Think big, act big and make real and lasting change

The Anthony Painter Labour movement column / @anthonypainter

We are in a state of anguish. Our lives no longer seem our own. We crave control yet have little. Acutely aware that economic, environmental, social, and political problems beset us, we feel inadequate to the tasks ahead. Looking to politics, religion, community, consumption, and work, we find few of the answers that we need. This world of multiple and intersecting crises needs a visionary response. It needs hope.

And at the root of this is a basic truth. The lives we lead are not sustainable. This is not a world of our creation yet we are forced to play by its rules. Consequently, we are stressed, frustrated, disempowered, and anxious. Our response is to consume more: the economy becomes more risky, the environment depleted, social dislocation grows, and where does that leave us?

Never waste a good a crisis. Lucky us, we have at least three to choose from.

A financial crisis where our way of living was shown to be built on sand. We can go back to business as usual. Then we end up in the same boat again. The dynamics of short-term gain spell high risk and we’ve seen where that ends up.

Then cruelly, just when we need it least, along comes a political crisis. This was not about expenses; it was about a political system where power has flooded to the darkest underground caves. It seems unreachable and unseen. We can hear water flowing somewhere, but where?

But it is the environmental crisis that bestrides everything else. This came home to me when participating in a number of debates on the environment during the recent European elections. Green party candidates were talking about things in a very different way and it resonated.

It became clear that the environment was a very useful way into a more profound discussion about how we live our lives, how we organise our economy, and how we structure our society.

Let’s be absolutely clear – climate change is happening, it’s caused by man, it will have catastrophic and highly unpredictable consequences, and we have to act now. It’s easy to point the figure at China building a new coal-fired power station every 10 days. It’s just as easy to dash a glance at America’s enormous carbon emissions per head of population. And what could be easier than tutting at airlines, energy companies, road haulage, and heavy industry? It’s easy so we recycle, cycle, feel virtuous, and blame others.

That will simply not do. It is our lifestyle that all this is there to support. China does the dirty heavy lifting so we export our environmental impact. Heavy industry is making sure we can buy cool goods like the MacBook this is written on and power them. And America is the standard to which we knowingly or unknowingly aspire. Ok, maybe with a few less hamburgers but broadly speaking.

As Jonathon Porritt has calculated, if population increases to 9 billion by 2050 and we are to achieve a 60 per cent reduction in CO2 then the average emissions per person has to reduce from 4.6 tonnes to 2 tonnes per year. And this is how we now have to think about the environment – in terms of our individual impact. It is necessary to cut the emissions of domestic industry, housing, the public sector and transport for sure. But this won’t capture the totality of our impact. We have to challenge ourselves to change also and that means changing the way that we live.

As I type in a Google search, a server hums and burns fossil fuel somewhere offshore. My thousands of Yahoo emails sit on a server somewhere being cooled down – I have visions of them being tending to like an Egyptian Pharaoh. The iPhone I use was manufactured in China, goodness knows at what environmental cost. It is full of toxic plastics and drinks energy like it’s water. Until I pay the true environmental cost of my behaviour it is difficult to truly know the impact that I have.

So everything we buy and use should have a carbon price attached. And it should be rationed.

Realistically, these things have to be changed collectively. The Copenhagen Summit is monumental and the recent Government proposals to transfer aid to developing countries to enable them to develop while limiting the impact on the environment may increase the chance of a deal.

Beyond that, there needs to be some fundamental thinking about the way we live as a society and how that must change. If we succeed then we will be happier, healthier, enjoy a better balance of work and life, and we’ll be off the treadmill. And our impact on the environment will be radically reduced.

In other words, the left has to re-discover its moral voice: thinking about the long term not just the short term, how we can be enriched not just get rich, and how we can work and live in communities that consume their own smoke and work cooperatively. In other words, we need to talk about how we can work together to protect our lives, our liberty, and the world on which we depend. It is tailor-made for the left.

This conversation has to be a broad and inclusive one. We will need a strong economy once again to invest in a greener future. Yes, we need the Green New Deal that the Green Party proposes to link jobs and sustainability. For any of this to happen, our politics must change. Trust is a commodity that has been squandered. It must be rebuilt and that means deep political reform not just a wave of new personnel.

These environmental challenges – and all they mean for security, poverty, diversity, human life and human opportunity – can focus our minds around a new moral dynamic. It is not a call for utopianism; there’s no time for that. It is a time for visionary pragmatism. We need to think big, act big, and make real and lasting change. In the process, the Right will look small minded, out of their depth, and out of step with the scale of challenge.

As Thomas Homer-Dixon states in The Upside of Down:

“Driving fast in the fog is, of course, not sensible. But it’s exactly what we’re doing today.” Surely the next left should persuade us to take our foot off the accelerator? Or are we speed junkies beyond reform?