Cultural changes at global scale are called for

The dilemma around environmental concerns versus developmental needs, to name but one, in the Eskom loan application to be considered by the World Bank this week is symptomatic of the challenges confronting communities across the globe to come to grips with the realities of a changing energy environment and with the needs to adapt to predicted climate change. So broad are the predicted changes awaiting mankind that many commentators predict a new cultural era.

The massive letdown at the Copenhagen international climate change talks in December last year, and the fact that the United States and Britain at one point last month were threatening to withhold support for the Eskom loan, both illustrate that in the changing environment, the cohesion of the global village is running very thin as domestic own-interest takes over.

The opposition by the World Bank’s two largest members – the US since has indicated that it will abstain from voting on the loan – has raised eyebrows among those who note that the two advanced, developed economies are allowing the development of coal-fired plants in their own counties even as they raise concern about those in poorer developing countries.

In a recent article on the openDemocracy website, Tony Kendle argued that mankind has to relearn community action and how society works together if it is to protect vulnerable people, not only from climate change but also from the solutions at which society arrives.

Many governments, international agencies and major corporations are developing plans for action at national levels and the frameworks that are being laid down are a platform for a radical change in our society, he wrote.

He referred to the United Kingdom’s plans to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 80% come 2050, which will require major adaption in the way that people live. It will all happen within the working lifetime of people who are now in their 20s.

“Almost every aspect of our lives today depends on liberal use of cheap fossil energy, and we can’t even begin to imagine how the changes ahead will play out. All we can say with Certainty is that it's going to be a wild ride,” he wrote.

As is the case with South Africa being expected to go for the much more expensive option in the short to medium term, of developing renewable solutions while it has an abundance of cheap coal, Kendle warned: “People’s lives are… therefore going to be impacted by the solutions and responses to climate change as well as by the actual weather, and it’s likely to be the solutions that start to hit us first.

“Many of those who are vulnerable to future floods will have already had letters from their insurance companies raising their premiums or removing their cover. As more and more responses unfold, we will see shifts in our liberties and rights, in what we can afford, in the ways that resources are deployed and in the political climate.

“We need to spend more time focusing on these effects rather than just on questions of how the weather may change,” he wrote.

On a question that is crucial for poor and developing countries, he pointed out that it is clear that “someone who is old, poor and in low-quality housing and lives in a rural location far from services is likely to have a carbon footprint much higher than a well-off urban professional. It’s well understood that the poor may suffer most as victims of climate change, but they may also suffer most as victims of the solutions we introduce.”

Kendle further made a case that more attention should be given to finding social solutions and not only to see climate change as a technical or environmental issue, and he laments the often one-dimensional approach to solutions – as if only individual behaviour matters.

“When government information campaigns tell us to go home to change our light bulbs, one addresses at the same time how we change our power stations. When we are told to drive less, no one explains how we will redress the decades of planning decisions that separated our home from our workplaces, our schools, the places to shop and to meet. When we are told to consume less, no one reconciles the fact that any drop in retail spending is heralded as a national disaster,” he wrote.

Kendle then pointed out that the really big number, in terms of greenhouse gas emissions, falls outside the realm of personal or individual choices. “These include how our entire food system works; how places and transport systems are planned that determine how, and whether, we need to travel; how effectively forests, especially rain forests, are conserved.”

He then concluded that “tackling climate change is ultimately a cultural problem. We have no hope of talking the steps that we need to, unless we relearn the nature of community action and how society works together to get the big, difficult things done – and done in a way that protects vulnerable people.”

• Add New
• Search

Comments (0)

Write comment

Your Contact Details:

Name:

Email: do not notifynotify

Comment:

Title:

Message:

Security

Please input the anti-spam code that you can read in the image.

Powered by !JoomlaComment 4.0 beta2