Reframing climate change: talking about insurance instead of apocalypse

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the RSA, has called on “the environmental movement” to rethink the way it engages with climate scepticism.  He told Business Green that following years of "pious alarmism”, green NGOs and businesses should develop a more "prosaic" argument for action on climate change based around its costs and benefits.  He went on to say that climate hawks should equate action to cut emissions with the insurance that households and businesses buy but rarely use.

"[People] spend money on house insurance and car insurance and life insurance, and, if what is overwhelmingly likely to happen and your car is not broken into or your house does not burn down or you don't die, it is money poured down the drain," he said.

"Even if you are a climate change sceptic, you surely think the chances of manmade global warming happening are probably a bit higher than your house burning down tomorrow.

"So you do not have to believe all the worst case scenarios on climate change to think it is worth doing what we do as a family and spend a bit of money and make a few changes just to ensure that something catastrophic does not happen."

Matthew Taylor’s criticisms of some green campaigners struck a chord with me.  I agree with him that the “insurance frame” is a very useful way of neutralising “climate sceptics” or, more likely, engaging with “climate neutrals”. 

But let's not get too carried away.  The “insurance frame” will not, on its own, build the political space needed for measures of the magnitude needed to meet the UK’s existing climate targets.  These include, for example, securing £200bn of private sector investment in energy infrastructure by 2020; substantially decarbonising electricity by 2030; and increasing investment in renewable power generation. 

Over the next few years, the government and climate hawks will need to advocate and defend low carbon policies against a backdrop of rising power prices and tighter household budgets.     

Prosaic arguments won’t cut it.

 

Posted via email from Neil Stockley's posterous

Pollwatch: global public less concerned with climate change than other environmental issues

The Guardian’s Damian Carrington has commented on a new Nielson survey, showing that across the world, more than two in three online consumers are concerned about climate change. That figure has hardly changed in the last four years. But people in the biggest polluting nations, the United States and China, are becoming less concerned.

The Nielson survey rams home a hard political truth: the extent to which concern about climate change is driven by consumers’ perceptions of their own interests, especially the “hip pocket nerve”. As Carrington says:

At the highly concerned end are Thailand, Mexico and Indonesia, all places with relatively limited capacity to cope with climate change and in regions expected to be hard hit [by extreme weather].

And:

At the opposite end, the least concerned, we have wealthy Norway, Australia and the UK, all places that are not yet really feeling the bite of climate change and anxious that their rich lifestyles might be affected by climate action.

Since the global economic crisis of 2008, the UK media and the public have lost interest in climate change, and focused on more immediate concerns like jobs, money and crime. The Nielsen report confirms that global “climate change” apathy has increased and goes on to provide this explanation:

The global economic recession (and its lingering effects on the job market and inflation) appears to have misplaced climate change as a big worry for many. But while half (48%) of unconcerned global online consumers cite “more urgent and serious matters in the world today” as the main reason for climate change apathy, 37 percent believe that climate change is not the result of human behavior and 23 percent believe future technologies will solve the problem.

The Nielsen survey also suggests that people are more likely to be concerned with environmental issues whose impacts they can more easily see, experience or hear about, a trend that the current climate trance has magnified.

Three out of four global consumers rated air pollution (77%) and water pollution (75%) as top concerns, both increasing six percentage points compared to 2009. The issues of pesticides, packaging waste and water shortages were all top concerns for 73 per cent of global consumers. As a result, climate change / global warming (69%) took what Nielsen calls a “back seat” to other environmental issues.

But we shouldn’t get drawn into an over-simplified politics of false environmental choices - “climate change vs. the rest”. Global consumer concern about climate change has increased, albeit marginally, since 2009. In Europe, consumer concern about climate change has jumped by 10 percentage points over that time. The interesting finding from the Nielson research is that concern with other environmental issues has grown dramatically since 2009 – pesticides (up 16 percentage points), preventing waste (up 14) and water shortages (up 13).

The contours of public opinion of environmental issues may be more subtle than they sometimes appear. The Nielsen report provides no detailed breakdown by region or country, though it notes that water pollution was the main concern for Europeans. In April-May this year, a Eurobarometer survey found that European citizens’ five top environmental concerns were, in order: man made disasters (oil spills etc); water pollution; air pollution; impact on health of chemicals -- and climate change.

For UK citizens, the top environmental concerns were (in order): climate change (1^st=); growing waste (1^st=); man made disasters; water pollution; and depletion of natural resources.

And climate change is not easily separated out from the other environmental issues described above. For instance, climate change is set to put new pressures on water availability in England; reduced water supplies increase the risk of water pollution. Better waste management should help to reduce C02 emissions.

So, what we have now is a global public concern about “the environment”, that is made of a number of issues, elements and frames, of which climate change is one of the most significant, despite the media trance of recent years.

Media bias, rising power bills spell trouble for clean energy

The UK media continues its climate trance. Latest figures from the Centre for Science and Policy Research at the University of Colorado show that the downturn in media coverage of climate change has carried on through 2011.

It may be more useful to see the climate change debate in the context of energy policy. I have previously suggested that UK media coverage of climate change has evolved over the last couple of years. The focus is now more on energy technologies than the latest bad news about rising global temperatures. Yet the media’s interest in energy innovation may not be a new thing. Last month, Matt Nisbet pointed to a forthcoming study that provides the first cross-national comparisons of how energy policy has been covered and debated in the news. Apparently, the study shows that from 1991 to 2006, the focus in the UK and Finland has been on energy technologies, especially nuclear build.

And whether it’s a new fad or an old theme, the media’s interest in energy technologies may not be good news for supporters of renewables. Duncan Clark of The Guardian recently reported on a study by the Public Interest Research Centre (PRIC). The PIRC study found that in July 2009, more than half of the coverage of renewable energy in the mainstream press was negative. He argues that such media bias matters

… in a country where planning obstacles are a major barrier to new renewable energy installations [and] where fairly small numbers of "antis" can block or delay major installations, every negative story or piece of misinformation counts.

And:

As Pirc researcher Tim Holmes points out in his introduction, press coverage is important because it can influence not only "what people perceive and believe" but also "what politicians think they believe". Indeed, politicians take the temperature of public opinion partly through the barometer of the press, and consistently negative coverage of renewables will doubtless "limit the perception of political space and impetus for political action", as Holmes puts it.

Let’s not get too carried away. The media is not a quasi-magical device that tells most people what to think, most of the time. Energy Issues 2009, carried out for Ofgem by Ipsos MORI, said:

The various forms of renewable energy are most popular with the British public as sources of electricity, led by hydro power, and fossil fuels are the least popular, though nuclear energy is apparently viewed more similarly to a fossil fuel method. Tidal power, wave power, offshore wind energy and large-scale solar power are also very popular. Wind farms on land are somewhat less popular, but still ahead of the various methods that involve combustion. Most favoured of these is biomass, followed by gas. Nuclear energy is less likely to be preferred than any other form except coal, which is bottom of the ranking.

Earlier this year, the Understanding Risk /MORI poll showed that solar power, wind power, hydroelectric and biomass are the most popular energy sources, well ahead of coal, nuclear and oil. (Click here for the analysis by Climate Sock.)

But things may be about to change. Hardly a week goes by without one of the major energy companies announcing a big rise in consumer bills. They blame a surge in wholesale gas prices, not always convincingly.

Some government policies that are designed to boost low carbon energy sources, including renewables, are loaded on to consumers’ energy bills. The extent to which those policies push up power bills is already being grossly exaggerated by the Daily Mail, and others. DECC says that the policies add 4% to the average gas price and 14% to the average electricity price. Last year, DECC estimated that domestic retail gas prices would be 18% higher and retail electricity prices 33% higher in 2020 as a result of energy and climate change policies. But energy efficiency measures may blunt the policies’ impact on consumer bills.

The government’s planned reforms to the electricity market will also have an impact, with DECC arguing they will cause a net reduction in energy bills. (To be sure, those reforms are designed to support a range of low carbon energy sources, including nuclear.) Later this year, the government is due to publish a new assessment of how energy and climate change policies will affect consumers' power bills.

But we all know how perceptions can trump reality. And over the next few years, the public’s pro-renewable instincts will come up against greater concerns about the rising cost of living, especially higher energy bills. A recent Populus poll found that 87 per cent of 2,000 respondents were "very” or “somewhat” concerned about rising gas and electricity prices. Energy costs are nearly twice as important to the public as the NHS, unemployment and public sector cuts, which have all received far greater attention from the media.

If a biased media chisels away at public support for renewables, with energy prices are rising and household budgets under acute pressure, the government may feel under pressure to do a U-turn on its clean energy policies.

Do DECC ministers and the renewable energy lobby know how they are going to handle the coming backlash?

Abbott vs Blanchett: Australia's battle of climate frames

There’s a new front in Australia’s climate wars – the battle of the frames.

Actress Cate Blanchett has appeared in a TV advert to urge her fellow Australians to back the Gillard government’s proposed carbon tax.

But Tony Abbott, leader of the Liberal Party (that’s conservative in Australia) weighed in with this comment:

"People who are worth $53m have a right to be heard – but their voice should not be heard ahead of the ordinary working people of this country."

And this:

"You do not give special weight to celebrities . . .

''You do not give special weight to people who live half the year in Hollywood where there is no carbon tax.”

Abbott was using the “people vs. the elites” frame that has worked powerfully in the US. He set out to cast Cate Blanchett as a symbol of wealthy left-liberal elites who say they want action on climate change but are out of touch with the day-to-day concerns of “ordinary people”. It all comes down, once again, to “who pays?”.

Cate Blanchett has come back with a double-frame of her own – “fighting pollution” and “protecting children”.

'Everyone will benefit if we protect the environment. There is a societal cost of increased pollution and that's what I'm passionate about as a mother. That's where it gets me in the gut,'' she said. ''I can't look my children in the face if I'm not trying to do something in my small way and to urge other people.''

The fact that Cate Blanchett is a mother of three adds an authenticity to her statements. In speaking out, she embodies her narrative.

But the real impact of the row may be to shift attention away from the advert’s message and on to personalities. So Cate Blanchett has tried to frame the argument around protecting the environment.

And she made an interesting aside:

''I understand that if you use the word tax, people are rightly and understandably concerned about their standards of living.”

The UK’s coalition government is bringing in a carbon tax too. They and climate hawks in this country should be relieved that the tax is officially called a “floor price for carbon” and will work within the EU Emissions Trading Scheme. The frame may blunt some of the attacks that are surely coming.

Footnote: Check out this new article from The Australian’s editor-at-large Paul Kelly about the updated 2011 Garnaut report on climate change. Kelly says:

Garnaut repudiates every basis on which Tony Abbott relies for his campaign against the expected multi-party compromise to put Australia on the historic path to a carbon price.

And:

Garnaut's conclusion is unmistakable – [Prime Minister Julia] Gillard is advancing the national interest while Abbott is reviving a regressive past of sectional interests.

Posted via email from Neil Stockley's posterous

Up and down with climate change | Political Climate

via politicalclimate.net

In yet another interesting post, Political Climate have picked up on the UK and world media’s current lack of interest in climate change. They place the “trance” in the context of Anthony Downs’ “issue attention cycle”, in which problems suddenly leap into prominence, remain there for a short time, and then – though they are still largely unresolved – gradually fade from public attention.

I have added a comment, suggesting that the public may now be more interested in related environmental / energy issues and that media coverage of climate change may also be evolving and becoming more specialised.

Posted via email from Neil Stockley's posterous

Is climate change yesterday's media story?

The latest news on human-made climate change is grim, very grim. 2010 tied with 2005 as the planet’s warmest year on record. And the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 390 parts per million, a figure almost 40% higher than it was before we started burning fossil fuels for industrialisation.

Except that it’s not news. Or, at least, we don’t seem to hear so much about it anymore. Almost all the UK media virtually ignored the above reports.

Since 2004, Max Boykoff of the University of Colorado and Maria Mansfield of Oxford University have tracked global trends in media coverage of climate change. Their research shows a noticeable upsurge in media interest in 2006-07, followed by a gentle decline. There was a spike in coverage at the end of 2009, followed by a sharp drop for most of last year.

The trendline for Europe, which is more pronounced than most other regions, takes in coverage by The Times, The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Mirror and The Express and all their Sunday titles.

The trends matter because media coverage influences what people are most concerned about. Ipsos MORI showed in January 2007 that 19% of the public rated the environment (unprompted) as “one of the biggest issues facing Britain today”. (That was up from a tiny figure a few years previously.) In January 2011, just 7% said that environment was one of the biggest issues.

I agree with Bob Ward of the LSE’s Grantham Institute, who suggested that “climategate” – the controversy over the hacked e-mails from the UEA’s climate change unit - may have made climate scientists’ assertions too hot for some news editors to handle.

Yet the shock and trance cycle has other, more straightforward explanations. Lord Stern’s review of the economics of climate change appeared in late 2006 and the following year saw the release of Al Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth and the publication of the IPCC’s four assessment reports on climate change. The latter took place in four stages, thereby maximising the amount of coverage that the report received. The 2009 news spike can be put down to Copenhagen and, perhaps, the attempts in the US to pass cap and trade legislation.

At the end of 2008, however, the global financial crisis, the recession and the ensuing worries about jobs shot to the top of media agendas everywhere and chloroformed their coverage of climate change. After the disappointing outcome at Copenhagen, “climate change” looked, more than ever, like a problem that was both huge and intractable. It also seemed old hat and, perhaps, a bit of a bore. Dr Boykoff’s chart shows that the media started to wake up to climate change around the end of 2010, when the Cancun conference was going on, but quickly dozed off again.

The snooze factor is really important. Matt Nisbet of American University argues that for the US media and public, climate change has lost much of its perceived dramatic qualities. He says that:

. . . journalists' coverage of climate change is driven by the need for dramatic storytelling and novel narratives. Much of the drama in news reporting generally -- and in science reporting as well -- derives from visible political conflict, personality clashes, and contested claims over risks that allow journalists to construct a “news saga” that they can cover for more than a day or week.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that climate activists and some politicians have looked for ways to inject a sense of drama back into the issue. The most noteworthy is 10:10’s “exploding schoolchildren” video last October. But that ended in disaster. Big drama = high risk.

So, where next? Nisbet suggests that the media will only look at climate change anew if they have:

a new novel storyline . . . for the issue that does not define the problem in terms of environmental impacts but rather in terms of something more proximate, localized, and relevant to the public such as human health risks.

That’s right, we’re back to reframing climate change – except that the media, rather than politicians, companies and NGOs are making the shapes. I agree that the public health frame has the potential to pick up traction with the media and the public. [click here]. Yet stories about threats to the economy, jobs and lifestyles are, surely, more likely to grab their attention, for a longer period of time. As for localised stories, floods and droughts in the UK may work in the way he suggests, with one caveat: there may still be too much uncertainty as to whether global warming is the reason for personal catastrophes.

But some interesting new frames and storylines may be emerging. Recently, Kate Galbraith of the New York Times suggested that coverage of climate change and environmental issues has evolved and become more specialised. She instanced the way reporters are subjecting politicians’ and companies’ green initiatives, as well as the challenges and quirks of new energy technologies, to more scrutiny.

In January, Andrew Revkin of Dot Earth showed how his colleagues at the New York Times have illustrated the impacts of climate change on communities and tried to show how clean energy solutions have transformed peoples’ lives in developing countries. He went on to say:

Good reporters, those always eager to get to the root causes of a problem . . . will still track climate science. But they will devote more time and effort to diving deeper on energy policy, habits and innovations — whether unraveling counterproductive subsidies, pointing out the lack of money for path-breaking research, or revealing examples of social and financial innovations percolating around the world — any one of which could make a big difference if the information gets out and around.

My views are impressionistic rather than being based on a Boykoff-type study, but I perceive that the British media’s coverage of climate change and environmental issues has evolved and matured, possibly faster than its American counterparts'. Fiona Harvey of The Guardian (and before that, the FT) has covered the “green growth” debate and the economic arguments around EU emissions reduction targets. She has also placed claims about “green jobs” and companies’ various claims to environmental virtue under scrutiny.

Last year, The Observer’s Juliet Jowitt focused on risks to the world’s biodiversity and brought out the threats they pose to future economic prosperity. She has also been known to question how low carbon energy policies will impact on consumers power bills.

The Guardian’s Leo Hickman has looked into the pro’s and con’s of electric cars, organic milk, green TVs and all kinds of “go green” consumer behaviours.

James Murray’s Business Green website is indispensable for its coverage of “green growth” and the “green economy” debate and of new UK business initiatives and innovations that will reduce our carbon footprint. The Sunday Times’ energy and environment page is largely devoted to new green technologies and their potential impacts.

John Vidal of The Guardian measures up to Andrew Revkin’s global standard. So does the BBC’s Richard Black. Black has framed the climate change in terms of national and international security risks. The Financial Times has developed the security theme for a few years now.

None of the journalists mentioned above has stopped writing about climate science or climate risks.

So, the British media has not turned off climate change. They are covering the issues in different ways. But the question remains as to whether the media’s stories will help build the political space that is needed for effective policies to tackle climate change. Perhaps that’s a job for the politicians – if the media will allow them to be heard and the politicians tell interesting stories.

Reframing climate change: a new overview

Most successful communicators are adept at framing, whether using frames intentionally or intuitively.

So says Matthew Nisbet, associate professor in the School of Communication at American University and blogger for Age of Engagement.

His primer on framing, what it is and how issues are framed, is essential reading for anyone involved in communications, especially about climate change.

Nisbet includes links to his earlier work, including this interesting article describing the frames that are frequently used in the climate change debate.

But he expresses concern that the framing of climate change is considered in terms of marketing and persuasion rather than as a resource for encouraging “bottom up” public involvement. Nisbet goes on:

The unintended consequence of a marketing, political campaign approach is that these strategies tend to seed further polarization and alienation while risking trust in experts and their organizations.

Nisbet, of course, writes about the US, where debate on climate change divides on party political lines much more than it does here. Across the Atlantic, there is much more dispute as to whether or not human-made climate change is real.

Yet the “marketing, political campaign approach” is also dominant in Britain’s discourse about climate change. There may not have been American-style polarisation and alienation, but the public have become less concerned about climate change over the last couple of years, as economic worries – jobs and mortgages – have moved to centre stage. (These trends can be too easily be over-stated, as Climate Sock has pointed out). And the media have lost interest , especially after the Copenhagen summit.

If we are to meet our emissions targets, governments and supporters of climate action will need to encourage people to adopt more-environmentally friendly behaviours. The policies needed are sure to be costly and controversial, meaning that public buy in will be essential. So, what sort of frames should be used?

The most familiar is what Nisbet calls the “Frankenstein’s monster” frame. You tell horror stories to grab the public’s attention, convince them that climate change is an important issue and warn about what will happen unless we all take action to emit less carbon. Many of the horror stories are, of course, well founded and well-researched. But there is growing evidence that “climate pornography” pushes people away and makes them feel that their personal efforts to tackle climate change are hopeless.

Last October, 10:1o tried to push climate change back into the headlines in a scary but humorous way, with disastrous consequences. [click here] Still, NEF’s “hundred months” campaign regularly warns us how little time we supposedly have left to save the planet. (It’s now 71 months, I think).

More positive strategies have been put forward. Last year, Tom Crompton of WWF argued that the government must promote a whole new set of values by which people should live, to promote a shift to a more sustainable society. [Click here, and here.] This sounds like a “moral” or “ethical” version of Nisbet’s “social progress” frame.

But other supporters of climate action acknowledge that most people want to enjoy ever more prosperous and comfortable lives and such materialist drives will prevail over any concerns that they may have about “climate change”. Consequently, most people will not readily make sacrifices to solve a problem that seems too academic, too big, too far away, too out of their control – or too scary.

The logical conclusion is that stories and frames should move on from “climate change”. and on to other arguments for taking action. For instance, this interesting New York Times article, from last October, about energy efficiency in Kansas, suggests that with ‘climate sceptic’ audiences, behaviour change is best framed in terms of other issues, such as energy security, jobs, and faith, rather than in terms of saving the environment.

One branch of this school of thought focuses on personal considerations, such as the promise of a better quality of life. Futerra’s Solitaire Townsend contends that politicians should tell the public a positive but down-to-earth story about what a low carbon way of life would look and feel like - “building a new narrative in people’s heads . . . a self-fulfilling low-carbon prophecy”. She has argued for “[low carbon] substitution, not sacrifice”. [Click here, and here.] Even if the narrative sounds a bit vague, it opens the way to a “consumerist” or “aspirational” edge to the “social progress” frame.

But neither Crompton or Townsend (or, at least, their material that I have seen) contains much analysis of current public perceptions and attitudes – where people are now, how much prepared they are to change, and why. Even Solitaire Townsend has tended to skirt around the issue of economic incentives or, to put it bluntly: why should people start living in more environmentally friendly ways? Where is the financial pay off for them?

The consumerist, “pocketbook” agenda is at the heart of the Political Climate blog, written for a year now by Matthew Lockwood and Andrew Pendleton. They want public policy to focus more on cutting on emissions than on changing behaviours. The Political Climate duo challenge the way politicians have framed climate change as an economic issue, with policies to price carbon (emissions trading, carbon taxes) and attempts to build an international framework as the solution. Instead, they want government to fund policies that bring down the price of low-carbon energy technologies, thereby helping to reframe the debate in more exciting ways, so as to bring more people and interest groups on board.

Political Climate’s argument is a version of the economic development frame, which positions climate change as an opportunity to grow the economy and create jobs, as well as to save the environment: a “win-win” solution.

I follow their work with considerable interest, but I’m still not convinced that the “innovation” answer could stabilise emissions quickly enough to meet the UK’s -- or other countries’ -- emissions targets. It may take years or even decades for cheap new technologies to reach the level of deployment needed to make a major impact on emissions. The alternative path is not as clear as it might be. In these fiscally straitened times, it’s very hard to see how the UK government could write the massive cheque needed to decarbonise our energy system by 2030. A key test of economic development frames like the promise of “green jobs” is whether they are plausible and credible.

Meanwhile, the coalition government has taken economic development as their central frame (but not the only one) for communicating climate policy. Two notable speeches by the energy and climate change secretary, Chris Huhne, on the theme of “green growth” can be seen here and here. Huhne argues that “green growth” will be delivered by more energy saving, carbon capture and storage, renewables and “new nuclear plant as long as there is no public subsidy”.

Crucially, the government wants to reform the electricity markets in order to promote investment in low-carbon energy technologies. It also believes that the EU emissions trading scheme can be reformed, to deliver a strong carbon price. The government’s policies and frames are, therefore, fundamentally different from those of Political Climate.

Chris Huhne is also invoking a “consumer benefits” frame with his promotion of the government’s Green Deal scheme for energy efficiency. His speech to last year’s Liberal Democrat conference is a good example. “Under the Green Deal consumers will save energy and save money.”

Now for the hard questions.

Will “green growth” happen? Will the government – the whole government – present a consistent, credible narrative on climate change or “green growth”? Will the public believe any of it?

How will the Green Deal be marketed to UK households? Will it work? (These questions address both policy and personal behaviours)

For that matter, can "green growth” frames persuade people to make the major economic changes that are needed, or is Tom Crompton correct when he warns that that appeals to materialism cannot, in the end, build strong public support for the radical changes that are needed in the way we live and may even undermine the massive paradigm shift required? Maybe some of Solitaire Townsend’s more “vision-based” narratives could help?

Or do we need to take some other American advice, from Joe Romm for instance, and try to make sure that discussion of policies that aim to tackle global warming should be located firmly in the context of global warming?

Over the coming months, this blog will address these questions in more detail, as well as the other issues raised above about different climate change and environmental frames. Then there’s the small matter of whether the media really wants to talk about it. More on that soon.

On 10:10 and "No Pressure"

The 10:10 campaign, set up to persuade people and organisations to commit to cutting their carbon emissions by 10% by the end of 2010, has shot itself in both feet.

No Pressure, their latest mini-film, tried to push climate change back into the headlines in a way that made people laugh. Produced by Richard Curtis (Blackadder, Four Weddings and a Funeral), the mini-film contains four scenarios in which people who do not make pledges to reduce emissions are blown up by committed carbon campaigners, scattering their blood and bits across the faces and clothing of classmates, workmates and friends.

Bill McKibben, the American environmental campaigner writer and founder of 350.org, has called the film disgusting, distasteful and depressing. I think that Curtis was trying to be ironic and amusing, but the film failed miserably on both counts. The end result was ghastly and boring.

10:10 have pulled the film and said sorry. But they’ve seriously damaged their credibility and handed their (/our) opponents some powerful ammunition. Sure enough, The Daily Telegraph’s James Delingpole has denounced this latest example of “eco-fascism” and slammed what he perceives as the dark heart and intolerance of “the environmental movement”.

I appreciate that this opportunity was too good for a provocative columnist like James Delingpole to pass up. But let’s stop and ask: just what is “the environmental movement” in 2010? “The environmental movement” encompasses NGOs like Greenpeace Friends of the Earth and WWF-UK and campaigns like 350.org . . . and 10:10. It also covers think tanks like Forum for the Future, Green Alliance and E3G and commentators and campaigners like George Monbiot, Mark Lynas and Jonathon Porritt.

But then the “environmental movement” might be business organisations like the Climate Group, the UK Business Council for Sustainable Energy, or the Prince of Wales’s Business and Sustainability Programme. Or the OECD Environment Directorate. Or merchant banks like Climate Change Capital.

This list, by no means exhaustive, captures a wide variety of drivers, agendas, ideologies, policies, strategies and tactics, from “deep greens” to “environmental citizneship”, “environmental justice”, “eco-feminism”, and “ecological modernisation” and much else. An inept film from one campaign proves nothing about all the strands and streams of modern “environmentalism”. It tells us rather a lot, however, about the judgment of those running 10:10.

So, should 10:10 pack up and go home? I think not. Individuals should be encouraged to “make a difference”. In his 2009 book A Blueprint for a Safer Planet, Nicholas Stern discusses “the power of the example” and shows that the annual emissions of greenhouse gases for a typical European lifestyle are, per person, around 10-12 tonnes, the most significant contributors to which come from heating homes, using electrical appliances and travel by car and air. He says that in the UK, the average household can save around 1.5 tonnes of greenhouse gases annually by making their home more energy efficient.

Campaigns like 10:10 can engage people in tackling what is surely the greatest challenge that humankind has ever faced. Over time, they can also help to build a public consensus behind some of the difficult and potentially costly (in the short term) measures that are going to be needed (such as consumer levies for renewable energies or even higher power prices to pay for new investment). Campaigns like 10:10 can put pressure on their governments to take the decisive action that is needed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

But where personal targets are used, they should be clear and long term in nature, with incentives and enablers available (which is what the Green Deal is supposed to be about). And if people set themselves targets, they need to be able to verify the savings. For me, this has been where 10:10 has always come up short.

More urgently, 10:10 needs to re-think its communications strategies. In recent years, some of us have tried to work out more effective ways to inspire public support for shifting to a low carbon economy. New perspectives – and not a small number of debates - have been opened up, on having a positive and compelling vision, communicated with emotionally resonant stories and frames, by credible messengers. [Click here, here, here and here].

The real tragedy of “No Pressure” is that, for all its attempts at irony, the film preached to us, with a negative message and a ‘doomsday’ frame, all sure-fire ways to push people away. This debacle could so easily have been avoided.

Posted via email from Neil Stockley's posterous

A liberal path to green growth

[Edited text of my speech opening the debate on a topical issue, “Building a Low Carbon Economy” at the Liberal Democrat conference, 21 September 2010]

What a year it’s been for the planet!

Last December, we saw the disappointing conclusion to the UN climate change summit at Copenhagen. We’ve seen the US Senate fail to even vote on a bill to cut carbon emissions. We’ve seen heat waves scorching Russia, and nearly one-fifth of Pakistan submerged underwater, vindicating predictions by the IPCC that such events will be more frequent in a warming world.

Whatever the climate sceptics say, the evidence is clear: we are increasing enormously the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. 2010 is shaping up to be the hottest year on record. New data shows that the air temperature over land is going up and so are humidity and sea levels. The arctic sea ice is thinning and glaciers and snow cover in the northern hemisphere are declining.

Our government’s independent advisers on climate change keep saying that we need a step change in the pace of emissions reduction and in our use of renewable energy in order to meet our emissions targets.

It’s been quite a year for another reason. Chris Huhne has taken charge at the Department of Energy and Climate Change and we have Liberal Democrats in key portfolios across government. Vince Cable at BIS is committed to spearheading a green industrial rebirth; Andrew Stunell at CLG is in charge of the regulations for energy efficient homes; and Norman Baker at the DFT handles alternatives to transport.

With these ministers working together, Liberal Democrats have an historic opportunity: to make our dream of a low carbon economy a reality; to promote green growth that helps rather than harms our environment.

A low carbon economy with green growth can give us more energy independence, greater security and new sources of prosperity and jobs. The global market for environmental goods and services is already worth around £3trillion and could grow to more than £4 trillion by 2015.

The path to green growth must take the carbon out of the energy we use. But the current carbon price provides a poor incentive to green investment. So we should welcome Chris’s plans to provide more certainty and support to the carbon price. And we should all back his campaign to raise the EU target for cutting emissions; from the current 20 per cent to 30 per cent by 2020.

But the path to green growth can’t stop there. The government’s advisers have concluded that £200bn worth of investment in a new green energy system is going to be needed by 2020. Most of that will have to come from the private sector in difficult financial conditions. But the existing energy market arrangements are not up to the challenge of delivering investment on that scale. So we look forward to seeing reforms that will give clean energy generators the incentives and the certainty they need.

We shouldn’t forget that the coalition’s programme for government echoed our manifesto in promising an emissions performance standard, meaning that no new coal fired power stations can be built unless they are equipped with highest level of carbon capture and storage. The government should also look at having such a standard for gas generation.

Study after study has shown that energy efficiency is the most cost-effective way to cut emissions. I welcome Chris Huhne’s Green Deal, a pay as you save energy efficiency solution for all householders. That’s a Liberal Democrat idea and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise! And Chris is now extending it to non-residential buildings as well. We’ll also need an ambitious national programme, to insulate the walls and lofts of existing homes and more clarity about energy efficiency polic, right across government.

When it comes to boosting clean, renewable energy the most urgent actions the government can take are to give the industry more certainty about the financial support that will be available, especially for renewable heat.

We must deliver on our promise of a Green Investment Bank. Let’s be clear: the GIB will need at least £2 billion to stimulate investment in the infrastructure that we need, and have the ability to issue bonds, if it is to underpin a green industrial revolution.

This, then, is the liberal path to green growth and a sustainable future for our children and our children’s children.

Posted via email from Neil Stockley's posterous

Pollwatch: British people like clean energy more than fossil fuels or nuclear, worry about energy costs and supply security

The energy regulator Ofgem has recently published Energy Issues 2009: Survey of British Public Opinion. The survey was taken by Ipsos MORI last December.

Here are the main points I have taken from the Ipsos MORI report:

· The various forms of clean, renewable energy are most popular with the British public as sources of electricity. Coal is the least popular and nuclear energy comes second to bottom in the public’s scale of preferences. Hydro, tidal, wave, offshore wind and large scale solar power are very popular. But onshore wind energy lags behind the other renewable sources, which should come as no surprise after the negative media it has received over recent years. Anti-nuclear and anti-onshore wind campaigners should both approach these figures with some caution, however. The survey merely offers a scale of preferences, with no energy sources ruled out altogether. Respondents were not asked to make trade-offs between the options.

· People are more likely to consider gas and electricity in terms of their cost than their impact on emissions. The price of domestic energy is the most frequently mentioned concern overall, with 52% of first or second mentions. Next comes affordability for everyone eg the vulnerable, with 43%. In other words, the public may be more likely to see energy policy as being about “social” policy – or, perhaps, “fairness” – than the environment. Of the factors listed, “being able to save the environment by reducing emissions” comes in third, with 36% of first or second mentions. That’s a significant figure. So is the 39% of first or second mentions for saving costs by being energy efficient. Still, no less than £200 billion of investment is needed in the UK’s energy infrastructure over the coming decade and the potential cost to consumers is one of the biggest political headaches that the government faces in energy and climate change policy.

· Making sure that Britain can provide all the electricity and gas people want is least mentioned as a first or second level concern. Yet people are clearly concerned about Britain’s energy security. 69% are very or fairly concerned about future imports from abroad. Three in four are concerned about Britain running out of gas. So, future energy options need to be framed, at least in part, in terms of supply security.

· More surprisingly, barely more than half those surveyed recognise that the government is responsible for having enough gas and electricity. All sorts of culprits, such as energy suppliers and Ofgem, are in the frame and one in ten said they don’t know who is responsible. But the government would surely be the first to be blamed if there was ever a real energy supply crisis.

· Most people don’t seem to be very prepared to change their energy use behaviours. Respondents were asked to give their opinions of five energy-saving measures. As the report says:

there is considerable interest in some of the proposed energy saving measures, though none would find overwhelming majority acceptance, and some are unpopular.

Later, the report explains:

the option of heating water at different times of the day attracts the highest likelihood of adoption. This is followed by using appliances (dishwashers, washing machines etc) after midnight. Both of these options are thought very/fairly likely to be adopted by a (small) majority of the population. Slightly less popular is the concept of technology that would automatically switch off appliances when prices are high, though this still attracts more rating it as likely than unlikely. The public are evenly split on carrying out household tasks including cooking during cheaper periods. Least popular is the use of electric storage heaters – 47% rate this as very/fairly unlikely while only 35% see it as likely.

Posted via email from Neil Stockley

Coalition's key test for the Liberal Democrats

I often wonder whether, in all the shock and awe of the last couple of months, Liberal Democrats have grasped fully one of the biggest potential “wins” from the coalition government.

Surely, we should be pinning our hopes on the environmental agenda. The Liberal Democrats can now drive faster progress towards a zero carbon Britain.

The point is well made in an article for The Guardian by Matthew Spencer, the new head of Green Alliance. He says that the delivery of environmental policies is a major test - and a major opportunity - for the coalition government. He points out there was little difference on green issues between the Conservative and Lib Dem manifestos and argues that the need to bring down the public deficit will force the coalition to use regulation to achieve its environmental goals.

Spencer picks up on some the implications for the Liberal Democrats.

Along with civil liberties and electoral reform, the environment is central to the Liberal Democrats' sense of political identity. As one Lib Dem insider recently told me: "If we can't make progress on green issues it wouldn't have been worth joining the coalition." It's an agenda that Nick Clegg will hope to use to bind the Lib Dem base into the coalition over coming months.

And:

Being the greenest government ever may not seem like a big achievement given the patchy performance of previous administrations, but for the coalition it will be a major test. If they can't achieve rapid progress on green issues their legitimacy will fade in the eyes of Liberal Democrats supporters and those who voted Conservative in the belief that it was a reformed, modern party. If they do manage to deliver on their commitments it will be a badge of honour for the new politics of Cameron and Clegg.

There is another, important reason that the Lib Dems can and should deliver for the environment. The party has cornered many of the relevant jobs in government.

Let's start with the obvious one: the Lib Dem secretary for energy and climate change, Chris Huhne, has his capable hands on the levers for regulating the electricity generation sector, which accounts for 37% of the UK’s CO2 emissions. He is also responsible for energy efficiency policies and for this country’s efforts to shape EU energy and climate change policy.

The Lib Dem BIS secretary, Vince Cable, leads the department that is best placed to provide this country’s businesses with the certainty they need to invest in low carbon, sustainable prosperity and enable them to make the best of the opportunities offered by the £3 trillion global market for environmental goods and services. Vince alluded to this in his first major policy speech, on 3 June.

The debate about industrial policy always raises the spectre of ‘picking winners’. But in a globalised economy its time to move this debate on a bit – be clear about what this means. Because in some ways we have to be picking winners . . .

. . . What we shouldn’t be doing is trying to micromanage the economy at the level of individual companies or so-called national champions: trying to supercede the judgement of markets.

The green technology revolution is a good example, and a potential source of huge opportunity for Britain. The Government is, and should, support development in a variety of renewable energy technologies and a variety of environmentally friendly vehicles – it does not have to be prescriptive.

Liberal Democrats in other departments can also make a difference. Norman Baker, a transport minister, is responsible for regional and local transport, buses, walking and cycling and alternatives to travel. The Committee on Climate Change has found that "smarter choices" - influencing people's travel behaviour towards more sustainable options - offer significant low-cost potential for reducing transport emissions.

Andrew Stunell, a communities minister, has building regulations as part of his remit. That may sound a little dry, but 40% of the UK’s carbon emissions come from energy consumed in buildings. The Carbon Trust has shown that tighter Building Regulations can be part of a strategy to reduce the carbon footprint of non-domestic buildings by more than one third by 2020.

No, these ministers will not be able to stop climate change on their own. Important as they are, their roles cannot provide the cross-departmental, multi-faceted approach that is needed to drive the transition to a zero-carbon economy.

But Liberal Democrat ministers now have an historic opportunity to join forces, link together the policies that they control or influence and ensure more rapid progress towards the party’s goal of a zero carbon Britain.

That’s a very good reason for the party to be in the coalition. It’s also one of the best ways that I can see of judging the Liberal Democrats’ effectiveness in government.

Posted via email from Neil Stockley