As I predicted in January, over the past few months we’ve seen some pretty seismic changes taking place in the global climate movement. Driven by Fukushima and the continuing reverberations from Copenhagen/Climategate/Deepwater Horizon, there’s a growing debate amongst climate concerned people about whether ‘environmentalism’, as currently conceived, is up to the job of dealing with climate change.

Although this ‘limits of environmentalism’ discussion has been going on for several years now in academic circles, over the past 6 months it’s starting to break through into activism, with growing numbers of groups discussing what a ‘post environmentalist’ agenda might mean in practical terms for their policy agenda, projects, communications and the way they work.

With that in mind, those of us who have adopted the label of ‘post-environmentalist’ have a real responsibility to define what we mean by it. Inevitably, some of that definition will involve us asserting our originality and defining ourselves against what has come before. Despite heated discussions otherwise, I think that’s perfectly legitimate. But it’s also crucial that we clearly outline what we are for, ensuring that the term means far more than a fashionable protest against the status quo.

Below, I’ve tried to outline the key things which I think define post-environmentalism, and which give it life and practical relevance.

• Post environmentalism is about fundamentals
  Over the past couple of years, the movement has paid more and more attention about how it communicates its messages and how it is perceived by others. That’s a good thing. But it’s also important to recognise that communications tactics have their limits- remember the adage about putting lipstick on a pig?Post-environmentalists believe that in the wake of the setbacks of the past two years, climate advocacy doesn’t just need a facelift, it needs a fundamental re-think of the way we conceive the problems, and the way in which we construct solutions.
• Post-environmentalism is expansive
  Rather than viewing climate change in a clearly-delimited, single-issue box marked ‘environment’, post-environmentalists conceive issue priorities such as climate, energy, transport, poverty and development as inseparable.A post-environmental coalition is more than a tick-box of interest groups, however.It is defined not by issues, but by shared values. Rather than asking others to see the world as we do, to care about ‘our’ issue, or by asking them to adopt ‘our’ policy aims, it works with them to define aims and policy objectives which fulfil the needs of all involved. Partnerships exist for the common and shared good, not just as a means to an end.
• Post environmentalism is relentlessly populist
  In a democratic society, lasting political change relies upon building mass support. Far too often, climate activists have developed policy prescriptions and campaign asks in wilful isolation from popular and political context. The result has been policies which make intellectual sense, but which are unlikely to have mass appeal.Post-environmentalists are focused on crafting policy that is designed to coincide with the demands, priorities and worldview of the democratic majority. It is communicated in terms which are unambiguous, clear and relentlessly relevant. In a time-limited issue with millions of lives at stake, there’s no point in policy that doesn’t sell.
• Post-environmentalism puts humanity at the centre
  Increasing attention to ‘green jobs’ and other economically-focused appeals are a great thing but, in many respects they miss the point. Appeals to human needs and human dignity need to be more than a hook with which to attract people to ‘our’ issue. Public transport matters because it improves people’s lives- not just because it reduces emissions.Post-environmentalists believe that human dignity and economic development must be at heart of our agenda for pragmatic as well as ethical reasons. Humanity is viewed as part of, rather than alongside or in opposition to the natural World.

  While they accept that there are legitimate critiques of our existing models of resource-intensive growth, Post-environmentalists also recognise that the human appetite for technological and economic ‘progress’ is a fundamental and legitimate part of our identity as a species. Post-environmental policies seek to channel, rather than challenge these impulses, viewing humanity’s creativity and ingenuity as resources to be harnessed rather than problems to be contained.

• Post-environmentalism is self-critical and responsive
  A movement which defines itself against another is one which lacks durability and the ability to proactively shape an agenda of its own. ‘Post-environmentalists’ need to work hard to ensure that their agenda is shaped by more than their alienation from established environmentalism.Equally, however, post-environmentalists assert the distinctiveness of their agenda. They are open and frank about the loss of public confidence in existing climate policy, and about the limits of its appeal. Post-environmentalists should be open about their own failings and open to discussion and debate over their values and principles. There should be no sacred cows.

Has to be said, Brendan, you have a point. There’s nothing quite like the thrill of an accelerating plane and the sudden jolt as it lifts off the runway and begins to gracefully rise as the world gets smaller and smaller around you. Not to mention the miracle of setting into the cabin and stepping off on the other side of the World just a few hours later.

However, your article, whilst cute in its childlike simplicity and descriptive verve, is a bit of a distraction.

It’s a bit like complaining about the rationing of petrol or the blackout of our cities back in 1939 as we stood a good chance of being inundated by one of the nastiest regimes in history. Yes, those steps, like the imperative to dramatically cut flying, represent a step backward. They represent a rejection of the many joys and benefits brought by human progress, which, as you point out, should rightly be celebrated.

But your article is also worrying in its lack of reference to science. Are you suggesting the liberation experienced by some through flight outweighs the oppressive drought, flooding, food shortages and mass migration which climate change will inevitably bring? Or, do you dispute the science, and on what basis? I’m not a scientist, and I don’t believe you are, Mr. O’Neil. I don’t pretend to fully understand the complexities of the global climate any more than you do. However, what I do know is that there are 300 scientists from across the world, from a huge array of disciplines and backgrounds, who not only agree we’re in trouble, but are 90% sure of it. I also know that kind of agreement is unprecedented. Are you saying you know better than those guys?

The fact of the matter is, we’ve reached the stage where attention will begin to shift from climate change, to its possible implications. Those implications constitute the most severe and direct threat to Britain since 1939. I expect that, when it comes down to it, similarly drastic measures will be necessary to deal with the mass migration of the entire Mediterranean region, the disruption and stretching of global food supplies, the wars as the superpowers carve up the dwindling resources for themselves. That’s not scaremongering or disaster movie fodder, those are the predictions of the IPCC, and are already happening to some extent, albeit on a limited basis.

So stop whining like a little boy who wants to be allowed to play with his toys whilst sitting on the edge of a cliff. The human ingenuity you wax lyrical about is responsible for this mess, there’s no doubt about it. However, this is not a call to crawl back into our cave.

Those of us with sufficient vision, not to mention true, rather than romanticised faith in humanity don’t waste our time bemoaning necessary sacrifices. Instead, if you wish to celebrate the liberation of human progress and its benefits, instead explore, believe in, and celebrate the role human ingenuity has to play in getting us out of this mess.

Where once the middle class strove to keep up with the Joneses, we’d now much rather prove our worth by asserting our individualism. The high street, at one time the peddler of a kind of homogenous, identikit fashion for the masses, is now all about finding a new look for ourselves, defining ourselves and marking out who we wish to be, by what we buy. Neurotic middle-aged control-freaks with no sense of humour buy PCs, whilst savvy, young, laid-back creative types use Macs, remember?

And so we’ve been pigeonholed accordingly. Are you a ‘Metrosexual’, ‘BME’, ‘Yuppie’, ‘NEET’, ‘Chav’, ‘Punk’, ‘Hippie’, ‘Emo’, ’Goth’ or one of the others? In the old days, a ‘Green’ was someone who typically recycled their bottles, had a compost heap or womery, didn’t own a car, avoided flying, wore knitted woollen jumpers and bought suspect looking organic veg from a tin shed on the outskirts of town. Often they were vegetarians too, and in their younger days had been caught up in things like the CND or Greenpeace, more often than not still receiving their monthly newsletter in the post. In the day of the ‘New’ Green, on the other hand, anyone can do it. You just have to drive the right car, have the right energy supplier, switch your 60” flat screen off at night and ensure the holiday home in Tuscany has been fitted with solar panels.

Of course, very often such people don’t exist beyond the pages of marketing manuals or the studies of sociologists or demographers, and few would doubt that being some shade of ‘green’, New or Old, is better than no green at all. Equally so, a lot has been said and written about the Old Greens and their uncertain relationship to the vastly more numerous New Greens as it is they, rather than the Old, who now set the environmentalist agenda. That’s a debate for elsewhere, and indeed, this article is a broader analysis of the current state of the environmentalist movement, just as applicable to both as we approach what may prove to be some of the most critical decades of modern history.

The first bitter pill for both to swallow is that if ‘green’ is regarded a little more than a lifestyle choice, we’re toast. It’s easy, having put our own houses in order, to enter into a guilt-free comfort zone. We’re doing our bit, and exhort others to do the same. For the New Greens, many of whom now dominate Britain’s establishment, the environmental lifestyle is in danger of being a political carrot; the kind of lifestyle the pollsters know middle England aspires to, and thus the one the politicians promise to deliver by way of symbol, speech and gesture.

For the ‘Old’, environmentalist hardcore, the situation is slightly different. Whilst their issue now tops the political agenda, the majority hold out against the political mainstream, for fear of being co-opted into a social and economic agenda of which they (perhaps rightly) want no part. Instead, many judge their time better spent as part of local and national interest groups and NGOs, or within smaller, more radical political parties. Some even chose to disengage altogether, sectioning themselves off onto the smallholding, content in the knowledge that they’re doing all they can to insure themselves and their family against the apocalypse they know is coming.

Continued on Monday 16/7/07

Remember the bad old days of the late 1980s and early 90s? McDonalds was a novelty, few had heard of GAP, Starbucks or Top Shop, and things like Nike caused wars in shoe shops. On the political side of things, the country was still run by old men with comb-overs and thick glasses. I remember watching them, as a toddler, during a particularly boisterous session of PMQs which happened to have been left on, slightly bemused when told these men ran the country. The slick pr-managed smile had barely been invented yet. Neither, I think, had environmentalism entered the mainstream. Even the arrival of the messiah, ‘pretty straight guy’ Tony Blair didn’t really do that; his climate change promises tended to be regarded by commentators as electoral garnish. A pleasant, if not particularly filling, addition to New Labour’s juicy promises to rebuild hospitals and get the trains running on time.

Of course there were the occasional middle-class one-family crusaders who did their bit, composting food scraps, cycling the kids to school and recycling their bottles, just as there’s always been those who took it further, downsizing to the Shetlands to grow organic veg. But these people on the whole went against the mainstream, not with it. Next Door was by no means hostile; ‘Nice people’ ‘lovely family’, but nonetheless, slightly eccentric. Harmless enough, mind you, but following a different lifestyle choice to the rest of us. They had to put up with the same kind of warm-hearted ignorance and inadvertent condescension that might greet the first black or gay family to move into a sheltered English village. Although, even in todays enlightened times that’s still the reality in many places, ‘the establishment’ view, arguably, has changed substantially. Today even the party of combovers and thick glasses pays homage to Mother Earth.

In 2007, everyone wants to be green just as ardently as everyone wanted a pair of Nikes back in 1990. If you’re in the public eye, it’s not really a choice, it’s an electoral imperative. Green toilet paper, green cars, green wellies, everything in green, even if it isn’t really, and the marketing men can hardly keep up. It’s never been easier to be green as it is now, while you’re hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t possess at least some form of awareness of climate change. For those who have been at the forefront of this movement, that’s a real victory. With David Cameron wily having picked up on it, and every other political party out there scrambling to outbid them for the green vote, ‘green’, sets the agenda like never before. For fear of being lynched, however, I think it’s high time we questioned whether, having brought the debate this far, being ‘green’ is really where we need to be.

Part II on Friday 13th

Smog in Hong Kong © Greenpeace / Leo Chan 2004

Given that the day before the Conservatives reportedly started making positive noises about meeting that 80% target, it’s worth throwing just one more statistic at you: if the UK was to stop all greenhouse gas emissions tomorrow, the drop would be made up for by China alone within three years. Add into that equation the other massive developing countries such as India and Brazil, and it’s clear that us switching to energy efficient light bulbs isn’t going to be enough.

That begs the question of what we, here in the suddenly impotent anglosphere can do about it. Obviously, the old solution of keeping them poor and agricultural, reserving for ourselves the bulk of emissions isn’t going to be workable for much longer. It would also be an incredibly hard sell to convince these nations to curb their own growth for the sake of a problem which we, through pioneering a flawed pattern of development, have created. Yet, if this is allowed to continue, old, recently developed and developing countries alike will face catastrophe.

Neither saving the World by ourselves nor forcing others to follow our lead are options available to us as they too often have been in the past. Instead, our best hope of saving ourselves, it seems, lies in proving that it is possible to combat this problem, reducing the risks in other, larger countries adopting our model voluntarily. If we want to make real progress in these areas; it’s down to us to prove that it is possible, and even beneficial, to have a sustainable, ethically accountable society and at the same time, enjoy the benefits of economic development.

Changing your light bulbs won’t make any difference unless all of China or India does it too, but that’s no argument for not putting in place here in the UK the relevant laws, regulations and programmes to make it happen. As a smaller nation with a highly-skilled workforce and a history of resourcefulness and innovation, we are ideally placed to prove that a modern, prosperous zero carbon economy is possible, unlike larger nations where it can take far longer to mobilize public and political opinion.

Clout on the world’s stage which has historically far outstripped our size is something almost unique to this country. Instead of writhing in apathy or in staking everything on efforts to lever larger countries into ‘doing something’ on our behalf, it seems to me that the opportunity is there to take the lead in a second industrial revolution, providing that model for sustainable development which the world so clearly needs.

That may be all fine and well (it isn’t), but the fact remains that under 25s are the fastest growing section of the planet’s population, and more often than not, at the epicentre of most of its problems.

In Sub-Saharan Africa, as HIV wreaks havoc amongst the adult population, it is a new generation, born in the shadow of the disease, who will determine the way forward for the continent. In the export processing zones of Indonesia and Bangladesh, it is the young women of whom the workforce is largely comprised who are leading the struggle for proper rights and working conditions. In Latin America, it is the students who are speaking out against the forced privatisation of their public utilities by foreign multinationals. As climate change and environmental degradation begin to wreak their unfathomable consequences, it again will be the irresponsible ‘yoof’ who have the most to lose, but with the greatest means to find alternatives outcomes.

At first glance, to your proverbial Martian observer, finding these alternatives might not seem so difficult after all. ‘Alternative’ is everywhere! It’s impossible not to walk into Top Shop and buy ‘alternative’ clothing, or to buy anything else but ‘alternative’ music in our chain record stores. Want teenage rebel? It’s this summer’s hot look. Want to be a punk? Their next concert is sponsored by a shoe company and the new album goes on sale next week. Surf bum? Get your ‘vintage’ effect £50 t-shirts from the beach hut in your local shopping centre. Teenage rebellion has, like just about everything else, been sliced, diced, tamed, mass-produced, marketed and packaged, ready for you to buy. Alas, it’s exceedingly difficult to be anything but ‘alternative’ these days.

So whilst the ‘yoof’ are being savaged to sell newspapers here in the West, and in the South, called to the fore of some of the greatest problems of our age, the marketing men are clambering all over themselves to grab a slice of our culture and the right to speak on our behalf. Is a real ‘alternative’ culture and type of consumerism still possible; or in doing that, do we become just another niche market? Stay tuned for the dilemmas, ideas and observations of a student campaigner doing his best to find out.