Environmentalism According to Lucas

Environmentalism According to Lucas

Over the last year, we have looked at some of the words and ideas coming from the environmental movement through the Green Party's MEP for SE England, Caroline Lucas. With her breathless, urgent catastrophism, Lucas epitomises Environmentalism and its hollow vision, shallow intellect, and deep misanthropy. In these respects, Lucas never disappoints us.

However, we are never very successful at getting Lucas or her press office to account for anything she has said. Luckily, she was on BBC TV's Question Time last week, and has been appearing at a number of public events of late. So here is another opportunity to subject Lucas's political ideas to some scrutiny.

The Question Time panel were asked if the Labour Party were suffering from a leadership crisis, to which Caroline Lucas replied that Labour's problem is that it lacks values, that it no longer knows what it stands for, that it has abandoned its traditional values such as equality, and that Gordon Brown is a man who doesn't know what he wants.



We agree with Lucas that the Labour Party is in crisis because it doesn't know what it stands for. As we say in our first ever post, "Environmental concerns are serving to provide direction for directionless politics". That is why Blair and Brown were keen to be seen to be acting on climate change, and that is why, in response to that action, the Tories committed themselves to a policy of an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050, against Labour's 60%. And that is why, not to be out-done, the Liberal Democrats upped their bidding to a 100% reduction by 2050. But are Lucas and the Green Party offering anything so different?

As we have also pointed out, Environmentalism thrives in this atmosphere of political vapidity, not because it represents an alternative, but because it captures the nervousness caused by a lack of political direction. Environmentalism nurtures a general sense of doom with ideas about societal and ecological collapse. Without that sense of doom, environmentalism would be nothing.

As political movements across the political spectrum have increasingly found it difficult to generate ideas through which to connect to the public, so they have had to turn to other ways to achieve their legitimacy and authority. As Lucas points out, the Labour Party is suffering from a 'crisis of direction'. But Lucas and the Greens have not found a direction by locating a new political vision to steer towards, but a nightmare to claim to be steering away from. Lucas attacks Brown for having no values, yet her arguments for social and economic change are not formed out of her principled objections to the way in which people relate to one another through social and economic structures. Instead, Lucas's philosophy depends on a conception of humanity's relationship with nature. She is, in terms of values, as poverty-stricken as any of those she attacks. Lucas doesn't have some great store of values, with which she can create a positive view of how the world could be. Here is Lucas, speaking at a recent debate held by the World Development Movement, setting out her case for carbon rationing, trading and 'equality' and selling her argument for 'equality' in such (pseudo) scientific terms.



Notice that, in that speech, Lucas is using the word 'resources', not in the sense of stuff that we have, but in terms of the biosphere's ability to absorb carbon from the atmosphere.

It seems that, in order to make a case for equality, Lucas needs there to be a finite world, as if, were there no such limits (to the absorption of CO2 by natural processes), there would be no case for equality. This prevents her from conceiving of a world in which equality is achieved, not by rationing and people having less, but by people having more, and having their expectations raised. Lucas doesn't have 'values', and hides the fact behind science. 'Science' is being used in place of values. 'Science' is Environmentalism's fig leaf. It is being used to create the idea of limits, so that Environmentalism doesn't have to commit itself to providing anything more than less and less. And just as science is used instead of values, doom is a stand in for political vision. If we don't do as 'science' (environmentalism) says, then catastrophe awaits. Here, for example, Lucas tells us that unless we put up with high fuel prices and tax, we wont adjust our behaviour, and society will collapse.



It is an 'interesting' argument that says we need to artificially keep oil prices high because... err... the days of cheap oil are over because... err... of peak oil. For someone who lectures us about 'science', the logic of the causal world seems to have escaped Lucas's understanding. Scarcity would do Lucas's work for her. Obviously, what is at issue is not rescuing humanity from a looming catastrophe, but the legitimacy of a political movement bent on creating a behavioural and cultural change for its own benefit, on the premise that only it can save us from the terrible chaos that awaits us.



As much as Lucas tries to make her ideas sound positive, they are underscored and sold by a vision of catastrophe. She may talk of progressive ideas such as 'equality', 'justice', and 'liberty', but all of these ideas are mediated by, and through the environment. Our freedom is limited, not guaranteed by the environment. Equality is measured in environmental, pseudo-scientific terms of resource distribution. Social justice, according to Lucas, is equivalent to 'environmental justice'. But what a pale imitation of justice that is; it doesn't right any wrongs, or create the possibility of a better standard of living. And where Lucas promises that there will be less unemployment under a Green Government, it is because a 'zero carbon economy' is far more labour-intensive than its fully-powered counterpart. In such an economy, the job that oil did will be done by people. Fancy a job as a serf? How about a career as a treadmill operative? This will be the 'equality' and the 'social justice' that Lucas has designed for us.

The use of science to limit political possibilities, and lower our horizons by constructing plausible catastrophic scenarios is the everyday language of environmentalism. But, surprisingly, the failure of this unremittingly negative view of the world hasn't escaped Lucas' attention.



What? Caroline Lucas is against climate alarmism? The same Caroline Lucas who, in July last year, compared climate scepticism to holocaust denial? The same Caroline Lucas who said in July last year that,

... if you look at the implications of climate change, of runaway climate change, we are literally talking about millions and millions of people dying, we are literally talking about famines, and flooding, and migration and disease on an unprecedented scale. And so yes, I know these are sensitive words that I've used, but I feel so strongly that we urgently need to wake people up and stop this march towards catastrophe that I very much feel that we're on.

Is the Caroline Lucas who is now against catastrophism the same Caroline Lucas who said in November,

... when you hear scientists say that we have about eight years left in order to really tackle climate change, I don't think what the public actually want is cautiousness, what they want is real leadership, and that is what the EU is promising to give, and yet that's what we're failing to do here.

Is it the same Caroline Lucas who said in February,

Around 75 per cent of all cancers are caused by environmental factors, mainly chemicals...

Is the Caroline Lucas who doesn't believe that alarmism works, the same Caroline Lucas in this video?



Lucas appears to be very confused about what she is selling, and how she is selling it. She claims that we must change the way we live, to expect less, and to make do and mend, but that, somehow, this will make us all happier. She claims that she doesn't depend on catastrophic visions to connect with the public, yet without it, there is no imperative to give her ideas a second thought. She claims to be part of a democratic movement, yet demands that the state regulate our behaviour. She claims to speak on behalf of the poor, yet would deprive the poor of the material means to change their lives; cheap goods, fuel, and mobility. She claims to have science on her side, yet she campaigns against the benefits of science; she is against animal research, and against evidence based medicine, favouring instead 'alternative' therapies; she campaigns against the use of agricultural and industrial chemicals; and she campaigns against anything which might have the charge of 'unsustainable' thrown at it. She claims to be against the coercive influence of big business, but in its place, she would put an authoritarian government that would regulate your freedom to travel, to buy things, and coerce you into observing an 'environmentally friendly' lifestyle.

A loss of values in politics is a bad thing. But the Green Party is far far worse. Give us disorientation over deeply confused misanthropy, any day.

Emissions Policy Policy Omission

Hilary Benn, Environment Secretary, son of Tony, successor to David Miliband, announced on Monday that the target of 60% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 set by his predecessor may not be enough. This comes in the wake of the Tories trumping the 60% figure, with 80%. This has been trumped in turn by the Liberal Democrats, who announced their plans for a zero carbon Britain.

This latest development isn’t yet the promise of a carbon negative Britain we have predicted, and there's not much wriggle room after the Lib's 100%. So how does Benn answer the other parties' offers?

The changes to the draft Bill, set out in a Command Paper entitled ‘Taking Forward the UK Climate Change Bill’ published today, include:

• As announced by the Prime Minister in September, asking the Committee on Climate Change to report on whether the Government’s target to reduce CO2 emissions by at least 60 percent by 2050 should be strengthened further;
• Asking the Committee to look at the implications of including other greenhouse gases and emissions from international aviation and shipping in the UK’s targets as part of this review;
• Strengthening the role and responsibilities of the Committee on Climate Change, including by requiring the Government to seek the Committee’s advice before amending the 2020 or 2050 targets in the Bill;
• Strengthening the Committee’s independence from Government, by confirming that it will appoint its own chief executive and staff, and increasing its analytical resources;

... (our emphasis).

In other words, the latest policy is that there is no policy. Emissions targets in the future will be determined not by politicians (you know, those people we elect once every few years to make decisions), but deferred from politics, to a committee. According to the DEFRA website,

The Committee will be comprised of 5-8 members including the Chair, supported by a standing secretariat of staff to conduct in-depth analysis into the issues being considered.

To ensure its credibility, it is important that the Committee is able to clearly and rationally present the economics of the costs, benefits and risks of abatement decisions. This means that the Committee’s members should be experts in their field, rather than representing specific stakeholder groups. The following list provides an indication of the types of expertise that will be desirable in the overall composition of the Committee:

• business competitiveness;
• climate change policy in particular its social impacts.
• climate science;
• economic analysis and forecasting;
• emissions trading;
• energy production and supply;
• financial investment; and
• technology development and diffusion.

If passed, the Climate Change bill will force the government to "explain its reasons to Parliament if it does not accept the Committee’s advice on the level of the carbon budget, or if it does not meet a budget or target", but won't let us challenge the decisions made by this committee democratically. This is because, according to DEFRA:

The debate on climate change has shifted, from whether we need to act towards how much we need to do by when, and the economic implications of doing so. The time is therefore right for the introduction of a strong legal framework in the UK for tackling climate change.

When did the UK ever have a debate about "whether we need to act"? And when was it settled? Over the last ten or twenty years, the "debate" has been dominated by climate orthodoxy, not by differences of opinion. Political environmentalism has never been challenged by any UK party, let alone the climate science questioned. But this is because dissenting views have been excluded from debate far more than they have been invited, not because a debate has been had. We can tell this is the case because of the disparity between statements made by politicians, and statements made by scientists. Furthermore, this orthodoxy has thrived and gone mostly unchallenged because of a profound lack of defining political ideas across the political parties. As we have pointed out before, fears about climate change serve to provide a direction for directionless politics, and the sense of crisis evoked by alarmism provides political parties with legitimacy. With no crisis to manage, politicians face an existential crisis - "why am I here? What is my purpose?". That is why we see this policy which misses something... politics. Even though what we decide to do with scientific evidence is ALL about politics.

But this move to put decisions which affect us outside of politics is not new. One of Gordon Brown's first acts as Chancellor of the Exchequer was to put the Bank of England outside of political control, giving it responsibility for setting interest rates. As soon as a "debate" or an issue becomes inconvenient or just difficult for the government, it simply prevents it from being a political matter. So why not simply manage the country by committee? What is the point of politics? Don't ask Mr Benn.

Tories on Standby for Labour-Saving Policy Action

Today's Observer editorial carries the following analysis of the "Phoney War" of policy battles between Brown and Cameron, amidst rumours of an early election:

The Conservative leader is not short of policy ideas. If anything, he has too many of them and they are not marshalled into a clear political vision.

David Cameron is not short of policy ideas? Over on page 7, there's a different story:

In an attempt to burnish his green credentials - weeks after being accused of lurching to the right - David Cameron will offer strong support for the report that would herald a major redesign of many of today's electrical goods.

Policy, policy, everywhere...

In a sign of the depth of the change of thinking at the highest levels of the Tory party, whose leaders once regarded the home as beyond the reach of the state, the report will warn that many electrical goods will have to be scrapped unless they are made more environmentally friendly. The report will single out hugely popular plasma television screens - they even adorn the walls of Downing Street - as a product that consumes too much electricity. The report will say that 'high consumption technologies' will be banned unless they meet new standards for lower electricity consumption.

The issue here is that the standby modes of electrical appliances are (allegedly) the cause of 2% of the UK's CO2 emissions. But policies about the buttons on our TVs really ought to be at the bottom of the policy ideas barrel - banning them is not going to change the planet. This policy is certainly a sign of the "depth" of "thinking" going on in Westminster, but not a change.

Cameron regards the Quality of Life report - the last of six semi-autonomous commissions to report to the Tory leadership - as a key moment in demonstrating his determination to modernise his party by adopting radical green proposals.

Expanding the matter in the same issue of the paper, John Gummer, former Conservative Environment Minister invites us to "Turn Off the TV and Join the Tory Green Revolution"... 'Individuals as much as governments must help in sustaining our increasingly beleaguered planet', he says. And how are we going to save the planet? Localism...

Localism is also about local food and local provision, it's about post offices and farm shops, it's about food miles and local amenities. Climate change puts a new cost on carbon and therefore changes the economic balance that, for too long, has driven us away from localism towards central control.

It's a funny kind of "modernisation" that bans the benefits of modern society. It's also interesting how the political equivalent of the razor wars seems intent on punishing the public for their naughty indulgences in the fruits of industrial society - big tellys, flying, driving, and labour-saving (pun intended) devices - and for wanting life to be about more than what's happening locally (whatever that means). Not only is today's politics about limiting the size of our television screens, it is also about lowering our horizons in the real world too. It is the political parties which are beleaguered, not the planet.

Who are these policies supposed to be speaking to - apart from other political parties, that is? It can't be the TV watching masses. And apparently it's not even the readership of the Observer. Of the 48 pages in the main section of one of the most green-leaning papers today, 9 contained car adverts, 3 of them full page, and 5 half pages.

Carbon Neutral Policy Surfeit

Apologies for being off-line recently. It’s been summer, we’ve been busy, and there’s been less news around. Now that the Summer is over (did it ever really begin?), we’ll be back with more regular postings.

********

The Liberal Democrats announced last week their plans for a 'zero carbon Britain' – including banning all petrol cars from UK roads by 2040, and the end of atomic power. As they tell us,

The measures, which will be debated at the party’s conference in Brighton next month, strengthen the Liberal Democrats’ position as the only major political party with specific proposals designed to face the challenge of climate change.

This indeed trumps the Labour Party’s 60% cut of CO2 by 2050, and the Tory’s 80%, and even the Climate Camp protesters' 90%. All you need to be radical these days is to add a few percentage points more than you opponents. But this is politics by numbers, and is better explained not by some new-found commitment to environmental politics or even the consequence of scientific research, but a need to find a new niche in the face of poor ratings. There are no ideas, no principles, no philosophy, and no matters of substance separating these parties. And there are barely any differences of approach to what the Lib-Dems are calling 'the number one challenge facing the world today'.

If the parties only offer differences of degree, all citing the same “science” (Stern, IPCC, Tyndall – none of which are “the science”), what science can they possibly be deferring to? Where is the science which tells us what percentage cut of CO2 will save the planet? How can four readings of the same research produce such "different" policies?

The answer is, of course, that the science has little to do with it. And in spite of this being 'the number one challenge facing the world', as we reported before, 56% of the UK public don't seem to see things the same way. Perhaps that's because, in spite of the poll's authors' contempt for them, the public are fairly good at spotting nonsense. Which is a problem for the Lib Dems, and the political parties generally, because in their bids to out-do each other, none dare to challenge the consensus or the political orthodoxy , but attempt to demonstrate that they better represent it. What appears to be the most radical figure - the 100% - is in fact the most cowardly. The Lib-Dems are, after all, yellow.

Which party will be the first to offer a carbon negative UK? Place your bets, it’s only a matter of time, and it’s the only way to go for the exhausted party politics of “the mother of all democracies”.

Runaway Climate Runway Capers

The "Camp for Climate Action" has opened near Heathrow Airport. Announcing the event, and commenting on some of the legal problems the organisers have faced, the campaign website said:

Unfortunately the police have stopped and searched some people coming to the camp, under anti-terrorism legislation. This is clearly an abuse of this legislation as the Climate Camp is organised openly, and we are clearly not a terrorist group!

We'd agree that anti-terror legislation is the wrong sledgehammer for this bunch of nuts, and however much we disagree with Climate Camp, their right to protest is worth defending.

However, Climate Camp are not against playing the terror card to further their own political messages:

The science is clear: global emissions of carbon dioxide must go into rapid decline within the next decade. If they don't, humanity faces a bleak future.

The science says nothing of the sort, of course. The science just says that the world has been getting warmer recently and that that is probably largely due to CO2 emissions. And their political message?

To achieve this in a way that respects global justice means 90% cuts in developed countries like the UK

Hey, that's a radical 10% more than the UK Conservative Party is calling for. (Perhaps the extra 10% covers the 'global justice' bit.)

As we say in our introduction:

15. Widespread disengagement from politics means that politicians pander only to the loudest, shrillest voices.

16. Science is increasingly expected to provide moral certainty in morally uncertain times.

17. Environmental concerns are serving to provide direction for directionless politics.

Success in politics today is achieved through painting a darker vision of the future than one's adversaries. A cursory look at the environmental movement, and those behind the War on Terror, for example, would give the impression that the two were politically opposed, but a closer inspection reveals that they are cut from the same cloth. Take away the terror, and there is nothing left; no positive view of what society can achieve, no sense of shared purpose, no vision of a better life - just a vague promise of 'security'.

Fear-mongers need media coverage. But only the right sort of media coverage. Previous Climate Camp actions have banned the media from their sites. Last year, the Camp was organised around the aim of shutting down the Drax power plant, and causing widespread inconvenience so that we all heard about the stunt, and "got the message", but it doesn't want the media to intrude on the precious lives of its own activists. This year, that policy received criticism from journalists:

Camp for Climate Action has stated that media will only be permitted on site between 11 am and noon; that they must be accompanied and identified with a flag; must stick with the tour; that some journalists will not be allowed on site and that a “black-list” will be operated. Sympathetic journalists will be given longer access.

After this protest from the NUJ, the campaign's website announced that it had changed its policy, and explained:

This policy is a compromise that attempts to provide reasonable media access whilst respecting camp participants' right to privacy. Past protest events similar to the camp have had a no-access policy, and last year's media hour, which worked well for all concerned, was, we thought, a major step forward. The proposed addition this year of longer access for some journalists was intended as yet another step toward fuller media access and more in-depth coverage. However, this year's experiment in providing greater access has not worked for anyone. The media team does not have enough people to do the job, journalists saw a tiered system as unfair and many camp participants have declined the offer of living for a few days with the press. So, we have revised and simplified the policy, with fairness, equal treatment of all, and ensuring that we have the capacity to deliver what we offer as our key principles.

Climate Camp is so anxious about its image that its organisers have cordoned off those who might be on-site, but off-message - it doesn't even trust its own membership to speak freely. It's a funny kind of protest movement that has to ban the media from observing it on the squatted land it occupies. The pretence of 'protecting privacy' is as spurious as the overzealous application of anti-terrorism legislation by the police. In excluding the critical eye of the media, and favouring those who would paint the protest in a good light, it reveals exactly the same Orwellian tendencies it claims to be the victim of. It wants a public image on its own terms, to pull a loud, irritating, inconvenient stunt, and then run away to hide behind it's 'rights' when challenged. 'Postman's knock' politics. A big noise, but no message.

In Crisis Politics, the Only Way Is Up

UK Conservative Party leader David Cameron has announced his commitment to an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050. This move 'beats' Labour's promise of a 60% reduction by the same date.

Cameron's announcement follows statements by the Conservative Party's Quality of Life Challenge policy group, whose website announced last weekend that they had 'publised [sic] an important update to the Quality of Life Group's recent report on acceptable climate change and CO2 emmission [sic] targets'. The policy group challenge the Stern report, drawing on the IPCC's WGII summary for policymakers, and others, to conclude that 'the existing 60% goal is likely to prove inadequate [...] UK emissions will have to be reduced by at least 80% by 2050'.

The statement is justified on the basis that 'the politics must fit the science and not the other way round' ('Don’t give up on 2°C [PDF]'). On the face of it, this seems a perfectly sensible approach. The trouble is that the science doesn't actually say that mitigation is a better strategy than adaptation, let alone whether an 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050 is better than a 60% reduction. Mitigation, far from being a no-brainer is a complicated and controversial field scientifically. By claiming that their 80% figure is derived from the science, the Tories are hoisted by their own petard - this is a clear case of the science being stretched to fit the politics.

Moreover, mitigation policies cannot be a matter for science alone; they must also be informed by moral and political considerations. And yet when parties hide behind claims that their policies are derived from the science, these are necessarily excluded from the discussion. For example, in a recent article in Nature called 'Lifting the taboo on adaptation', Roger Pielke Jr, Gwyn Prins, Steve Rayner and Daniel Sarewitz argued that the case for adaptation had not been sufficiently heard.

Yet policy-makers need to understand the limitations of mitigation for reducing vulnerabilities, and give more urgent consideration to broader adaptation policies — such as improved management of coastal zones and water resources — that will enhance societal resilience to future climate impacts regardless of their cause. To define adaptation as a cost of failed mitigation is to expose millions of poor people in compromised ecosystems to the very dangers that climate policy seeks to avoid.

So why would the Tories wish to exclude discussion of alternative strategies? Why would they claim that alternatives would contradict the science, that they are 'at the margin of the debate', and that 'we cannot risk them being wrong'? The answer is simple: lacking a framework of political principles, they have such little scope to set themselves apart from their Labour and Liberal (and for that matter, Green) counterparts that their only option for demonstrating their fitness for leadership is to appear to be taking the issue more seriously. And that's the only option open to their counterparts, too. The result is an escalation of the 'crisis' that ends up looking more like the razor wars than politics.

Cynics on both sides of the issue may dismiss Cameron's words as empty rhetoric, as mere postures assumed to embarrass the Labour Party, and to rob the liberals and the Greens of their environmentalist edge. They may well be right, but what is important here is to recognise how dramatically environmental thinking is narrowing political discussion about the future. Crisis politics dominates thinking right across the political spectrum and hides politics behind scientific absolutes which simply do not exist, and cannot be interrogated. Even the Socialist Workers Party is getting in on the act, calling for cuts of 'at least 80 percent [...] by 2030'.

That all parties are pushing in the same direction on this one might lead some to argue that they can't all be wrong. But it would be more true to say that they can't all be correct. Discussions about the future are being reduced to an arms race of gimmicks that appeal to the very same fear that they generate. It's enough to make five blades in a disposable razor seem like a positively radical, world-changing idea.

Challenging Climate Orthodoxy...

April 2007. Since its release in February, the IPCC's AR4 (Working Group I) Summary for Policymakers has been uncritically reported in the mainstream media, and its findings often exaggerated. Because of a perception that the public mood demands action to mitigate climate change, the UK government has used the IPCC findings to justify committing the country to a 60% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050. Like much environmental policy, this has gone largely unchallenged by opposition parties.

We believe that an unfounded sense of crisis - and therefore urgency - dominates public discussion of environmental issues. Thus, demands for urgent action to mitigate climate change thrive at the expense of genuine, illuminating, nuanced debate.

Neither the science nor the politics of climate change should be exempt from scrutiny. Our intention is to provide some decent commentary on how science, politics and the media handle environmental matters, for anyone interested in challenging this dangerous new orthodoxy. And for anyone just interested.

Where we're starting from...

1. There is good scientific evidence that human activities are influencing the climate.
2. The evidence for anthropogenic climate change is neither as strong nor as demanding of action as is widely claimed.
3. Our ability to mitigate, let alone reverse any such change through reductions in CO2 emissions is even less certain.
4. The scientific consensus on climate change as widely reported inaccurately reflects the true scientific consensus.
5. There is no scientific consensus on how society should proceed in the face of a changing climate.
   
6. How society should proceed in the face of a changing climate is the business of politics.
7. Science does not and should not proceed by consensus.
8. Political arguments about climate change are routinely mistaken for scientific ones.
9. The IPCC is principally a political organisation.
10. Environmentalism is principally a political phenomenon.
11. And yet climate change policies go unchallenged by opposition parties.
    
12. The goals/aspirations/values of society are/should be matters of politics, not science.
13. The current emphasis on mitigation strategies is impeding society's ability to adapt to a changing climate, whatever its cause.
14. The public remain unconvinced that mitigation is in their best interests.
15. Widespread disengagement from politics means that politicians pander only to the loudest, shrillest voices.
    
16. Science is increasingly expected to provide moral certainty in morally uncertain times.
    
17. Environmental concerns are serving to provide direction for directionless politics.