A thoughtful guest blog from Stevan Lockhart -Project Officer for Assynt Renewables
On the news pages of the Assynt Renewables website, we did not report at all on the build-up or process of the Copenhagen conference as news about it was everywhere. They even counted how many leaders arrived in electric vehicles. Copenhagen seemed to be item number one on the agenda for such a long time. Now here we are, wondering exactly what happened and whether it’s been a good thing or a bad one, a missed opportunity or a good start. Were we misled by all the expectation that grew in its run-up, with headlines such as “Road to Copenhagen,” which now seems to have resulted only in a general agreement that we should all do better? It seems to have been an example of a complex issue dissected to the point of simplicity, which turns out to be complex after all.
Summary: Coming at this time in the history of humankind leaves us struggling to understand the complexities that go to make up what happened at the Copenhagen Accord. But concentrating too much on this one event leaves us distracted from the things that matter. And these are things that we as individuals can do something about.
We are left with more questions than before, though at least now there is no illusory silver bullet of “Copenhagen” sorting everything out. Conveniently released details of scientific squabbling made us wonder whether we are being hoodwinked by climatologists trying to make a name for themselves, or hoodwinked by nay-sayers trying to establish their own scientific proofs.
Claims that soot in the upper atmosphere is “worse” than carbon dioxide for global warming have been thrown in too. China and India are portrayed as the big problems, when we in the West, and America in particular, are far worse offenders, the finger pointing looking, even to the least intellectual, like the distraction it is. In this instance, the BBC, for example, did and does itself no favours for purported impartiality, rigorously favouring our own point of view.
There were those saying that every nation on the planet had to agree to change its ways with immediate effect no matter what the other consequences and there were those saying that the required changes to systems of government would amount to a global police force and global government to make Orwell’s 1984 look like a feelgood romance. For them, Copenhagen’s “failure” comes as a relief. And there were those saying simplistically that reductions in our carbon emissions would solve the problem while others said that global warming has nothing to do with carbon.
On the other hand, as Roger Harrabin has reports, “If the climate was a bank they would have saved it, said Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. But it is not. And they have not.”
But none of this matters.
Forget the climate. The fundamental issue, which has not yet been addressed in any way, is the basic fact that we simply consume to much of the planet’s resources. Much of what is proposed, increased use of renewable energy, electric vehicles etc, may be considered to be window dressing. Magic schemes such as carbon sequestration and other technological wonders are held out as “just around the corner.” We simply need technology to solve all our problems. But the reality is different.
As was re-iterated in “The Big Debate” on BBC Scotland on 16th December, if everyone alive right now lived the way we do, we would need two planet Earths to supply the resources we use. That is the problem. We simply use too much, and we do not understand that we have now hit the limits.
So why can’t we act? Why do we find it so much more attractive to head blindly along a path that, deep down, we know leads to destruction? It is, one suspects, because we humans are so poor at recognising risk. Take an obvious example, our response, in the UK at any rate, to modern crime.
We have signed away many of our liberties because of our perceptions of the modern danger of acts of terror, yet the danger posed by the the biggest killer by far, the car and fast road transport, we simply have processes such as the largely ignored NCAP safety ratings. Our response is stupidly disproportionate; it seems as though we have no logical ability to tell real from perceived threats.
We need a massive event, some cataclysm, to indicate to us the trouble we are in. Scientists graphs do not move us to action. And the proof of that is global response to the banking failure. Here, in spite of all the climate and energy related improvements which we are told we can’t achieve because of economics, we found the ability, within weeks, to spend amounts of money the size of which we can’t even understand.
So until something happens, like the North Atlantic Drift stopping flowing, creating some massive and unignorable event, we will continue in our international bickering; we do not realise that the times have changed.
We should heed voices like E.F.Schumaker, who wrote a long time before climate change became the issue of the day:-
To talk about the future is useful only if it leads to action now. And what can we do now, while we are still in a position of ‘never having had it so good?’
And that’s the issue. At a time when politicians should be showing leadership, we see the effects of the expenses scandals, leading us to questions their real motives. When we are told things need to change dramatically, the most dramatic change of which we are aware is the amount we are having to pay anonymous bankers. And at this time, we have the backdrop of the Iraq enquiry further introducing doubt into our minds about how well politicians have our best interests at heart.
We have “mechanisms,” like carbon trading, which, it seems, are simply there to enrich a small proportion and which, it seems, are used in a very different way to their intention, rather than achieving their real aim.
But, says Schumaker, we can make a difference. If we start behaving differently ourselves. If we as individuals put our own ethics first, rather than pre-fabricated ethics from news services or corporate PR. If we question, ourselves and how we live. If we start at home.
Communities aren’t always geographic groups of people. Sometimes communities are simply individuals who happen to be going in the same direction. And groups of communities may make up a groundswell Groundswells can change the world.
But what can I do? Some excellent examples can be found on the World Wildlife Fund website at http://www.wwf.org.uk/how_you_can_help/change_how_you_live/
Understand how much you consume. The WWF has a tool here http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/ which can tell you how many Earths would be required for everyone to live the way you do.
Save energy. Don't assume the way you've used energy in the past is a point to aim for in the future.
Decide carefully whether or not to buy things. Good advice in troubled economic times too.
Consider how much, why and how you travel. Can you make better choices?
Examine your diet, the food you eat and where you get it.
Well what about Copenhagen? Has it put us on the right road? Perhaps not. So forget the possibility of some immense change in life that gets thrust on you. Initiate change for yourself. Do something, even if it’s just changing your mind. Take some of the above ideas, or generate some of your own. Set some standards for yourself. Once that process starts, by ones, twos, hundreds, thousands and millions, Copenhagen’s best outcomes will be dwarfed, and who knows, the world may well be a better place tomorrow.
