Climate Impacts Day

Hence you see the same responses: write a letter to an MP, write to the editor of your newspaper, create a web site, run a campaign, phone somebody up, make a movie, same old, same old. It can be very comforting - a knee jerk reaction to a problem. It is a comfort zone for most within the environmental movement. What better than a good old fashioned fight against something? I recall in the 1980's when Margaret Thatcher came to power and we were told that the NHS was in "crisis". Thirty years later and we are still being told the same thing by the same people via the same campaign techniques. Same thing. No wonder the people are jaded. There is still a belief that if we just plead and negotiate a solution will be forthcoming. It is not. The politicians are not going to whip-up a special deal at the eleventh hour to save us all. But that that is not the same as saying we do nothing. For there is much to be done.

I have been on Climate Change protest marches. I have written the letters. I have worn the TShirt. Do you know what happened to make me realise this was pointless? Our neighbour pops round to our house and compliments us on the refurbishment to our front door. It was an old wooden door - paper thin really and useless at keeping the cold out. So I added some polystyrene sheeting, some draught-proofing plus a lick of paint - viola! A somewhat warmer front door makes a somewhat warmer house. Everyone is happy - even the neighbours. The same neighbours who gestured at our biomass boiler a couple of years ago and asked "So this is your eco-thing?"

I could have sat my neighbours down and explained the science of climate change or the geology behind natural resource depletion - but they wouldn't have been our neighbours for much longer - not even our friends. It won't change a thing. So THIS is the mistake we are making. We have to put the "do" into "do-ology". We need to go beyond the comfort zone of the green campaign - beyond another High Street petition. We have to be more imaginative. And this isn't just the fault of the lefty-liberal green fringe either: I have been reading the results of the Copenhagen Consensus - a think tank set up by Bjorn Lomborg (he of the "Skeptical Environmentalist" fame) to look into "smart solutions to climate change". He gathered some of the brightest egg-heads in the world to come up with an economic cost/benefit analysis for various solutions such as geo-engineering and methane reduction. All good ideas but the work had a fundamental flaw. Lomborg thought that if he just presented enough good ideas, written up in the language of modern economics, to politicians then it might break the impasse in the Kyoto-replacement negotiations. 10 out of 10 for trying - but it misses the point.

Politicians are not going to solve this one. They can't. Because nobody cares. Nobody is voting for it so it doesn't happen. The flaw is this: it isn't an economic problem solvable by pulling a few strings and by pressing a few buttons. Likewise it isn't a scientific problem either. It is a PREDICAMENT. It is a facet of our culture for we are a quarrelsome species and we will not get an international agreement for anything unless the solution can line the pockets of influential people in positions of power and privilege. This won't happen. Economics puts a low value on the life of poor people. And THEY will be hit hardest.

So what do you do?

Now anyone who is reading this should NOT take this personally - this is MY personal opinion and is the manifesto I live by. It is from MY heart. This is personal, passionate, peaceful and polite. I do not write to papers, or my MP or do ANY of the run-of-the-mill Climate Change Campaign stuff that jams up my email Inbox everyday. But yesterday my neighbour thought that it would be a good idea if she got her husband to insulate her front door. (It sure would make that downstairs cloak room a tad warmer.) THAT is what people like. That they will vote for. It may seem like a tiny, tiny victory. It may not give the environmentalists the victory they are after. It so much easier to reach for the email instead of the screwdriver. But there it is. There is a cultural war to be won and we will win it by insulating our homes, getting better transport, eating better food, shopping in better shops, downscaling our own frenetic economic activity, holidaying a little nearer home and generally leading by example.

You write the letters if you want to. If it makes you feel better do it. It might even turn the odd head. But it isn't a solution. You have a predicament. So use some imagination and reach for the insulation. Be an example to others. Impress them and you JUST might change the world. There is a better way.

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