Time to Grab Our Opportunities

“You have the biggest opportunity, in all of human history, to live an incredibly meaningful life. And the actions that you take, because of the accident of the time of your birth, are of an order of magnitude in importance compared to most people who have lived before, because you are going to affect the future of life on earth in 50, 500 and 500,000 years by what you do in the next couple of decades. So, no one is asking for an easy life, really, deep down, we’re asking for a meaningful life, and living now is an incredible gift.”

Tom Rivett-Carnac on answering the question: “Are we going to be okay?”

(Outrage and Optimism podcast, episode 211)

Sometimes someone says just the words you need to hear, and today, I needed the quote above. As I write, the Sustainable Travel Zone proposals for Cambridge, which I supported, are in grave peril. Despite substantial charging reductions in the latest version of the plan, a popular uprising challenged any level of congestion charge for the city, arguing that:

• it was an unfair tax on drivers that disadvantaged those on low incomes,

• it would cause economic and social hardship to families and carers,

• it would further challenge recruitment and retention at Addenbrookes,

• it could not possibly deliver on its promises for a better bus service,

• it was simply unnecessary. Congestion? What congestion?

Decent arguments can be and have been made both for and against all the points above. That’s fine, and I’m not going to rehash them here. And it’s fair and right that the Greater Cambridge Partnership (the GCP), which came up with the proposals, should be challenged (for one thing, why are the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority Business Board and both Universities partners, but not any citizens’, environmental, homeowners’, tenants’ or students’ groups?).  

But what really depressed me was this: Why didn’t the GCP, and the local authorities tasked with approving or denying the proposal, rise above the arguments to say, “We have to do this because … Climate Change”.  Instead, greenhouse gas emissions have been pretty much absent from the discussion. Just look at the language used– while the proposal was for a “sustainable” travel zone, the charge was a “congestion” charge, and included electric and low emissions vehicles. There were good reasons for this, but the messaging around it was stupefyingly unclear. It’s as if, having declared climate emergencies at the national and local level, our authorities have dusted off their hands and said, and now let’s never speak of it again.

I’m aware that there are many experts out there who advise the “don’t say climate” approach to those working on the transition. They say that using the word pollution is better, and focusing on the effects of pollution on health. Everyone can relate to these ideas, they say, unlike the more controversial and complicated ideas around climate change. Many, they argue, still see climate change as a problem of other people in other places, or of the distant future, or as a political football.[1]

I think the experts have a point, but I think it might be an outdated one. True, citing climate change as a reason for charges does give rise to the usual arguments, the ones our current government and much of the media are fond of making. Like the one that goes “The UK’s contribution to emissions is low compared to the US and China”.[2] Or “Even if everyone in Cambridge stopped driving, it wouldn’t stop climate change”. [3]

But what I think the pundits are missing is that public views have changed. The polls show over and over that most people ARE concerned about climate change and DO want fast action to avoid disaster. Add that to this year’s almost constant litany of natural disasters – the latest two, the floods in Libya and Hurricane Idalia, are estimated to have cost more than 2000 lives and between $12 billion and $20 billion in damage, respectively – and it is only the seriously misinformed or self-serving who are still in denial that the crisis is here, now, on us and we need to do something.

But most don’t know what to do. They make the arguments about the UK’s relatively low emissions because no one is telling them otherwise, or what their role might be in fighting climate change, or how the UK could be providing an example in the wider world.

So maybe it is time we talked about it.  In fact, maybe people are just waiting for their leaders to open the conversation.  What would it look like if it was our leaders – leaders at every level from schoolboards to charity boards, small businesses to corporations, local authorities to Westminster - who were saying, “We have the biggest opportunity in all of human history, and we have to make these decisions now to protect the future of life on earth?” What if we all started saying that? What if we said it when we made choices about what to buy, how to travel, what to eat, what to support and what to oppose…and who to vote for?

I’m hoping that, if the STZ proposals get thrown out, our leadership will rise to the opportunity. Not necessarily to push through a plan a majority doesn’t want. But to make the discussion about transport a discussion about the multiple crises hitting humanity and the planet, and about our responsibility – all of us – to rise to the challenge.

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[1] London Mayor Sadiq Khan has been following this playbook - defending his expansion of the London Ultra Low Emissions Zone by highlighting the thousands of people now breathing cleaner air because of it.

[2] True on the face of it, but ignores so many factors, like air travel, the fact that we have exported almost all manufacturing of the goods we use, mostly to China, and historical emissions.

[3] Also true. But it would help slow it down a bit.

Michelle Golder

September 12th 2023

The Big One - And We Were There ( April 2023)

Tens of thousands of people from all around the UK came together in London over four days from April 21st to take part in "The Big One" and make our voices heard about the future we want - and at least ten of our members were there! With marches, workshops, public assemblies, music and dance and activities for children, the vibe was friendly and positive - but also determined. The demands of the demonstration include ending the huge fossil fuel subsidies our taxes are still paying for - £20bn more than renewables received since 2015 - (see this article for information), and instituting citizens' assemblies whose decisions will be binding on the government to decide the way forward for the climate transition.

Initiated and hosted by Extinction Rebellion, which has embraced a new strategy of non-disruptive action, the event involved over 200 co-operating organisations, including trade unions, community groups, businesses, NGO's, conservation organisations and more (see the full list here: https://extinctionrebellion.uk/the-big-one/).

The event received overwhelmingly positive press, with the Metropolitan Police issuing the following statement in praise of Extinction Rebellion's foresight in helping the London Marathon avoid conflict.

Earlier in the year, our group had held a general meeting in which a member of Extinction Rebellion told us about the event and XR's new policy. As a result of this, at least ten of our members attended the event over the four days, with some members attending several days. Below is a short blog of her experiences there by Haslingfield resident Katharine Woodall, and some of the photos taken by our members.

"I attended on Friday, the first day of the 4 day XR protest. I didn’t know quite what to expect but began the day in a rainy Parliament Square listening to XR co-founder Clare Farrell talk about the need for citizens assemblies on climate.

Friday was a day of protest at government departments, so we joined members of the Cambridge XR group and some of our eco group outside the Home Office.

Everywhere we went in Westminster during the day there was a very positive energy and sense of community with people coming together from across the country. There were so many colourful flags and beautiful homemade banners.

The highlights for me were hearing Caroline Lucas talk about this government’s depressing lack of urgency and ambition on climate issues. She was followed by Mike Berners-Lee, author of There is no Planet B, talking about the newly established MP Watch, which monitors and supports MPs’ understanding of climate science.

We headed home with the sounds of the samba bands still ringing and the hope that some people in government were listening".

What is My Job? Facing the New UN Report (March 2023)

A group photo from the 2018 Cambridge Rise for Climate, which involved a number of local organisations coming together to demonstrate in the Market Square.

The UN has just released yet another report on where we are at in fighting climate change – and the news isn’t great. In 2015, in Paris, most of the countries of the world agreed to a target of a maximum of 1.5 degrees of global warming. This was based on years of research, and the pleas of a number of island and low-lying countries which argued that anything above 1.5 degrees would be a death sentence for them.

Eight years later, we are at about 1.1 degrees of warming above pre-industrial levels, and greenhouse gas emissions have gone up and up and up.

But hope is far from lost.

For one thing, progress is being made. New technologies, the number of people making an effort to modify their own emissions, and systemic thinking across every aspect of our civilization, from transport to farming, from buildings to the role nature plays in absorbing carbon, should eventually make a difference. With a massive effort, the UN argues, we could still stay below 1.5 degrees – if we stop pumping fossil fuels out of the ground and invest in carbon capture, anyway.

And if we don’t manage that target, well, every tenth of a degree of warming still matters. As Mark Lynas lays out in his book Six Degrees, every increment affects how much ice will melt, and thus how far sea levels will rise, and it also affects the total energy of the earth’s weather systems – more heat equals more energy, equals bigger storms, equals bigger and more frequent extreme events like heat waves and hurricanes.

So there would be an enormous difference between 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees, for example. Just think about the impacts we’ve seen at just 1.1 degree of warming – record breaking fires, floods and drought across the entire world.

Even if we do blow past the 1.5-degree goal, then, we have to continue to hope and work toward not letting it go higher – and eventually even bringing it back down again. Though obviously that will probably be tragically too late for places like Kiribati, and likely for many of our current biospheres and the creatures which live there.

A Storm of Emotions

When people first start paying attention to what’s going on they often feel enormous anger that the world didn’t act fifty years ago, when scientists began sounding the warnings about carbon dioxide and its effects on global temperature. If we’d started acting then, we’d be laughing, and many lives would have been saved. But we didn’t.

Just as often, people feel terrible grief, over the natural world so under siege, and the innocent people suffering.

I’ve certainly felt, and still feel, both of those emotions, sometimes almost unbearably.

I’m not sure, though, that either emotion is worth indulging. Anger at people of the past, who had less reason to trust the science of the time than we do, seems pointless. Like many of us, they believed and hoped that solutions would be found which wouldn’t inconvenience them. Democratic leaders had other concerns that people cared about more – like education, poverty, and conflict.

And grief…well, that’s tougher for me. But one thing that helps me is to try to grasp Earth’s long history of life. I recently found out that an ancestor of dragonflies was around a million years before the dinosaurs. Five mass global extinctions later, there are still dragonflies enchanting the summer. The few tens of thousands of years in which Earth has hosted human beings almost seem insignificant against the vast span of millennia in which plants, fish, insects and reptiles have dominated. Over and over again, life has found a way. Not the life we are used to. Not the creatures we love now. But life.

A Transition Generation

So those thoughts keep me sane, but given I have them, why do I work so hard on my local eco group? I’m only a little, ordinary person and I don’t see myself as a world changer or eco-warrior. But I do believe that everyone alive now is part of a crucial and important transition generation. We will all see huge and rapid changes in the way we live – some caused by climate change, some caused by the attempts to prevent it. Some of us will choose to embrace it – to be part of the solution in any ways we can. Others are more resistant to change – but change will come for them as well, one way or another.

In the shorter term, i.e. the next few decades, it seems very likely that many of the changes we will see will be painful. We may lose much more of our native wildlife. Our choice of diet may become limited: plants like coffee and chocolate are at high risk from climate change, and there may be crop failures of staple foods like wheat and rice. And some of what we see as our freedoms and privileges may be curtailed.

For many, that seems like the hardest loss to take. Or maybe it’s just the most immediate one?

Here in Cambridge, and across the UK, for example, there has been outrage over proposed congestion charges, or sustainable travel zones, which some have mixed up with the idea of 15-minute towns to claim that “they” want to force everyone to stay in their own neighbourhoods. And in fact schemes in cities like Canterbury are proposing to charge car drivers every time they cross a sector boundary, that is, move from one neighbourhood to another. The idea is to make car driving so expensive that people are forced to use public (or active) transport, rather like France’s recent 3 year ban on short haul flights.

People don’t like being forced, and we can argue the merits of such a scheme. But let’s at least keep our facts straight - the idea of 15-minute towns is not always or even commonly connected to the idea of charging zones. The 15-minute towns idea involves planning communities to make it easy for people find everything they need within 15 minutes of their home. They can walk, or cycle, or take a bus, and it will be quick and easy to visit the doctor, pharmacy, school, or shops.

People who have experienced this kind of modern planning approach have found it improves their lives enormously. And of course, in cases where this is combined with road charging, they can still leave their neighbourhoods and go farther in a car…it just isn’t free anymore. Just as fossil fuel companies have not had to pay for the damage their product has caused, just as all forms of production have viewed the services which nature provides (water, air, plants, minerals, pollinators) as external to their business, and therefore outside of any need for consideration, we as individuals have taken our behaviour for granted. We pay (through our taxes) for our solid waste to be disposed of, but we have felt we have the right to emit greenhouse gases for free.

So What’s My Job? Or Yours?

Here’s what I see my job, as an ordinary citizen, to be. I need to keep informed of the changes going on around me. I need to think hard about what kind of future I’d like to see for the generations to come and for the natural world. I do need to question and be involved in the changes brought by society in its attempts to fix things (or otherwise!), but always in the context of that desired future – which for me is one in which we do keep warming to 1.5 degrees or less and we foster and protect nature. I need to do as much as I can to reduce emissions and consumption I have control or influence over. And I need to prepare for the environmental changes that are now inevitable, and protect the natural world where I can.

It's quite a list. And there’s one final thought. I can’t do any of this alone. I rely on smarter people to carry out research and provide the information I need. I rely on local authorities and organisations to also keep informed, answer my questions, and use their powers to support a positive transition. I rely on my community to do all the things communities do that will get us through this – from sharing goods, services and skills; to volunteering at sports clubs and school fetes and food banks and litter picks; to supporting each other when times get tough.

It's my job to be part of that. Just like air isn’t actually free, neither is community. In creating the future, we all have a part to play.