Category: Climate change

XR have apparently made a New Year’s resolution. From now on, there won’t be any more protests that cause public disruption. They are changing their tactics to non-disruptive demonstrations instead.

It will be interesting to see whether this changes people’s opinions about them, or whether they have any more influence as a result. After all, they have been labelled in most people’s minds, favourably or otherwise, and it is very hard to shake off a label.

Which is why some experts try to avoid them. For instance, the environmentalist David Mackay, author of Sustainable Energy Without the Hot Air and former government Chief Scientist, was very careful to come across as the “numbers guy, just trying to be helpful”. He would present numbers as clearly as he possibly could, without subjective comment let alone expression of personal opinion, and hope that people would draw the right conclusions and then act upon them.

He was probably right that we are all much more influenced by conclusions we derive ourselves than ones put forward by other people. The problem though is that we often need things to be spelt out and then repeated. It is doubtful that SEWTHA reached a wide audience beyond those already converted to what he had to say. Of course, this is in part due to the fact that Mackay was an academic and a scientist, rather than a rock star or top footballer. But it’s also because many of us are simply not very numerate and need messages more spelt out than he was prepared to do.

Other leading figures in the climate debate have opted to express their personal opinions openly and “tell it how it is”. This approach has the merit that it avoids the risk of a conclusion being missed. But then we’re back to labelling. Will a person who decides to “tell it how it is” be listened to once they’re labelled, beyond their core supporters for whom the message is superfluous?

Take Greta Thunberg, for example. She might have something new to say, but the very mention of her name prompts an immediate reaction in most people. We feel we already know what she is going to say, and so we are likely to miss anything new. The journalist George Monbiot is another who has been labelled: we assume that what he writes will be polemical and negative. His 2022 book Regenesis might have plenty of non-polemical and positive material in it – indeed, revolutionary ideas about how humanity might survive in future – but few will engage with it once they’ve been hit by his initial criticisms of how we live.

All this is very difficult. To be listened to when the message is unwelcome requires a rare combination of clarity, perseverance and charm, especially if one is not already widely popular. Luck, too.

How might XR be listened to more, assuming they don’t have any lucky breaks such as a much-loved public figure deciding to champion their cause? Do they need to moderate their message, even if the mainstream scientific view is hardening, on the ‘softly, softly’ principle? Do they need to show more humility by, say, admitting they have got their tactics wrong on occasion or that some of their members have been guilty of hypocrisy?

Personally, I am sensitive to hypocrisy in myself and other people; and am naturally inclined to warm more to a bon viveur who cheerfully admits to contributing to the problem than to a XR campaigner who leads a similar lifestyle and justifies it on the basis that it’s entirely up to government to sort out. That’s really just bias on my part – one could argue that at least the campaigner is helping to raise awareness – but I suspect many people react in the same way.

Then again, to what extent can XR “show more humility” before they start to lose credibility? And is it right to soften the message that humanity needs to act when statements over the last year by the IPCC and other leading authorities have suggested we need to be taking more drastic, not less drastic, action to avert disaster?

Maybe it’s not the words that need to be moderated, but rather how they are conveyed – delivery, not content. Maybe XR’s change of tack is therefore in the right direction; let’s hope it’s not too late. And on that score, it still seems possible to save ourselves if everyone does what they can – a lot by government, yes, and corporations, yes, but a tangible amount too by individuals. We can create a virtuous circle of influence whereby government is inspired by the integrity of individuals, who in turn respond favourably to honest government endeavour. With business developing the new opportunities.

However frequently we’ve failed up until now, a New Year is a good time to try again.

This week, the government has approved a coal mine at Whitehaven in Cumbria, the first new coal mine in Britain in about thirty years. One of the supporting arguments is this: if we don’t produce the coking coal ourselves, we will just end up importing it.

This assertion is dubious for several reasons, including the fact that most of the coal would be exported (I use “would” rather than “will”, as the government’s decision is certain to be challenged, so the development is still not certain); British Steel maintains the Cumbrian coal might not be suitable for its plant; and Tata Steel plans to shift away from coking coal to cleaner production methods within a decade. So the coal might end up being not here, not usable, or not needed.

Another dubious aspect is the “zero sum” assumption: the idea that whatever we produce in Britain will displace an equivalent volume somewhere overseas. Michael Gove hinted at this in his reasoning that emissions from steel-making are inevitable either way. The Conservative MP for Workington, Mark Jenkinson, went so far as to say that there is “no sense in importing all of our coking coal, which would be an abdication of our climate commitments”. By his logic, developing the Whitehaven mine apparently shows climate leadership!

The “zero sum” assumption is invalid for the simple reason that with any market commodity, if you increase its supply then you put downward pressure on its price, which leads other things being equal to an increase in demand. It might be that the downward pressure is small if the price-setting part of the supply curve is relatively flat, or if there is counteracting fiscal action, or if the developer is an international company which was clearly going to develop just one project – either in Britain or abroad. But unless the government can demonstrate that such is the case, the more credible assumption is that developing Whitehaven would have an upward influence on the overall consumption and greenhouse gas emissions from coking coal.

A common psychology

“Zero sum” is a common psychology, which crops up in other ways in the environmental debate. For instance, frequent flyers frequently argue that “the plane is going anyway” and if you don’t take the seat, someone else will. Companies – including West Cumbria Mining in this instance – argue that if they don’t undertake certain polluting activities, then their competitors will; and they will be less bad than their competitors, honest. And countries such as the UK, in using a production-basis for measuring greenhouse gas emissions and blaming China in particular for wrecking the world, pretend that their consumer demand has no effect on the emissions from those producer nations.

I guess there are various psychological motivations at work. We hate the thought of someone else getting what could be ours, and us not, whether it’s a holiday abroad or corporate profits. We don’t want to take responsibility for consumer behaviour: if it’s legal that’s OK, isn’t it? And, to be fair, it is hard to see how the actions of an individual, or even a small mining company, can have any influence on the global stage. It is likely to be both small and hard, perhaps impossible, to measure.

The trouble is that the world is made up of small and hard-to-measure influences. Cumulatively, they become seismic.