25 April 2019
Extinction Rebellion
Moving on.
By John Watson
It is impossible not to feel admiration for Dr Gail Bradbrook of Extinction Rebellion. She has taken the environmental agenda of the far left group Rising Up and has turned it into a movement which stands outside left/right politics. In a week of direct action, Extinction Rebellion has put carbon emissions centre stage and done so in a way which allows it to draw in people of all party political hues. That is a great achievement. Successful political movements have always needed support from the political centre, and much though one might dislike the inconvenience last week’s protests caused to the public, it was necessary to do something drastic to bring the issue into the forefront of politics.
But what now? Where does it go from here? Extinction Rebellion envisage a new stage where they engage with the government to try to persuade it to:
- “tell the truth about climate change”;
- reduce carbon emissions to zero by 2025; and
- create a citizens’ assembly to oversee progress.
The first and last of these objectives are less about persuading politicians than about involving the public. The Times quoted Dr Bradbrook as saying:
“Two different people who happen to know Theresa May’s advisers tell me she knows how bad it is. Essentially, they said, ‘They know that you’re right and they need people like you to create the social movement to give them permission to move forwards.’ “
The Shaw Sheet is not privy to Mrs May’s thoughts, but the quote does go to the heart of the matter. Public engagement with environmental issues is crucial if progress is to be made because in a democracy politicians can only go so far without widespread support. Achieving that engagement requires honest information and updates on progress monitoring so the mechanisms for providing good quality information are of fundamental importance. Extinction Rebellion are right about that. It is a pity though that they describe the institution needed as a “citizens’ assembly” because that carries implications of a populist democratic governance which would probably be fatal to its effectiveness. It is only necessary to look at recent developments in US politics to see how sound policy can be subverted by the competition for political power, with history telling us that the sacrifice of short term comfort to long term considerations is not something which democracy is particularly good at. No, we need something which, though rooted in public consent, keeps raw democracy at arm’s length while operating in an objective way in the pursuit of its role.
There is already a model for this in the financial sphere, where the Bank of England is mandated to keep inflation as close as possible to 2% but operates independently of direct government control. The actual setting of interest rates is done by the Monetary Policy Committee, a panel of economics experts, and the structure serves to prevent the manipulation of monetary policy by politicians anxious to win elections. Although the government ultimately controls its membership, the decisions are those of the Committee and not the government, so that direct democratic accountability with its risks of sacrificing long term stability for short term gain is kept at one remove. Surely this is a model which could be used for the purpose of monitoring progress towards carbon neutrality? It would have to be adapted, of course. The Bank of England exercises its authority by setting interest rates and there is no equivalent power here; but if, as Extinction Rebellion suggest, we need an authoritative briefing of the public, the body which does it needs to be removed, and demonstrably removed, from day to day political pressure.
The second of Extinction Rebellion’s demands goes to a shortening of the timetable for achieving carbon neutrality. Experts in the field seem to think that 2025 is unattainable; probably they are right but clearly the target should be made as aggressive as is sensibly practicable. As Dr Bradbrook points out, it is amazing what can be achieved in times of war and here the urgency is similar.
Whatever the right number may be, the measures taken to reduce different types of emissions will need to accommodate and, where possible, exploit public attitudes. For example, there is already a trend towards eating less meat, driven by a mixture of health concerns and dislike of certain forms of farming. To reduce meat consumption further merely requires the acceleration of that trend. Similarly, the move towards electric vehicles seems to be generally underway (after certain fits and starts – remember that diesel was originally promoted because the carbon emissions were less than those from petrol). In both these cases, the changes required to reduce emissions are obvious and would go with the existing flow. On the other hand air travel gets more common and cheaper by the day and limiting it would be hard to sell. Here the challenge becomes one of how to make it more efficient rather than how to limit it.
In the end, though, progress towards carbon neutrality depends primarily on science. Can we produce synthetic equivalents for meat? Can we produce a better system of international travel? Will new battery technology make electric cars more attractive? Can we produce wind power or indeed nuclear power in a way which is efficient, safe and environmentally friendly?
These are the challenges and we need to give them our best shot. That means harnessing the powers of the market, of academia and of the state. In these highly experimental fields the first, the market, with its capacity for pursuing an almost unlimited number of competing solutions at the same time, is particularly important so we need to make environmentalism a prime object of business. It is here that the provision of information and monitoring comes in. If the revolution catches light it could become impossible to sell environmentally unfriendly products; but for this to work the public needs to be able to determine what is unfriendly and what is not.
The success of Extinction Rebellion is dependent on its ability to fire the imagination of the public as a whole. That means keeping outside and above the arena of party politics, which it will not be easy. There must be many green activists who are appalled at the prospect of their own parties and pressure groups being swamped by the new movement. What will happen to the careers they have created for themselves in the dark corners of the left? Of course they will try to take the new movement over and to re-politicise it. That may damn the planet but only thus can their own positions be saved. The first test for the Rebellion is whether it is able to stop them doing so.
