Matthew's RSA blog

The changing climate of climate change

There would appear to be a change in the air – and I’m not just talking about the weather. At the Commentariat event last night (fun, if slightly self indulgent) I heard someone from Spiked magazine confidently criticising the commentators’ consensus around climate change. This wouldn’t normally have been so worrying, but it was the third time in a day that I’d heard this kind of dissent.

This time last year it appeared that all the UK, and even some American, politicians were on message with what could broadly be called the Stern Hypothesis: the climate is changing, humans have contributed hugely to this change, we should and must act now to mitigate our impact and adapt to those changes we can’t mitigate. But today people seem to be emboldened to question this scientific orthodoxy.

Richard Littlejohn, one of the most widely read columnists in Britain, recently wrote about how politicians are using ‘dodgy climate change hysteria to keep increasing taxes’. His overall point is that climate change isn’t happening, that the earth’s temperature is cooling (though I’m not sure what his source is), and that the Government’s agenda to implement green taxes is hurting the man on the Clapham omnibus (or rather in the 2001 Renault Espace).

Indeed, even looking to the American elections, climate change doesn’t seem to be an issue in the interminable Clinton v. Obama contest, and their increasing tone of protectionism doesn’t bode well for their commitment to global issues.

In some ways both Littlejohn and the American politicians are right. As people’s finances are increasingly stretched, and a downturn in the housing market means that people feel less well off, they may feel that all this talk of paying more taxes to facilitate climate change mitigation, or changing their lifestyles to reduce emissions and waste, is too much to ask when they are concerned about more pressing problems like paying their mortgage.

It was always going to be difficult to empower the individual to feel responsible for their own contributions to climate change, particularly when changes in global politics means that many less developed countries are justifiably piqued when asked to reduce their emissions (and economic growth) by developed nations who got us into this trouble in the first place.

Sceptics like Littlejohn are helped by the misnomer of ‘global warming’ – in fact climatologists would say that there is no inconsistency with the argument that humans are responsible for changes in our global temperatures and a drop in temperatures – the point is that our actions are impacting on the world, and this may take the form of some cooling and some warming, the point is that the climate is changing.

I don’t believe that ethical living, as some put it, is incompatible with a retrenchment in the family finances, quite the opposite. There are ways to live a full life that don’t involve driving a petrol guzzling car, or buying clothes made by children in distant countries, and there are ways to make such a lifestyle affordable as well. Paying more taxes to enable the government to deal with those elements that are outside our control, like what happens to the waste we inevitably create, is just a further cost that must be factored in.

There is a third, more hopeless view, falling somewhere between Stern and Littlejohn, which argues that it is pointless to tinker with car emissions and plastic bag bans because people will only make drastic changes in their lifestyle when they are forced to, the tragedy is, that assuming the science is right, by this time it will be far too late.

Just how do you get to Australia without stepping foot on a plane?

We returned to the office from a snow-covered Easter to an exciting week of events.

We kicked off on Wednesday with Rt Hon Jack Straw MP who spoke to a heaving Great Room about building community confidence in the criminal justice system. The lecture was a great opportunity to launch the RSA's new Prison Learning Network and we had some excellent questions from the audience, you can listen again here.

Later that evening we screened No End in Sight. Nominated for an academy award for best documentary feature the film was the first of its kind to chronicle the reasons behind Iraq's descent into guerilla war, warlord rule and anarchy. Director Charles Ferguson spoke about making his first documentary film and what led him into the gritty world of documentaries from an earlier career in software technology.

Finally we wrapped up with this week's RSA Thursday, by welcoming slow-traveller Ed Gillespie to the RSA to prove that you don't have to get on a 747 to holiday in Australia you just need a lot of time....Read his blog about his 361 days of slow-travel global circumnavigation here.

We draw a quick breath before we launch into the Spring programme. No rest for us as we have just announced our April events, you can see the full list here but highlights include: Julian Barnes, Tim Harford, Jonathan Powell and Charlie Leadbeater.

Hope to see you all at JAS soon

International relations

An amazingly busy week for us here in the events team. We started on Tuesday with a joint event with the Equality and Human Rights Commission where David Cameron and Trevor Phillips drew a buzzing crowd to talk about Sharia Law amid the controversial comments that have recently hit the headlines. MT then bumped into DC on his bike outside the Houses of Parliament when DC had only positive things to say about the RSA.

From religion and law to arts as Turner Prize winner, Jeremy Deller spoke about social and environmental challenges with John Wilson of BBC Radio 4’s Front Row in the second of our Arts & Ecology Exchanges. With Wednesday came an international slant on education, as Ray Simon, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education travelled to the UK for the first time to speak on the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001. And from America to Russia as our popular RSA Thursday took on the Russian Presidential elections with an expert panel. Speakers included Edward Lucas who has recently published The New Cold War: How the Kremlin menaces both Russia and the West.

Finally we finished off the week with acclaimed director and self-proclaimed master of hype Tony Kaye with an exclusive screening of his epic documentary Lake of Fire. After a massive 15 years in the making this black and white film tackles the ever-dividing issue of abortion head on.

We step into March with an exciting and varied range of events, including a mini-series on Iraq five years on from invasion. We start with a bang as British filmmaker, Nick Broomfield joins us for an exclusive screening of his new film, Battle for Haditha.

What should we make of all this?

The debate over tackling climate change is interesting but a little confusing. I first heard of the Conservatives’ ideas about aviation arriving on Sunday morning at Sky News to do their paper review. I welcomed the idea of a personal aviation emissions allocation as this is broadly in line with the RSA’s own proposal for personal carbon trading.

The next day the FT suggested that my support for the Conservative idea – which is both green and redistributive - was some kind of rebuff for Gordon Brown ahead of his own speech. As it turned out the Chancellor, referring to the important deal negotiated by Angela Merkel, emphasised the need to take continental and global action on climate change.

Last week in Brussels David Cameron urged the EU to take a strong role in tackling climate change but at the same time revealed that his only partners in his putative new centre right European Parliament group is the Czech ruling party, whose leaders are apparently unconvinced that global warming is real! In a further twist, Brown favoured voluntary measures on domestic fuel efficiency over Tory proposals for regulations and taxes; a neat reversal of conventional political point scoring.

What should we make of all this? Obviously it is good that the politicians are putting climate change centre stage. After last month’s grim IPCC report (itself probably erring on the cautious side), there was nowhere left to hide on the issue. Environmental groups must feel like the only girl at the ball so assiduously are they being courted. Put both Brown’s and Cameron’s ideas together and you have a pretty serious action plan. Brown is right that action must be taken internationally; Cameron that the domestic requirements of such agreements will not be met by voluntarism alone.

But there is a danger in the environment being seen as a political fad. As the sociologist Stan Cohen brilliantly analysed in his book 'States of Denial', most of us rely on a capacity to turn our faces away from difficult truths. Thus were most Germans under Nazi rule able to deny responsibility for the Holocaust and even otherwise progressive white South Africans willing to live with Apartheid. And maybe it is how we can live affluent Western lifestyles while a few thousand miles away African children starve?

In persisting with denial we rely on certain mental tropes such as 'it's not really happening', 'it's nothing to do with me' or 'there's nothing I can do about it'. By making climate change feel like an issue of political point scoring rather than unarguable science and clear moral responsibility we run the danger of providing an easy route for denial.

Ultimately I believe we can tackle carbon emissions and have better lives, but in the short term we face some tough choices. Once this row is over, our politicians should try to find a basis for an agreed way forward.

I heard last week that the average readership for a blog is one so I am gratified to see that at least six people read mine:

Andrew and Praguetory - I agree there are some good blogs and I should stop talking only about the negative ones.

Ewan - yes, we need to think of new ways to use technology to engage young people in politics (something we will be discussing in our internet conference later this year).

Leen Petre is right to remind us of the digital divide, although it isn't so big when you look at satellite TV or mobile phones.

Trevor - we are currently thinking about doing some work on prisons.

John - I liked the idea but I can't say I hold out much hope that citizens would pay a voluntary tax to politicians however good their cause.