The Unshifting Powerdime

Changing The World Without Changing?
By Daniel Simpson

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”

- Upton Sinclair (”I, Candidate for Governor: And How I Got Licked”)

[Accompanying presentation available here]

LONDON – The only real question about climate change is whether we have any intention of trying to stop it. The science is unarguable: we need a 90 percent cut in the developed world’s carbon output or environmental devastation will quickly outpace our capacity to remedy it. Solutions exist; all that’s lacking is the will and coordination to implement them soon enough, and on the necessary scale. Mindful of the risks (and, for some, the opportunities), companies are starting cautiously to act. But even the pioneers take their cues from politicians, whose reluctance to sell austerity is as readily backed by voters as it is by governments’ corporate underwriters.

It’s not all displacement activity, however, even if the average sustainability strategy amounts to little more than a public relations fillip, and a modicum of belt-tightening. A whole industry has sprung up to advise businesses how to reduce emissions, to lobby lawmakers and to try, if only with creative thinking, to break the vicious circle of self-interest that constrains us from doing what we all know needs to be done. Early adopters of these consultants’ services are preparing for a future in which carbon will be rationed, although few like to talk about it in these terms, preferring instead to debate the merits of taxation and tradable quotas. Yet even if emissions aren’t capped at close to current levels, which scientists say they must be to prevent runaway climate change, the government’s target of a 60 percent cut by 2050 will force firms to invest in alternative energy. What’s unclear is how meaningful these investments will be.

Away from the bubble economy of renewable power financing, where more and more capital keeps chasing limited numbers of projects, most attention is focused on energy efficiency. For the companies who’ve already put a figure to their “carbon footprint” (still very much a minority, in part because there’s no standardised formula for the calculation), this is the easiest way to rein in consumption without hurting their bottom line. As part of the process of raising awareness of climate change and of the need to act, both internally and among the public, businesses are also starting to sign up to the principle that polluters should pay. It’s becoming standard practice to “offset” emissions by funding projects that cut someone else’s carbon output (at least in theory) and firms are also trying to lure customers with more eco-friendly products, often sold at a premium. The objective for many is to declare themselves “carbon neutral”: a fashionable label that salves the conscience by implying a low-impact lifestyle, even though most industrialised nations’ emissions keep rising. The government is already seeking to outlaw the term on the grounds that it’s generally misleading.

“If a business decides to offset all of its emissions and wishes to advertise that to its consumers, it can inform them that the offsetting product that it purchased meets the government standard,” says a recent consultation paper on regulatory proposals from the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. “Business cannot use the standard to claim that they are carbon neutral, due to the complexities involved in proving this.” Environmentalists are less guarded in their critique of the carbon-neutral quest, which diverts attention from the ultimate priority (for climatologists if not policymakers) of weaning ourselves off fossil fuels as quickly as possible.

“We need to go on a carbon-controlled diet and if you’re going to go on a diet you can’t ask someone else to reduce their calorie intake for you,” says Kevin Anderson, a specialist on alternative energy at Britain’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. “That’s not how dieting works. We have to make those changes. We have to reduce our carbon intake and emissions ourselves.”