting attention? Can individual or
community actions achieve the kind of society-wide emissions cuts that
scientists believe are necessary?
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