The Climate Macroeconomic Megatrend. A Virtuous Carbon Cycle

1. Public finally recognises quality of life, safe society and an efficient economy trumps status and prejudice. Accepts this personal social responsibility. Acts, Lobbies and Votes low carbon
2. Government takes this electoral confidence signal. Accepts its leadership responsibility. Strongly regulates, incentivises, hypothecates low carbon
3. Business sees this clear price signal. Accepts the business responsibility to innovate. Plans long term business around low carbon goods and services
4. Public consumes more low carbon goods and services. Go back to 1

Dealing with climate starts with the individual. This can be strongly reinforced with leadership from the Government who can then regulate. Following this signal Business can then innovate confident about future fixed, less volatile and regulated price factors. The risk is lower, people can make the big calls with less chance of losing their job over it.

Key is for the public to start this virtuous circle by lobbying and voting for the real climate leaders. They can also lead themselves by creating the demand and by committing to pay the price for low carbon goods and services. This is only the case for an overwhelming minority today.

Presently the public want low carbon goods so they can feel good about it, but they are not willing to pay. Business wants profit so must wait for the early adopters to take the lead. Government leads slightly ahead of the public, slightly behind business. so we are in a stale mate

We all have plenty of carrots. More carrots will not move people as is seen with the price of fuel. Its inelastic. Sticks are now needed to make the change. Public and business will accept stick if it is both reasonable, fair and most of all they trust the leadership whipping them with it. Political levers such as the Conservative IHT promise are really not the right way to win public trust. They merely reinforce public opinion of poor leadership.

Climate Leadership Responsibilities

Climate is a Human Problem. Technology and economics are the easy parts. We either have the tools to revolve this or we do not. If we do not we are hosed anyway. If we do, the political decisions needed to move the global public and commerce to resolving action is what we should be undertaking right now.

The problem I have with this is I also believe the public are the beginning of a virtuous circle to climate success. But our leaders, prior to this, must first deliver us from prejudice. This means accepting responsibility rather than blaming others. Uniting people rather than dividing them. All things that are rarely undertaken by today's leaders, especially prior to important political events such as elections. The times when the public is most acutely aware of the state, its administration and how much to trust it.

For politicians this means commencing a courageous journey to the Undiscovered Country. An imaginary place where we have given up our prejudices and finally learned to get on with one another as global citizens.

Of course the alternative is much more costly and painful but may be of equal merit to the biosphere and perhaps civilisation in Darwinian terms. There will be fewer mouths to feed, fewer cars to fuel, fewer homes to heat and cool.

Should Politicians Really Get all the Blame?

Or is it time for the public to accept responsibility too. As prot said on his visit from K-PAX, “Don’t blame the politicians for your problems. They are merely a reflection of yourselves.”

I guess it's a question of enough of the public accepting the situation and pressing the politicians to act and enough politicians accepting the situation and having the confidence that the public will back them when they act. So far there is little acceptance in public due to wealth factors, thus the politicians are not confident they will get backing if they act.

In a democracy the government can only lead at the margin without risking getting voted out. Some might think our reaction to a politician who makes a small tentative shuffle in the right direction should be to say 'Well done, that's great. Now can you go a bit further, by teatime please'. Others recognise we don't have time to play around waiting for selfish public and weak leaders to make the call.

I’m with the latter based on historic human behaviour.

Wealth Denial is Analogous to Carbon Denial

Why do so many of us lie to ourselves and each other about the money in our pocket? According to Ms Dawson, it's because our financial wealth is perceived to reflect our social and mental health. She explains: "It isn't surprising that ‘money' is such an emotive issue, because how we manage our money is a reflection of how well we're seen to be coping with life in general. "We lie about our financial problems in order to save face, and to avoid being regarded as greedy, disorganised, naïve or out-of-control - all traits associated with over-spending or financial mismanagement."

The same could be said about our use of fossil fuels across the spectrum, individual to organisation to government to state. All of us dare not reveal their carbon footprint. It just looks too bad.

Climate Sceptics, We Need 'Em

First we denied that the globe was warming much faster than it should. Then we denied that it was mankind causing this effect. The latter is now the centrepiece of the denial lobby. So what. The science is overwhelming and therefore a sensible society should take measures to reverse the damage... Or should it?

There is a new kind of sceptic emerging that is saying that we should not do anything, whether climate change is manmade or not. Don't get me wrong, I like sceptics. Coming from a marketing background I know all too well that as soon as you start believing your own BS, you know you are in trouble. Sceptics keep us on track to the truth because they are rational people who debate in a realistic way and help us to actually question our own marketing. Its the deniers who are so dangerous because their lobby is purely dogmatic, emotional and usually with a disconnected political agenda.

When a species or society exploits an unrestricted and limited natural resource, eventually it will fail and the outcomes are in the lap of the gods... or Darwin. This is commonly known as "The Tragedy of the Commons" and the exploitation of the biosphere to sink our unrestricted carbon emissions has now reached such a limit and apparently we are soon to pay the price through rapid and dangerous warming.

These new sceptics are claiming that climate change is the biospheres way of delivering a "natural cull", much like plagues and wars have done in the past. And we should let it get on with it. This seems hugely callous, and who says so and who says who gets to survive. In the past its always been natural selection. Maybe its the same here too. Equity once again does not get a look in, and again who says that we are all born equal.

I don't accept the above equity argument but at the same time I have no rationale to deny its unfair either. There's a huge amount of unfairness in life that is completely overlooked by even the most kind of citizens. Often we do not realise by living like we do we are punishing someone out of sight, out of mind. But at the same time we do not look far for those we could easily help.

My view right now on the outcomes of climate change on civilisation are those that are abundant, wealthy, flexible and adaptable enough will make it through quite easily. The rest will be the victims of evolution

Who Cares About the Climate Anyway

Following conversations with several friends recently, who are generally good people, but refuse to limit their excess use of carbon, usually with the excuse that they don't really care, I decided to have a deeper think about why they were adopting this classic form of psychological denial.
Normally its used as a means to deny its their problem simply by saying they don't care. That way they have put themselves in a position that means this existential threat no longer hurts them or makes them feel directly uncomfortable and they can continue doing those things that are the root cause of the emotion in the first place. I suspect they are risking that some magic is going to resolve any problems between now and when any climate fallout affects them directly. Its a good bet I guess.

So I needed to discover why this was and if there was any reasonable rationale for the behaviour. It came to me the other day after reading a report called the "State of the Future in The Guardian about how organised crime is by far the biggest threat to our future alongside climate change and access to decent water

http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,,2167270,00.html

But the trigger in the report was not the leader. It went on to say that there are now 27 million people held in slavery, more than during the slave trade and the majority Asian women. So I thought why are we not doing anything about this. And to my point, why do we still not care about slaves given the dramatic scale of the problem and the shameful history still bearing down on those of us still reaping the fruits of that vile trade. Well I don't have the answer about our selfishness here. But it does tell me that its not the only thing we don't care about.

Its an obtuse thing to deny the logic behind climate science's claim to anthropogenic climate change these days. Its clear to me that any remaining denial is purely political, emotional and influenced largely by prejudice. Logic and science do not come into it. For me this is almost certain behaviour

So people only care about things that are immediate and close to us, things that will affect our livelihood or safety directly. Remote dangers and injustices, no matter how big, that fall outside our immediate sphere of comfort are clearly not that important to us. We really don't actually care about them or the outcomes of future generations. I suspect this is ultimately because we do not need to care about the social well being of others any more. We are all wealthy enough not to have to rely on the help of others.

Its still difficult to explain this complex argument to my friends without hurting their feelings though. One statement always does get them thinking though:

Our fun loving lifestyle of travel, homes and leisure means that the climate issue will be resolved by Darwin

One World Cafe Opens

Wednesday 11th July, One World Cafe, Leigh Street, London WC1H 9EW

09:30am - Meeting Opening, informal introductions.
09:45am - Steve Burak, Introduction to 'One World' Centre
09:50am - Stephen Stretton about the climate change think tank & campaign for stronger targets.
10:00am - Prof. David MacKay (Physics Department) - Energy and Climate Change
10:15am - Colin Challen MP - Speech & Opening of Shop
10:30am - Tea break 11am - Informal discussion about the programme for the think tank & the One World climate change centre.
11:30am - Dr Adrian Wrigley - The taxation system and how it can be fixed.
12:00am Questions, discussion
12:30am Close

7pm Celebratory Party Begins.