Greater Cambridge Development Corporation Consultation Response

The government recently announced its proposal to set up a new body, the Greater Cambridge Development Corporation, stating that this is necessary to realise the potential for growth in this area. There is a consultation process, open until 1 April, so do have your say about this proposal which has huge implications for the future of our region.

According to the consultation document: “ Sustained economic growth is the only route to improving the prosperity of our country and the living standards of working people”. But what sort of growth, and will it be sustainable in the long term? I volunteered, within the Climate Leaders Group I belong to, to draft a response to the consultation. I did this by uploading a number of references which I thought were relevant to Claude.ai (a more ethical AI choice) and asking it to find more where I didn’t have evidence to support an argument. In the end we used 23 references, most of which are peer reviewed, and all of which are worth reading - if I couldn’t find evidence for a contention it is not included. I also gave the AI instructions about the main ideas I wanted to get across in my response: that growth must be within our planetary boundaries now and must contribute to more and better democratic engagement, not less. After 12 versions, in which I checked and edited every paragraph, I asked the AI to argue against my points, so that I would be more aware of what those with other points of view might think. This revealed where my arguments were weak or needed more support.

The final version, version 13, is linked below. This version has been shared widely, with the Climate Leaders and at the recent South Cambs Climate and Nature meeting with MP Pippa Heylings, where it was highlighted as one of the questions for her to address. She was complementary about the response, and addressed it thoughtfully, including revealing that her party, the LibDems, was involved in a process of re-evaluating how they wanted to define growth. It will be interesting to watch how that develops. A number of other community groups have also been in touch with me, wanting to build on or use the response as a reference. The version below is written as an email submission, but I have also created a version which is mapped to the consultation questions. I am happy to share either version - write to hnheco@gmail.com if you are interested.

Michelle Golder, co-chair

Greater Cambridge Development Corporation Consultation Response

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

Anthony Browne’s Climate Change Optimism: Is it Justified? (May 2023)

My MP, Anthony Browne, recently posted a blog on Conservative Home with the title “Climate change. The more involved I have got, the more optimistic I have become...”

I’m very glad he decided to write directly about the crisis, and I agree with many of his points. For example, I agree that there are many reasons for optimism. Of course, how you feel about the climate and ecological crisis very much depends on the lens through which you are viewing it. If you are a mother in rural Somalia, where the worst drought in 40 years is leaving millions without food, you might well be feeling less than optimistic. Similarly, if you are a scientist studying the Greenland Ice Sheet, which is losing ice at a rate of 270 billion tons per year, or a native of Kiribati, a Pacific Island nation destined to be the first in the modern world to be swallowed by increasing storm surges, you could be excused for being a tiny bit un-cheery.

On the other hand, if you are an entrepreneur working on a transformative and potentially lucrative new technology, like the world’s most powerful wind turbine, which Mr Browne mentions in his post, you will be much more aware of the possibilities. As Mr Browne says, we do have the solutions to hand. Organisations like the Drawdown project have identified more than one hundred of the most effective strategies and technologies – including many which are nature based - which will, if implemented rapidly, lead to “Drawdown” of greenhouse gases from the atmosphere - and it is working globally to encourage their rollout. And though global emissions have continued to rise year on year despite the promises of the Paris Agreement, the progress made by large emitters like the UK and the EU is making a difference - there is reason to believe we are approaching the inflection point where emissions will begin to fall.

I also agree with Mr Browne that “pessimistic fatalism” and “counsel[s] of despair” are harmful to our children, and where they go mainstream they are terrorising many people into apathy. It’s also true that if you go on to any environmental forum online you will find those who prefer scaremongering to positive action and push conspiracies about how all the possible solutions will only be worse than the problem, because humans are basically sh**te.

However, I hope Mr Browne is also aware that once you get out of the toxic online environment, and engage with actual climate activists, you will find some of the most dynamic, solutions oriented, reasonable and well-informed people on the planet. The radicals, zealots and keyboard warriors do not, in my experience of ten years as an independent activist, represent the movement as a whole, which encompasses local eco groups, churches, professional societies and people from every age and social demographic. So it was very disappointing to read Mr Browne’s dismissal of Extinction Rebellion’s recent peaceful and joyful multi-organisation demonstration in London (see photos below) as the self-righteous posturing of a Doomsday cult. It is so misinformed that it leaves me unable to take Mr Browne’s views seriously. And that is a sad state of affairs.

So let’s put a few things into perspective.

Mr Browne’s cheery optimism comes despite the fact that he has consistently voted against new legislation aimed at tackling the UK’s emissions.

There’s evidence that taking steps to reduce emissions makes people happier, not more depressed. A low-carbon lifestyle, for example, is “more likely to involve routines—like balanced eating or hybrid working—that are known to maximize our individual happiness levels”. Research is also supporting the idea that “taking steps to protect the environment makes us feel good by fulfilling basic psychological needs, such as the sense that we are making a useful contribution to the world or acting on our own values and concerns.”

There’s a fine line between “pessimistic fatalism” and optimistic fatalism, which is a weakness Mr Browne may be prone to. In a letter to me about the EU Retained Laws Bill, Mr Browne made the odd assertion that leaving the EU would “enable us to legislate to discriminate in favour of bird and plant species that would otherwise be vulnerable to non-native species better suited to the changing climate.” In other words, our native birds are going to be out-competed by non-native species more suited to our altered climate, and his jolly solution is to legislate for…what exactly? Fighting natural adaptation to protect our native species? Instead of fighting climate change?

While there is every reason to be hopeful that we will eventually solve the problem of climate change, and do so while restoring our planet’s natural systems, we are a very long way from being out of the woods. In order to get out, we need everyone to play their part, and most importantly, we need the system change that will allow us to pivot from an extractive, linear (take stuff out of the ground, transport it across the globe, use it for a short time, dump it in landfill), inequitable (those who do the least actual work get the most benefit) and rapaciously destructive system, to a circular, restorative, distributive one. And this is not just an activist’s opinions. The Government commissioned Dasgupta Review on The Economics of Biodiversity and former Bank of England chief Mark Carney both came to similar conclusions last year, conclusions which were, sadly, pretty much ignored.

Our current trajectory, if not deflected, is, sorry Mr Browne, genuinely disastrous. We are currently on track to reach in the neighbourhood of 2.7 degrees of global warming. We’re now at just under 1.5. Every tenth of a degree has an effect, so, if you can face it, let your imagination go to what an additional 1.2 degrees is going to mean for extreme weather events, crop failures, mass migration, killer heat waves and sea level rise. Not to mention our native birds, bees and trees.

So, yes, we absolutely can still change our trajectory with immediate, strong action. But if Mr Browne and his party colleagues continue to reject the need for system change, which has to come from the top, while ignoring or ridiculing those who care the most, no amount of techno-boosterism will get the job done. We will not solve the global environmental problem. And the children he is so worried about traumatizing will be truly stuffed.