(This article appears in Insight Magazine April 2008 )
When a social movement is championed by a prince, a Cambridge graduate on the roof of parliament and Waitrose shoppers across the land, you know you have a problem. Yet to say that climate change is of interest only to the middle class of the West is to miss the point entirely.
Much of the response to last months Plane Stupid demo illustrated a growing group of critics who claim that the green movement are little more than “fear-mongering, snobbish, isolationist puritans.” They suggest that the solutions offered to climate change are riddled with class prejudice. By attacking cheap flights and mass consumption they feel the green activists are instead conveying a “shrill middle-class disgust with the greedy masses and their bad habits.”
While the growing ideological debate over how to tackle climate change threatens to obscure action, the doubts over the existence of human-made climate change have, at last given way to reason. Those who still dismiss it as the ‘new millennium bug’ would do well look at the facts.
Between 1950 and 2005 average global temperatures increased by 0.7oC. Over the same period emissions of human-made green house gasses have mushroomed by over 70%. It takes a peculiar bloody mindedness (or funding from Exxon Mobile) to ignore the link. If global temperatures increase by 2oC over pre-industrial levels, we enter the realm of runaway climate change. It is just as dramatic as it sounds. 4 billion people could suffer water shortages, sea levels could rise by 7 metres and the permafrost of the west Siberian peat bogs begins to melt, unleashing 70 billion tonnes of stored methane, the Napalm of greenhouse gases. The cautious but rather aptly titled Stern Report calculated that failing to act would cost us at least 5% but possibly 20% of global GDP.
Slowing the climate’s growing fever is the essential challenge of our age, yet the limp response so far, which is defined by both the moralistic ‘green consumerism’ and their conservative critics, is ineffective and snooty.
When legitimate concerns over emissions are voiced, they are easily perceived as killjoy rantings from a privileged minority. The thick smug that emerges from the hybrid cars of a spoilt few betrays a judgement about how the rest of society should live. And often, their case, though legitimate appears overstated: cheap short-hall flights are seen as disgusting, cheap imported meat is sick, over-boiling the kettle is genocide, and so on. Implicit in their entire effort is the wrong assumption that by changing consumer habits they have tackled climate change. Changing your light bulb is not changing the world – energy efficiency is essential but not enough.
However, the lambasting that the green movement receives from the likes of Brendan O’Neill in The Guardian and his magazine Spiked Online fails to offer any solutions to what is an accepted problem. These self-titled (and usually middle-class) libertarians moan that the entire issue is merely an elitist vehicle to meddle in the lives of ‘the masses’. Yet if this were a genuine ideological concern, they would do well to remember that liberty ends where the one person’s actions limit the freedom of another person’s actions. Unrestricted emissions from some will hinder the lives of many others. Failing to counter that argument these same critics then suggest that climate change is just an anti-progress conspiracy wrapped up in superstition. This sort of drivel fails to contend the science and ignores the fact that social and economic progress demands a stable climate. These so-called “defenders of the masses” end up protecting the interests of the wealthiest corporations instead. It’s difficult to think of many more patronising things then well-paid journalists claiming the voice of millions of working-class voices, especially when, as Green Party MEP Dr Caroline Lucas notes, “if you look at the impacts of climate change, it’s the poorest that are hit first and hardest.”
Until government takes action to draw in the whole of society – business included – the mass effort against climate change will forever be undermined by precious minorities on either side. Rather than relying on the good will of British Petroleum, or hoping that people will give up weekly flights to their holiday homes in Monaco, the government should stand up to the challenge and set an equal limit on how much carbon we can all emit.
Dr Lucas added “the science demands action. We are told we have between 8-10 years in which to put in place a rigorous policy framework to ensure serious emission reductions. It is as much a social justice issue as an environmental one.”
Through setting limits on national emissions, government can sanction one proportion for businesses and then divide the rest equally amongst citizens. Rather than attack the poor – as the much vouched-for carbon taxes do – this would progressively redistribute wealth. Those who expend less than their entitlement can sell off their excess to others who demand it. Remember that despite what they may think, the self-congratulating rich actually consume more carbon than the poor.
With similar incentives placed on businesses effective action would be demanded. It would no longer be profitable for a BP to emit a 100 million tonnes of carbon dioxide to produce crude oil from tar sands; instead they could employ part of their enormous annual profit to genuinely invest in sustainable alternatives.
That we should all be taking action to tackle climate change is unquestionable. But when in 1940 we were faced with a global threat to our livelihoods, the government wasn’t afraid to lead a mass campaign. Food rations were an immense sacrifice, but rather than having an elitist few telling the poor not to eat, everyone was in the same boat. The scale of this threat may not be entirely predictable as yet, but unless we move beyond are limp response, we may have to face the horror of finding out.
I have recently had the dubious fortune of becoming a research assistant with an MEP in the European Parliament. As I was thrust into this new skin I was told that I was entering the ‘frontline of politics’.
It has been fascinating to lend my eyes a perspective I had never come across and in doing so I have tried to distill the essence of the political. It seems to me that the role of a government basically boils down passing a law, or not passing a law. All the familiar debates spiral out from this point.
In the last week the EU Parliament has agreed on a motion to improve energy efficiency by phasing out wasteful goods such as Patio Heaters. Whilst the frantic colluding, compromising and horse-trading was going on around the parliament it became apparent that the political frontline is far from such politicians. Ultimately politics is experienced in everyday life, it’s omnipresent and inescapable. When you sit outside a pub no longer experiencing the absurd comfort of heating up the outdoors, you are on the political frontline.
Power, as opposed to politics is more opaque. Politicians, elected solely by citizens appear in submission to a myriad of other influences. In the name of pragmatism ideals, values and morals are easily relinquished.
The battle to prevent run-away climate change, for example needs decisive political action (law making) but politicians seem unable to manage this. The minority who dismiss climate change as the new ‘millennium bug’ are thankfully giving way to reason, yet despite democratic demand for action politicians remain impotent. Instead unaccountable private groups, corporations and their lobbies appear to run the debate and corrupt democracy. With skilled lobbyists, lawyers and PR departments they create a yawning information asymmetry and stifle political action.
In terms of the media, Britain’s leading left-leaning weekly, The New Statesman, for example, obtains of much of its revenue from advertising companies such as BP and BAE systems. This compromises its ability to criticise both these companies and the wider social structure that allows information to be constrained by such companies. Information is perhaps key to an effective democracy yet it’s blatantly undermined in almost all aspects of the media.
If citizens can overcome this hurdle they face further barriers trying to negotiate the lobbyists of unaccountable interests groups. When debating over legislation or other political action, politicians will face a barrage of highly skilled, well versed people who represent the interests of a tiny minority. When these same interest groups also command the funding of political parties, what hope can the majority have of their voices being heard and getting the appropriate law being passed.
It is a crime to blockade the offices of BP but perfectly legal for BP to emitt 100 million tonnes of CO2 producing crude oil from tar sands.
It is the general public who experience politics but unaccountable minority who dictate it. In this situation where power resides is debatable. Perhaps if people realised that they are the ultimate politicians we could retrieve control over our public lives.
THE TRUTH ABOUT BLACKS!
The other race explained by a black who knows!
“My mates tell me the reason I don’t have a black friend is because my bedroom is a bit on the messy side. Do blacks really make an issue out of that kind of thing?”
To be honest, I don’t know any black who’d be happy to be invited back to a filthy flat. Admittedly some blacks can be obsessive about cleanliness but if you really want to get lucky you’ll just have to live with that.
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The above passage, adjusted from last Friday’s Nuts Magazine shows how quickly ‘harmless fun’ disintegrates into something more sinister when placed in a different context. From the original copy the references made to ‘women’ were changed to ‘blacks’ and ‘men’ to ‘whites’. Whilst the analogy may not be perfect the prejudices it displays remain. Nuts may be a flaccid target for critics but with almost 6000 copies a week sold in the UK it demands attention.
‘Lad’s Mags’ often attract criticism for their objectification of people. Whether objectification need be dehumanising is an important debate. However, in this example I simply question whether the attitudes on display would be deemed unacceptable in a different context.
Like racism, you will never rid society of sexism. Thankfully in the last century much progress has been made on both fronts. The common defence of such publications and the attitudes portrayed is that they are simply what the market demands. Yet, in today’s age it would be unthinkable for companies to sell their goods through a racist card. Why should it be different when dealing with an equally ignorant prejudice?
Racism entails assigning behavioural and cultural traits to the different biological ethnicities. On the basis of these imaginary characteristics a racist concludes that one ethnic group is superior to another. The above article carried a similar process of behavioural assumptions about men and women.
The shocking statistics released last month by the British Crime Survey estimated 200,000 incidents of rape and sexual abuse, of which the police recorded only 12,000 and disgracefully only 5% ended in conviction. This means that of the 200,000 cases of rape committed only 600 men end up in prison.
Too often the pervasive notions of gender prescribed the media are divorced from the visible crimes they reveal themselves in. In no way does reading Nuts amount to raping women but the complacent attitude that brushes aside offensive writing as ‘harmless fun’ does seem to exhibit itself in these far uglier forms.
Last year Anna was savagely beaten up in Notting Hill late one evening. She called the police the morning after, only to be questioned about whether she’d been drinking and what she’d done to provoke this assault. The officer rounded off the call with the news that they were unlikely to catch the man who did this to her so there was little point in proceeding. Yet, in the same area, there is no shortage of yellow Metropolitan police incident boards seeking information when men are the victims of unprovoked violence. Rather than being an isolated incident the statistics suggest cases like this are indicative of the entire system.
Returning to race, if there were numerous magazines reducing and homogenising ethnic groups to imbeciles, accompanied by evidence of intrinsic racism in the police force, there would, quite rightly be public outrage. The two things would be discussed together and wider questions about our attitudes towards race would be raised.
The dominant ideas of both women and men that pervade are ignorant and offensive. The contest to the millennia of misogyny has only just begun. If progress is to be made we must challenge ourselves to make a stand and demand debate about these issues.
The debate surrounding the NHS superbug crisis infecting Gordon Brown’s young premiership has too become riddled with a virus of party political manoeuvrings. All the while the root issue remains unchecked.
This weeks report by the government’s health watchdog revealed that scores of NHS patients have been killed by Britain’s deadliest superbug, c-difficile. This, alongside the continued spread of MRSA has prompted Alistair Darling to announce a £270million investment to combat hospital-acquired infections.
Despite Gordon Brown championing his ‘deep clean’ of NHS hospitals, the actual issue of cleaners remains entirely anonymous. Instead the rumblings over Labour targets, and Tory under investment continue.
Cleanliness is a vital factor in tackling hospital superbugs and is an essential component of good nursing. As the Daily Mail was in pains to note “In her seminal Notes On Nursing, published in 1860, Florence Nightingale wrote that the greater part of nursing consists in preserving cleanliness”. Sadly, thanks to a Thatcher introduced privatisation policy, continued under Labour, nurses play little role in cleaning hospitals anymore, and hospital managers have no direct control over what is cleaned and when in NHS hospitals.
The NHS was once the bastion of Labour values and yet they have allowed the policy of outsourced firms running hospital cleanliness to remain. The rationale was that private companies could provide a more cost effective way of ensuring clean hospitals. Yet studies show that whilst private companies can indeed save costs – by hammering down on wages, they retain the mark-up and walk away with the profits. As a result, workers who are the lowest paid, often unregistered and with little English manage an essential part of patient safety. The average wage of a contracted cleaner hovers around £4.20/hour. This grossly represents the disregard with which both the main political parties have for such a fundamental part of patient care.
Whilst some bemoaned ‘modern-day feminism’ as the cause of nurses indifference to ensuring cleanliness, and the Conservative’s harped on about Labour’s top-down, centralised targets, critics and the government have failed to touch upon the loss of control and accountability that the outsourced cleaner system entails. Compared to the early 1980s there are now less then half the number cleaners, who are lower paid and contracted to a external third-party, have no relationship with nurses and hospital staff. It is an absurd situation where if a hospital manager finds a dirty ward, she cannot call upon a cleaner to sort it out, she would have to contact an entirely separate management system.
The dominant parties have failed to recognise this inadequacy and much of the media debate has been poisoned with the same impotence. It is not just our hospitals that require a deep clean but our media analysis, which needs to root out the dirt of dogmatic ideology that prevents reasoned debate.
