Back Issue - December 2003
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
So President Bush has come and gone from his State Visit
to Britain. Exactly that, was commented in the press, for
he met the representatives of the State but not the people.
And what was gained by his visit? was also asked, but matters
of trade restrictions and human rights at Quantanamo Bay were
considered too gross to be settled at such a lofty occasion.
And what about the small matter of Tony
Blair taking a stand against the Bush regime's refusal to
ratify the Kyoto protocol and make significant reductions
in greenhouse gases? Not a word! Bush was reported to have
been 'permanently preserved inside his own travelling White
House ecosystem' during his visit, but that ironical reference
to the environment was the only hint that the human race might,
yes just might, be heading for extinction from climate-led
disaster!
So was John Gummer [1] correct in his
assessment, in early October 2003, that 'non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) have lost the power to grab headlines
and must get a fresh sense of direction'? [2] Let's take a
closer look, starting with the State Visit that has recently
taken place.
Though nothing to do with the official itinerary for the
visit, the occasion was brilliantly utilised by a small NGO
called 'Campaign Against Climate Change' to grab national
and some international media attention, by holding a "Burning
Planet" Protest march, on the eve of President Bush's
visit, across London to the US Embassy, and culminating in
speeches from Michael Meacher and the UK heads of Friends
of the Earth and Greenpeace.
Phil Thornhill, who is also a member of Save our World, rated
it as a FANTASTIC DEMO * HUGE SUCCESS !!!! Afterwards he wrote:
"We were essentially the only protesters on the street
as Bush arrived and as a result got loads of media attention.
Reuters estimated numbers at 1,000; the Guardian newspaper
at 600. In any case the turn out was good for us BUT the media
coverage we got was massive ...out of all proportion to the
numbers.....
"We had a superb line-up of speakers - headed by Michael
Meacher, now free from government and able to speak his mind;
followed by Tony Juniper, Director Friends of the Earth; Stephen
Tindale, Director Greenpeace; Darren Johnson, Green Party;
and George Marshall of RisingTide. We were able to give a
really strong statement from the British environmental movement
as a whole about why Bush is so BAD for the global environment.
And it was down to us that the media had pictures of the demonstrators
right from the start of the visit."
Coverage included: The Standard, The Guardian, The Independent,
The Times, Reuters. Interviews were given for ITV, CNN, Channel
4, BBC Newsnight. Footage appeared on BBC24 and ABC TV in
both the USA and Australia. Save our World was represented
by a group of members and friends who also helped carry our
'Get out of War over Oil' banner and our flags. I had helped
to arrange Michael Meacher's attendance and spoke briefly
after George Marshall. (A fuller description can be read on
the Campaigns
page of our UK web-site)
'A lucky one-off !!', you might say,
and you are probably right, up to a point - but not about
Gummer's insistence that 'NGOs must recover their spirits
and sense of direction'.
The last Boiling Point on 'Persistence', and others before
it, are all about developing the qualities that are needed
for bringing about effective change, requiring a much closer
relationship between the pragmatic and the spiritual dimension
of Save our World - than even I considered until recently.
This is one of our distinguishing qualities, that I have been
purposefully developing since we started in 1998.
OK, so few people have heard of us (not
long ago we clocked up 10,000 visitors to our web-sites) or
other new and so-far small emerging NGOs like 'Campaign against
Climate Change', but let's take a look at what we, and the
movement as a whole, are up against.
Gummer wrote: 'Since the Earth Summit in Johannesburg a year
ago, many environmental NGOs have been reflecting on their
lack of success and the sense that their influence has significantly
declined'. He has a point here, which I acknowledged in the
Persistence Boiling Point (now a Back
Issue) back in May. There I ascribed this lack of
influence to our not having the equivalent of the Middle-East
roadmap for achieving sustainable development, as well as
gross inconsistences in the UK government's priorities for
the environment.
Gummer goes on to say: 'The public has been wearied by scare
stories. They accept the facts of ozone depletion, climate
change, water shortage and environmental degradation. They
just don't want to be reminded of them - so they are not news.'
Well, we in Save our World have been conscious of the newsworthy
problem for a long time, which is why this series is called
'Boiling Point' (See the heading to this column). And as to
not wanting to be reminded of the besetting problems, the
subject of denial, or not wanting to know, has been addressed
in this series a number of times.
Interestingly enough, denial has been shown
to be no problem at all when the subject of climate change
is graphically portrayed in street theatre. Nor is disempowerment
or helplessness to do anything about it, as you can read from
the report of our first and highly successful Roadshow, on
the Local
Projects page of our UK web-site.
So, part of a creative response to the newsworthy and denial
problems appears to lie in operating at a number of different
levels at the same time: locally, nationally and globally.
Is the mainstream media the only, or the best, way of getting
a message across? One automatically assumes so, but there
are many other paths to utilise - not least web-sites such
as this. On its own it has nothing like the same mass coverage,
but is this what is needed to effect significant change -
or not?
Gummer points to a number of responses by the large environmental
NGOs in Britain: 'Greenpeace has ... chosen to concentrate
upon a narrow range of issues. Friends of the Earth has developed
a new and effective means of influence ... that is gaining
a reputation for objectivity and accuracy' which presumably
gets its views quoted as authoritative in the media. Certainly
that is my impression.
Not only is there no point in competing with their claim
for authority; our approach is deliberately to credit, refer
on enquiries and complement the strengths of other organisations
- in the form of linked campaigning, awareness raising and
empowerment. As I have written at the foot of our Campaigns
page on our UK web-site, building upon such collaborations
appears to be the way we need to go, rather than trying to
get potential representatives together to form a Coalition
for Climate Crisis Resolution, as we attempted to do before,
and then deciding what we can do.
We still look for openings with other organisations, especially
Christian Ecology Link (which created the Operation Noah campaign)
and with the Global Commons Institute. I took an active part
in the latter's workshop in July and conference in November
on Contraction & Convergence of global greenhouse gases.
And our potential involvement in both UK and global issues
will hopefully increase with my recent election to the UNED-UK
(United Nations Environment & Development - UK) Stakeholder
Forum Executive Committee.
Linked campaigning provides a part of the potential for having
impact; but another part is combining it with all our other
activities: our own Roadshows and educational Workshops on
averting climate change; presence, participation and petition-gathering
in demonstrations, festivals and other events as well as reporting
them (Local Projects page on the UK web-site); attracting
more members of Save our World; attending, taking an active
part in, and follow-up activities from debates, conferences
and common projects; and writing frequent letters to the media,
which get circulated through e-mail groups and posted to our
YahooGroup (via the Links pages),
whether or not they get published in the regular press. They
are also copied to the most relevant prominent politicians
in the UK, not least to let them know we are 'on their case',
where relevant.
How to get the most out of combining these
activities is an on-going creative challenge, but the outcome
is never entirely in our hands, as I quoted at the end of
the Back Issue for September 2002 'So the Summit is Over -
Now What?'.
'A person should engage himself in
performing good actions. He should not wonder whether they
are going to bear fruit or not. In the Bhagavad Gita the
Lord says: "O Arjuna, keep performing good actions.
Never wonder what kind of fruit you are going to attain
and when." No action will go to waste. When the right
season comes, the trees blossom and bear fruit.'
Swami Muktananda
Gummer further asserted that the NGOs have largely retreated
from a global role as a result of US unilateralism, brought
about by the neo-conservative policies of the Bush administration.
He said this has left a significant gap in worldwide campaigning,
adding to uncertainty and a feeling of powerlessness afflicting
European NGOs. I can only agree, since it is reflected in
very little new material on our own global (save-our-world.net)
web-site over the last year.
However, a new international initiative
is now emerging for stabilising the global concentrations
of greenhouse gases, which was produced at the conference
I attended just before the Bush visit to Britain. The contents
will shortly appear on a new Global
Projects page on our global site. It reflects at least
one sign of the sense of direction which Gummer was calling
for.
Another sign of fresh spirits is contained in a series of
hard-hitting articles written just after Gummer's was published:
'Goodbye cruel world: how long before all the Earth's mega-species
disappear from the wild?'; 'Heebie gee-gees. Why does nobody
care about cataclysmic events?'; 'The state we're in': cars,
people's attitudes, chemicals and energy; 'America is killing
itself' through pollution - a seven page major investigation;
'The planet's polluters should be put in the dock' - Michael
Meacher's contribution to the annual Schumacher lectures that
I heard live[3]
Further encouraging signs for European NGOs are revealed
in Polly Ghazi's investigation in The Guardian on 29 October,
which was entitled: 'Transatlantic drift: at no time have
Europe and the US been as far away from each other on green
policies as they are now'. She wrote: 'the public in Europe
demands that politicians respond to environmental concerns;
more so than the American public.' Quoting the director of
the Pew Center on Global Climate Change in Washington, she
continued: 'Bush "never had an environmental constituency
going into his presidency and neither did many Congressional
leaders" ... (This) point helps explain why the Bush
administration can employ "greenwash" terminology
that would be savaged in Britain if Margaret Beckett, the
environment secretary, tried it'.
Much of the pressure on the British and European governments
must surely come from the environmental NGOs, which I am proud
to say includes Save our World. And with some success, not
least in keeping corporately driven genetically modified food
out of our shops so far. The importance of maintaining this
pressure is starkly revealed by accounts from the USA asserting
that the population has largely lost its power to prevent
gross exploitation of the natural world by a combination of
political and corporate interests. Important as such pressure
is, however, I cannot deny that there is still a huge amount
to do, in order to get the global climate stabilised and make
Sustainable Development anything like a reality.
We do not have just to consider our own
efforts but also those deliberately and perversely aimed to
undermine environmental protection.
Gummer quoted the US "Clear Skies" programme which
has repealed many of the requirements of the Clean Air Act
for reducing the pollution from old power plants; and the
"Healthy Forests" Bush-speak initiative for allowing
timber companies to log in previously protected forests. The
book 'Global Spin: The Corporate Assault on Environmentalism',
states, in its publicity materials: 'reveals the sophisticated
techniques being used around the world by powerful conservative
forces to try to change the way the public and politicians
think about the environment, which include employing PR firms
to set up front groups that promote the corporate agenda whilst
posing as public-interest groups; getting corporate-based
"environmental educational" materials into schools;
and funding conservative think-tanks, which have persistently
tried to cast doubt on the existence of environmental problems'.
As if we have not enough on our hands already
in dealing with actual physical problems!!!
These antics portray one extreme, but unconscious denial
can be much more inisidious, as I previously wrote about in
the Back Issue entitled 'Creeping
Denial - and Facing it Head On'. Since writing it,
in February 2002, I have become increasingly aware of the
effects of institutional denial by scientists that they make
subjective judgements, having a skewing effect on the so-called
'debate' on the commercial planting of genetically modified
crops. See the following letters in our Yahoo Group, via the
Links page: 113 'The political
distortion of science', 131 'Good and bad science?, 136 'Scientists
must NOT decide about GM', and 139 'Well spun!'.
Much more subtle than this is the underlying 'feel good
factor' which is promoted in the marketing and advertising
of all kinds of goods, irrespective of their effects on the
environment. Can anybody be surprised that the general public
is left with the feeling that there is nothing to worry about,
concerning the state of the climate and the environment generally?
From this point of view I disagree with
John Gummer that 'the public has been wearied by scare stories'
per se. I contend that what really wearies them are stories
that produce no commensurate action from governments and other
major authorities, and about which they therefore see no means
or need for action themselves.
On the rare occasion that the UK Government accepted the
vital necessity for 60% reductions in greenhouse gases by
2050 (which we and other NGOs demanded repeatedly up till
the Earth Summit in September 2002 - now under World
Summit 2002 which is listed on the Archive page),
it destroyed its own credibilty within hours by promoting
a massive expansion of the Air Industry. Air travel increases
greenhouse gases more, per passenger, than any other form
of travel - by far!
Also under World Summit 2002, you can read the only
publicised analysis I know of the UK government's disincentives
to raise public awareness about the dangers of climate change.
It is contained in 'The Text of the Original Challenge'
sub-section 'The
First Hurdle - Awareness Raising'. Maybe such disincentives
explain the lack of response I have received from UK environment
and energy ministers so far to following up an eminently practical
policy already adopted in the State of California.
This is to set a compliance date for the manufacture of carbon
zero-emitting products, and, in particular, cars. For it would
achieve three objectives in one go: communicate to the public
that climate change is a real problem; set a consistent direction
or vector for Government policy; and strengthen business confidence
in markets for renewable energy and energy efficiency systems.
One difficulty with adopting it, I understand, is that the
UK government is precluded from such action by EU regulations,
but I have no doubt that the UK government could be prevailed
upon to influence them if so minded, as it appears to be doing
so, unexpectedly, over the possibilities of making UK GM crop
free. We are not going to give up pressing for such an initiative,
and I hope other NGOs will join us in doing so.
So my answer to John Gummer is
that we are in good spirits, determined and constantly refreshing
our direction. We do, however, wholeheartedly support his
general conclusion in principle: 'There never was a time when
a radical voice was so needed. The whole world has need now
... of NGOs with their spirits recovered and a sense of direction'.
[1] John Gummer MP
was Conservative Party Secretary of State for the Environment
from 1993-97.
[2] 'No news is bad news' The Guardian 01/10/03
[3] All published in The Guardian on 2, 22, 23, 24, 24 October,
respectively
(C) Jim Scott 05/12/2003
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