The list of day-to-day activities outlined by DEFRA as relevant to reducing emissions is long. Should we be concentrating upon a blanket strategy, focusing on all of them? Many would say so. A proliferation of how-to-do-it books exists on how to reduce one’s carbon footprint, and, if the majority of the population were to follow them, the impact upon carbon consumption would be significant.
I am quite hostile to such endeavours, however, no matter how well intentioned they may be. They are based upon a quite unrealistic assumption – that everyone is willing and able to live like the small minority of ‘positive greens’ in DEFRA’s sample. It is possible that they may even be counter-productive, by actively putting off the majority of citizens from other steps they may take. Giddens’s paradox holds. For most of the time and for the majority of citizens, climate change is a back-of-the-mind issue, even if it is a source of worry. It will stay that way unless its consequences become visible and immediate. In the meantime, no strategy is likely to work which concentrates solely upon provoking fear and anxiety, or which is based not only on instructing people to cut down on this or that, but also on expecting them to monitor that process on a continuous basis.
A different approach is needed from that prevalent at the moment. It must place an emphasis on positives as much as on negatives, and on opportunities rather than on self-induced deprivations. I would set out its main principles as follows.
Incentives must take precedence over all other interventions, including those which are tax-based. ‘No punishment for punishment’s sake’: in other words, punitive measures should either supply revenue spent directly for environmental purposes, or be linked in a visible way with behaviour change – and preferably both. The drivers of gas-guzzling vehicles, for example, should face heavy tax duties for the privilege, as heavy as is politically feasible, under ‘the polluter pays’ principle. Clear and self-evident options for behaviour change are available – switch to smaller cars or drive less.
The positives must dominate. This isn’t as difficult as it might sound. Take the issue of making homes more energy-efficient. There are several countries in the world that have managed to make major progress in this respect. How have they done so? Not by trying to scare people, but by emphasizing the advantages of having homes that are snug, protected against the elements and which also save money. An example is what has been achieved in Sweden, which was done by placing a strong emphasis on what was called ‘community, style and comfort’.
Low-carbon practices or inventions that initially have only limited appeal can be fundamentally important if they set trends, or if they are seen as in some way iconic.14 Most initiatives, whether social, economic or technological, are, in the early stages, open only to a small elite. In California, for example, there are long waiting lists for the hydrogen-powered Lifecar, although the first models will be extremely expensive. However, investment in such a car will provide the opportunity to see whether the vehicle could have a wider market, and also gives it an avant-garde cachet. This is what happened with the Toyota Prius hybrid vehicle, nearly a million of which have been sold worldwide. It was a vanguard model in the sense that it stimulated other manufacturers to start producing low-emission vehicles, whether hybrid or not.
Most initiatives that have successfully reduced emissions so far have been driven by the motivation to increase energy efficiency, rather than the desire to limit climate change. This observation applies to whole countries as well as to regions, cities and the actions of individuals. People are able to grasp and respond to this perspective more easily than to climate change, with all its surrounding debates and complexities; it is not difficult to present energy efficiency in a positive light. What is at issue, as mentioned earlier, is energy efficiency in the economy as a whole, since efficiency gains in one context are of little or no value if savings made are spent on energy-consuming activities elsewhere. The fundamental problem at the moment is to make clean energy sources competitive with fossil fuel energy sources, whether through public provision of subsidies or through technological advance. Utility companies in the US have been offering electricity generated from wind or solar sources to consumers since the late 1990s. Initially, take-up was very small, however, since the prices were not competitive. In early 2006 Xcel Energy in Colorado and Austin Energy in Texas offered tariffs below those of the regular energy sources. Austin Energy encouraged its customers to sign up for 10-year energy contracts, and was able to prosper even when the price of electricity dropped.
The role of technology in promoting low-carbon lifestyles is bound to be considerable. Technological innovation rarely determines what people do, since we often react to it in ways in which its initiators did not suspect. Thus the telephone was invented in 1876 as a signalling device; no one imagined that it would become so intrinsic to our lives as a medium of talk and conversation.15 Yet, at the same time, our lives can change dramatically through such interaction with technology. It is said that we are ‘creatures of habit’. And it is often true, especially if habits become addictive. Yet such is far from always the case – we can change our behaviour quite rapidly and dramatically, as has happened, and on a global level, with the arrival of the internet.
Government should be actively encouraging the creative economy and the creative society, even when these don’t seem to have an immediate bearing upon climate change, since creativity has to be the order of the day. Richard Florida, who has written extensively on the subject, argues persuasively that the creative sectors of the economy – where innovation, lateral thinking and enterprise can flourish – are increasingly becoming the driving force of the economy as a whole. Florida rejects the idea that creativity – the capacity to innovate, to question conventional wisdom – is limited to the few. Creativity is a ‘limitless resource. . . . It’s a trait that can’t be handed down, and it can’t be owned in the traditional sense.’16 R&D investment is important, but in pioneering responses to climate change, we need to be bringing science, the universities and social entrepreneurs closer together.
Step changes or ‘tipping points’ aren’t confined to the field of climate change science. They apply to social and economic life too – that was the context, in fact, in which the author who popularized the term, Malcolm Gladwell, originally discussed it.17 We should be looking to create tipping points when it comes to the transition to low-carbon lifestyles. From small beginnings, much larger changes can occur when a certain threshold is reached.
Governments have an important role in ‘editing choice’, and, in pursuing that aim, they shouldn’t be afraid to take on big business when it is necessary to do so. Corporations influence our choices in many direct and indirect ways – the state shouldn’t be reluctant to take a leaf out of their book. For instance, supermarkets usually place sweets and chocolates close to the exit, where customers line up to pay for their purchases. The reason is that at that point they are open to impulse buying, having relaxed after making their main purchases. Given the advance of obesity, I see no reason why such a practice shouldn’t be either prohibited or actively discouraged (although thus far it has not). How far we should go with choices that affect carbon consumption is a moot point. Some examples of choice editing appear to be completely unobjectionable. Thus, for example, we could propose that heating and air-conditioning should be organized such that everyone knows immediately how much he or she is spending at any given time. The effect would be even more powerful if we knew how our expenditure rated compared to that of our neighbours. A study showed that heavy users made bigger cuts in consumption if a smiling face was inscribed on bills below the average, with a frowning face on the bills of those having higher than average expenditure. Other examples are more complicated. I see no civil liberties issue in cases where our behaviour is already being significantly influenced, or manipulated, by companies, and where the object of government policy is to counter that influence.18 An example would be when a firm heavily advertises a product or service known to have adverse
environmental effects. Should governments go further? The Australian government, for example, has instituted a total ban on all light bulbs that aren’t of the low-energy type. Is it justified in doing so? In my view it is, given that the energy gains are substantial, while the difference in other ways between the conventional and low-energy bulbs is negligible. In any case, it is up to governments to explore these boundaries in conjunction with the electorate.
Foregrounding
Combating climate change demands long-term policies: how are these to be kept at the forefront of political concern? What can be done to keep global warming firmly on the political agenda? Agenda-setting theory helps supply some of the answers.19 It concerns how and why different policy questions figure prominently in the programmes of governments while others tend to recede into the background or even disappear altogether. How far a given set of problems receives public and policy attention does not just depend upon its objective importance, but upon a range of other factors too. In democratic countries, numerous areas of concern at any one time jostle for attention in the public sphere. Very often, transient issues outweigh more permanent and profound ones in terms of the attention they receive in the political arena.
Three aspects of the political agenda can be identified. First, there is the ‘public agenda’, which refers to issues felt to be most important by voters at any specific point in time. Second, the ‘governmental agenda’ is about the questions that are under debate in parliament and surrounding agencies. Finally, the ‘decision agenda’ refers to a more limited set of policies that are actually being enacted. Each of these dimensions is limited in terms of the numbers of issues that can be considered at any particular moment. Hence, there is competition between items that press for attention.
According to John Kingdon, the leading author in the field, who coined these terms, the political agenda at a given time is the result of the interaction of different ‘streams’ of concerns, which he labels problems, policies and politics. They sometimes converge, but also often flow on largely independently of one another, with their own rules and conventions, personnel and dynamics. What actually gets done depends upon the points at which they connect, which canny political players manage to exploit. There is much more chance that an issue will command the interest of policy-makers at such a point – a window of opportunity opens. Kingdon’s now classic work, Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies, starts with a resounding quote from Victor Hugo, ‘Greater than the tread of mighty armies is an idea whose time has come.’20 But how can we know when the time for an idea has come? Why do those in and around government, at any particular point, attend to some issues and not others?
The problem stream comes to the attention of policy-makers, Kingdon says, through indicators, focusing events and feedback. Indicators are measuring devices that reveal the scale of the problem in question. They allow a process to be monitored. Thus a continuing issue may actually become a ‘problem’ when a change is witnessed, as when unemployment or crime rates go up. Shifts in indicators may be enough to push an item onto the agenda, but issues are more likely to attract attention when propelled into the limelight as a result of dramatic events that bring them into focus. A focusing event may be anything that catches the headlines, such as a particularly violent crime.
Feedback concerns the responses of different groups, or the public at large, to particular policy programmes. It is almost always negative feedback that highlights a given problem – policies or practices that are working well don’t get reported. Nor do they tend to spark the interest of the public, which is most often stimulated when things go wrong or are seen to be going wrong. How events and reactions to them become framed – for example, how far a given problem is seen as open to government intervention or not – is of great importance in determining actual outcomes.
Work in the policy stream tends to be continuous. It goes on without much day-to-day reference to what moods may grip the public, and is pursued by specialists and experts within policy communities. Such work generates many possible policy proposals, but only a few ever make it onto the concrete political agenda. They are quite often ‘solutions’ waiting for problems – that is to say, they provide avenues for political intervention when the need for it arises as driven by a specific focusing event or set of events. The availability of ‘solutions’ is very important. Problems which do not come with potential courses of remedial action attached are not likely to get onto the agenda. Rather, they are accepted as situations that have to be lived with, and normally do not rate highly among the worries expressed by the public.
Organized interest groups of one kind or another play a role in shaping public opinion and limiting or opening out space for governmental action. However, what Kingdon calls the ‘national mood’ has a major impact upon when, where and how the problem, policy and political streams converge. For instance, when the mood is ‘anti-government’, voters may simply tune out from whatever strategies the government of the day might propose.
Some windows of opportunity are predictable – annual budgets, for example, usually provide an opportunity for a new departure. Most, however, are not, and policy entrepreneurs must therefore be prepared to grasp the opportunity when it presents itself, or to mobilize to block it. Public enthusiasm for a given policy agenda rarely lasts long, even when an issue is of continuing and manifest importance. In fact, studies show, it most often turns to disillusionment or indifference when the problem is not one that admits of a simple solution. Cynicism, unwillingness to make sacrifices, the perception that the costs are too great, or simply boredom can supplant the initial burst of public concern and support. With a constant search for novelty, and a distaste for ‘yesterday’s news’, the media undoubtedly play a substantial role in public shifts in attention.
The implications for climate change policy are clear and significant. Public support for such policy is not likely to be constant and can only form a general backdrop to effective policy action. I have argued that anxiety about future risk can’t be used as the sole motivator of public opinion, and that conclusion is backed up by studies of other risks and how people respond to them. For instance, concern about terrorism tends to move up and down the list of major public concerns depending exactly upon the factors identified by Kingdon – for instance, whether or not there has been a focusing incident of some kind. Worries not linked in the public mind with clear modes of response quickly slip down people’s ratings of what disturbs them most. Talk of impending catastrophe – whatever the risk in question – has little impact and indeed may induce an attitude of fatalism that blunts action. Fatalism in response to risk is a common reaction, visible in many who choose to pay no heed to health warnings about their lifestyle habits.
A cross-party concordat, as discussed below, would give a firm anchor for climate change as a continuing preoccupation of the ‘policy stream’. A diversity of groups in civil society – also discussed below – will certainly continue to press to keep necessary reforms and innovations going. Yet public support will be needed and it cannot be only latent. Based on Kingdon’s work, Sarah Pralle suggests a number of ways in which public interest and concern can be charged and recharged. Indicators, if they are straightforward and easy to grasp, could have an important role; and with the continued advance of climate science, they are certainly abundant. A few key indicators, especially where they can be linked to focusing events, should be highlighted. However, they shouldn’t be of the doom and gloom variety, but linked to potentially positive outcomes – to efforts that groups and communities are making to lessen the threats.
Problems that relate to people’s immediate experience are most likely to be taken seriously. Rightly or wrongly, hurricane Katrina and the 2003 European heat waves made the impact they did upon the consciousness of citizens in the developed countries because they were ‘close to home’. Only a small proportion of people in the industrial countries currently agree with the statement, ‘My life is directly affected by gl
obal warming and climate change.’21 They are also far more likely, on average, to be taking concrete measures to reduce their own carbon consumption. Most important of all, policy entrepreneurs should always connect problems with potential remedies or solutions. However, those solutions themselves must have ‘salience’ – they have to supply the motivation to act. One hundred books on one hundred ways to reduce your carbon footprint will have less effect than just one that is geared to what people are positively motivated to do.
A political concordat
Many have bemoaned the convergence of parties towards the centre ground in contemporary politics, but in the environmental field at least this could be a major advantage. Equating being in the political centre with an absence of radicalism only applies in the case of traditional left–right issues. As I have argued earlier, if one doesn’t think in this way, it is entirely possible to have a ‘radicalism of the centre’ – indeed, in terms of climate change and energy policy it is an essential concept.
What does a ‘radicalism of the centre’ mean? It means, first of all, gaining widespread public support for radical actions – that is, for the conjunction of innovation and long-term thinking which is the condition necessary for responding to climate change. It implies the reform of the state. Climate change and energy security are such serious issues, and they affect so many other aspects of the political field, that a concern with them has to be introduced across all branches of government. Most of the industrial states are coming to recognize this, although progress on the ground tends to be slow. Climate change is generally allocated to the environment ministry, which, in turn, is rarely one of the most powerful in influencing government. Such ministries are quite often separate from those dealing with transport and energy, health or overseas development. Power lies mostly where the money is: in the Treasury or finance ministry. Yet from now on, where the money is will be influenced enormously by climate change and energy questions, so it is in everyone’s interest that these issues achieve the primacy of place they deserve.
The Politics of Climate Change Page 13
