It wasn’t meant to happen like this. The climate scientists told us thatour winters would become wetter and our summers drier. So I can’t claim thatthese floods were caused by climate change, or are even consistent with themodels. But, like the ghost of Christmas yet to come, they offer us a glimpse ofthe possible winter world we’ll inhabit if we don’t sort ourselves out.
With rising sea levels and more winter rain (and remember that when the treesare dormant and the soils saturated there are fewer places for the rain to go)all it will take is a freshwater flood to coincide with a high spring tide andwe have a formula for full-blown disaster. We have now seen how localised floodscan wipe out essential services and overwhelm emergency workers. But thismonth’s events don’t even register beside some of the predictions nowcirculating in learned journals(1). Our primary political struggle must be toprevent the break-up of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. The onlyquestion now worth asking about climate change is how.
Dozens of new books appear to provide an answer: we can save the world byembracing "better, greener lifestyles". Last week, for example, the Guardianpublished an extract of the new book by Sheherazade Goldsmith, who is married tothe very rich environmentalist Zac, in which she teaches us "to live withinnature’s limits"(2). It’s easy: just make your own bread, butter, cheese,jam, chutneys and pickles, keep a milking cow, a few pigs, goats, geese, ducks,chickens, beehives, gardens and orchards. Well, what are you waiting for?
Her book also contains plenty of useful advice, and she comes across as modest,sincere and well-informed. But of lobbying for political change, there is not aword: you can save the planet in your own kitchen – if you have endless timeand plenty of land. When I was reading it on the train, another passenger askedme if he could take a look. He flicked through it for a moment then summed upthe problem in seven words. "This is for people who don’t work."
None of this would matter, if the Guardian hadn’t put her photo on themasthead last week, with the promise that she could teach us to go green. Themedia’s obsession with beauty, wealth and fame blights every issue it touches,but none more so than green politics. There is an inherent conflict between theaspirational lifestyle journalism which makes readers feel better aboutthemselves and sells country kitchens and the central demand ofenvironmentalism: that we should consume less. "None of these changesrepresents a sacrifice", Sheherazade tells us. "Being more conscientiousisn’t about giving up things." But it is: if, like her, you own more thanone home when others have none.
Uncomfortable as this is for both the media and its advertisers, giving thingsup is an essential component of going green. A section on ethical shopping inGoldsmith’s book advises us to buy organic, buy seasonal, buy local, buysustainable, buy recycled. But it says nothing about buying less.
Green consumerism is becoming a pox on the planet. If it merely swapped thedamaging goods we buy for less damaging ones, I would champion it. But twoparallel markets are developing: one for unethical products and one for ethicalproducts, and the expansion of the second does little to hinder the growth ofthe first. I am now drowning in a tide of ecojunk. Over the past six months, ourcoatpegs have become clogged with organic cotton bags, which – filled withpackets of ginseng tea and jojoba oil bath salts – are now the obligatory giftat every environmental event. I have several lifetimes’ supply of ballpointpens made with recycled paper and about half a dozen miniature solar chargersfor gadgets I don’t possess.
Last week the Telegraph told its readers not to abandon the fight to savethe planet. "There is still hope, and the middle classes, with theircomposters and eco-gadgets, will be leading the way."(3) It made some helpfulsuggestions, such as a "hydrogen-powered model racing car", which, for £74.99,comes with a solar panel, an electrolyser and a fuel cell(4). God knows whatrare metals and energy-intensive processes were used to manufacture it. In thename of environmental consciousness, we have simply created new opportunitiesfor surplus capital.
Ethical shopping is in danger of becoming another signifier of social status. Ihave met people who have bought solar panels and mini-wind turbines before theyhave insulated their lofts: partly because they love gadgets, but partly, Isuspect, because everyone can then see how conscientious (and how rich) theyare. We are often told that buying such products encourages us to think morewidely about environmental challenges, but it is just as likely to bedepoliticising. Green consumerism is another form of atomisation – asubstitute for collective action. No political challenge can be met by shopping.
The middle classes rebrand their lives, congratulate themselves on going green,and carry on buying and flying as much as ever before. It is easy to picture asituation in which the whole world religiously buys green products, and itscarbon emissions continue to soar.
It is true, as the green consumerists argue, that most people find aspirationalgreen living more attractive than dour puritanism. But it can also bealienating. I have met plenty of farm labourers and tenants who are desperate tostart a small farm of their own, but have been excluded by what they call "horsiculture":small parcels of agricultural land being bought up for pony paddocks and hobbyfarms. In places like Surrey and the New Forest, farmland is now fetching up to£30,000 an acre as city bonuses are used to buy organic lifestyles(5). When thenew owners dress up as milkmaids then tell the excluded how to make butter, theyrun the risk of turning environmentalism into the whim of the elite.
Challenge the new green consumerism and you become a prig and a party pooper,the spectre at the feast, the ghost of Christmas yet to come. Against the shinynew world of organic aspirations you are forced to raise drab and boringlyequitable restraints: carbon rationing, contraction and convergence, tougherbuilding regulations, coach lanes on motorways. No colour supplement will carryan article about that. No rock star could live comfortably within his carbonration.
But such measures, and the long hard political battle required to bring themabout, are, unfortunately, required to prevent the catastrophe these floodspredict, rather than merely to play at being green. Only when they have beenapplied does green consumerism become a substitute for current spending ratherthan a supplement to it. They are harder to sell, not least because they cannotbe bought from mail order catalogues. Hard political choices will have to bemade, and the economic elite and its spending habits must be challenged, ratherthan groomed and flattered. The multi-millionaires who have embraced the greenagenda might suddenly discover another urgent cause.
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George Monbiot has been awarded an honorary doctorate by the University ofEssex and an honorary fellowship by Cardiff University. www.monbiot.com
References:
1. Eg James Hansen et al, 2007. ClimateChange and Trace Gases. Philiosophical Transactions of the Royal Society –A. Vol 365, pp 1925-1954. doi: 10.1098/rsta.2007.2052.
2. Sheherazade Goldsmith (Editor in chief), 2007. A Slice of Organic Life.Dorling Kindersley, London.
3. Sarah Lonsdale, 19th July 2007. Take the online test to find out yourfootprint. Daily Telegraph.
4. See here
5. See here
