Climate change is a part of the problem

The government has just committed to tough, legally-binding reductions in carbon emissions: to 50% of 1990 levels by 2027. OK, so they’ve got a get-out clause, no clear mechanisms to hit the targets and can effectively ‘outsource’ most emissions reductions. But even assuming we can get over these issues, I’ve still got a problem with climate change.

Let’s be clear: it’s very real. Climate change is an issue of national security, the greatest market failure ever, a social and economic disaster accelerating towards irreversibility. It’s a big and important issue.

My problem is that it tends to eclipse other environmental considerations.

Why? Because nationally and locally we make policy and decisions using the framework of ‘sustainable development’. Which is a great principle, although we have difficulty pinning down what it means or how to apply it. The way it tends to be interpreted is about finding a balance between social, economic and environmental objectives. Wonderful…

More about my problem: if climate change is considered, there’s a tendency to think all environmental issues have been considered. When considering environmental issues, government, public bodies and the private sector often start with climate change and stop there. Sustainable development can sometimes end up looking like a balance between social, economic and climate change objectives. Which is why, even if these emissions reductions are made, we are still a long way from seeing the ‘greenest government ever‘.

There’s a figure of speech: metonym. Oxford Dictionaries Online definition of metonym:

‘A word, name, or expression used as a substitute for something else with which it is closely associated. For example, Washington is a metonym for the US government.’

Climate change is used as a metonym for all environmental considerations. This is especially true in the context of ‘sustainable development’.

So, just to give you an idea of what constitutes the rest of the ‘body environment’, what tends to get lost in the decision-making process:

Treasured landscapes, native wildlife, accessible green spaces, wild and rugged places – things that really mean something to people, that people connect with and value.

Interestingly, the general public, people, don’t tend to make this mistake. According to a new Defra report on attitudes and knowledge relating to the natural environment:

• 92% of respondents said it was important to them to have green spaces nearby.
• 78% agreed that they ‘worry about changes to the countryside in the UK and loss of native animals and plants’.
• 85% agreed that they were ‘proud of their local environment’.

These stats speak about people’s direct and lived experience of the natural environment. Of their immediate engagement with the world around them. And they care about that world.

My hope is that if the government’s drive towards localism and Big Society means anything at all, it should bring extra emphasis to the other environmental considerations: the local, immediate ones that are central to people’s everyday ‘life worlds’. And that’s a good thing.

I’m not saying by any means that climate change isn’t extremely important. Not at all. I firmly believe that climate change should be firmly written through and into every decision we make. It’s the very back-cloth to all sustainable development.

The problem is that labelling climate change as an environmental issue means that all the other environmental issues are competing for attention with arguably the biggest threat that faces us as a species!

I would like to propose that climate change actions are woven throughout the social, economic and environmental framework. It’s at least as much a social and economic issue as an environmental one.

Climate Change is a part of the problem. But let’s not treat it as the whole environmental ball-game. People don’t.