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September 2007 Archives

September 10, 2007 - Our Common Future

2007 marks the 20th Anniversary of the publication of “Our Common Future”, otherwise known as the Brundtland Report, and widely held to be the foundation document for whatever sustainable development means and amounts to today.

Most people have forgotten just how big a deal the Brundtland Report was at that time. By bringing environmental sustainability, economic development and human rights together in the same frame, it upset all sorts of apple carts at the same time. Old-fashioned, elitist conservationists had their noses rubbed in the reality of protecting habitats and species: all your work is doomed to failure if you don’t take up the cause of the poor and disadvantaged people on whom those habitats depend. Lefties in the development movement were told to grow up and stop categorizing environmentalism as a form of middle-class masturbation.

And all that before the great debate about climate change, which has brought all the constituent parts of the sustainable development world together in an unprecedented sense of shared purpose.

The momentum generated by the Brundtland Report led directly to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 – seen now, in retrospect, as the high point in political awareness and seriousness of response. Basically, governments the world over have just been messing around since then, with very little of substance achieved over the last fifteen years.

So it was with some distress that I realised the 20th Anniversary might pass us by without so much as a “good-on-you-Gro Brundtland” birthday party. The Sustainable Development Commission itself hoped to do something, but got knocked off track when both Mrs Brundtland (who was incapacitated through knee replacement surgery) and Gordon Brown (who was too busy) turned us down.

So three cheers for the Environment Foundation and the 21st Century Trust who have just announced a 20th Anniversary consultation on Democracy and Sustainability to take place at the Science Museum on October 23rd and 24th.

http://www.environmentfoundation.net/

http://21stcenturytrust.org

Posted on September 10, 2007 3:17 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

September 12, 2007 - Jennifer's Ear

Politicians have always seized on particular instances to build swingeing generalisations about the state of society as a whole.

For instance, I have a rather vague memory of what I think was described as “the war of Jennifer’s ear”, where whoever was in opposition at the time seized hold of the wretched Jennifer ear (metaphorically speaking) to accuse whoever was in government at the time of total, heinous dereliction of duty in the management of the NHS.

At least Jennifer lived to tell the tale. One hopes that her ear is fully operational again, and that she has no abiding grievance against those who so ruthlessly manipulated her affliction.

By contrast, manipulating a child’s death is an altogether different matter. Personally, I feel a deep abhorrence at the sight of politicians (of any persuasion) jumping on the coffin (metaphorically speaking) of any child or young person as victims of street violence to argue that the entire country is collapsing in a state of unprecedented anarchy, and that it is all the fault of the disengaged, incompetent government of the day.

The implication that any one political party “cares more”, collectively or as individuals, about the tragic death through violence of young people, is just grotesque. And with the suggestion that one set of policy overlays (by which I mean if superficial bells and whistles are laid on top of decades of economic and social decline in areas of profound disadvantage) is going to do a massively better job than any other set of policy overlays, is headline-grabbing politics at its worst.

Self-denying, respectful sympathy would obviously be the ideal political response at such moments, in the immediate aftermath of such tragedies. But that would be too much to ask, wouldn’t it?

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Posted on September 12, 2007 2:06 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

September 19, 2007 - BBC axe falls on Planet Relief

Hallelujah! The great Professor John Marburger (George Bush’s leading scientific advisor) has robustly confirmed the principal findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – including the “more than 90% likely that climate change caused by mankind” bit.

In his recent interview with the BBC, he went a lot further than that, revealing his worst Lovelockian fears: “The CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere. There’s no end point – it just gets hotter and hotter, so at some point it becomes unliveable”. That’s irreversibility for you, John.

I wonder how the BBC billed Professor Marburger, internally, in their forward planning: climate mainstreamer or climate contrarian? (He’s often been in the latter category before now, so the BBC is going to be really cross that he’s gone over to the other side at this stage).

Over the years, the pool of potential contrarian contributors has dwindled year by year – there’s only so much incontrovertible science one can go on denying in order to suit the media. This is going to get increasingly problematic for the BBC, given the apparent editorial decision to maintain some kind of Reithian balance in its reporting on climate change.

All this surfaced when the BBC decided to axe its plans for Climate Relief – a day of programming focusing on climate change, including quite a lot of advocacy and even “campaigning”.

Great stuff, but the BBC lost its nerve: “it is absolutely not the BBC’s job to save the planet”, said Peter Barron, Editor of Newsnight.

Rather than axe Planet Relief, I’ve got a much better idea for the BBC that seems to be terminally muddled about all this stuff. Why not carry on with Planet Relief, and at the same time commission an alternative “Screw the Planet” day, providing a truly balanced love-in for all climate deniers, chaired by Bjorn Lomborg, duped by Martin Durkin, whimsically entertained by Richard D North, bored rigid by the Institute of Economic Affairs, lectured by Philip Stott, reduced to uncontrollable hysterics by David Bellamy – and regaled by wise and far-seeing US politicians like James Connaughton, Bush’s leading adviser on climate change, who believes that adopting mandatory targets for reducing emissions of CO2 would “mean shutting down the US economy”.

There you are, Mr Barron. What better way of protecting your precious reputation for balance than by lining up the galacticos of today’s ever-so-balanced contrarian movement? And what a fantastic contribution you’ll be making to climate change awareness in the process.

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Posted on September 19, 2007 1:06 PM | | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

September 21, 2007 - Bunting and population

I have absolutely promised not to let this blog get population-obsessed, but I have absolutely got to go on the record to clear up any misunderstanding caused by Madeleine Bunting’s recent article in the Guardian (September 10th) about why most environmentalists can’t bring themselves to utter the dreaded “p” word.

I’m sorry to have to do this. I think Madeleine is a brilliant journalist, and her ongoing battle with Richard Dawkins is just great – someone has to keep on pointing out just how prattish it is for someone like him to wage a war against religion with such religious intensity.

So I was delighted when Madeleine said she was about to do a piece on population – and sure enough, the first 80% of the article is excellent. Check it out for yourselves. But then we find these paras:

“Jonathon Porritt, chair of the government's Sustainability Development Commission, admits it is 'tough territory' but argues that 'it is intellectually unjustifiable' for the environmental movement not to address it. He wants to see a UK population policy that covers both family planning and immigration, aimed at long-term population decline. That would mark a dramatic shift in policy. In particular, he rejects the oft-cited need to keep up the birth rate to pay for pensions. But his attempts to get the government to engage have got nowhere.

"As Porritt ruefully admits, his position lands him in some unsavoury company. The Optimum Population Trust proposes some batty ideas such as government campaigns on the unattractiveness of parenthood. And it gets much worse. As is often the case where there is a disconnect between public debate and popular sentiment, the British National party (BNP) is stepping in to grab the territory. It argues that 'our countryside is vanishing beneath a tidal wave of concrete', 'immigration is creating an environmental disaster' and Britain could become 'a tarmac desert'."

That is all so misleading as to beggar belief! As a Patron of the Optimum Population Trust, am I really likely to slag it off in public for having batty ideas – especially as I spend most of my time telling anyone who will listen that it’s an excellent organization that they should actively be supporting. And would I really be talking of it as “unsavoury company”!

Worse yet, is it really fair, by virtue of (presumably deliberate?) juxtaposition to put the BNP and the OPT in the same category. Madeleine knows it’s not, and unless she can blame such sloppy journalism on her editor (which is of course perfectly possible), then she really has got a bit of explaining to do. I know I shouldn’t complain too much. It’s great that more people are joining the debate on such a critical issue, and it’s not as if I’m not aware of the controversies associated with taking a high profile on it. But it’s not really me I’m worried about in this instance: it’s the OPT, which may now, in the minds of many deluded Guardian readers, be seen as some kind of batty, BNP look-alike. Which is as far from the truth as one can possibly get.

You can do better than that, Madeleine.

Posted on September 21, 2007 5:04 PM | | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

September 26, 2007 - Shattering the government silos with pedal power?

The biggest frustration for anyone watching governments make such a horlicks of sustainable development is their apparent inability to make the connections between different policy silos. So here are three seemingly “separate issues”: the increase in levels of obesity – especially amongst young people; the increase in the emissions of CO2 and other greenhouse gases from car use; declining quality of life in our towns and cities through increased air pollution and congestion.

No doubt dozens of hard-pressed officials in the Department of Transport, Department of Health and the Department of Communities and Local Government are hard at work in their own respective silos struggling with what are by any standards “seriously wicked issues”. But the idea that the single most important answer to these problems lies in promoting cycling and walking is obviously just a bit too wacky, too subversive, too “muesli-ish” – as someone put it to me the other day!

But could the improbable combination of Alistair Darling and Ruth Kelly be on the verge of shattering those separate silos? A recent report from Cycling England has dramatically raised the stakes in demonstrating that for a mere £70 million a year the Government could secure by 2012 a 20% increase in cycle journeys, 54 million fewer car journeys, and a reduction in CO2 emissions of at least 35,000 tonnes a year. The impact on obesity levels is harder to estimate, but the data shows quite clearly that increased levels of physical activity are fundamental in any anti-obesity strategy.

So could the Government at long last make up for 10 years of paralysing failure in this one tiny policy area of cycling? During that time, the average distance travelled by bicycle fell from 43 to 36 miles per person per year with average trips down from 18 a year to 14. Targets to increase cycle use have unceremoniously been abandoned, and money dolled out in such pathetic dribs and drabs that it’ s no surprise that nothing has happened.

So where has Prudence been all this time? Whatever happened to the “invest to save” philosophy? As the Cycling England report points out:

“even achieving a modest target returning the number of trips to the 1995 level within the next 10 years could save around £523 million by 2015”.

So, anybody prepared to take a punt on the following headline in the announcements about the Comprehensive Spending Review: “cycling receives massive boost as part of governments new sustainable transport strategy”.

I wonder why not!

http://www.cyclingengland.co.uk

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Posted on September 26, 2007 4:08 PM | | Comments (6) | TrackBacks (0)

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