Yes, This Is Important

I've been thinking a lot about Melinda's recent posts about environmental social change. Read her thoughts here about how to get people to change their lifestyles, participating in your community, and how doing it alone is not enough. It's a great series of posts and it asks a lot of important questions. Why is social change important? How do we affect change? How do you build a social movement? These are questions I have been pondering myself for the past two years.

There are a lot of people critical of individual action in the name of the environment. It is easy to poke holes, to label people as hypocrites. It is easy to point out that the changes we all make are microscopic drops in oceanic buckets. But none of those critics ever have a better solution. Almost everytime I go to a lecture on climate change, without fail, someone in the audience will ask what they can do about the crisis we face. And almost always, the answer given is, "Well, the truth is there isn't much you can do aside from vote."

How is that helpful?

I remember many years ago when I saw "An Inconvenient Truth." I still remember the combination of fear and helplessness that washed over me. The world as I knew it was coming to an end, and there was nothing I could do about aside from changing a few lightbulbs or considering a Prius. After I saw that movie, I immediately went online and bought a Terrapass. Then I continued to do nothing. For about a year. Because well, there was nothing I could do anyway!

And then one day everything clicked. I realized there was something I *could* do. So, I attempted to do it all. I stopped shopping, I started air drying, I even made my own jam and butter and started taking public transit in Los Angeles of all places. And then I moved to London in order to attain a better grasp of environmental policy issues.

Almost every seasoned environmental social activist knows that none of the changes we make are enough or anywhere near enough. But we also believe that our work creates a ripple effect. It is hard to determine the exact results of social action, especially one as amorphous as the environmental social movement. But it seems to me increasingly clear that the world is growing more environmentally aware. And part of that is due in part to a growing band of environmentalists who are challenging conventional rules on air-drying laundry, increasingly patronizing farmers markets, as well as advocating for a global deal on climate change in Copenhagen. Individual action at home begets slightly more public action which begets large scale activism for international change.

Do we need a global deal on climate change? Yes. Do we need more government investment in renewable energy? Yes. Do we need higher efficiency standards? Yes.

But we need social change to get those things. We need social change to help us maneuver to a new era of renewable energy.

In the movie Who Killed the Electric Car, one of the culprits cited is the American people who were not ready for the electric car. As I drove around the city of LA, I would be haunted by this failure. I'd drop by the library where the only empty parking spot was that reserved for electric cars. I'd drive by my coffee shop and see another empty parking spot labelled "electric vehicle only." The infrastructure was there, but we had not been able to change people's behavior. Of course there were many other reasons for the failure of the electric car, but I believe that this example demonstrates the need for a social movement. We cannot transition to a new era of renewable energy without changing people's behavior.

And that's why this social movement is important. In the end it's not about the plastic bags saved or the reusable coffee mugs used though those are good things to do. It's about the large scale awareness that is gradually being generated. That's why I continue to fight and work to grow this movement.

Yes, this is important.

Monday Non-Depressingness

So sorry for depressing all y'all with my post from Friday. I agree with many of the commenters that sometimes it is necessary to be positive in order to incite people to change. I agree that telling people The End Of The World Is Nigh is not overly helpful for a lot of people. I still remember seeing Inconvenient Truth, being COMPLETELY freaked and also feeling helpless in the process.

So I'd like to reiterate that while I think we may have to entirely change our way of life in order to deal with climate change, I also believe strongly in the power of human beings to innovate and adapt. And I don't at all believe our situation is hopeless, nor do I think the great number of changes we may have to make in the future will be all bad. Change is scary, but change is often more scary in theory than practice.

And today it's Monday. A happy Monday!

So instead of depressing all y'all, I am offering some link love to a couple posts I have enjoyed recently. Leela Raina writes "Why I Shouldn't Date an Annex 1 Guy."

And a rebuttal (of sorts) from Fergus Auld on "Why Annex 1 Guys Can Be A Good Date After All," although Fergus doesn't particularly provide a good defense of his American Annex 1 brothers. Maybe *cough* because there isn't one.

Both posts come from the blog "What's With The Climate," a forum for the environmental youth movement on the Indian sub-continent. I interviewed several people from the youth movement for my MSc dissertation, and I have to say that the work youth activists are doing all over the world is truly inspiring. If you're interested in learning more about the youth movement, check out "It's Getting Hot In Here," which is THE website for the international environmental youth movement.

I Know, I know

I said I was going on hiatus, but then I read some controversy-producing blog posts and articles and I can't help but comment on them. Also, I'm trying to stretch out the three hours of dissertation work I have left as long as possible for maximum crankiness.

Beth recently posted a link to an article by Derrick Jensen in Orion Magazine entitled "Forget Shorter Showers: Why personal change does not equal political change." The first couple sentences of his piece are pretty abysmal actually. I mean he invokes the NAZIS for crying out loud. And unfortunately those sentences do Jensen a great disservice because the rest of his article is actually quite thoughtful and insightful.

What Jensen is arguing is not that an individual's actions don't matter; rather, he's arguing a very specific point: that individualist environmentalism is not particularly helpful. By individualist environmentalism, I mean environmentalism that is not part of a broader linked-up action, but is done on a personal basis in the home.

Now, recently, one of my friends A got her landlord to put in a gray water tank into her bathroom. Which is pretty awesome, right? Anyway, she was telling us all this, and my friend J interjected and pointed out what a small difference one gray water tank is. Not that he didn't think it was worthwhile, but what's one gray water tank when there are wide swathes of residential lawn, golf courses, and water intense agriculture all over California? And the truth is, my friend J is right as is Jensen who also points out how small residential water usage is in comparison to agriculture and industry.

The point Jensen is making is ... well ... It's the Institutions, Stupid. (Seriously, I HAVE to get tee-shirts made saying that.) Given the crisis we're in, individual action isn't going to cut it. It's kind of like taking an Advil when your appendix is bursting. What is needed is institutional reform.

So, basically, ludicrous and easily refutable first few sentences aside, I completely agree with Jensen. But, in my mind, Jensen doesn't go far enough. Pointing out that individual action isn't enough ... that's the easy part. Look, we all KNOW individual action isn't enough. But as Jensen points out, we're in a double bind. One can give up, and go with the status quo, or one can participate in semi-meaningless individual action. There aren't really many other options for most people.

I think the point is, that individual action can result in two things. One: it can result in complacency. Oh, I recycle and bring my own bags to the grocery store, so I'm doing my bit and I can just sit back.

Or, two, it can propel people to action.

The thing is, if it weren't for individual environmentalism, I would probably not be here in London procrastinating my dissertation. I became individually involved and then became part of a political movement LATER. So I think the real question is, how do we motivate more people to take individual environmentalism one step further? How do we harness the energy from the individual environmentalist movement and use that to change institutions? Those are the real questions that need to be addressed, and it would be great if a few journalists put their thinking caps on and started working on that instead of trying to just shit on personal environmentalists.

Speaking of sh*tting on environmentalists, Elizabeth Kolbert goes after a few in her recent New Yorker article, specifically Colin Beavan and Vanessa Farquharson. Basically, she accuses them both of participating in one-year eco-stunts in order to gain publicity.

To which my response is, "Yeah ... so?"

Did Colin and Vanessa engage in eco-stunts? Sure. But what's wrong with engaging in stunts? Participating in stunts is valid political behavior to attract public attention. Again, speaking from personal experience, I was motivated to change my lifestyle because of people like Colin and Vanessa. And as someone who has arguably participated in her own stunt (though I never wrote a book about it), I can testify that you don't come out the other end an unchanged person. Although my year of strict non-consumerism is over, I shop much, much less than I used to and my entire life philosophy has changed greatly. And knowing Colin and Vanessa as I do, I know they have been transformed as well.

The most ridiculous part of the article is where Kolbert talks about how Colin needs to engage in more political behavior instead of personal environmentalism. I ... kind of don't understand how Kolbert completely missed that Colin is ALL political environmentalism ALL the time these days, what with his new organization, and his protesting, and his meetings with politicians. In fact, Colin has had his ass handed to him by his readers several times because they MISS the personal stories. So if his book, which I haven't read yet, is heavy on the personal anecdotes, that's probably just because Colin knows his audience.

In the end, Kolbert accuses Colin and Vanessa for missing the forest for the trees, but really it's Kolbert who misses the personal transformation because she's too busy criticizing Vanessa for flying places and getting laid.

Caught in the Storm of Cap & Trade

Yesterday, I ragged on cap & trade, and how I was so tired of seeing climate change framed in economic terms, and that it needs to be framed in terms of human institutions and human welfare.

Anyway, I got a comment that I thought was particularly interesting where the author of the comment basically argued that the reason climate change has been framed in economic terms is that people understand "costs" and "taxes" and "incentives."

...Really?

Because, I have to be honest, I think what most people understand is: how much is this going to currently cost me? How much more money will come out of my paycheck NOW? And for businesses I think it's: what are the short term costs and the short term paybacks?

Basically I think the way we've been arguing climate change is bass-ackwards. Because what we're arguing for is economic incentives/disincentives and then we assume that from THAT, societal change will flow.

But it don't work like that.

Take the sadly demised congestion charge for New York City. There were a lot of problems with the congestion charge, and a lot of specialized interests that caused its death. But one of the problems was simply that policy makers were putting the cart before the horse: the economics before the social change.

If you read this great article by Sarah Bunting, she mentions several societal problems with the congestion charge that weren't addressed by economic means:

1) People like cars & driving.
2) Many people may not technically need to be in their office to do their job, but their place of work might not allow them to work from home.
3) Trains into New York City are already filled to capacity

Now in my mind, the third is the most damning for policy makers. If you're going to charge a congestion tax, I think you have to build the public transit first and make sure it can handle the uptick in volume. But one and two are important to deal with as well.

Now, I don't entirely agree with Bunting's entire assessment. I think had the congestion tax gone through, you would have seen a down tick in people driving into New York City. But the salient point here, for me, is that the congestion tax DID NOT go through. And I would argue that it did not go through because policy makers were trying to deal with something from an economics point of view, and not dealing with the social ramifications.

I could name any number of examples, because environmental policy is rife with them. From carbon taxes to cap and trade to gas taxes at the pump to fees on plastic bags, policies have failed to be widely implemented. Why? Because people don't like 'em. Why don't people like 'em? Because people see it as money out of their pocket for an abstract concept: climate change.

Raise your hand if you know how 2 degrees or 4 degrees of global temperature rising will affect the weather in your hometown. Raise your hand if you have any real conception of what 2-4 degrees of global temperature rising even means.

The truth is, we don't know what a 2-4 degree temperature rise in global temperatures will do. We have some models, and good ideas, but basically, we don't entirely know what for sure will happen. So we're telling people we're going to charge them more to drive their ass to their work when they're already struggling to get by because some scientist at NASA says we need to have only 350 parts per million of carbon in the atmosphere. And we expect them to go along with this because ... why now? Because Al Gore said so?

This is NOT working. It's not. And it has not been working for seventeen freaking years now.

So let's stop putting the cart before the horse. Let's stop framing climate change in terms of economics. Let's start framing the environment in terms of improving livelihoods. Let's create a social fabric where people bike to work because it makes them happier, healthier, and also because it's the thing to do. Or where people eat local, organic food because it tastes better. Or where people bring their own bags to the grocery store because everyone looks at you squinchy eyed when you don't. Because fear of society's disapproval is probably more potent than a few cent tax anyway.

Let's stop framing climate change ... actually let's stop calling it freaking climate change. No one understands what that means anyway. How bout instead we call it increased flooding in Amsterdam and Bangladesh, and more fires in Malibu and Australia, and more drought in Sub-Saharan Africa. And then, let's figure out how we are going to address these problems in their localized contexts.

Will it work? I don't know. But what I do know is that the other way isn't working, so, frankly, what have we got to lose?