Brokenhagen: treating the public this way is what’s caused the problem – here’s how we can take a different path

By Stuart King / @Stuart_King

It should have been obvious that the “COP-15″ summit was becoming the COP-OUT summit weeks ago; arguably months and years ago. And it was because of mistakes by those evangelising on climate change, that have now been repeated and compounded. And I write this as a “believer” not a “sceptic”.

Talking up the challenges, the costs and the sacrifices, doesn’t make most people want to buy-in to a solution. And getting the public to recognise the problem and buy-in to the solution isn’t some irritating optional extra we can pick and choose whether to bother with. It’s inseparable from dealing effectively with the problem.

Treating the public this way is what’s caused the problem. It prompted scientists to foolishly fiddle the facts, conceal information and treat us as too stupid to be able to understand the very thing scientists are supposed to do: challenge orthodoxy.

It prompted politicians to offload difficult, expensive decisions onto unelected bureaucrats who were never going to be able to deliver the answers – because the answers demand the accountability they lack.

It prompted middle-class, affluent environmental activists – for whom fixing a wind turbine on their roof or paying a carbon offset after a quick holiday jaunt to the Caribbean is pocket-change – to lecture families on fixed incomes about what they will have to sacrifice. And each of these groups got exactly what they deserved at Copenhagen.

How about going down a different path now?

Here are the four ways I think a substantive deal on climate change could be rescued, which can resonate with the public and which doesn’t require us to retreat into caves to bring it about.

First, let’s learn from history. When I was growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s, the big environmental threat was something called Acid Rain. It’s not talked about very much in the West now (although it’s a growing problem in China, India and Brazil) because action was taken to combat it, raise environmental standards and improve technology to tackle the problem. In the 1990s the problem was the hole in the ozone layer – again a problem caused by the emission of damaging gasses and chemicals.

I know that climate change is an immensely bigger problem, but in these examples we can see that huge amounts of change can be made without scaring people that their world is going to end. And by putting investment in technology at the forefront of the battle we’ll be creating new, long-term jobs in manufacturing and research, which will help our economy as we seek to come out of recession.

Second, we need to seriously challenge the way we have until now gone about tackling climate change to date. The carbon “cap and trade” system doesn’t provide a single incentive to reduce dependence on carbon-based fuels, which remain the cheapest available. We should look instead at a means of fees and dividends: fees for those choosing to stick with carbon-based fuels; dividends to those who switch.

And when I talk about dividends, I’m not talking about rewarding everyone who consumes energy – this won’t be an impenetrable scheme like cap-and-trade that only multinationals dabble in above the heads of the rest of us: it will pay cash into your bank account if you go green. Click here to read an eloquent explanation by James Hansen, Adjunct Professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University. As I’ve written before, incentives are far more effective than taxes in producing change – and one of the reasons Britain is so tired of green issues is because green taxes have been abused by politicians.

Third, instead of just writing developing nations blank cheques to insure them against climate change, let’s make sure that a large part of the developed world’s response is the establishment of an international trust to safeguard the world’s forests and reverse deforestation. While one half of the climate change threat has been the increase carbon emissions since the industrial revolution, the other half has been massive deforestation, and as we know forests are critical carbon absorbers.

And finally, let’s put an end to top-down lecturing by government and do-gooders. Back at the time of the first Earth Summit, a project called Local Agenda 21 was set up. It was supposed to enable individuals, communities and groups to make their own contribution on the environment. It never worked: councils half-heartedly seized responsibility for LA21 and whereas these groups were supposed to be about people telling their representatives what to do, the reverse happened.

But the principle of LA21 is sound. Understanding and explaining the science of climate change needs to start at the bottom – with small groups being shown in clear and unequivocal ways what greenhouse gases do to temperature; the consequence that has on polar ice and the consequences that will have on water levels, currents and weather.

Politicians needs to talk about what we can do together, not what sacrifices must be imposed upon us from on high. Give us some confidence that what we’re being asked to do will address the concerns – that the goalposts won’t suddenly be moved once those targets are met. Invest much more in stuff that works and produces clear, visible achievements. And who knows, we might actually get not only a deal to reduce temperatures by 2 degrees or more – but a deal that governments can actually deliver because they will have the buy-in of their citizens.

Stuart King is Labour PPC for Putney. Read his PPC Profile here.

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