Learning to and from Copenhagen

“We have fewer than 50 days to save our planet from catastrophe,” the Prime Minister told the Independent. There have been a lot more headlines like this on the Road to Copenhagen. The talks are important but it’d be a mistake to overstate their importance. Disappointingly emissions of CO₂ from the rich countries which ratified the climate change agreement in 1992 have risen by more than a tenth since 1990. Despite all the jet-set-caffeine-soaked-lastminute.com-brinkmanship over the past 17 years, we still don’t insulate our homes properly, drive more fuel efficient vehicles, watch what we eat and most importantly find ways of achieving happiness less contingent on consuming so much.

I hope the international negotiations in Copenhagen are a success. We need them to be. But I also hope the protestors, negotiators and politicians take a look at Copenhagen itself. They’ll see lots of people cycling, good quality integrated transport, homes kept warm using surplus heat from power stations and waste plants. Wind farms, many community owned, supply almost a fifth of the energy. The country introduced carbon taxes back in the early 1990s. In many ways the city is the environment movement’s poster-child. It shows what may be achieved from enlightened policy making, but equally importantly it shows the limitations of policy. Danish per capita emissions are higher than those in the UK. Emissions of carbon dioxide have barely fallen since 1990; traffic and garbage have continued to increase. It’s a wintry, rich little country and its population enjoy the trappings of that wealth.

When I give talks about my book the Economical Environmentalist the commonest criticism is that the book by focussing on individual behaviour lets companies and Governments off the hook. I argue back that individual and community action is not just an adjunct to policy it is the only way we can roll out change fast enough to respond to mitigation’s gruelling schedule. We have no other way of operating so nimble. Can you imagine the check-in clerk at the airport denying a passenger a boarding pass because she deemed the stag-night trip to the Prague as being too frivolous, or bailiffs demanding access to a loft to check if your roof insulation is the requisite 270mm? Though many environmentalists might wish it; it doesn’t look as thought really tough regulations will happen.

Reducing emissions from homes, personal transport and eating is largely bottom-up – it means tens of millions of people have to install better insulation and to buy more energy efficient cars and heating systems. The products are already on the market. Books like mine will help you decide what the best option is for you, but it for you to choose them. My experience of Government is that it’s only possible for ministers to implement game changing policies (as they have against racism and sexism in the workplace, against smoking in public places, against poor health and safety practices in industry) when they believe they have a sufficient share of voters behind them. Head to head Ed Milliband vs Jeremy Clarkson debating vehicle emissions standards. Sorry Ed, I think the smart money would be on Jeremy.

If there’s any organ of Government that’s really embarked on changing things fast it’s the financial regulator. I attended a talk by Hector Sants – Chief Executive of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), at Bloomberg’s sumptuous city offices. The talk was dreary and I regretted not staying in the lobby to watch the huge aquarium which contained what looked like the cast from Finding Nemo. But the theme of the talk was important. Sants elaborated on the FSA’s idea of intensive supervision of banks. He claimed the FSA would turn its gaze to the ethics and culture of the senior staff in the banks it supervises. A number of bankers presumably with flawed moral compasses – have already left their roles, products like the notorious single payment product insurance have already been withdrawn. I found myself thinking…way to go Sants. Am I seriously proposing the environment movement should learn about behaviour change from the City regulator? Yes - why not? Anyone who has glimpsed the whoring, lying, backstabbing culture within the City, brilliantly satirised in Geraint Anderson’s City Boy knows the scale of the challenge. The FSA is asking the industry to look into its soul and ask what a successful banker looks like and come up with an answer pretty diametrically the opposite of today’s consensus view. Now that’s a big challenge.

Flawed human beings make poor choices on the spur of the moment. In my old life when I stumbled out of the tube at midnight I would usually have chosen kebabs over falafel, but subscribing to Abel and Cole’s box scheme has meant my fridge is never empty… free-range, organic, seasonal, local has become my default food. Installing a new boiler with better heating control means the house is unheated most of the time, and better insulation means it never gets all that cold. Yes Government can play a part in helping design and promulgate these defaults but we the governed have to play our part too. The Economical Environmentalist is really about how lazy, harassed, time myopic people - people like me - can stumble into good environmental behaviour despite ourselves. Maybe a better title for the book might have been “Posterity despite sloth”.

Prashant Vaze author of The Economical Environmentalist