I agree with all that you say Alistair bar the choices available to the
individual. In some areas I think the choices are easier to make than
others. I believe, in one sense, it is very easy to refuse to fly. And a
refusal to fly would send a very strong message to political leaders. It
is not very easy to not drive because post war planning decisions have
all been based on the assumption that people will drive. Consequently
the places we need to get to are a long way apart. However, I have heard
so much nonsense from middle class 20 something campaigners saying oh,
take the train to Europe for your holiday this year, or use the bus
instead of the car. How is that meant to resonate with working class
families, cash and time strapped, suffering the privations of capitlaism
and being made to feel bad about enjoying the benefits? Or the call to
save the world by changing to low energy light bulbs that are just crap.
That will put people off the green agenda for years.
Also, some consumption choices are positional, ie they serve social and
symbolic needs rather than physical ones. I think that adds a barrier to
voluntary changes in patterns of consumption.
It has to be a debate about a better, because more equal, life for
everyone, rather than assuming poorly designed or impractical
alternatives to allow for the continuation of life in a sub two degrees
of warming capitalist system is any sense either a) progressive or b)
going to have any traction for the vast majority of people. The
inability of top-down discourses to advance this agenda means working in
a political concious fashion from the bottom up.
On 18/06/2010 10:51, Alastair McIntosh wrote:
> This is a response to Chris's comment about NGO communications strategy, but
> (forgive me, Chris), it goes far beyond that, thus why I've tweaked the
> heading:
>
>
> I don't think we're looking at a failure of NGO communication strategy in
> tackling climate change. But what we are looking at is a failure to hit the
> right target because it's too challenging to the human condition, and we're
> all much too complicit in it if we care to do the sums, including our
> apportionment of non-personal energy use which leads David MacKay
> (Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air) to his figure that we each consume
> 125 kwh of energy per day - in round figures that's equivalent to each of us
> having 5 bars of the electric fire on permanently.
>
> Most greens have no idea of this level of complicity, but it is the reason
> why simplistic fixes just don't add up. As MacKay says, small changes don't
> add up to a big enough change. As such, given the current product of
> consumption and population, we're stumped. As climate change activists it's
> not a failure of communication strategy; it's a failure (as you'd probably
> agree, Chris) of the message itself.
>
> I have seen this close up with an international climate change forum on
> which I sit. It is made up mainly of big NGOs with background senior
> involvement from bodies like UNEP, DFID, ILO, etc. I don't want to name it
> here because they're trying to do good work, but terribly hamstrung by what
> can be said in a way that keeps everybody on board. The consequence is that
> they can agree no problem about the need to green-up existing energy supply,
> but talk about cutting consumption and that's off the Richter scale for some
> of the members. When I try to bring it in, it gets respectfully noted, and I
> think everybody privately gets the point, but it comes out diluted in the
> resultant communiqués. Here is an example of a paragraph that I recently
> tried to get included into a document and which was watered down:
>
> "We recognise that to seek to substitute current energy requirements with
> renewables is only one half of the necessary equation. It is a supply-side
> measure. To be effective, the drivers of climate change must also be tacked
> from the demand side. This is because continued growth of energy demand is
> impossible to reconcile with the lower hanging fruits of renewables
> potential. However, to raise such demand side questions is challenging to an
> economics of unmitigated growth that looks only to the supply side. There
> are no easy answers as to how these tensions might be reconciled, but they
> ought at least be placed on the table for discussion. A demand-side approach
> would entail energy obviation measures on the one hand (such as are already
> being pioneered by industry), and the discouragement of profligate
> consumerism on the other. Here "consumerism" might be defined as consumption
> in excess of what is necessary for dignified human sufficiency, including
> the sharing of and enjoyment of abundance within equitable constraints of
> planetary carrying capacity."
>
> I do not blame my colleagues for the watering down. They are only trying to
> reconcile the ideal with the possible, and this is the way that consensus
> trance reality works - we all get pulled into magnetic alignment with where
> real power lies. But what is doubly difficult with climate change is that
> such "real power" in my view cannot be pinned only on the corporate chiefs,
> or the politicians. It comes, above all, from we, the people; in other words
> (and as I've sought to show in "Hell and High Water"), it is where the human
> condition is at.
>
> This is what makes the work of people like Tom Crompton and Tim Jackson
> important. They are tackling the psychological roots. I would say we have to
> go even further and tackle the spiritual roots of consumer addiction, and
> also, have the courage to place population policy back on the table (not
> compulsory sterilisation, but women's rights etc.).
>
> Did anybody watch Tim Hayward of BP being grilled by Congress last night on
> the BBC web? He came over as a broken man; a man being blamed for the
> failure of a virtually autonomous business unit. That is how big industry
> works these days. But what drives such behaviour? Well, when was the last
> time that you filled up a tank of petrol, and chose the cheapest filling
> station? If we want to know the root of our problems, we have to shift the
> framing of the debate, and not only look outwith - that is important too -
> but also look within, and start to have the guts to tackle our
> psychospiritual condition. As long as we believe there's no such thing as
> such inner life, we'll remain blind to the causes of the problems and
> contributors to them in the scattering effect of our hubris.
>
> Alastair.
>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Discussion list for the Crisis Forum
> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Chris Shaw
> Sent: 18 June 2010 10:00
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [localsustuk] News Items from the USA re electric vehicles and
> solar pv plus Notes
>
> At what point is it necessary to admit that the communication strategy of
> the NGO's etc has failed? If the idea was to avoid more than two degrees of
> warming ( an idea which for me has always been a symbol of defeat anyway)
> then it is game over. The need to avoid this level of warming has been at
> the centre of the debate long enough, and is losing ground.
>
> I believe the problem has always been that the debate has been shorn of
> politics, the mainstream green argument has always been about keeping
> modernity on the road. Yet the evidence is clear; an equal society, at a
> relatively low income level, would be a happier and healthier society.
> Of course very powerful, very violent, very oppressive forces have spent the
> last 100 + years making sure that agenda is off limits. And so we circle
> around the same irrelevant debates, carefully avoiding the elephant in the
> room. And academia seems as bad an offender as any other endeavour regarding
> this collusion with the value system of global elites.
>
> On 18/06/2010 09:33, Edward Borodzicz wrote:
>
>> Chris,
>>
>> Don't confuse education with intelligence, education is increasingly
>>
> correlated to wealth (the last and current government in the UK are
> determined to make it so with their fees, charges and loans), it is
> therefore likely that the context of wealth that the student came from was
> therefore a gas/energy guzzling family, denial is hence no more unreasonable
> than the smoker who denies the damage the next cigarette will do, or the fat
> person and the next 1000 calorie burger! It is well documented in
> psychology that we do not like to acknowledge high probability risks,
> instead preferring to look for some exotic low frequency events.
>
>> As for intelligence.......... look to those who achieved in spite of not
>>
> because of!
>
>> Edward
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>>>> Chris Keene<[log in to unmask]> 17/06/2010 22:54>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>> It would be nice to know the average cost of driving a mile on
>> electric and on petrol. I believe electric is much cheaper. But how
>> much of the petrol cost is tax? Would electric still be cheaper than
>> petrol if taxed at the same rate?
>>
>> The reason I ask is a campaigning point. All good campaigns have an
>> enemy, and I know the oil companies have been buying up the patents
>> for electric batteries and blocking their development. If we could
>> show the public how much they would save by having electric cars
>> rather than petrol we could get them to really hate the oil companies,
>> and just maybe get them to disbelieve the climate denial the oil
>> industry has been funding.
>>
>> Or am I just grasping at straws? We must do something to conquer the
>> deniers - only 19% of college educated Republics in the USA believe in
>> anthropogenic global warming (and the more educated you are the less
>> you are likely to believe, which suggests to me this is a function of
>> the climate denial propaganda educated Republicans are exposed to)
>>
>> Chris
>>
>> On 17/06/2010 22:38, ferrand wrote:
>>
>>
>>> 4.7 Million EV Charging Units Expected Worldwide by 2015:
>>>
>>> McClatchy/Tribune, June 7, 2010
>>>
>>> http://www.energycentral.com/functional/news/news_detail.cfm?did=1579
>>> 5940
>>>
>>> The first affordable mass-produced electric vehicles will hit the
>>> streets of America later this year. Once the Nissan Leaf begins to
>>> make its way from dealerships to consumers, the electric vehicle
>>> charging revolution will begin. A new report by Pike Research reveals
>>> that there will be an estimated 4.7 million EV charging units in
>>> operation worldwide by 2015. Of these 4.7 million units, about 1
>>> million will be located here in the United States and the remainder
>>> elsewhere around the world. One primary difference between the
>>> national and international markets is location. The majority of
>>> charging stations in the United States will be located at individual
>>> residences. The report indicates that about two-thirds of EV charging
>>> equipment sales will be in the residential sector. Americans are
>>> expected to prefer the convenience of charging their vehicles at home
>>> where it will typically cost consumers less than $2 to fully charge a
>>>
> vehicle.
>
>>> Photovoltaics Likely to Reach Milestone of 10 Gigawatts Installed in
>>> 2010 - But Wind Remains Far Ahead:
>>>
>>> GreenTech Media, June 11, 2010
>>>
>>> http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/milestone-10-gigawatts-of
>>> -pv-in-2010-part-2
>>>
>>> The threshold of 10 gigawatts of photovoltaic solar installed
>>> globally in a single year is likely to be reached this autumn. Ten
>>> years ago, the total amount of photovoltaics installed in the year
>>> 2000 was 170 megawatts. Since then, the solar photovoltaic industry
>>> has grown at a
>>> 51 percent annual growth rate, and 170 megawatts is now the size of a
>>> healthy utility installation or a small solar factory. Photovoltaic
>>> module pricing has made radical progress, as well, moving from $300
>>> per watt in 1956, to $50 per watt in the 1970s, to $10 per watt in
>>> the 1990s, to $2 per watt today. By comparison, the wind industry
>>> installed
>>> 27 gigawatts in 2008, 38 gigawatts in 2009 and has a total installed
>>> base of more than 158 gigawatts compared to PV's installed base of
>>> about 20 gigawatts. 2010 will see more than 200 gigawatts of
>>> installed wind and the Global Wind Energy Council expects that to
>>> double to 400 gigawatts by the end of 2014.
>>>
>>> NOTE In UK Solar PV is at present about 85% of the installed capital
>>> cost of offshore wind, this may well come down further in the next
>>> year or so if some current UK PV developments reach the market. BUT
>>> wind offshore has a utilisation of 25 to 30% while Solar PV is 15-17%.
>>> SO Solar PV, above [say] all car park bays, will cause much less
>>> visual and environmental effects than wind energy. Be easier to
>>> connect to the electricity grid. And require less maintenance ??
>>> Electric car charging points could be provided ??
>>>
>>> In a way one needs both: Solar in Summer especially to feed
>>> Supermarket Air Conditioning and Refrigeration: Wind in winter for
>>>
> heating& lighting.
>
>>> regards
>>> Ferrand
>>>
>>> __._,_.___
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