Climate emergency, cultural emergency

There’s a cultural dimension to the climate emergency and for the last 50 years we have been playing it all wrong. Ever since the Ecologist magazine published its Blueprint for Survival in 1972 it seems there have been people warning of imminent environmental collapse and others inclined to dismiss them as alarmists, killjoys and prophets of doom. The scales may have tipped in the intervening years but the cultural attributes of the two sides have hardly changed.

The problem with the activist side is that the message is essentially negative: we face extinction or, at best, serious environmental, economic and social breakdown unless we significantly reduce the rate at which we are releasing CO2 into the atmosphere. We can help to do this by eating less meat, giving up the second car, flying less and so on. It is a familiar picture.

Of course, for that significant fraction of the world’s population who can see little beyond the daily struggle to provide food and shelter for their children, such concerns risk appearing somewhat academic. For the rest of us it boils down to a matter of managing guilt - either through reparation or denial.

There is nearly always an element of guilt - mostly on account of the fact that, faced with the prospect of climate change, most of us find it difficult to give up enough to make a significant difference. Many choose to do as much as they can and quietly rank themselves according to the extent of their self-assessed virtue. Others, finding themselves culturally at odds with the whole green lifestyle, prefer to hold out for action at government level. While they might be worried about climate change, they don’t feel there is much they can (or wish to) do about it. A common view is that there are others whose responsibility for the problem is far greater than their own. Why should they give up their own hard-won, yearly holiday when there are others boasting about reducing theirs from three to two?

But let’s not fool ourselves: despite the fact that they would have us believe we’re all Green nowadays, there really is another side - namely the side that would have us all wander over the cliff edge, just so long as there are profits to be had on the way. There is little point in identifying the individuals who seem intent on taking us down this path. The momentum dragging us inexorably towards disaster is locked-in to the structures, customs and practices that make up capitalism and its variants. Individuals might grow weary of serving this machine but there are always others eager to replace them. Meanwhile the algorithms continue to do their work.

When it comes to opposing and belittling climate activism, the opposition finds itself with a wealth of targets. Those advocating radical change are variously described as: naive, privileged, middle-class, egotistical, disruptive, unglamorous, unrealistic fantasists. Many of these labels resonate even amongst sympathisers. As so much of Green ideology appears to focus on self-denial, Greens are easily portrayed as ardent killjoys - despite the colourful clothes and the drumming. It’s like those happy-clappy evangelists; they might look like they’re euphoric but deep down you suspect they’re not actually having much fun.

The problem with programs for addressing climate change is that they focus on the steps we need to adopt to transition from where we are now to a green and sustainable future. Of course there is nothing wrong with this from a scientific point of view but in terms of presentation it is a disaster, principally on the grounds that the measures advocate abandoning the familiar and embarking on a voyage into the unknown with no clear destination in sight.

It doesn’t need to be like this. Here is what I think we should do.

Firstly, we should focus more energy on developing a vision for the future that describes how humans and other creatures can inhabit the earth in a sustainable way. Sustainability is the key concept here, in as much as it refers to the ability to co-exist with nature and the environment in a way that is ongoing. Far from representing ‘back to nature’ fundamentalism, the future global ecology will depend on highly sophisticated closed-cycle technologies, compared with which our present poisonous, waste-encumbered efforts will appear recklessly primitive. Such ecologies will draw on environmental energy flows, as opposed to fossil fuel extraction and there will be a natural tendency in favour of geographic dispersal, based around small communities and towns, where both energy and resource flows will be predominantly localised.

Secondly, we should turn the tables. At present, the environmental movement appears willing to participate in a scenario in which it is cast as the alternative to a mainstream which is manifestly broken, and yet it is the environmental side that is obliged to explain itself. This is all wrong. We should be putting the difficult questions to apologists for the status quo; they are the ones from whom we should demand answers. In all our communications we should rebrand the environment-despoiling, fossil-fuel burning, climate change deniers as the Opposition - for that is precisely what they are. 

I have no doubt whatsoever that a future sustainable ecology using known advanced technologies is 100% feasible. What is less clear, of course, is how to make the transition from where we are now. That said, we should not be apologetic about the fact that we don’t have immediate answers. Without a destination it is difficult to plan the journey.

Instead, we should demand that the Opposition explain exactly where it is they think they are taking us.