Values do not realize themselves. They have to be connected to a ‘how’ that explains the means whereby they can be realized. Greens, as mentioned, have a distrust of power and the state – the desire for participatory democracy is found in the manifestos of virtually all green parties. Goodin searches for a logical connection between green values and the typical green political framework – advocacy of participatory democracy, distrust of large-scale power, and nonviolence – and finds none. This is an important conclusion, for reasons I shall mention later. He also argues – I think correctly – that a green theory of value should have priority, in cases of clash, over the green theory of agency. As he points out, such an emphasis runs counter to the intuitions of most greens, who believe that direct personal action should have priority over orthodox politics, and see this belief at the core of what it means to be green.
Although Goodin does not discuss the issue in an extensive way, one should point out that the relationship between the greens and the question of global warming is problematic. Global warming is not simply an extension of more traditional forms of industrial pollution; it is qualitatively different. Scientists, and scientists alone, have directed our attention to it, since it is not visible in the way London smogs were, or smoke-stack pollution is. We are also wholly dependent on the research and monitoring work of scientists to track the progress of warming and map its consequences.
Some concepts which play a major role in current environmental thinking, such as the aforementioned precautionary principle, come from the green movement broadly defined. Other notions sound as though they have green origins, but in fact do not, such as ‘ecological footprint’, a phrase first introduced by William Rees in the early 1990s.7 One might think it refers to a footprint in the sand, but it actually has high-tech origins – it came from the comment of a computer technician, who spoke admiringly of the small space his new computer took up on his desk.
A lot more order needs to be brought into this jumble of ideas and concepts. I see no problem in accepting that there are green values which are relevant for significant aspects of political life. However, such values are not necessarily the same as those connected to controlling climate change, and may indeed run counter to them. For example, a key green value is that of ‘staying close to nature’ – or, more briefly put, conservation. It is a value that has a certain aesthetic quality to it. It is very possibly important to the good life, but it has no direct relevance to climate change. Clashes can easily occur between conservationist values and policies relevant to global warming – for example, conservationists might resist the building of a nuclear power station, or a wind farm, in a given area of the countryside.
The desire to protect animal species from extinction might also be a worthy one, but its only connection to climate change is if extinction threatens the ecosystems that help reduce emissions. For these reasons, although being ‘green’ has become synonymous with acting against global warming, I don’t use the term. Of course, green values or policies could be and are relevant to wider political concerns. In other words, actions that are politically attractive because they serve widely held green values could also serve the goal of limiting climate change. It is quite right to say that economic growth shouldn’t be valued in and of itself, especially as a society becomes more affluent.
The green movement will lose (or has already lost) its identity as environmental politics become part of the mainstream. Although green groups and parties holding these ideas will of course remain, the absorption of the greens into the mainstream means discarding those aspects of green theories of agency that have nothing intrinsically to do with green values. These include the theses that participatory democracy is the only kind of democracy that counts; that the best kind of society we can aim for is a radically decentralized one (decentralization may quite often be a valuable political goal, and even relevant to green objectives, but only alongside other forms of political organization); and the commitment to nonviolence (plainly an important goal in most contexts, but arguably not a universal one, and in any case one that has no intrinsic connection with climate change objectives as such).
We must also disavow any remaining forms of mystical reverence for nature, including the more limited versions which shift the centre of values away from human beings to the earth itself8 – tackling global warming has nothing to do with saving the earth, which will survive whatever we do. Living in harmony with the earth, respecting the earth, respecting nature – these ideas fall into the same category.
The green movement leaves behind it some central dilemmas. In what sense, if any, does coping with climate change and energy security mean that economic growth, in its usual sense, is inevitably compromised? Can and should political life in the industrial countries, and perhaps elsewhere too, be reshaped so that well-being replaces affluence as a core aspiration of development? We also have to ask how useful the concepts are that have come, at least in some part, from the green movement. They include especially the precautionary principle, sustainability and the principle that ‘the polluter pays’.
Managing risk: the precautionary principle
The precautionary principle (PP) has been used well beyond the green movement to handle risk in the context of climate change and other environmental areas. The notion has been incorporated into numerous official documents concerned with global warming. It was built into the 1992 Rio Declaration and has been applied widely since, including in the programmes of the European Commission. Its core meaning can be summarized as the aphorism ‘better safe than sorry’, although it is invariably clothed in more technical garb. Like other aspects of everyday wisdom, ‘better safe than sorry’ is a theorem that dissolves into ambiguity when subjected to scrutiny. Moreover, there is no reason why ‘better safe than sorry’ should be prioritized over its opposite: ‘he who hesitates is lost’. All popular maxims, in fact, have their opposite, which explains their lack of explanatory or predictive capacity. We tend to apply them retrospectively depending on what the outcomes of a course of action prove to be.
The PP concentrates only on one side of risk: the possibility of harm. The reason why it has become so prominent is bound up with its origins in the green movement and the attitude of that movement towards nature. Conservationism easily slides over into the view that we should beware of interfering with natural processes as a matter of principle. Risk, however, has two sides. The opposite of precaution is boldness and innovation – taking the plunge. Taking risks adds edge to our lives, but, much more importantly, is intrinsic to a whole diversity of fruitful and constructive tasks.9 Risk-taking is essential to new thinking in all spheres, to scientific progress and to wealth-creation. We have no hope of responding to climate change unless we are prepared to take bold decisions. It is the biggest example ever of he who hesitates is lost.
The American legal scholar Cass Sunstein has produced a devastating critique of the precautionary principle. He notes how divergent are the situations it has been taken to cover. The definition of the PP most often offered is ‘that regulators should take steps to protect against potential harms, even if causal chains are unclear and even if we do not know that those harms will come to fruition’.10 Yet thus formulated, the PP can be invoked in quite contradictory ways. It could be used to endorse interventionist action to prevent a given state of affairs from arising, as in the case of taking action against global warming – or, as Sunstein points out, the invasion of Iraq. More often, however, the PP is invoked to justify exactly the opposite – inaction, on the grounds of being better safe than sorry. Such is the case, for example, when groups oppose the introduction of GM crops, in the belief that it is better to maintain the status quo than to make risky interventions into nature.
Since it can be used to justify completely opposed courses of action, it isn’t surprising that there is little consistency in definitions offered of the PP. Sunstein traces some 20 different such definitions, in fact, remarking that ‘they are not compatible wi
th one another’.11 They range from ‘weak’ to ‘strong’. A weak definition is one such as the following: that ‘a lack of decisive harm should not be grounds for refusing to regulate, in relation to a specific hazard’. Strong definitions are those such as ‘action should be taken to correct a problem as soon as there is evidence that harm may occur’. Sunstein shows that both types of definition are worthless as guides to action. Weak versions of the PP do no more than state a truism. Governments could not possibly demand certainty in risk situations before taking regulatory action.
However, stronger versions, if they were applied strictly, would paralyse all action. Take the example of GM crops. The risks to human health and local ecologies are not known with any precision. A strong version of the PP requires that they be banned completely, on the basis that this way we avoid any risks they are likely to pose. However, prohibiting their use creates significant risks too, including the possibility, for example, of rising levels of starvation and malnutrition. The strong definition of the PP would entail that we avoid these risks too. Hence the strong definition is logically incoherent; it goes against both the cultivation and the non-cultivation of GM crops. The PP in its strong form, Sunstein shows, tends to lead to extreme conclusions, as a means of concealing its incoherence. It tends to focus only on worst-case possibilities, producing either a paralysing focus on the status quo, or endorsements of extreme reactions.
Precautions against some risks almost always create others. This observation is important to my arguments about climate change, since there is always a balance of risks (and, crucially, opportunities) whenever a given course of action is considered. We cannot therefore justify a ‘bias for nature’ – leaving nature intact – as an argument relevant to dealing with global warming. We will need to push the boundaries of the end of nature further, rather than (as green thinkers want) pull back from them.
How can it be that the PP is self-contradictory, yet is so widely accepted as a framework for policy? The reasons, Sunstein says, lie in the social perception of risk. We tend to focus on some risks to the exclusion of others, and use rules of thumb that are quite often very misleading in judging risks. Sunstein lists a number of such rules of thumb or ‘heuristics’, including:
1 The ‘availability heuristic’. We may pick on certain risks simply because they are in the news, ignoring other relevant threats. For instance, Sunstein says, at the moment there is a distinct tendency to overplay the risks posed by terrorism.
2 ‘Probability neglect’. We tend to focus on worst-case scenarios, even if they are very improbable. This tendency is noticeable among some of the writers on climate change, as noted earlier.
3 ‘Loss aversion’. People tend to have a bias in favour of the status quo because they are more concerned about losses than about future gains, a well-established finding in behavioural economics. This tendency is related to future discounting, as discussed in the Introduction.
4 A belief in the ‘benevolence of nature’ that makes risks created by humans particularly suspect.
5 ‘System neglect’. This tendency prevents people from seeing the risks created by their own attempts at risk avoidance.
If one adds to these points the exploitation of risks by special interest groups, it is easy to see how biased risk assessments arise. Since people usually concentrate only on some risks, filtering out others, and since they tend to concentrate on worst-case scenarios, strong versions of the PP result. They offer no proper policy guidelines, however, because of their self-contradictory starting-point.
I draw several conclusions from Sunstein’s analysis. The first is that we have to operate in terms not of the precautionary principle, but of another PP – the ‘percentage principle’. In assessing risks, no matter how catastrophic, some form of cost-benefit analysis of possible forms of action is nearly always involved. That is, we have to assess risks and opportunities in terms of costs incurred in relation to benefits obtained. Risks which shade over significantly into uncertainties, like those involved in global warming, however, inevitably mean that there will be an element of guesswork, perhaps a large element, in whatever we do (or do not do).
Second, cost-benefit analysis in democratic settings presumes public debate, since choice among risks is involved. For instance, nuclear power can help reduce emissions, but it creates other risks, such as those involved in the disposal of radioactive waste. Debate, however, will not necessarily lead to agreement, and policy-makers will in the end have to make the leap one way or the other.
Third, all risk assessment is contextual. It depends upon values, which inevitably shape the threats considered most salient at any point, given that no course of action is ever risk-free. Consider the introduction of a new medical drug. From a regulatory point of view, it is certainly sensible to test it thoroughly before it is used on a wide scale. However, those suffering from a condition that the drug could help may well decide to take it before full testing has taken place. In such a case, ‘he who hesitates is lost’ trumps ‘better safe than sorry’, because sufferers have little to lose by not taking the drug.
The issues just discussed are relevant to all areas of risk and public policy. They are important to the arguments of this book, since how people assess and respond to risk in general is a key part of the politics of global warming. However, they are also relevant in an immediate way to strategies for mitigating climate change and also to problems of adaptation.
‘Sustainable development’
The year 1972 was important in the history of environmental thinking, since it was the date at which a landmark study appeared: the Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth. The work argued that our civilization is exhausting the resources upon which its continued existence depends.12 It sold in its millions and, although it was subjected to numerous criticisms, its overall emphasis is now widely accepted. In the same year, a major UN conference on the ‘Human Environment’ highlighted the importance of reconciling economic development with the more efficient use of resources. The term ‘sustainable development’ was introduced in the 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and Development – now usually referred to as the Brundtland Report, since it was chaired by the Norwegian ex-Prime Minister, Gro Harlem Brundtland.13 Like Limits to Growth, it focused on the possibility that modern industry is using up its source materials at an alarming rate, which cannot be maintained for much longer without major change.
The Brundtland Report recognized that economic growth is necessary in order to bring greater prosperity to the developing world. However, development overall has to become sustainable. The Commission defined sustainable development as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.14 The 1992 UN Rio Earth Summit endorsed a declaration setting out 27 principles of sustainable development and recommended that every country produce a national strategy to achieve these ends. A few years later the Treaty of Amsterdam embraced sustainable development as integral to the aims of the EU, and a comprehensive Sustainable Development Strategy was established in 2001.
The introduction of the notion has had a valuable effect. At least to some degree it has helped bring together two previously discrepant communities – on the one hand, greens and others who were ‘anti-growth’ and, on the other, pro-market authors. As Richard North has observed, it ‘has exposed green extremists as being indifferent to human realities [the plight of the poorer countries] and hard-nosed industrialists as obsessing about the short-term. And it has provided some solid middle ground from which former hotheads, dreamers and radicals can hone workable policy.’15 The meeting-point came through world poverty. Greens and conservationists could argue that a no-growth policy made sense in the industrial states. However, they also support global social justice, whose realization means that poorer countries must be given the opportunity to become richer – that is, to develop economically.
The term gained such popularity that it is now deployed
almost everywhere and has figured in thousands of books, articles and speeches. Yet it has had its detractors from the beginning and their voices have become ever more strident. What accounts for its popularity, they argue, is precisely its anodyne quality – an intrinsic vagueness, coupled with a have-your-cake-and-eat-it quality. The two prime terms, ‘sustainability’ and ‘development’ – as many have observed – have somewhat contradictory meanings.16 ‘Sustainability’ implies continuity and balance, while ‘development’ implies dynamism and change. Thus environmentalists are drawn to the ‘sustainability’ angle, while governments and businesses (in practice, anyway) place the focus on ‘development’, usually meaning by this term GDP (Gross Domestic Product) growth.
One response to the elusive nature of the concept has simply been to avoid defining it and instead to substitute a cluster of goals in its place. In Implementing Sustainable Development, for example, William Lafferty and James Meadowcroft argue: ‘Sustainable development indicates an interdependent concern with: promoting human welfare; satisfying basic needs; protecting the environment; considering the fate of future generations; achieving equity between rich and poor; and participating on a broad basis in decision-making.’17 Such an all-encompassing list, however, surely empties the notion of any core meaning. It is an example of ‘the way that sustainable development has become an all-embracing concept to the extent that it has no clear analytical bite at all’.18
The Politics of Climate Change Page 7
