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“Gameau defaults to the position of inspiring people rather than alarming or overwhelming them. You leave the film wanting more, not less, of these sorts of productions.” Film review of 2040 (directed by Damon Gameau, Australia, 2019) by The Guardian newspaper

There is a majority view that positivity is important if you want to effect change.

Nearly 80 years ago, Winston Churchill inspired the British people with a speech that offered “blood, toil, tears, and sweat … many, many months of struggle and suffering”. In 1849, Garibaldi rallied his troops in Rome with the promise of “hunger, thirst, forced marches, battle, and death”. And in a similar vein a modern leader might propose “fire, floods, feuds, and famine … many years of environmental decay, conflict and adaptation”.

But it’s a little hard to imagine. Gameau’s vision – of a fume-free, noise-free green idyll, brought about by the combined forces of clever technology, community spirit and female emancipation – is more in keeping with the modern zeitgeist, and the it-will-be-all-right speeches of today’s politicians.

I largely share The Guardian’s enthusiasm, and recommend 2040 to those who have not yet seen it. I only wish it was more realistic.

Displacement

The film begins with a defensive claim: that all of the carbon emissions caused by its production (largely from the director jet-setting around the world) have been offset by ‘certified carbon credits’. It’s clearly a point that bothers Gameau, as the same claim is made at the end, only this time with a further announcement that additional funds have been donated to pro-active tree-planting in his native Australia.

Carbon offsetting is helpful but there is an essential dishonesty in the message that by spending a few extra pounds on a flight we can carry on with ‘business as usual’. We need to take the measures involved in offsetting – which in large measure would happen anyway, this is the problem known as ‘additionality’ – and also reduce flying, at least until such time as miracle planes have been invented that emit only small amounts of greenhouse gases.

The (non-)additionality of offsetting is one instance of the displacement problem: as climate breakdown escalates, firms will fall over themselves to claim that they are ‘green’ – that their own energy is from nice wind and solar, that they are planting lots of trees, that if only other firms could be as eco-friendly as they are the world would be fine. Essentially many of these green actions have already happened (e.g. the firms are sourcing electricity from renewable power stations that have already been built), or would happen anyway, one way or the other; the eco-friendly firms are attributing them to their own account and displacing others from doing so in the process. Not all actions fall into this category – some are genuinely additional – but we have to be wary of any claims that appear to be an excuse for business as usual. The claims are growing fast.

Too good to be true?

Unless you believe that progress is only possible if we are fortified by delusion, it is worth asking whether some of the film’s claims are too good to be true. For instance, the utopia of shared autonomous electric vehicles doesn’t quite address questions such as: a) how will everyone travel to work in rush hour?; or b) what are the resource implications of the large number of batteries required?; or c) how much energy will be required in data centres to support the constant streaming requirements for the autonomous vehicles? Perhaps there is a harder reality here – that we need to travel less full stop, whether for work or pleasure (bicycles excepted).

We do need a grown-up discussion about the psychological desires behind travel, and the dubious rationalisations given to justify it.

Are we really going to solve food problems by geo-engineering the oceans to grow seaweed? Or is the prosaic advice to eat a largely plant-based diet more realistic as well as less appealing?

Putting solar panels on everyone’s roof yields bigger dividends in relatively sunny countries than in northern Europe. Certainly they won’t provide all of a home’s energy needs (especially heating) as implied by the film. Nor do they provide much security when it is simultaneously cold and dark. Which isn’t to say they aren’t useful, but rather that the problem is much bigger than the film admits. Once again, lower consumption in western countries is part of the answer.

And even if the idyllic world were to come about, it will not be as early as 2040. If humanity stops using fossil fuels within twenty years, then many people will die in consequence, such is our reliance upon them. Yes we need to wean ourselves off, but in a way that is controlled and responsible.

At the risk of being out of step with the zeitgeist, I suggest that some hardship is unavoidable.

How many things do you think we should be concentrating on to reduce our carbon footprint? A lot or a few?

A lot, surely.

60 actions to save the world

During 2019, the Ethical Consumer magazine compiled a helpful list of 60 actions that individuals in the UK can take against climate breakdown. This list is currently being promoted in 2020 by Greenpeace, as I know from experience. During a recent e-mail exchange between me and Greenpeace’s web team – I was expressing the view that their position on stopping the development of new oil and gas fields with immediate effect is a little unrealistic, not to say potentially deadly, given how dependent our entire society is on fossil fuels – they sent me the list. Perhaps in the hope that I would stop bothering them.

The list is a collection of suggestions made by the magazine’s readers. The suggestions have not been prioritised or compared, except with regard to their popularity amongst the respondents. But this omission just leaves a void which we fill, because as readers we automatically compare listed items, even if it’s to assume without consciously realising we are doing so that they are of similar weight.

For instance, here is the second entry: carry a reusable coffee cup. This recommendation’s position in the list, number 2 out of 60, gives the impression that it is an important action, at least as important as the 58 actions listed beneath. The impression is probably unintended, but it’s subconsciously inevitable in the mind of the reader.

Now whether or not the environment is a net beneficiary whenever someone buys a reusable coffee mug is a complex question; indeed, academic articles have been written about it without reaching a firm conclusion. There are various factors to consider such as the energy and materials used in the mug’s manufacture, how and how often it’s washed up, how long it’s kept, the composition of the disposable cups that would be used instead, the manner in which disposables are disposed of, … But here is an easier thought: the impact is small, one way or the other, compared say with flying over an ocean. It’s even small compared with boiling all the water required to make all those hot drinks.

Another recommendation I came across recently is to purchase and use a bamboo toothbrush. The Independent newspaper described this example as an “easy way to have a big impact”. By way of justifying the claim, the newspaper reminded the reader of the (large) number of toothbrushes discarded by the western world each year. This is a little bit like being reminded that a dripping tap wastes several gallons of water over the course of a year. If you integrate any small act of wastefulness over billions of people, or over a significant period of time such as a year, you are likely to reach a large number. To retain a sense of perspective, we really need to measure the impact of the discarded plastic toothbrush or dripping tap against other things that we do or don’t do.

It seems to me that our enthusiasm for compiling long and unranked lists raises a couple of issues. Firstly, items of different magnitude are mixed together so that we end up in a muddle as to what matters most. Then, from this muddle emerges a temptation to pick and choose: we can ‘do our bit for the environment’ by using a bamboo toothbrush, say, which gives the green light to our travel plans, diet and shopping habits.

Green energy suppliers

One of the choices that concerned citizens make to do their bit for the environment is to choose a green energy supplier. I discussed this option in a previous post (you can search for ‘green energy supplier’ if interested), but to re-cap: hitherto, the amount of renewable electricity in the UK has been largely determined not by concerned consumers but by the overall size of the various subsidy mechanisms: the Renewables Obligation, Contracts for Difference, and (for smaller schemes) Feed-in Tariffs.

As of 2019, the last complete calendar year, circa 37% of our annual electricity consumption is generated from renewable sources. How much would be from renewables if no households had deliberately chosen to sign up with a green supplier over the last couple of decades? Close to 37%, I reckon. It is difficult for end consumers to affect the total amount of renewable energy unless they are willing to pay significantly more than the market rate for their energy, and the extra funds find their way to the developers. There has been an increase in public support for renewable energy – and this might have had some unmeasurable impact on government targets, or R&D, or the commercial rates of return sought by developers – but for the most part ‘green’ suppliers have displaced ‘brown’ suppliers without actually affecting the overall generation mix in aggregate; and real power projects that have secured subsidies and gone ahead have displaced other potential renewable projects that might have been built otherwise.

For the avoidance of doubt, I think it is a good idea to buy energy either from a ‘green supplier’ or on a green tariff from a ‘brown supplier’. (Most suppliers are of a shade in between these two colours.) I also think that consumer impact will be much greater in the future than it has been in the past, essentially because new renewable projects are much closer to being viable without any subsidy and hence sensitive to other influences. But it is obvious from an analysis of materiality that far from such action being sufficient in terms of ‘doing one’s bit’, it does not come close to the handful of big ticket items.

5 actions to save the world (barring miracles)

Which are these:

1) Eat a largely plant-based diet. 2) Travel less in cars and planes, be it for business or pleasure. 3) Cut down on buying stuff. 4) Reduce home heating by living with others, or downsizing, or insulating, or only heating certain rooms, or turning down the thermostat, or installing a heat pump. 5) Don’t spend too many hours data streaming (e.g. Netflix). (And perhaps one should add: 6) Don’t have lots of children.)

Admittedly the bamboo toothbrush, not to mention most of the 60 actions in Ethical Consumer’s survey, sounds more appealing than these rather brutal options – at least to those of us who imagine happiness is obtained from consumption in its various manifestations. The trouble is that nature cannot be fooled (Feynman’s words, not mine). Politicians would have us believe that science will come to the rescue – but climate scientists and organisations like the IPCC are less persuaded of the wisdom of this and largely repeat the points made in the previous paragraph (data streaming might be an exception, being a particularly recent concern). Technology, to qualify an overused phrase, is unlikely to be a silver bullet.

Speaking of politicians, there is a widespread viewpoint that personal action is pointless as we are individually insignificant compared with the sheer might of oil companies, or other multinationals, or governments. But those of us who hold this viewpoint are perhaps confusing the consequences for us as individuals with the mechanism by which those consequences are visited upon us. Whether from government regulation, market pricing, or our unprompted volition, change is in store for our way of life – if we are to avoid catastrophe.

Unless, that is, there’s a scientific miracle or two, or climate science turns out to be vastly mistaken.