Unrealpolitik

Three weeks on from Copenhagen, and the blanket of snow currently enveloping much of the northern hemisphere hasn't obscured deep disappointment about the outcome of December's climate conference. No one appears to believe that the deal achieved is sufficient to make an impact on global carbon emissions and limit global warming to within safe levels.

Who's to blame? The list of candidates is long. The image of hapless hosts Denmark may take some time to recover. But what has become increasingly apparent over recent weeks is the lengths that the Chinese delegation were prepared to go to in order to avoid being subjected to a binding global agreement that might hamper their growth . Mark Lynas's account in The Guardian of the walkouts, the snubs and the last-minute scuppering of targets that did not even affect China makes depressing reading.

Given the level of ambivalence among the Chinese public about a strong global deal at Copenhagen (as we noted last month) this attitude by their leaders should not perhaps have come as a surprise. But, by any standards, theirs was pretty ruthless behaviour. That being the case, you might have thought that climate activists and NGOs would not be slow to point the finger?

Not so. Their ire has been directed almost exclusively at the countries of the developed West and, in the case of George Monbiot, at Barack Obama himself. The ink on the non-deal was barely dry before John Sauven of Greenpeace was referring to Copenhagen as a 'crime scene, with the guilty men and women fleeing to the airport'. Regardless of what Western countries might have put on the table (and in some cases it was substantial), and regardless of Chinese wrecking tactics, the environmental movement's mindset required that the West were identified as the villains of the piece.

Monbiot bemoans the failure of concerned liberals to take to the streets in large numbers to demand action on the climate from their leaders. But why are we surprised? In relentlessly accentuating the negative, ramping up the rhetoric to ever greater heights and allowing post-industrial guilt to trump a sense of what can actually be achieved, the environmental movement has itself been guilty of disempowering those who might have been supporters. If you portray the problem of climate change as unimaginably huge, decry any attempt to tackle it politically as a shameful betrayal and make no attempt to help people imagine how they might live fulfilling lives in a low-carbon world, don't be surprised if most of them bury their heads in the sand.

A few weeks before Copenhagen, I attended a gathering of NGOs, think tanks, labour organisations and corporates to discuss the 'green economy'. Talk turned glumly to Copenhagen, and I wondered aloud to a senior campaigner at one of the major environmental NGOs why his organisation wasn't concentrating its efforts on where advances could be made – lobbying multinationals, working with enlightened US states, championing new technologies. This was sniffily dismissed as 'realpolitik' and I was assured that 'doom and gloom is what we do best'.

This seems breathtakingly complacent to me. Our research shows that while NGOs are still trusted more than most institutions, trust in them is declining and people value them more for the aid and assistance they give than their campaigning work. Instead of peddling 'unrealpolitik', environmental NGOs – and the movement as a whole – should be taking advantage of the fact that they don't have elections to win every few years and play a positive role - building coalitions, articulating a vision, thinking the unthinkable, helping people to imagine what a different future could look like. It's never been more important.

Danish Blues

With the Copenhagen summit now underway, global attention is focused on the climate change issue, arguably as never before.

Our latest BBC World Service poll shows that – even in the midst of a recession – public concern over the climate has reached its highest level in the 11 years we’ve been tracking it. In total, 64% of those across the 24 countries we polled said they considered climate change a ‘very serious’ problem. In 13 of the countries we’ve been asking this question on a regular basis since 1998, and we’ve seen a sharp increase in concern on this measure from 44% to 63% overall.

Undoubtedly, until the buildup to COP15 started, the economic crisis had been keeping climate change out of the headlines, and the proportion of people in our polling naming the environment as the biggest issue facing their country dropped sharply. But while the economy was imploding, the steady accrual of alarming news about the climate has propelled concern about climate change – a problem which is, let’s not forget, complex, multi-faceted and (at least for now) somewhat abstract – to new heights. As our poll shows, there is substantial support for governments taking a strong line and supporting ambitious targets to fight climate change.

The UEA emails row may have provided a straw to clutch at for the sceptically-minded and the conspiracy theorists. But the likelihood is that any dampening effect that this has on concern will be temporary – particularly if we see a repeat of the scorching summers, hurricanes and snow-free winters that have become an increasing feature of the last decade.

What our poll also shows, however, is that leadership at Copenhagen will probably have to come from somewhere else besides the world’s two leading CO2 emitters, China and the USA. In both of those countries, concern has dropped back since 2007, and both are ambivalent about their governments pushing for a strong global climate agreement in Denmark.

Strong Copenhagen Agreement Unlikely, Despite Potential Benefits: Sustainability Experts Speak

The latest findings from our regular poll of sustainability experts around the world from the worlds of business, academia and NGOs illustrates the ambivalence that many of those in the know are feeling as the Copenhagen summit approaches.

On the one hand, they are exceptionally downbeat about the prospects for a meaningful agreement being concluded at Copenhagen - that is, one stringent enough to avert the major and frightening consequences for the climate that most scientists now predict. More than eight out of ten anticipate that, while a total failure to reach agreement is unlikely, the compromise that emerges won't be tough enough to make much of a difference.

But on the other, they see real prospects for a wave of innovation and investment in renewable energy, and low carbon products and services if a really radical agreement is reached. This is important, as it seems to suggest that experts largely don't subscribe to the view that the dynamic between the environment and the economy is a zero-sum game - that is to say, the more you try and fix one, the more you damage the other. With Hu Jintao committing China last week to producing 15% of its power from renewables and nuclear energy by 2020, this is clearly the way the tide is shifting.

Whether it will shift fast enough to avoid us all being engulfed, in the absence of a more ambitious agreement in Denmark in December than currently looks likely, is quite another matter.

Amid The Confusion, A Growing Carbon Consensus

Interpreting public attitudes on climate change is a confusing business these days - apparent contradictions abound, and the contrast between what people appear to believe, and how they behave, is often stark.

Polls like The Guardian's latest illustrate this well. The prevailing attitude of the UK public might be summed up as: yes, climate change is a major threat, yes, I should be doing more about it than I am, but whatever I do it probably won't make any difference - and anyway I'm not prepared to contemplate anything that will cause me financial pain. It's hardly surprising if policymakers seem paralysed by the political consequences of taking major steps to address the problem.

But look a little harder, and a consensus does start to emerge. Our latest global polling on the issue is evidence of this. We interviewed a sample of 1,000 adults in each of 19 countries how they felt about government actions to address climate change, including investment in renewables. Would they be good for the economy, or hurt the economy? Nearly two thirds (62%) felt they would be good for the economy. But what if that isn't the case - what if the economy suffers as a result of a government push to address climate change? Another clear response - three in five (60%) say governments should do it anyway. Of course, the devil is still in the detail. What if the economic damage translates into major cuts in public services, or tax hikes for large swathes of the population as well as much higher energy costs? The public may not have fully come to terms with that.

But even so, the figures are striking. Look at the USA and China - over half (52%) of Americans say they support measures to address climate change that would hurt the economy, and in China, nearly nine in ten (89%) feel that way. There may be a long way to go politically, but surely this amounts to a mandate for boldness from the leaders of the planet's current and future CO2-emitters in chief.

Looking for Green Shoots

It's always struck me that the green movement as a whole made a major strategic error in the way its has gone about the task of persuading the rest of the planet to respect our environment. Massively more time and effort has been spent trying to bring home to us the true horror of the environmental catastrophe that awaits us than on articulating in a clear, persuasive and plausible way what an alternative to our current lifestyle might look like. The effect has been to depress, alienate and disempower many millions of people who might otherwise have become active supporters of change - but aren't clear what it is they should be supporting. If that isn't a failure of leadership, I don't know what is.

But maybe we're turning the corner. Alongside the regular drip-drip of truly alarming news about the global environment, some hopeful coverage has started to appear over the past weeks and months. Perhaps editors have decided that, as Copenhagen approaches, there's only so much bad news about the environment that people can take.

Some political leadership: Barack Obama has been using his 'bully pulpit' to promote a move to renewable energy by means of carbon caps - and escape from recession in the process. His plans may yet get bogged down and watered down in Congress, but at least he's trying.

Some civic leadership: The BBC reports that Suarez, a town in Uruguay has moved to solar power for its street lighting - not just to save energy, but to save money. Others may follow.

And some journalistic leadership: The Guardian is doing its bit with its Manchester Climate Change 'hearings' and report, to which it devoted a whole section of the newspaper last week, which outlined twenty reasons to be hopeful about the environment, including ideas such as concentrated solar power in the desert, cloud-making ships and carbon mortgages.

Our research shows that, while alarm over the environment has been steadily increasing (economic crisis notwithstanding), hope has not been extinguished. There's significant public support for renewables - in our poll of 22 countries last year, we found that the proportions who felt that we should depend 'a great deal' on solar or wind power significantly outweighed those who thought that the answer lay in bio-fuels, cleaner coal or nuclear power. Sustainability experts agree. Americans are remarkably optimistic that they can make the transition to a low-carbon economy without sacrificing prosperity. And Indians, buoyed up by the technology-driven growth of the last ten years, put great faith in high-tech solutions to the climate crisis.

What's clear is that there are a lot of people out there looking for leadership, and reasons to be hopeful. Obama, Suarez and The Guardian are doing their bit - let's hope others follow.

Supreme Court Nominee has Pressed for Government’s Role in Forcing Reductions of Carbon Emissions

US President Obama’s first nominee to the Supreme Court, Sonia Sotomayor, has hinted as an appellate-court judge that big polluters should be forced by government to reduce their emissions. In a case from 2006 (Connecticut vs. American Electric Power Company, Inc.) in which Connecticut and other US states brought action against five large US electric utilities companies as public nuisance case. Whilst the case was rejected, as it presented a ‘political’ question unsuitable for ruling by the judiciary, Sotomayor - then the lead jurist in the case - was moved to remark that,

"I have absolutely no idea about the science of global warming… But if the science is right, we have relegated ourselves to killing the world in the foreseeable future - not in centuries to come, but in the very near future. And at some point, someone is going to have to say ‘stop’”.

Sotomayor’s sentiments strongly reflect public opinion in the USA and across the world, as in the 2007 version of GlobeScan’s Climate Change Monitor, 46% of US respondents remarked that it is ‘definitely necessary’ for governments to impose strict limits on the amount of climate changing gases that individual companies are allowed to produce, and another 31% thought it was ‘probably necessary’. Globally, more than half of all respondents thought it was definitely necessary for national governments to take action in this area.

In terms of performance, GlobeScan’s 2008 wave of the Climate Change Monitor, also indicated that both governments and global companies are lagging behind in the effort to address the problem of climate change, with only 16% of US respondent saying that they thought the US government was doing its fair share, and likewise only 13% said the same of large US companies.