The green movement has done much to warn us about climate change. But now that global warming is widely accepted, do green campaigners do more to hinder than help us tackle it? They stress the likelihood of catastrophe if we do not reduce greenhouse gas emissions. They urge governments to adopt demanding targets and they tell us what we must not do. Don’t fly, don’t drive unless you have to, don’t build new power stations, whether fired by coal, gas or oil—let alone by nuclear reactions. Apply the precautionary principle just in case technological developments might damage the environment. Their song is: “Accentuate the negative.”
But is this the best way to win support? The trouble with prohibitions and prophecies of doom is that they seldom motivate positive action. In their book Breakthrough (March 2009), Nordhaus and Shellenberger ask if Martin Luther King would have inspired the civil rights movement with the cry: “I have a nightmare.” If you are told armageddon is inevitable unless you give up the things you care for, fatalism is the likely response. Yet sensational scare stories—like about “Frankenfoods!”—are the stock in trade of Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. Scares recruit members.
Tirades against car use, for example, do not reduce car use, because most people depend on their car for shopping, taking children to school and other activities important to their lives. People also like cars because they increase choice. In fact it has been plausibly estimated that by 2050 there will be four times as many in the world as there are today, whatever we do. The best way to reduce carbon emissions from motorcars is therefore through technology: using a different source of power, like environmentally friendly biofuels or rechargable batteries.
Britain is faced with two problems: reduction of carbon emissions and security of power supply. Yet green campaigners tend to ignore the latter. Greenpeace’s demonstration against the King’s North coal-fired power station was, for them, a great success. (Plans for the plant have now been postponed or shelved, though the company blames a “lack of demand.”) But what if we build no new coal-fired stations? Old ones will have to be closed because they will not meet the EU’s environmental standards. Old nuclear power plants, which supply 16 per cent of our electricity, will soon be phased out too and new ones, bitterly opposed by greens, will only slowly come into use. Imported oil offers no security and will probably become unaffordably expensive when the recession ends. And renewables, now a tiny proportion of our sources of electricity, cannot possibly fill the gap. In practice, renewables mean mainly wind power, which has to be backed by fossil-fuelled stations for the days when the wind does not blow. To stop the lights going out, then, we will have to depend on gas from Russia—that is, on Putin’s goodwill and the hope that Gazprom will undergo a miraculous conversion to efficiency. Its present incompetent management and lack of investment suggests that in time most of its production will be needed by Russia itself.
Both of these problems—carbon emissions and energy security—will therefore not be solved by calls for a change of lifestyle or by dramatic attacks on the towers of Kings North, but by science and technology. Of all the major current sources of electricity in the world, coal is likely to grow fastest, and so a massive investment to solve the technical problems of carbon capture and storage (see Damian Kayha’s account of this developing technology) is obviously what is needed.
Will an international deal at Copenhagen on binding targets for reducing emissions be the spur to such investment? Even if such agreement is reached, will targets be enforced and achieved? Kyoto is not a happy precedent. At the time we were told that those targets were essential to any hope of averting climate catastrophe. Ignoring the fact that important countries like US and China did not sign the treaty, those who did performed no better in limiting emissions than those who did not. Currently, in terms of carbon emissions per head, France and Sweden are among the best performers—France because 80 per cent of its electricity is generated by nuclear power, while Sweden relies heavily on hydroelectric power as well.
What matters more than targets, then, is progress with technology, and here the greens’ approach generally suffers from a fundamental weakness: a mistrust of science. The precautionary principle is either so obvious it is otiose—“If there is significant evidence of risk, be careful”—or so vague as to be are virtually meaningless, or positively harmful. It tells us that even when there is no significant scientific evidence of harm, no product should be licensed unless first proved safe. This is impossible because science cannot prove certainties. It also concentrates entirely on risk, without weighing risk against benefit.
If, as I believe, the application of science and technology is the best hope for mitigating or adapting to global warming, the obvious conclusion is that green campaigners, for all their good intentions, ultimately do more harm than good.
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Comments (8):
We can only delay the end of the world (as we humans know it). So someone will be the last person alive, after all others have died. Does it matter if that is in 200 years or 200 billion years? All the people in between? There will be none if the world ends in 200 years, so none to worry about.
The majority of \eco-warriors\ actually expend a great deal more energy organising local allotments, car pools, recycling schemes etc. than shouting at people.
Direct action is also not without its advantages. It gets media attention and brings issues to prominence that are often otherwise ignored. Groups like Climate Camp get TV Coverage. They get people interviews on the main news bulletins and in newspapers. Without the publicity stunts, nobody would listen to what they have to say.
Agree with your argumnents but they don’t really connect to your conclusion. Why did the article need to be titled “greenwash” and say that greens “do more harm than good”? You don’t give any evidence to back up these claims!
Instead you write about the serious political challenges to climate change agreements, the benefits of technology, and the problems brought by a narrow approach that sees carbon cuts as the only solution. As well as criticizing the strategy of the greens. All fair enough. So why the need for such a shallow, stereotyped depiction of the “green movement”, full of straw horses and attention-seeking statements? The only evidence you give to support your conclusion is some vague claims that greens are “anti-science”. (how about climate change sceptics? humanity in general?)
Yes some greens totally fail to identify and resonate with the public on their level. Yes some are not practical with regards to nuclear or technical solutions. But they still play a vital role in keeping the issue in the political spotlight and putting pressure on public opinion. Especially when so many people still deny climate change exists, or take an entirely fatalistic attitude to it. In the language of risk (since you brought it up). economists such as stern are clear that the expected value of losses due to catastrophic climate change far exceed the expected costs of reducing emissions to a level likely to avert this happening. furthermore technological innovation also has great uncertainties attached (just look at the history of invention). It would be foolish to focus on either approach at the expense of the other.
Again, why spend all your energy attacking a minority of the green movement? You are hypocritically doing the exact same things as them, attacking those using different goals to achieve the same end, rather than those who oppose the end. Persuade the greens to accept technology. Attack the fatalists and climate change sceptics.
The Martin Luther analogy is compelling. Fortunately thare are many so called eco -warriors as well less exotic types like engineers who do have dreams of what a carbon constrained world looks like where we use resources sustainably. Britain is fortunate in having some of the finest consulting engineering firms in the world delivering ecological solutions and practical thought leadership on the the way to the dream. Look at Peter Head’s Brunel Lecture at the Institute of Civil Engineers on the ecological age for example: – http://www.arup.com/Publications/Entering_an_Ecological_Age.aspx . Most of the technology needed already exists and will only get better. And relatively modest changes in behaviour – on waste recycling, car use, insulation – all make a difference. There is no need to scare people witless. Better to talk up the art of the possible and build political support for the investment in technology needed, some of it public, and not overdo the nightmares.
Lifestyle changes are good, but they can only slow emissions growth slightly, they will not reduce emissions. Personal lifestyle changes can only have an impact of a few percent at most. We cannot ignore the other 95 percent of the problem. Some have suggested that we can forget about caps and just focus on behavioural changes, which is insane.
http://selfdestructivebastards.blogspot.com/2009/10/voluntary-lifestyle-changes.html
I disagree entirely with Dick.
He’s as malinformed and distorted as it can be. Technofixes are no solutions. If they were, we would be making ‘progress’ right now with so many new technofixes, ipods non-withsanding. We are not making any progress, far from it, we are destroying the planet.
Ah I get it, we didn’t get the right technofixes yet, did we ?
Dick knows nothing about science, he pretends he does, he has no research science papers published, zero, nada.
He writes opinions. He is entitled to is own garb and ego no doubt, but it should not be published here or anywhere. Prospect should know and do better.
You have a point. Apocolyptic languages are the province of the doomed; and the whole gloom factor relating to the green movement smacks of old testament linguistics of fear and dread.
Woe, woe and thrice woe!!!
A friend of mine who was one heavily involved with Greenpeace told me in a very mater of fact tone some nine years ago that we have about three hundred years left before the entire planet becomes unhabitable by any life form and that basically there’s no way of turning back the damage anyhow…After that she started up a PR buisness, went back to eating meat and flourished? What can I say!
But I have to admit that thanks to the gloomsters in rainbow shirts I do worry about the environment and take more notice of, and have more respect for, the natural world around me. Plus, taking active measures to reduce my use of petrol, gas and electricity in the domestic setting has sent my fuel bills falling through the floor – one very good reason to become more consciensious about one’s carbon foot print. But mostly I’m pretty pleased with myself for taking a massive reality check. bottom line…I didn’t really need half the power I was burning in the first place and if it hadn’t been for the greenies I’d never have taken the trouble to find out.
Just one small problem though…how come Bluewater and Lakeside and all the major high risers in London have their lights burning 24/7? If the governments really serious about cutting the nations carbon foot print then shouldn’t it be coming down with a heavy boot on comercial enterprise as well? or is that, like the banking system, exempt from responsibilty???
D
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