Oh, the UK's new energy bill. Otherwise much lauded by green industry commentators, the bill put off setting a 2030 decarbonisation target until 2016 - a compromise between Energy Secretary Ed Davey and the Chancellor George Osborne. An amendment to the bill to set the target now was narrowly defeated in the House of Commons. You'd think the world had ended from the Twitterstorm that followed.
For interest, I challenged a couple of people who were venting off, asking what they thought the problem was with delaying that target. Nobody could give me a clear answer apart from it would be better to have it sooner than later. In fact many tweeters seemed to think the target had been rejected outright rather than delayed, and some seemed to think the whole energy bill had been voted down. Few seemed to actually have investigated what they were tweeting about before hitting that blue button. One resorted to personal abuse for daring to ask.
All of this reminds me of the dank underworld of the climate change denier. Keyboard warriors hunched over their screens, repeating the mantra in BTL article comments without ever stopping to ask key questions - or check the evidence. People who don't automatically agree are clearly inferior and should be put in their place with brutal efficiency.
At worst this is groupthink - repeating the myths 'cos the rest of the tribe is doing so it must be right. Often it is confirmation bias (which we all suffer from to some degree) where we exaggerate the evidence that suits our argument and ignore that which contradicts it.
The commentators I really respect are those who think for themselves, considering the evidence and coming to their own conclusions. Mark Lynas has proposed that GM and nuclear are required to saving the world, going against the green grain. Uber-greenie George Monbiot has considered the relative impacts of coal-power and nuclear power and concluded that the latter is preferable by a country mile - again upsetting the green doctrine. James Murray at BusinessGreen has made his name by objective analysis of the pros and cons Government policy rather than the kneejerk and predictable condemnation of the NGOs. I might not agree 100% with everything these guys say, but I always find their arguments valid and thought provoking.
Let's be clear, if we are going to shift towards a sustainable future, we need to be pragmatic. That means concentrating on what is possible and getting that done quickly, rather than getting all holier than thou. This may involve, dare I say it, compromise and certainly requires objectivity.
We expect rabid nonsense from the deniers, but what we need from the green community is a little more signal and a lot less noise.
I've been a member of the UK's third political party, the Liberal Democrats, for the best part of a decade - and an elected Councillor here in Newcastle for most of that time (full disclosure!). When I first joined, the party seemed so far from power that its earnest and sometimes fiery debates on policy seemed somewhat quaint, but the 2010 General Election changed everything.
With no clear majority for either the incumbent Labour Party or the opposition Conservatives, the decision to go into coalition with the latter, on the grounds they got more of the vote than anyone else, sent shockwaves through the party, the 'Westminster bubble' and the electorate. Suddenly what the Lib Dems did or said meant something - for better or worse.
The central thrust of this new tome, The Green Book, is that the party should focus on its strong reputation on environmental issues to define the next stage in its history. The editors make the case on three grounds:
Moral: many environmental pressures are now hitting critical levels and the time for action is now;
Economic: a green economy could rescue the UK economy from its current torpor;
Political: as the Conservatives' initial ambition for 'the greenest Government ever' has faded, the Lib Dems have continued to fly the flag, providing clear green water between the coalition parties.
What follows is a collection of 31 essays designed to set out a vision for eco-liberalism, as distinct from the eco-socialism championed by the Green Party. The authors are predominately MPs and party insiders, but many of the latter are sustainability professionals in their day jobs, and they are augmented by heavyweight guest authors. As a result, the majority of the pieces are intellectually hefty pieces of work, going way beyond the usual political blandishments. Here are some of the key themes I distilled:
The need for political leadership: across the UK economy, companies are sitting on mountains of cash which could be invested into greentech, if they the confidence to do so;
The need for a narrative: too much of the environmental debate has consisted of barrages of data and statistics, we need a narrative to take people with us on the quest for sustainability;
The need to sell the wider benefits of a green economy as well as the risks of inaction: energy security, rebalancing the economy, job creation etc;
The need to tackle the (politically more difficult) demand side of the economy as well as the supply side;
The need to understand and work with prevailing culture: "Persuading people to change their behaviour is, in general, only likely to succeed when it goes with the grain of their lifestyles and beliefs." (fits with my concept of Green Jujitsu);
The need for finance: for example, 3% of companies in the Cambridge greentech cluster have venture capital funding, compared to 36-40% in sectors such as healthcare or IT;
The need for policy integration: only the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) sees a green economy as more than a standalone issue, the need to see resource management as more than a waste issue etc;
The need to break up vested interests and cartels to open up markets and devolve solutions to the local level.
Given there are more than two dozen authors, the book provides a smorgasbord of potential solutions to these issues rather than a tightly defined manifesto. The ideas range from high level principles, most well understood in the sustainability sector such as the circular economy, to some quite specific solutions, such as how to allow the Green Investment Bank to borrow to invest without upsetting national finances. There is however a significant job left to do to weave these together into a cohesive whole and, more importantly, develop that narrative to make a compelling case to the electorate - we're still deep in policy wonk territory here.
Obviously this is a party political publication, and non-party supporters will have to put up with a degree of Lib Dem braggadocio, but there's plenty of red meat in here for environmental policy geeks no matter what their political viewpoint. As many psephologists are predicting another coalition Government after the 2015 election, and the party leadership has adopted its key thrust, The Green Book could become very influential indeed.
The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) was set up at the Earth Summit in 1992. That's 21 years ago and where are we? Atmospheric carbon levels have just hit 400ppm for the first time in human history and emissions show no sign of slowing. We're running out of time.
Is it time to admit that, no matter how many international jamborees held or acronyms forged, trying to agree an over-reaching framework of targets, processes and systems that will satisfy Beijing, Washington and Dar es Salaam just ain't gonna happen?
On the other hand, we know what will happen if we don't have some form of international agreement. Nations that take action will lose polluting industries to those who won't, creating to a race to the bottom and no reduction in emissions. The Tragedy of the Commons writ large.
This is a conundrum I've been wrestling with for a long time and I've come to the conclusion that simplicity is the answer. Just think about when you get overwhelmed at work - trying to do too many things at once just leads to you rushing around like a headless chicken and getting nowhere fast. The only solution is to list what needs doing, pick the one which will give you the biggest return on your efforts, and focus on that 'til it's done.
So if you could pick just one thing to do on the climate, what would it be?
My vote goes for a carbon tax in every nation. A carbon tax is very simple, penalises carbon intensive energy (eg coal) more than cleaner energy sources (renewables), and some countries have already gone down this route so we have some experience to build on. If every UNFCCC country committed to impose a carbon tax then, in theory, there would be no carbon 'leakage' as industries would find a similar regime in place wherever they went. Nations could spend the revenue raised as they see fit to avoid 'World Government'-type paranoia.
In order to prevent poor countries being penalised, the level of taxation in each country could be linked to per capita GDP. This could lead to limited carbon leakage initially, but growth and carbon emissions would be decoupled.
This approach would lead to immediate action on carbon emissions, rather than arguing over targets which, once agreed, might lead to reduced emissions at some point in the future - and might not.
Once a such a global carbon tax agreement was agreed and implemented, then the UNFCCC could start looking at other issues one by one, such as protection of forests, targets, development mechanisms etc. These would have to play second fiddle in the medium term, but at least we'd have one practical measure up and running and cutting carbon, rather than yet another avalanche of position papers.
So let's keep it simple and actually do something. Carbon taxes for all!
All eyes were on UK Chancellor George Osborne yesterday as the first quarter's GDP growth results were released. If they were negative, then we would have been in a 'triple-dip' recession - don't you love the way it rolls off the tongue - which would be terrible, and if positive then everything's absolutely fantastic. It went positive and George sighed a big sigh of relief.
The whole hoo-hah over the figures of course is nonsense. The definition of recession - two negative quarters in a row - has absolutely no economic significance in itself. Statistically the UK economy has been flatlining for 18 months, and whether or not we hit the accepted definition of recession or not in this period makes little practical difference.
All this makes me think about the growth/no growth debate in the sustainability world. If this is what zero growth feels like, then nobody seems particularly happy with it. My argument is that we've never really tried to decouple GDP and, say, carbon emissions, so we don't know whether the two are locked together as tightly as the no-growth proponents claim.
Which leads on to GDP itself. The big problem with this being the dominant measure of progress is that it treats all economic activity as equal whether that activity is highly socially/environmentally damaging or whether it adds value to society and the natural world. If we could get a better definition of GDP that focussed on 'good' economic activity, then the growth/no growth argument might become redundant.
Another aspect of the weakness of GDP was flagged up on BBC's Today programme early yesterday morning. The debate was how come employment was increasing if there was no growth. Economist Prof Jonathan Haskell of Imperial Business School explained that method of calculating GDP used in the UK was developed in the grimy post-war times of Keynes and doesn't handle 'production' from the modern knowledge economy. If we switched to the system used by the US, growth would leap by 1% - which would make George a very happy boy indeed.
But the implications of that current system is that relatively clean industries like software (and by extension the whole lightweight digital economy) don't register as growth whereas old smokestack industries and resource intensive sectors like construction do - a perverse incentive. So, go on, Georgie boy, change the system and make us all happy.
Margaret Thatcher, who died today, was one of the most divisive political leaders of our time with people either loving or hating her with equal passion. I must be one of the tiny minority that is ambivalent to her legacy.
As the son of a self-employed couple and who runs his own business, it would churlish not to acknowledge I have benefited massively from her economic liberalism. On the other hand, living in the North East of England I can see first hand the destruction that liberalism did to traditional heavy industries - and, Nissan at Washington aside, the lack of anything to replace those industries. This has led the demise of the proud blue collar worker and the disintegration of many communities.
But one of Mrs Thatcher's more unexpected legacies is that she remains Britain's greenest Prime Minister. She was the first to warn openly of the dangers of climate change in a speech to the UN in 1989, saying:
"We are seeing a vast increase in the amount of carbon dioxide reaching the atmosphere... The result is that change in future is likely to be more fundamental and more widespread than anything we have known hitherto."
She set up the Hadley Centre to study climate change which has informed all progress and legislation since. The Green movement hates to admit it, but Mrs Thatcher set the ball rolling.
This led to one of the more bizarre climate change denial theories - as put forward in The Great Global Warming Swindle - that Thatcher invented climate change to destroy the coal industry and its Unions. This is despite the fact she pretty much did that 5 years previously in the Miners' strike.
Right-wing climate change deniers have tried to reclaim her since, but no British Prime Minister has nailed their colours to the mast so vividly. Major, Blair and Brown said nothing. David Cameron may have declared he would lead "the greenest Government ever" but he has barely managed to pay lip service since.
Cameron would do well to emulate his heroine, as Mrs Thatcher never did anything halfheartedly. Love her or hate her, you cannot accuse Mrs T of lacking in the leadership that we now need so badly.
I spent a remarkable amount of time yesterday talking about district heating and combined heat and power (CHP) - with students in the morning and the Council in the afternoon (with my political hat on).
This is one issue that I am very passionate about but very frustrated about. Why on earth do we in the UK burn fossil fuels to make electricity but then chuck away the majority of the thermal energy produced - and then burn more gas to heat buildings? It is madness - and the fact that many of our European cousins do it as a matter of course suggest that it is a attitude problem rather than being a technical or economic one.
A number of times in my career I have tried to push such heating schemes but I have consistently come up against people in positions of power who pay a bit of lip service to the idea and then skilfully back heel the ball into the long grass. I have seen others suffer the same fate, so it's not just my lack of persuasion skills.
The one new UK system which bucks the trend is in Birmingham. The owner, Utilicom, asked the Council to sign up to a long term electricity and heat contract pegged below market rates. That was it.
Utilicom de-risked and incentivised the project for the local authority (traditionally risk averse) and gave itself the financial confidence to get on with it, installing the distribution pipes and signing up customers. Everybody seems very happy about it and carbon emissions fall - a nice example of what Umair Haque calls 'thick value', economic value with net social and environmental benefits.
Coincidentally, DECC published a raft of analysis on district heating yesterday. This confirms that, as in the Birmingham example, the private sector sees less risk in district heating than the public sector. This throws the traditional green shibboleth of "business = bad" on its head. Change means risk and risk simply isn't rewarded in the public sector the way it is in business, so projects wither on the vine.
I am one of a growing number of people who believe that only business can embrace that risk and deliver sustainability for us. The state's most powerful contribution in many situations is to incentivise 'good' behaviour, penalise 'bad' behaviour and let the market deliver it in the most efficient way. That will be heresy for many, but it is about time we gave up on politics and embraced pragmatism.
Many of us sustainability professionals are idealists - on a mission to save the planet and all the people on it. We genuinely care about doing the right thing and doing right by everyone. There's one main problem with idealism - and that's the real world. The real world is messy and is full of people with maddeningly diverse, and sometimes illogical, viewpoints driven by different pressures, experiences and beliefs.
I was inspired to write this piece after taking part in a discussion on whether business driving Corporate Social Responsibility down through global supply chains was usurping local democracy. My view is that proactive supply chain management has nothing to do with democracy unless it weakens local standards, it takes industry around the world beyond compliance, and it is for the greater good - what's not to like? But my big problem with arguments like these is that all too often they are simply throwing abstract intellectual spanners in the gears of real progress.
It is always easy to find fault with something that works. Veteran green commentator George Monbiot regularly attacks the incredibly successful Feed-In Tariff (FiT) system for funding renewables. His argument is that the many pay the (richer) few for generating clean energy. While that is indeed true, it is normal in today's market economy - our combined grocery shopping makes a few supermarket bosses very rich, but our diet is better than it has ever been, so we rarely complain. Likewise, FiTs have created a solar revolution, driving record investment in clean energy for the benefit for the many, so is it really a problem if those who invest get a reward?
A third example comes from my experience of being second in command politically of green issues at Newcastle City Council. We proposed bringing in a semi-mixed collection of recyclates on the kerbside using lidded wheelie bins to replace the existing open crates which needed to be stored inside. The local green groups screamed blue murder, accusing us of reneging on our environmental commitments by mixing up materials. However the public loved the simplicity and convenience of the new system and the recycling rate jumped by 50% to an impressive 46% of all household waste. The screams faded to a recalcitrant grumble.
Sustainability, like politics, is the art of the possible. Let's not get distracted by the indulgence of nothing ever being good enough for us and get on with the job in hand.
The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
I'm not convinced this is the case - particularly in the sustainability field where I frequently find people of normal intellectual ability seemingly comfortable with pursuing two conflicting goals. UK PM David Cameron was at it yesterday in front of the parliamentary Liaison Committee. He claimed to be pursuing both a green economy and a gas/fracking 'revolution' where, for once, that 'and' can only be an 'or'.
Holding two conflicting views like this is said to cause 'cognitive dissonance' - a uncomfortable, conflicting mental state, yet so many people carry such a dichotomy merrily along with them without a care.
For the sustainability practitioner, this is dangerous. You get assured that things will change, sustainability projects will start and bad practice will end. Yet business as usual always seems to live on like the B-movie zombie that will never die.
The magical antidote to this disease is clarity.
About a year ago I was pondering why so many of the outputs of my workshops fell into what I thought was the 'bleeding obvious' category yet my clients were delighted with the results. I had a minor epiphany when I realised that my prime goal should not be to drive workshop participants to make intellectual breakthroughs (although those do happen and are very welcome), but to make the implicit explicit.
Once everything is explicit, the synergies and conflicts become very clear. And in terms of sharpening people's understanding of what must change, that clarity is priceless.
I got home from a business trip last week to find a mystery parcel waiting for it. I ripped it open and six copies of my first book The Three Secrets of Green Business fell out - in Japanese! I was delighted in that strange bemused sort of way as I have no idea how good the translation is - or what to do with the copies. There has been talk of simple Chinese and Russian translations, but this is the first that has come to fruition.
And it got me thinking about sustainability in a globalised world. Here are a few environmental and ethical issues that cross national boundaries:
Environmental standards: if different nations have different environmental standards, it inevitably creates a 'race to the bottom' - the country with the lowest standards get the business. Over a decade ago Pakistan lost its ship breaking business after insisting on higher safety standards after a lethal explosion on a gas tanker. As sustainability is about going beyond compliance, there is a need for the responsible globalised business to set its own minimum standards to ensure that it is not contributing to the drive towards the lowest common denominator.
Transparency and Traceability: As commodities move around the world, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine their providence. APP's paper may have been blacklisted by almost every major brand, but it still manages to sell into the market place, so someone is buying (a lot of) it. On the other hand, I have seen responsible UK manufacturer demonstrate how they can trace any tissue paper pack to the acre of forest it came from (the portion that isn't from recycled sources).
Pay & Working Conditions: These are also subject to the 'race to the bottom' as the cheaper labour force tends to attract manufacturers. While there are some simple red line issues like child labour and slave labour, it becomes more difficult when different cultures have different approaches to pay and working conditions and the 'going rate' varies.
Tax: We have seen recently how some big businesses exploit the ease of moving money around the world to minimise their tax bill. Different tax regimes can lead to operations moving swiftly from one place to another at the sniff of a tax break, disrupting local communities and economies with short terms booms and busts.
As always a globalised supply chain can be seen as not a so much a problem but as an opportunity to do some work for good. Insisting on first world standards in third world countries is a sure fire way of raising the bar rather than lowering it. But companies can be more pro-active than that, actively investing in those countries to drive standards up. A great example is the low carbon lingerie factory Marks & Spencer developed with a supplier in Sri Lanka.
But the most important thing is to avoid getting into the kind of contorted mental mindset of those big tax dodgers where you end up defending the indefensible to justify the status quo. Being honest with yourself is the vital first step.
In the meantime, I'm just happy to be Big in Japan...
Today some top honchos from Starbucks are up in front of MPs to explain how they organise their tax affairs. The papers have been full of articles recently about the minuscule amounts of tax some of these big companies pay - some of them pay no corporation tax whatsoever. Everybody from Vodafone and Amazon to U2 and Jimmy Carr have been accused of going way beyond what the man or woman in the street would think was fair.
I'm a businessman. I love business and I'm not averse to earning a profit, far from it. And I employ an accountant to make sure that I pay all the tax I should and not a penny more. So what's the difference between me and, say, Starbucks?
Well, I'm playing by the rules and the spirit of the rules - my accountant takes my income, deducts legitimate/bog standard allowances and I pay tax on the rest. These corporations have made an art-form of shifting cash between parts of their businesses around the world simply to minimise that bill.
Of course Governments should legislate - by insisting on a minimum tax on turnover, banning corporate entities which have no trade other than tax 'efficiency' and/or placing punitive taxes on those that do. There's an element of tragedy of the commons here - any one country that 'gets tough' on tax avoidance may lose out if others stand back - so an international agreement may be required, which in turn would take years of negotiation on past performance.
But what about the businesses themselves? Many of these companies claim to take Corporate Social Responsibility seriously. Well, paying tax is a moral and social issue - think of all those countries around the world which are struggling with huge deficits and who could ease their painful austerity programmes if companies operating on their turf paid fair taxes?
Is any captain of industry going to show moral leadership here? Maybe propose a code of conduct for others to sign up to? Anyone?
...we want our children to live in an America that isn't burdened by debt, that isn't weakened by inequality, that isn't threatened by the destructive power of a warming planet...
It was to these words, delivered in familiar stentorian tones, that I woke up this morning as the radio alarm kicked into life. My immediate reaction was "Obama won!" and then, secondly "This is the first big mention of climate change in the US election!"
During the campaign Obama referred to the green agenda only in terms of green jobs and energy security. Now in times of economic crisis this is a form of green jujitsu - framing the agenda in terms that appeal to the audience. Our own Prime Minister David Cameron does the same - happy to boast about record investment in renewables, but clearly unwilling to go back to his pre-crash husky-hugging vote-blue-go-green days.
But both can afford to be much, much bolder - and need to be given the speed of change required. In the UK, a third of all recent economic growth is coming from the green sector - a wave ready to be surfed by any political leader. Obama now has the luxury of the second term president - he can set his own agenda - and hopefully, hopefully he will put climate change centre stage and give much clearer leadership. And he may find that the solutions to the economic problems and the environmental problems are one and the same. Be bold!
It's a real pity that last week's Green Is Working in London demonstration didn't get the attention it deserved. The pro-growth message, the presence of telly capitalist and 'dragon' Deborah Meaden and the neat highjacking of a certain Conservative party slogan certainly should have resonated much more in the corridors of power than the usual dread-locked hoards wanting to smash the system.
The economic case is compelling. The rising oil price in 2007 almost certainly precipitated the implosion of the debt bubble, the continuing high oil price is keeping the global economy under the cosh, and a third of what growth there is in the UK economy has been attributed to the green economy (according to the CBI). As I have said before the question is no longer "green or growth?" but "green growth or stagnation?"
The struggle for the green agenda in the Coalition Government is well understood. The Liberal Democrats and a cadre of progressive Conservatives are pushing forward hard while the Chancellor and a rump of old school Tories, perhaps with fond memories of the North Sea Oil boom years under Margaret Thatcher, are resisting and trying to prioritise gas instead. The Prime Minister appears to be trying to offend neither side by saying very little - and the one time he did open his mouth on energy recently it turned out to be another 'misspeak'.
Unfortunately little pressure is coming from the Opposition. Labour leader Ed Miliband apparently 'forgot' the green economy section of his look-no-notes conference speech, which even if we take his word for it, suggests it is far from a priority.
In the absence of a clear political direction the green economy muddles on. We have good news such as 10% of electricity being produced by onshore wind alone for a whole day in September, then bad news such as the glacial slow uptake of electric vehicles.
My recommendations would be:
A clear commitment from the Government (and indeed Opposition). A strong clear statement from the top would boost confidence and an end to wobbling in the face of media scare stories would steady nerves too.
Rapid investment in enabling technologies such as smart grids and electrical storage technologies (instead of the usual economic stimulus high carbon formula of roads and buildings).
Strengthening of green procurement requirements in the public sector.
Memoranda of Understanding between potential large scale users and suppliers of low carbon technologies to generate economies of scale in emerging supply chains.
Completion of the shift to intelligent subsidies which vary with capital costs to avoid the gold rush firefighting we have seen over the Feed In Tariffs.
We're in the midst of party political conference season and one thing you will notice in any discussion about sustainability and climate change is the focus on shiny new technology. You will not of course hear anything about the destruction of the old unsustainable way of doing things. This is for one very good reason - no-one ever got far in politics by emphasising the down side of what they want to do. But, as the cliché goes, you can't make an omlette without breaking eggs.
There is some irony in the title of this post - that to build a sustainable society, we must destroy the old one. But sustainable in the ecological sense does not mean unchanging, merely the concept of operating within natural limits in an equitable way. Like nature itself, a sustainable society will be constantly evolving, not frozen in aspic.
There are two ways to approach the transition. Firstly the politicans' method - build the new and let the old wither on the vine. And to a certain extent this is happening - as Mark Lynas and Chris Goodall point out, the more renewable energy the country produces, the less gas is burnt. Rising renewable capacity will eventually lead to reduced gas capacity as who will build what isn't needed? The upsides are that it is easy to sell and usually produces a robust end product, the downside is speed of change as the system evolves.
The other way is the machismo approach. Companies like InterfaceFLOR appear to relish deleting product ranges which are incompatible with their sustainability targets. They see this as a badge of pride - revolution rather than evolution. This is obviously easier in an organisation than it is in the democratic system as business leaders don't tend to have the Daily Mail breathing down their necks chasing headlines, but it is fast and decisive.
The answer will no doubt be a mishmash of the two - large scale evolution powered and accelerated by many medium scale revolutions in the value chains that provide our material quality of life. But we can't duck the fact that change requires destruction as well as creation.
77% said they supported renewable energy for providing our electricity, fuel and heat, with 26% strongly supporting. Just 4% opposed renewable energy.
Perceptions of a range of renewable energy sources were mostly positive. Highest levels of support were found for solar (82%), off shore wind (73%) and wave and tidal (72%). On-shore wind had the highest level of opposition, though still only 12% opposed this, with 4% strongly opposing (compared with 66% supporting).
Also out this week was a survey that said, if someone was unsure whether to buy a house or not, the most popular single 'extra' that could persuade them was installed solar PV.
Jeepers. And all this despite the vast majority of UK newspapers running relentlessly negative stories about renewable energy in particular and the green movement in general. If you ever look at the comments section of any on-line green story, or the foaming and ranting in newspapers' letters pages, you'd be forgiven for believing that the shift to green was incredibly unpopular with the general public. But as Machiavelli said:
"the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones.”
There is, it appears, rather a sizeable silent green majority and the ranters and ravers are in actual fact a tiny if very vocal minority.
These statistics should give heart to all those in politics and business who want to push green harder. Here in the UK, only one of the three main party leaders, Deputy PM Nick Clegg, has made a major green speech while PM David Cameron and Opposition Leader Ed Miliband have merely paid lip service. This is incredible given that whopping 77:4 ratio of supporters to opponents of renewable energy - a clear vote winner for whoever pushes hardest at that open door.
Business leaders too should feel empowered. This appetite for a low carbon economy from the general public and, by extension, their employees and potential employees is fertile ground for innovation, new products and whole new business ventures. People want it - let's supply it!
Having said that, I would warn against the statistics being seen as a carte blanche (carte verte?). Going green requires creative destruction - losing the high carbon, highly polluting parts of the economy and replacing them with greener equivalents. Such change produces uncertainty and may undermine confidence, eroding that public perception. The key as always is to ensure that the new product/process/system is much better in all respects than the old before phasing out the latter. I suspect that the 77% are asking for a shiny new low carbon economy, not a tatty old hair shirt.
One of the most frustrating things about this business is the politicisation of environmental issues, and how difficult this makes getting objective analyses. Whether you want a view on climate change, acid rain or peak oil, objectivity seems in short supply. Distorted graphs, cherrypicked data and straw man arguments are plastered across the web and much of the media.
For example I read a piece on peak oil this week which described the concept as "idiocy" as oil "will never run out" because long before it did, prices would rise and force investment in alternative energy sources. Er, that's peak oil theory you're agreeing with there, pal, if you bothered to find out what it actually is.
Readers of my books will have seen a version of these perceptions of the environment (the red ball) in a slightly different format. The three here are:
Individualist: believes the environment is robust and there to be exploited - the red ball will always roll back to the safe centre - typical of free marketeers and those who 'disbelieve' in climate change;
Hierarchist: believes the environment can be exploited within safe limits - the red ball is OK unless you push it too far - typical of Governments and scientists;
Egalitarian: believes the environment is fragile and should be protected at all costs - the red ball is doomed if you move it even slightly - typical of green pressure groups.
The problem with the extreme mindsets is that people tend to develop them and stick to them tribally, exaggerating data which supports their position and ignoring anything that disagrees with it - a phenomena known as confirmation bias. Conflict happens when the hierarchists start to see society nearing one of the safe limits - then from the viewpoint of the individualists, they start to look like the destested egalitarians and all hell breaks loose.
I find all this tremendously frustrating, as I'm basically a hierarchist and I'd really like to know where exactly we are in relation to, say, peak oil. It takes too long to check out every 'sceptical' argument from individualists or wild claim from egalitarians yourself (and I've been through a hell of a lot of them on climate change), so it comes down to trying to find someone you trust to be objective. So I have these rough rules of thumb:
Never trust a think tank or pressure group - you can tell what the Adam Smith Institute and Greenpeace's position will be on renewable energy before you open the report, so why bother?
Dismiss any argument derived solely from commentators - if anyone validates an argument using either James Delingpole's or George Monbiot's words (to pick two from opposite ends of the spectrum above) then I stick my fingers in my ears and sing "la, la, la";
Peer reviewed science is more reliable than non-peer reviewed science, but peer review in itself doesn't mean it is 'right';
Consensus of evidence is more important than consensus of opinion. The important point about climate change science is not so much that 98% of qualified scientists believe climate change is real and manmade, but that they can validate the theory using lots of different methods and evidence;
Analyses which acknowledge their own limitations and provide error bars etc are usually more reliable than those which don't;
Watch out for University press releases which are increasingly often exaggerating the findings of 'controversial' academic papers to make them more newsworthy (which is a disgrace and undermines the whole idea of scholarship);
Any piece which contains personal abuse should be disregarded, especially if evokes the Nazis.
There's another big call out for a plastic bag tax in England and Wales. I'm not against such a tax per se, but it is far from the top of my list of priorities. OK, single use plastic bags cause litter, but nearly as much as, say, crisp packets (if you have ever been on a litter pick you will know what I mean), and can harm marine life (ditto), but they're said to represent 0.1% of the average person's carbon footprint, so if we wanted to make a 50% cut in humanity's carbon footprint, we'd need to find 500 such measures to do so.
"So what?", you may ask, "this is an easy win, a symbolic gesture, something we can do." Yes, but, have we not had enough symbolic gestures, enough pilot projects, enough green grandstanding when we really need to be delivering improvements at scale? This is no time to be lowering our sights down to something even the Daily Mail can support - we've got to raise them, challenge ourselves and make a real difference.
The same thing can happen at the organisational level - people pursuing "safe" incremental improvements at the expense of more ambition. The third "secret" in my first book, The Three Secrets of Green Business, was "take some huge leaps and lots of small steps." If you focus just on the latter, you'll soon come up against diminishing returns - you need the huge leaps to propel you you towards sustainability. My second book, The Green Executive, called for organisations to set themselves stretch targets, to escape "the tyranny of the present", change the mindset and make those ambitious changes.
So yes, let's have a plastic bag tax, but don't see it as a significant achievement and don't waste much time and effort on it - and for goodness sake don't rest on your laurels - but understand it would be a tiny incremental improvement and we need to be looking for those huge leaps.
So in the big green battle in the UK's Coalition Government, it looks like round 1 to Energy and Climate Change Secretary (and my political colleague) Ed Davey (right), who announced today that cuts to onshore wind subsidy would be limited to 10%, not the 25% called for by backbench Conservative MPs who were given a sympathetic ear by Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne (left).
However Davey might have taken a couple of telling body blows during the opening exchanges, according to details leaked to the Financial Times. It is not clear what deal was done, but the concession may have been an open door to cheap unabated gas, which could compromise progress to hit climate change targets at a later date.
This is a fascinating battle - and one which Davey was predicted to lose. But I know Ed and, while he is less combative than his predecessor Chris Huhne, he does have a reputation for being quietly effective. But this is also an interesting case study for those trying to implement radical changes to deliver sustainability in their own organisation.
Traditionally Governements haven taken a very incremental approach to environmental protection. This changed with the previous Labour Government's Climate Change Act in 2008 which committed the Government to deliver a 'legally binding' 80% cut in greenhouse gases by 2050. Despite this bold stretch target, with the notable exception of Ed Miliband's Feed In Tariff, the administration did not make much progress in terms of practical policy measures to meet it.
So the Coalition inherited a stretch target, but there are clear differences in how (or even whether) to meet it. There are those, mainly on the Conservative backbenches, who would simply scrap it. At the other end of the spectrum there's a cross-party group keen to tackle the challenge head-on - Lib Dems Huhne, Davey and Conservatives such as Tim Yeo and Greg Barker. In between are those who see their role to moderate the debate such as Osborne (who I am reliably informed is not quite as anti-green as portrayed in the media). The problem with this latter position is it takes us back to the incremental tit-for-tat pre-Climate Change Act approach.
So how would I tackle the problem? First, as Davey has done, dig the heels in for the short term at least - 'wins' secured now will have a much bigger impact than 'losses' in the future. Secondly, use some green jujitsu to play to Osborne's interests, reframing the argument from "low carbon or growth" to "low carbon growth or business as usual stagnation." The green sector grew 5% last year - growth Osborne would kill for in the rest of the economy. So play down climate change in the internal debates and make arguments along this line - eg jobs, exports, growth, energy security, innovation, technology etc - all things to attract the attention of a Chancellor of the Exchequer. Thirdly, back this up with evidence from the respected International Energy Agency to keep the Treasury geeks happy.
I'm sure this battle will run and run, but the key will be to fight smart and fight hard.
Last week, political broadcaster Andrew Neil (right) hosted a debate on climate science. He invited libertarian polemicist James Delingpole and Friends of the Earth campaigner Andrew Pendleton to give their views. Presumably the choice of participants was to give the debate 'balance', but Delingpole and Pendleton have one very important thing in common which should disqualify both - neither is a climate scientist. If Neil really wanted light rather than heat, why didn't he simply ask someone who actually knows what they are talking about?
If I want to understand a bit more about, say, the Higgs Boson, like everyone else I listen to Prof Brian Cox, because he does know his stuff and is great at explaining it in context: "It's 99.999% sure [we've found the Higgs Boson], which actually, in particle physics, is only just sure enough." Brilliant.
The two worst nightmares I come across in the culture change programmes I run are:
Someone who has loaded themselves up on nonsense spouted by Delingpole, Christopher Booker or the rest of the denialosphere and sits there regurgitating it to show off in front of others;
Someone who has loaded themselves up on self-righteous drivel about how we all just don't get it and need to and live in yurts. One woman at an event I attended asked "How can we just sit here and talk about climate when people are dying in Syria?" I had to restrain myself from shouting "Well if that's what you think, why are you just sitting here yourself?"
Fortunately both are quite rare, but to avoid getting bogged down in lengthy, pointless debates, I try to avoid talking about "problems" and focus instead on solutions. You can't debate climate science properly in a short session, just as you can't debate the Higgs Boson - you can only talk in broad terms. Climate solutions, however, focus the mind much more productively. If you do get one of my stereotypes holding forth, you can set the solutions exercise going and invite the show off to discuss their pet subject with you in the sidelines. But never let yourself or your sessions get hijacked by such people - life is way too short.
So the Rio+20 conference chugged to its almost inevitable anticlimax. The NGOs and green-friendly press are looking for villains - missing big name leaders, lack of commitment by those who were there, the (allegedly) pernicious influence of the oil industry have all been blamed, but I've got a completely different view. It's no-one's fault. It's the process.
I think it's blindingly obvious that if you try and get over 100 countries - all with different economies, cultures, political systems and languages - to agree a single text on a hugely complex issue, you are going to get the lowest common denominator - and that common denominator is going to be pretty damn low. Consensus kills inspiration, innovation and ambition.
In my lighter moments, I mull on the idea that we should be holding international competitions rather than conferences. We would expect delegates to turn up and compete as to which country is doing most to shift towards sustainability. This already happens a little on an informal basis - witness the timing of UK Deputy PM Nick Clegg's announcement that London Stock Exchange listed companies would face mandatory carbon reporting. But what if we could do it on a grand, Olympics of Sustainability scale? We would have countries striving for a gold medal, pushing themselves to greater heights.
This isn't just idle beard stroking, some of the best sustainability moves have been driven by competition. With my local authority hat on, I witnessed the effect of Forum for the Future's Sustainable City Index. Our city, Newcastle, won it in 2009 and you could feel everyone in the Council and key partners striving to retain the title in 2010, which we did. Unfortunately Forum for the Future then killed off the Index and the pressure has come off. In business, Steve Jobs launched an ambitious green programme at Apple after being stung into action by a Greenpeace ranking of the environmental performance of consumer electronics companies. UK supermarkets battle it out every year in a green ranking scheme - nobody wants the wooden spoon.
And going back to the subject of this blog, competitions have been hugely successful in stimulating green behaviour within businesses. Researching the Green Executive, I found sustainability competitions between teams in a medium sized law firm, Muckle LLP, and in international drinks giant Diageo. They are fun, compelling and drive ambition - everything that consensus isn't.
But how would the idea work on the global scale? Hmm, back to the beard stroking.
Since the Arab Spring last year, it seems that appending 'Spring' to any popular movement has already become a cliche - the "-gate" of the modern day. But my ears pricked up at the mention of the 'Shareholder Spring' this year where a number of big businesses are being given a firm clip around the ear by the people that own them - their shareholders.
When Business Secretary Vince Cable announced last year that one of his efforts to contain excessive executive pay was to give more power to shareholders, I must admit I was sceptical. Yes a few individual shareholders may protest, but the big institutional shareholders who have to find enough money to pay our pensions tend not to rock the boat. But now there have been shareholder revolts at Aviva, Barclays, AstraZeneca, Trinity Mirror and several others - and chief executive heads have rolled. Cable is keen to legislate for more power to the shareholder elbow and is being urged on by his opposite number Chuka Umunna, suggesting momentum will continue.
The big focus of the Shareholder Spring is excessive executive pay - in particular rewards for poor or mediocre performance. The fast expanding ratio of executive to average pay is one of the scandals of recent times - and it clearly contributes to inequalities in society. But with wider corporate social responsibility (CSR) becoming a key source of competitive advantage, when will shareholders start looking at the whole range of green and ethical risks?
And will those investors start seeing their investments as opportunities to demonstrate their own CSR? Currently you can invest in green and ethical funds (which often outperform the mainstream), but in the same way as 'green' is being integrated into mainstream consumer products like P&G's Ariel Excel Gel, will CSR be integrated into mainstream investment policies? The environmental pressure groups certainly think this is a key arm to twist - for example targeting the part nationalised RBS last year for its investments in tar sands. The leverage of shareholders is massive - probably bigger than any other stakeholder including customers - so this is a huge opportunity to drive positive change.
For me, it looks like I may have to update the business model in The Green Executive to include shareholders. I did consider including them at the time, but as none of my corporate clients, or indeed the executives I interviewed for the book listed them as a driver, I left them out. The way things are going, I might have to insert them in the second edition. Things move fast in this business!
Oh, the UK's new energy bill. Otherwise much lauded by green industry commentators, the bill put off setting a 2030 decarbonisation target until 2016 - a compromise between Energy Secretary Ed Davey and the Chancellor George Osborne. An amendment to the bill to set the target now was narrowly defeated in the House of Commons. You'd think the world had ended from the Twitterstorm that followed.
