Changing public attitudes to long-term issues - Page 2
From Griffith REVIEW Edition 12: Hot Air
© Copyright Griffith University & the author.
Written by Ian Lowe
IT IS CLEAR FROM THESE EXAMPLES THAT IT IS ENTIRELY POSSIBLE for fundamental changes in public attitudes to happen. It is equally clear that it is no small task to achieve significant change at any level – the personal, the household, the small community or the nation. Most of the time, most people are reasonably content with the way things are and reluctant to embrace change, especially at a fundamental level. I believe that there are four steps to major change: discontent, a new vision, viable pathways and commitment.
Unless there is discontent, there is no motivation to change. If I am happy with my fitness, I am unlikely to change. If we are happy with our lifestyle, we are unlikely to change – which is why advertising tries to make us discontented and therefore more susceptible to the latest consumer fad. Richard Eckersley argues that the seven deadly sins – envy, greed, lust, pride, anger, sloth and gluttony – have been re-packaged as the seven marketing imperatives of the modern world. They are constantly used, as Clive Hamilton puts it, to urge us to spend money we don't have to buy things we don't need to impress people we don't like. Producing dissatisfaction is the aim of all advertising.
I am dissatisfied with our lifestyle because we are depriving future Australians of the sorts of opportunities we have taken for granted. Unless that awareness is widespread, there will not be the dissatisfaction that will motivate change.
Being discontented is not enough. Even if I am unhappy with my fitness or my lifestyle, I won't do anything unless I can imagine a better alternative. Without a vision, change might actually make things worse rather than better. So the second step to real change is to picture the future we want. Advertisers use this principle, portraying the life of indolence or the sexual pleasures that await us if we buy their products. In the case of my fitness, I can imagine the sort of state I would like to achieve, because I was there a few decades ago.
Achieving a sustainable society is more difficult because we haven't been there, so we have to invent it. Unless we have a credible vision of a future sustainable society, it is very unlikely there will be support for change. In writing A Big Fix (Black Inc, 2005), I described the essential components of a future sustainable society. There is room for argument about some of the details, but the general principle is clear. We must limit human consumption so it doesn't exceed the sustainable level of production from natural systems.
Again, even a coherent vision is not enough if we can't see a way of getting there from where we are. I do a fair bit of bushwalking, so I know that the easiest route from your starting point to your destination is hardly ever a straight line; you need to take account of the lie of the land and the vegetation. A friend might advise me against trying to recover my fitness of twenty years ago from where I am, but I might see a viable pathway, with suitable attention to diet and exercise. So the third component of change is developing and describing feasible pathways that would take us to our goal from where we are now. Again, it is more difficult with a future sustainable society. Even when a future sustainable society can be imagined and described, it is difficult – and contentious – to spell out the steps that will take us there.
Since a sustainable future must involve much less use of fossil fuels like coal and oil, the initial steps run counter to some very powerful vested interests. In Australia's case, the export coal industry and the heavily subsidised aluminium industry have been remarkably effective in blocking the sorts of changes that are clearly in the public interest. Before the Kyoto conference on climate change, which set preliminary targets for reducing the levels of greenhouse pollution from the industrialised world, I attended a briefing for interest groups. I sat with mounting incredulity as the leader of the Australian delegation set out the stance being proposed for the Kyoto meeting. When I asked whether it was possible to identify any nuance in the official position that differentiated it from the public stance of the energy-intensive industries, the delegation leader responded angrily, but was eventually forced to concede that there was no significant difference. The position adopted at Kyoto by the Australian Government, led by the Minister for the Environment, Senator Robert Hill, was to defend the interests of two industries that are largely foreign-owned – the export coal and aluminium businesses. Another example of a vested interest that has been very successful in blocking change is the road-freight operation, heavily subsidised because the registration charges and fuel taxes paid by large trucks are thousands of dollars less than the damage they do to roads. These examples illustrate that the pathways to a sustainable future must be politically feasible as well as technically viable.
The fourth component is commitment. If I can spell out a coherent program of diet and exercise that will enable me to regain my physical fitness, it will still take commitment to stick to the regime. We all know people who have good intentions but lack the will to stick to their plans. The politics of sustainability hinges on developing such a public commitment to a sustainable future that the change becomes politically irresistible.
AS THESE EXAMPLES SHOW, TRADITIONAL POLITICS WILL ONLY RESPOND to urgent long-term issues when there is irresistible pressure. The historian Paul Kennedy argues that those who succeed in democratic political systems are usually those who have refined to an art form the avoidance of any threat to powerful interest groups. So they are unlikely, he proposes, to adopt significant changes in the interest of future generations as long as they can argue that experts are divided or more research is needed.
In the case of complex issues like global climate change, there will always be some division among experts, making it feasible to claim that more research is needed before we embrace significant change. It has become steadily more difficult to find scientists with any credible claim to expertise who will deny that human activity is changing the global climate, but media organisations and governments have responded by intensifying the search rather than accepting the overwhelming consensus.
While several European countries have now adopted serious targets for reducing greenhouse pollution, in Australia we are still getting evasion and spin from our national government, like the extraordinary claim that we are "on track to meet our Kyoto obligation". The basis for the misleading claim is Australia's uniquely generous target, an eight per cent increase in emissions when most developed countries are required to reduce, combined with what is known around the world as "the Australia clause" in the Kyoto Protocol. Our delegation demanded that changes in land use should be counted in the greenhouse-pollution calculation. So our baseline was inflated by the huge scale of land clearing in 1990, and the Beattie Government's actions to stop that clearing allows the national government to claim we are doing our share for the global effort. In fact, our energy-related emissions, mainly from electricity and transport, are more than a third above the 1990 Kyoto baseline and spiralling out of control, with no serious policies even to slow down the rate of increase.
The crucial first step will be committing to the principle of a sustainable future. It should not be necessary to say this, because the Council of Australian Governments adopted the National Strategy for Ecologically Sustainable Development as long ago as 1992, but there is little sign of these ideals in 2005. We should be flexible about how we get there, but the goal must be unambiguous.
In A Big Fix, I tried to set out the the principles of a future sustainable society and a process for achieving that goal. This year, the Australian Conservation Foundation has set up a group called Australia's Future Makers. The aim is to develop a charter for a sustainable future and gather public support from prominent Australians, leading up to a Sustainability Summit in October. It is intended to create a groundswell of public opinion that politicians will be unable to ignore.
The crucial step will be to develop awareness that the change will benefit all of us, rather than being a massive sacrifice in the short term to help future generations. It will then be feasible to advise voters at future elections on the policies that are needed, allowing them to make their own judgements about which candidates or parties will be more likely to fulfil our hopes.
IT IS SOMETIMES CLAIMED THAT ENVIRONMENTALISTS ARE TRYING to "spoil the party" and stop people enjoying our modern lifestyle. Rather than spoiling the party, I am suggesting that a new party is starting up. It is a better party because it won't run out of food and drink, it will be more satisfying because it will be based on personal fulfilment rather than gluttonous consumption, it won't damage our shared "house" or leave us with a hangover, and it won't have envious neighbours looking on or throwing rocks on the roof. It will be a party we can all enjoy, and a party we can expect our children to enjoy as well. All around the world, people are striving to develop social and institutional responses that will enable the transition to a sustainable future. We have to recognise above all else that we share the Earth with all other species and hold it in trust for all future generations. That moral duty provides the impetus for the transition to a sustainable future, just as moral principles underpinned the end of apartheid and the dismantling of the Berlin Wall. As in those cases, the changes we need are not inevitable, but those examples serve as a reminder that radical changes happen when enough of us want them.
So what are the realistic prospects for the changes we need to make? Some appear relatively straightforward. For example, I think there would be widespread public support today for a responsible approach of phasing out coal-fired power as existing plant reaches the end of its life, replacing it with a mix of renewable fuels. There would be little public objection to improving the efficiency of appliances and vehicles, since this provides economic gains as well as reduced environmental impact. Replacing dangerous pesticides with safer alternatives should not be contentious, while there would probably also be political support for preferring local foods to those carted halfway round the world.
The really problematic changes relate to growth in population and consumption. While it is clear from elementary biology that no species can increase its population without limit in a closed system, most of us are still in denial about the application of this iron law to humans. In similar terms, our right to consume more per person is almost the defining myth of our time. The real challenge is to spread awareness of the need to achieve a future steady state and develop political support for that change. ♦