What's going on?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=inFDgCSGWDs

There's no accounting for folk. At the start of 2014, give or take, there were 13,000 paid-up members of the Green Party in England and Wales (The autonomous parties in Scotland and Northern Ireland are effectively the same party, with the same principles, their existence being in part a function of the principles of decentralisation and local engagement).

One of the reasons I joined up, apart from the very obvious one that this was the only political organisation the UK which takes climate change seriously enough to incorporate it into most parts of its manifesto, was that by September 2014 the party had grown to over 20,000 members and was polling better than previously - around 4-5% in the national polls.

During the time that I've been involved, helping out with the local group with PR and fundraising, the party has grown steadily, and opinion polls have rated it anywhere from 5 to 10% on various occasions.

Then, earlier this week, on National TV News, there was coverage of the discussion in Parliament over the protocols for the leadership debates due to be aired in the lead-up to the General Election in May. David Cameron had said he would participate unless the Greens were represented, as a party which was often polling above the Liberal Democrats, who are a part of the current Government, and have representation at all political levels.

This was a response to the statements first by the BBC then OFCOM, that the Green party was a minority group and therefore didn't justify the same rights of coverage as the 'major' parties, which include both the Lib Dems and UKIP.

The public response has been somewhat unpredictable to say the least. We aren't renowned for our political engagement in the UK - only a very small percentage of the population is a member of a political party compared to 50 years ago, and a long tradition of disgust and disenfranchisement has left many indifferent to the process.

Over the last two-and-a-half days more than 7,000 people have become members of the Green Party. So many that the party's website has crashed several times (probably slowing the rate of growth).
On Wednesday, after the TV coverage, more than 2,000 signed up. Yesterday, more than 3,500 joined.

As of 2:40pm today, the number of people who are members of the Green party of England and Wales is just short of 40,000, a number almost certain to be exceeded by day's end. On Wednesday, the Scottish and Northern Irish groups counted around 8,350 members (three times as many as in early 2014). It is likely that combined membership will exceed 50,000 by the end of the week.

You may not be impressed by these numbers, but to place them in context, there was a large surge of membership last year for UKIP (which has since slowed), and it currently has a bit less than 42,000 members. The Lib Dems have around 44,500 members (though it is known that some of these may be lapsed memberships which are still being counted).

Which all means that where, just a year ago, there were only two-and-a-half political shades of grey in the UK spectrum, today there are six parties who are likely to have an impact on our next Government and its structure and policies. Four are Grey, one is Scottish (the SNP has massively increased membership in the wale of the Scottish independence referendum, to almost 100,000 members), the third is a bright shade of Green.

One of the absolute essentials to saving the planet in some form of civilised sustainability is that politicians do more than pay lip service to green issues. This is a change which has to happen now, if we are to have a future which our children can look forward to: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jan/15/rate-of-environmental-degradation-puts-life-on-earth-at-risk-say-scientists

It's no longer sufficient to simply whinge about how everything is going to pot and why doesn't someone do something about it. Many people are working hard to plan for a more sustainable future and at many levels good work goes on. But this is a big problem which needs big responses and only politics (and the corporates) can deliver on these levels. In order to gain leverage to promote action by politicians we need them to realise that inaction will cost them votes. The great the number of obviously environmentally concerned voters there are, the better the chance that change will occur.

By joining a local political group, whether or not it's a Green party, you are registering your engagement and increasing the value of the principles which you wish to see pushed up the agenda. It's another thing we as people can do to move collectively towards greater sustainability. So why not do it?

Wealth comes from not spending, but saving

British MP Chris Huhne put in an interesting article last week in The Guardian: 'Don't fear Growth, it's no longer the enemy of the planet...' (link here).

Among the take home points were:

"For centuries, the rise of GDP has gone hand-in-hand with the burning of fossil fuels. But technology has now broken that link" ...

"For the first time in history, we are growing richer while using less energy."

"...This is why so many green thinkers have rightly been suspicious of economic growth: the curve of rising living standards has been tracked by the curve of rising energy use from coal, oil and gas. The simple answer was green puritanism: change our lifestyle. Don the hair-shirt..."

"Businesses are bound to be early adopters of energy-saving technologies, because retailers and distribution firms can spend a fortune on energy. They are used to assessing investment and returns, whereas householders are often put off by the higher initial cost, and poorer households simply cannot afford the switch of energy efficient products even though they pay back quickly. Poorer householders simply cannot afford the up-front cost. That is why it is so crucial for government to encourage household energy saving.

It is also why one of the most short-sighted decisions of this government was to halve the amount of support for energy saving through the Eco subsidy, and just this summer to end the cashback scheme for the energy-saving green deal because it was too successful. The £120m budget allocated until next spring was exhausted in six weeks."

None of this is news to yours truly: having worked in an engineering firm supplying energy-efficient systems for lighting and air conditioning, and for several years in Renewable Energy, one of the key selling points of our services was that the cost-return equation could be highly advantageous for the adopter, though this often depended on the existence of other benefits to the client, including tax breaks and subsidies.

An important feature of the decision-making process for businesses was confidence - many clients were suspicious of the technology and highly risk-averse about the processes and potential returns, not least the banks who ended up lending the money for the work to be done. Not a problem which exists in several EU countries, or among large institutional energy users, but particularly prevalent at smaller scales and where the returns were more marginal or more dependent on 'pure' subsidies.

For me, the important message is these figures demonstrate that reducing energy use is NOT harmful to Economies and NOT a threat to a way of life in itself - in fact, the truth is quite the reverse. This means that there is no credence to be given to ideas that living/ doing business more effectively somehow commits us to the 'hair shirt, greeny, degrowthy' future that seems to scare some people so much.

But, whilst Huhne's article makes its points well and emphasises an important feature of the relation between economy and energy, it doesn't address some deeper issues such as sustainability, pollution, trade equity (TBF, it isn't meant to). There is the ongoing presumption that 'growth is good', difficult to argue against for the whole globe, but problematic.

If economic growth can be achieved while using fewer resources and making less waste and pollution, without putting the planet and future generations in resource-debt, then it looks attractive. In a sense, it is inevitable, as population rises, that markets will grow naturally. The argument for energy efficiency also applies to resource efficiency, hence the popularity of schemes like Ellen MacArthur's Circular Economy, which focuses on the whole product life cycle and the resource life cycle, rather than the 'Stuff' approach, where resources are inputted, processed, sold, used, then trashed.

But it is important not to be naive about the problems of Consumerism and Markets. The products of large corporates such as P&G, Unilever and Nestle (the 'big three') are not always amenable to recycling - soaps, oil-based products, luxury foods, etc - these can have potentially toxic outputs on large scales (constituent chemicals sent into the water supply, packaging...). The social impacts are sometimes significant, for employees in some countries, for outcomes such as obesity and landfill.

It is important to see that the world does not need to be overthrown by bloody revolution in order to move in a better direction for society and the environment, and useful to recognise that our fortunes are not tied to energy in the way some have suggested, but the other bottom line that should be pushed here is that, in the real world, we make and buy a whole lot of crap - genuinely useless, unhealthy, unnecessary 'stuff' - and for individuals, getting past the efforts of marketing to convince us that we 'must have' this stuff for our own well-being, is still important. The example from the larger economy should inform our personal economies; more judicious use of our resources (earnings), less profligacy and a bit of prudence, these qualities will make our income 'grow', give us more resources to put aside, or use to create our own capital, and, as a result, make us 'happier', wealthier people with cleaner consciences.

Whether the weather, whatever...

So it's back to a familiar pattern - the weather hits the news, and discussions arise about climate change, impacts, causes (blame), and so forth. In a sense this is good, because it brings climate to front and centre in the public consciousness, but I have a concern about it. I think it is leading us down a tricky path.

It's no surprise that weather extremes are used as tools to advocate for action on climate, since the impacts are immediately visible and present to the consciousness of the public in a way that no amount of good science or statistics can ever emulate. It's the time when people just 'get it' more readily. It's evidence by ostensive definition; 'Look!'.

The problems I have with this: first, the obvious one, that it perpetuates the language of 'cause' or 'blame'; the notion that any given weather extreme is caused by a changing climate, or evidence of a changing climate. No. It might be evidence of what happens when the weather systems of a globe or region don't do what they normally do. It might be cited as an example of what sort of damage and suffering might be expected if weather patterns change in particular places. But it is not the reason why scientists, working with long-term statistical averages, are worried about the direction we are going in. It's also, arguably, not a good precedent for future events.

The desire to get the message across, that changing climate has significant impacts which are likely to hurt us, is of course important. But a changing climate and the long-term consequences of this are much more than the sum of a series of damaging extremes in local or regional weather. So I feel that to work this particular meme, this message, is potentially dangerous. In our eagerness to get folks to pay attention, we might be skewing the real importance of what is happening to the planet and our role in this.

It will be interesting to see how the WG3 section of the AR5 copes with this apparent contradiction - that the urgency of action is demonstrable through known, visible impacts, but that the reason for concerted international effort goes beyond these impacts. Consistently, scientists have been at pains to point out that the likely consequence of AGW of more than 2 degrees is 'dangerous'; 'Dangerous Climate Changes'. 

But the dangers are not just about what happens to weather patterns in line with what we already know and can see, or measure. More worrying is the danger arising from our ignorance or uncertainty - in other words, runaway feedbacks, system-wide effects (what price a permanently accelerated jetstream, or a shutdown of the THC/AMOC?), and simply unknown effects which are only hinted at now, but would, if they happened, have really frightening consequences. I'm thinking here, for example, of what happens if, as a result of pollution and drought, insecticide and shifting wind patterns, we lose 95% of the Global honey bee population?

In simplest terms, the dangers we should be worrying about are those about which we are uncertain, but which have a logical relation to what has already been observed. To steal a phrase from a well-known Nobel scientist, what should draw our more serious attention is that the impacts of increasing atmospheric CO2, increasing deforestation, increasing black soot deposition and increasing abuse of natural ecosystems, will probably be more than we currently imagine, and different. 

Though I am reluctant to push this to the absolute extreme, the argument here is that, if the sum of the impacts of our present stewardship regime (bad joke) of the Earth are 'more and different' to what can happen within current parameters, then we really are setting ourselves up for a Global (social) transformation a couple of step-changes beyond what is currently being considered in 'mitigation and adaptation' scenarios. And we aren't in a position to anticipate these. Yet.

Which takes me at last back to my gripe. Focussing on weather extremes is short-term. Focussing on economic damage is short-term. Focussing on the evidence before our eyes is too narrow a view. If climate change is about anything, it's about the bigger picture. If sustainability is about anything, it's about the bigger picture. The value of a wood is greater than the sum of the value of each tree; the importance of finding a way to reduce our impact on our planet lies not in saving trees, or woods, it  lies in avoiding the awakening of the Kraken, of arousing Godzilla, of unleashing the rough monster that slouches towards Bethlehem to be born; it really is about keeping nightmares in the realm of the unreal.

Valuable free resource pool on climate adaptation (but only till Sunday)

It's a shame I didn't pick up on this earlier, but there are still a few days left to take advantage of FREE ACCESS to some useful and interesting papers on Cities and Climate Change, courtesy of the IIED (International Institute for Environment and Development).

The introductory article, here, explains the remit of the pieces. The paragraph below seems to provide a helpful context to understand this:

The theme for this issue of Environment and Urbanization (our fiftieth issue) draws on Mark Pelling’s book on Adaptation to Climate Change: From Resilience to Transformation. (4) The focus on resilience and transformation was conceived as a theme that is of relevance to all urban settings, namely how the capacities to withstand or recover from all direct and indirect impacts of climate change (resilience) can be developed while also contributing to the so much-needed transformation to a low carbon (local and global) economy where everyone’s needs are met – and to achieve this quickly enough to avoid dangerous climate change. This has, as a central component, the delinking of successful cities, towns and rural settlements (and their inhabitants’ consumption patterns) from high greenhouse gas emissions. Of course, these are inter-connected, since reducing greenhouse gas emissions globally reduces the direct and indirect impacts of climate change.

In all there is access, either on the main page, linked above, or attached to the articles (including the first), to around sixty pieces, all connected by the interface of Urban society, climate change action and the notion of resilience.

There's way more than a couple of days reading here, but recent commentary at Stoat (look at the comments thread, in particular), suggests that, as a resource, this will be of interest and value to a number of us who attempt to deal with such issues on the internet and in our thinking.

Enjoy the free access and make the most of the opportunity. This whole package is strongly recommended, not least because it raises interesting points about some of the implicit assumptions and principles which are used.

How to change things; could it be magic?

So, the discussion continues at Stoat about how to produce effective policy which balances present and future economic needs and benefits with emissions control.
So, like you do, I go on a trawl which gets diverted and before you know it I'm reading a neat new paper, Johannson et. al., at Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics:


The evolution of shipping emissions and the costs of regulation changes in the northern EU area
L. Johansson, J.-P. Jalkanen, J. Kalli, and J. Kukkonen
Atmos. Chem. Phys., 13, 11375-11389, 2013

in which the authors offer: "An extensive inventory of marine exhaust emissions is presented in the northern European emission control area (ECA) in 2009 and 2011..." Browse the paper, rather than the abstract: it's twenty minutes well spent.

So why mention it? The paper is interesting in itself for some of its details, such as that CO2 emissions from shipping in this area alone amount to around 500MT a year. But what makes it interesting in the context of this discussion is that it reviews the impact of specific regulation (in 2007) on emissions of Sulphur Dioxide, and relates certain connections between the costs, benefits and impact of the regulation.

First, in the period measured, SO2 emissions from shipping were better than halved. Second, the cost of this is estimated at about +10%. Third, the further introduction of retrofitted sulphur scrubbers would produce reductions proportionally larger than the comparable costs. (I think all of this is right...)

One of the conclusions of the paper is that slowing down cargo vessels by only 10% would result in even more SO2 (and CO2) reductions and save the shippers money. The paper does point out that it doesn't factor in the possible need to increase fleet sizes/movements to compensate for the extended travel times, but there is still a point here.

What would be the effect of reducing the National Speed Limit of road traffic (particularly haulage vehicles, but also personal vehicles) by a similar 10%? How much less fuel would be used? What cost savings would there be, and how much compensating increase of traffic would be needed?
Two points from this: the paper seems to indicate that the regulation of sulphur emissions over the past several years has resulted in considerable real reductions, at some cost (which does not appear to have restricted trade) to the emitters, for the benefit of all. Part of this no doubt is due to the fact that Maritime regulators have huge amounts of power (yes, they can shut down a fleet), so their rules are not ignored lightly. So; well-designed and enforceable regulation can produce results which, on the surface, represent a net benefit, not just for the regulated, but also for the affected.

The second point is that, following a similar logic, regulating behaviour by means of processes such as speed limits, or improving the design efficiency of diesel engines (see also the incredible improvements in Rail diesel systems over the past ten years), can produce the right kind of result without excessive constraints on either liberty or markets. It also means that (value chain ignored) the emitter is paying what cost there is.

Anyone got an opinion on this thought?

The COP-out; what a catalyst you turned out to be...

What is to be learned from the fiasco that is currently COP19? 

First, it appears that there is a sea-change in the rhetoric of certain developed nations. Where previously there had been some attempt to avoid being seen as a moral pariah, the examples of Australia, Canada, hosts Poland and other participants, show that the fear of domestic political damage is overriding the fear of international shame in responses to both mitigation and adaptation needs. Some folks are just flat out saying that they ain't gonna do nuthin' for mitigation, on the contrary, intend to follow domestic policies which run counter not just to climate change M&A but also pretty much all concepts of Sustainable Development. 

Their response indicates that rather than address the hugely complex ethical and practical difficulties of coping with Sustainability on a global as well as domestic scale, these players prefer to deny any relationship to responsibility past present or future, and express the intent to go down the short-term self-interested path. As a former teacher, this is reminiscent of certain schools which proclaim that 'bullying is nonexistent'. There is no such thing as an adolescent society devoid of an internal power/influence structure; it just takes subtly different forms. But in all (secondary) schools there are those who dominate and those who are dominated. Likewise, it is fair to say that there is no society which will escape the negative consequences of AGW down-the-line, and these players, in denying the reality, are simply deferring the problem to a period beyond their tenure (or even lifetime).

Second, the divide between have and have-not seems to be crystallising. Not just the rhetoric, but also the desires and intentions of the G20 (for example), are in conflict with those of the G77. One one side, the demand is: "you caused this problem, you ought to help fix it," on the other: "it isn't OUR problem, why should we?" 

It's difficult to be sure how this divide will develop over time, but the choices seem to be starkly twofold: 
1: Either we move towards a global society which is increasingly polarised on the basis of wealth (capacity to adapt), increasingly inequitable and unjust, and increasingly violent (what happens at metropolitan level when you have a strongly financially divided society?), in which scenarios of multiple-million deaths and permanent local/regional instability become the accepted 'necessary cost' (Collateral damage, anyone?), or 
2: We continue to struggle towards a generally more equitable and just society, where the distribution of the means of survival are managed and shared, according to the need of the recipient and the ability of the provider (Charity, anyone?), ie, seeking the win-win solution. (Yes, it can be argued that Australia is playing a particular variant of the zero-sum game, the Prisoner's Dilemma, and is opting to 'win' at the cost of the other).

The third (and probably most divisive) lesson is that Climate negotiations are going down an inexorable path to a blame-culture. This can be nothing but bad news. It's as if the developing nations ('victims') have decided that, since the 'noisy neighbours' won't play ball, they are going to proceed to litigation and counter-attack to achieve their objectives, in response to which the neighbours send out the rottweilers. This is very much a no-win game.

On the brighter side, I have a suggestion as to How to ensure that funds exist for fixing what's been broke, protecting what's at risk, and preparing for the unexpected.

The parallel is not exact, but more than 300 years ago, the largest need for investment, and the largest return on investment, came through international trade, conducted over the high seas. In response to market demand, and from pre-existing processes, Lloyd's of London was formed, to provide investors with greater security, and sailors with funds needed to set sail. Why can't we construct a similar organisation for Global Environmental (incl. climate) Capital? Existing entities such as the World Bank and the IMF, funds such as CCC or the corporate sustainability foundation trusts, can band together, with or without individual governments, as 'names', providing the capital to allow for underwriting of risks, for investment in M&A strategies, and for providing succour to the victims of disaster. This way, more would share the burdens, autonomy could be preserved, and what was needed could be provided where and when the need arose.

It's a thought.

It's amazing what we have in common; wanna live like common people?

Over at the warren, Eli makes mention of Gardiner's 'Perfect Moral Storm', a characterisation of the ethical complexities associated with climate change. Gardiner compares the moral dilemmas associated with climate change and the issues of mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, and intergenerational equity to the 'triple storm' which forms the centrepiece of the original story by Junger.

One of the matters which arises during Gardiner's discussion, and in Peter Singer's 'response' paper of the same year (2006), is that of the 'Tragedy of the Commons'. This is Hardin's highly influential analysis going back to 1968 of the difficulties of dealing with ecological and environmental problems, particularly (in his case) to do with overpopulation.

When you look at the dialogues and arguments surrounding COP19 (and all other climate policy debates), it is easy to see the influence of Hardin (and perhaps Gardiner), in the underlying principles which are being discussed - who should take responsibility, who should pay, who should benefit, etc. Gardiner provides the basis for a moral framework which supports the notion that developed nations need to support developing nations to avoid a future destruction of the 'commons' of the global ecosystem. Singer goes beyond this to argue that, regardless of the moral basis chosen, the result (about who should take responsibility) always goes back to the same source, not just for ethical reasons, but also for practical ones.

It had been a few years since I first flirted with this material, during my brief period as a postgrad in Environmental Ethics, so I duly refreshed. Following this up with some further reading, I came across the work of the remarkable Elinor 'Lin' Ostrom, with whom I had not previously been acquainted.

And so, by a roundabout course, I came across some weekend reading for Eli to enjoy, which I am sure he will, since the very first example cited in the book refers to the maintenance and management of levees in the USA. I'm also recommending it to Roger Sr, since it relates to his team's work on (local) resource vulnerability and climate, and to Roger Jr, since it relates to the fundamentals of 'right policy making', which I know he is enthusiastic about, and has quite a lot about sports.

So, here is the (open access) 'Sustaining the Commons' by Anderies and Janssen. Grown ups and interested parties can revert, of course, to the original material by Ostrom et al., but this is about four hour's worth of undergrad level light weekend reading, and therefore suitable for busy bunnies. Why bother? Well, an awful lot of what has been going the rounds recently, for example in my chosen rag the Guardian, has been very depressing. There are times when one gets close to the 'we're f***@d' position. Reading this both cheered me up and gave me some more thoughts to work on in my search for a redefinition of our generational social dilemma.

Please, read and enjoy.

For everything there is a season - tide and time

Over at the warren, Uncle Eli has posted about SLR, a subject I touched on last month, here, and here, including references to Grinsted's excellent material.

It occurs that the Average Josephine (IOW, most of the world) might look at the projections of sea level rise and, whilst registering that a change will have an impact, might reasonably ask why a meter or so of extra sea might be such a big deal. So here's an attempt to place this into a 'human' context.

On its own, a few centimetres of water 'added on' to the water level at any given beach or dockside is no big deal. This is because the other forces which have an effect on sea level at any given location are much stronger (they create more variability) than the underlying 'signal' of sea level.

First and most obvious is the effect of the tides. Whilst in some places sea level fluctuates by a few metres over the course of a day, in others the tidal range can top ten metres and more (up to around 15-16 m for some locations). In practical terms, coastal human habitation and business takes this into account, so in most places human activity takes places above the high tide level, for obvious reasons.

At certain times of year, specifically the Equinoctial Spring Tides, the various forces which interact to create tides and tidal ranges combine to create particularly high and low tides. It is not uncommon already for these to overreach the human adaptation level and to result in localised flooding, which is further worsened if these tidal periods occur in sync with strong weather conditions (in particular, depressions, often related to storms).

Now, the current range of projections for changes in sea level have to be considered in the context of historic tidal ranges and existing infrastructure and human-ocean interfaces.
For example, the 'averaged' sea level range globally hits around 79cm during Spring tides. This means that, overall, the shoreline would experience a few extra inches more or less. But in a local and regional context this 'average' is effectively meaningless, and is not reflected in the real experience of many coastal dwellers. For most people on coasts, the tides go up and down several metres.

If global average sea level rises by, say, half a metre, what does this mean for local impacts? And what effect does this have on local tidal ranges and, in particular, during the upper bound of the ranges (the Equinoctial Springs) and those occasions when these coincide with storm surges?

Well, it should not be difficult to work out that an extra 'average' SLR of 50cm is going to mean a rise of high tides, and of high springs, in the order of 2 - 5 metres of 'extra' sea. Given that a storm surge can increase sea levels (for example, in the Philippines) by another 4-5 metres, and you end up with places which are likely to experience regular (annual or more frequent) tidal surges in the range of 5 -10 metres. We have seen the horrific effects on one part of the world where a tidal surge of 5 metres, added to extreme weather conditions, has resulted in devastation and carnage. Now multiply this by all those places which are 'vulnerable' to such variability.

As an aside (because I'm not certain of the projected effects), it should be noted that a Spring tide normally produces currents twice as fast as Neap tides, but with eight times the power, or force. Anyone who has struggled to get out of the water onto a beach during an ebb in difficult conditions can have a sense of how much power is involved - it is, literally, an overwhelming force. 

It seems rational to presume that higher Springs will be associated with faster currents and therefore greater forces - resulting in more erosion, more localised damage and greater stress on infrastructure (including defences). So, the effect-multiplier of a few centimetres of extra sea level 'on average' produces impacts which can easily be seem to include, for example, the overwhelming of low-lying islands, or the inundation of coastal cites, oil refineries, nations (Bangladesh).

If all of this is the consequence of half a metre of sea level rise, what then is the consequence of a metre or more? Is it likely to be twice as bad? Or, given the 'effect multipiers, are we instead talking about a localised effect with a difference of an order of magnitude?

Finally, for the economically-minded amongst you, remember that an astonishing proportion of the world's trade is conducted across the oceans - around 90% of all trade goods is shipped at some point. Now, consider the impact on shipping of the changes outlined above. The cost of building tougher ships, the cost of building new, relocated shipping hubs (the World's three deepest 'ultratanker' and supercontainer ports are all vulnerable to rising sea level). The risks and losses, all to be paid for by someone.

A very high proportion of the Global population lives in the coastal strip - I think it's about 85% of the population. Not all of these people would be vulnerable in the way I outline above, but with sea level rise must come, inevitably, relocation and mass urban movement inland, fundamentally changing the dynamic geography of our society.

That's why sea level rise matters, and why a metre is more significant than half a metre.

NOTE also Simon Donner's eminently pragmatic contribution to the discussion of adaptation.

More out than in - outside physics, is it possible?

Yesterday in the Guardian, Tim Smedley reports on the forthcoming forum on Natural Capital Accounting. Link to the article here. 

It's an interesting feature, not least for the comments which follow it, which are clearly considered and sophisticated (so far!). Included among which is the response from the group setting up a 'counter forum, in the same city, Edinburgh, at the same time; 'Nature is not for sale'.

Lord Aaron's comment in the feed at the bottom of the article brings up one of the more significant problems in the area of Natural Capital Accounting: that it is placing a financial price on Natural Capital (the article cites the groundbreaking work done by Puma since 2010), and thereby making Nature marketable (in other words, natural assets can be traded, and 'environmental offsets' can become tradeable capital resources. If this were the direction that NCA goes into, it's easy to see that the Environment is likely to lose out again to vested interested/creative accounting, where it substitutes for accountability.

But it seems also that NCA can have a role to play. As the article shows, it becomes possible to place a relative price and cost against a return from exploitation. This in turn allows us to see where resources are being exploited rather than used Resourcefully- in other words, more is lost in the transition from the prime resource to the tradeable commodity, or product, than is gained in the short term. You can see where this could be of benefit, not just to the Corporates who now appear to be recognising that unsustainable exploitation means precisely that they cannot sustain, even in the mid-term, the end product which is the basis of their capital wealth and added value. And losing their core supply, even shifting the balance of Demand/supply, will hurt their businesses moving forward.

For a long time now, Many Environmentalists have been deeply suspicious of moves to subsume the World's natural resources into a discussion of Economy, of 'putting a price on Nature'. What the argument has often boiled down to is that the Value of a Natural Resource lies in more than the dollar signs against it - the price. And this in turn is driven by a division in the ways in which people view Nature and the World: whether it is something for us humans to use (you could call this the 'Genesis' perception), or is something to which we belong and for which we, as the species which can damage it, or unbalance it, have a duty of care (the 'Stewardship perception).

All of which relates to the principle of Resourcefulness. In particular, it serves to demonstrate why Resourcefulness must be about more than resources. It is good that someone is working hard to challenge the implicit presumptions or potential hazards embedded within Natural Capital Accounting, but sadly, for the organisation involved, the brute reality is that, whilst it can be argued that Nature should not be for sale, in fact, as a basis of the means of production, it is.

There is a temporal perspective to be considered here in relation to these matters - for climate debaters, the principle of 'trash now, pay later' is one of the monsters being strongly fought, consistently. Scientists try to tell politicians and the public what they are letting themselves in for, and then get berated for 'alarmism', because narrow focussed eyes don't look far enough down the line to account for the consequences of choosing net present profit over projected loss.

There is also a philosophical/existential principle, but this is a little harder to summarise briefly, so will have to wait for another post. It is about what it means to be human, in the World, with Others, and also about the concept of 'home' and its significance to us.

A parting thought. A while back, someone might have realised that Dodo represented a potentially valuable commodity as a foodstuff, like turkeys, for example, but to make it so, the supply chain would have needed preserving. Hungry sailors didn't tend to think that way.

Being Resourceful; can we fix it?

Recently I suggested that the idea of Sustainability, or Sustainable Development, contains an underlying negativity which can contribute to a resistance to change.

Instead, I suggested that it might be useful to adopt an alternative term; Resourcefulness. Though in retrospect I am tending towards the idea that Resourcefulness might be a subset of Sustainability; we shall see.

So, what do I mean by Resourcefulness?

First, and perhaps finally, this is a state of mind – an attitude towards the World and its component parts which is both responsible and creative – a predisposition towards the things of the World and Society. Resourcefulness explicitly implies that a response to a problem, demand, crisis, need or situation involves the application of intelligence, imagination and creativity. It also contains the assumption that the attitude to the case in point is one of seeking the opportunity in the situation (if there is one), and making the most of it (and the resources involved).

In itself, this is nothing especially original. Business and enterprise are full of examples of exactly this kind of approach (though often driven by necessity rather than disposition). Some commercial services are particularly focussed on this kind of thinking; others, driven by more immediate pressures on performance, seem to avoid it. In this sense, it looks like there could be a relationship between Resourcefulness and the management of Risk which points us towards something useful at a more sophisticated level of development.

One would expect Resourcefulness to include, specifically, an attitude to Resources. Examples of this might be Resource efficiency (making more from less), Natural Resource Economics, or more closely observed, the Circular Economy concept (I profess to admiration of the work of the Ellen MacArthur Foundation in this field). All of these, and other existing practises in Sustainability, such as Waste Management, can be included in the remit of the Resourceful Society, Business or Individual, but Resourcefulness should not be seen as being limited to an attitude to Resources alone.

This is because there are other kinds of Resources than simply the ‘stuff’ of the World. And there are approaches to all resource types which do not imply a relationship of use or exploitation; this is particularly important to understand, since Resourcefulness (the ‘creative’ predisposition) expects of us that we see the worth, or value of things and actions, not just in ‘net benefit’ or ‘utility’ terms, but also in terms of the ‘Goodness’ or ‘Rightness’ of these. This means that Resourcefulness goes beneath issues covered by Consequentialism, to the core Human Social values of Equity, Justice and (probably) Liberty.

This leads us to a fairly fundamental point of ‘Resourceful’ Action: it should be non-exploitative both in terms of resources, and also in terms of people. In other words, Resourceful Actions do not serve to take from one person or group in order to give to another. This runs counter to so much of modern Economic and Social theory that considerable effort must be spent to demonstrate that personal or commercial Wealth need not come at the cost of exploitation of Labour or Markets. For some, this will read as an impossibility, for others, akin to heresy (or Social Democracy), but it is the intention to undermine the model of ‘Competitive Advantage’ as best practice and seek, instead, a model of ‘Collaborative (Mutual) Advantage’.

One special strength of the concept of Resourcefulness is that it is Action-oriented, in other words, a Resourceful approach, instead of asking ‘what’s going wrong?’ or ‘who is to blame?’, asks ‘How do we make it better?’

It may seem to some experienced and knowledgeable observers that this appears to be a somewhat trivial and simplistic idea, but I believe that, in common with many important principles, Resourcefulness is both simple to grasp and put into action, but also deep and meaningful – the one does not exclude the other.

I’ll finish today with a reference to a childrens’ TV character. It is a statement of affirmation and intention, of predisposition to make things better:

“Can we fix it? YES WE CAN!”

Money talks, what is it saying?

Today's Guardian carries an interesting piece about the World Bank on moving forward on CC action. What is particularly interesting to me is that we are clearly thinking along similar lines, about communication, if nothing else. Here's what Rachel Kype says in the interview:

How important is getting the communications right?

We've started talking to behavioural psychologists and other disciplines about how to communicate so that you can convey urgency in a way that people can respond. There's a long history in the environment movement of fear-mongering and a) not providing alternatives or b) not having those fears realised. So we feel a responsibility to be able to communicate this in such a way that people can say: "OK, so what now?"

Extreme weather events is the place where the public and science and policy-makers seem to agree that they're prepared to accept the climate is having an impact. Obviously, that grabs people's attention and for a few weeks after superstorm Sandy you had everybody's attention, but then it starts to ebb away.

There is a particular problem in the US, which is the role of science in the society, which seems to be up for question, not just in the area of climate but elsewhere. Communicating science poses a set of challenges in the US that is not necessarily the case in other parts of the world.

Even more interesting is her take on the Language issue:

From your research, what have you learned about how to communicate more effectively?

The tendency with a lot of social movements is to talk to ourselves, so we develop language that we're comfortable with, that speaks to other environmentalists or other engineers but which means absolutely nothing to the lay public.

We're very reluctant or reticent to come up with language and idioms that will perhaps not express every little nuance in that one sentence, but which will actually resonate. We've known for a very long time that the phrase "sustainable development" is kind of clunky and we've never come up with anything better, and that's OK as long as we tell stories and build images and pictures about what we're really talking about.

There's lots of behavioural psychology that some of these words just land really cold: they don't mean anything and they don't speak to the emotional brain. What does "green" mean? It doesn't evoke very much.

Jim Kim feels very strongly that, if you're going to paint a picture of the future where it's sackcloth and ashes, don't be surprised if you don't have a long line of people following you. We have to paint a picture of opportunity.

It sounds to me like what they need is a little bit of Resourcefulness. 

The World Bank is a complex issue, but I know from personal experience that it has an important role to play in supporting Energy Development, security and poverty reduction in rising economies, so I'm happy to be counted as (at least in part) a fan, if not totally happy with everything it does.

Time to reconsider Sustainability and become more Resourceful instead?

Something is broken in our ability to communicate the problems and issues which beset our complex, struggling World. Well quite a few things, but in particular, we seem to have got lost in our efforts to express in simple terms the things which matter.

After '92 (maybe even before this) the meme of choice became 'Sustainability'; a useful catch-all which encapsulated the spirit of the messages coming out at the time - the need as a global society to live within our means.

But these days, it seems the term is losing its edge. Many commentators have pointed out that it has become cheapened by over-familiarity, that its many meanings and interpretations are so diverse, its marketing usage so overblown, that irrespective of the underlying values which the original usage implied, 'Sustainability' as a concept may itself no longer be sustainable.

The number of reasons why this has happened is legion, do not require reiteration here. But, for me, there is an issue which I have not seen much discussed, which is that the term and its conceptual underpinning are fundamentally negative.

In a nutshell, 'sustainable' implies a sense of 'survival', of making do, reduction, subsistence. For many of the developing nations this conception makes perfect sense, since survival in the face of adversity has been (though need not have been) a common theme in contemporary accounts of the 'needs' of these societies and their peoples. But the implicit hair-shirted self-sacrifice which so often is cited hand-in-hand with Sustainability has become, in the developed world, as much an albatross as a rallying-call.

Sustainable living as an fundamental idea still has its value and merit, that has not and should not change, but the time has come to put aside the hair shirt and try to find a new 'overriding' conception of what it is we need to do, individually, collectively, politically, economically. A conception which permits the best of humanity to shine and points forwards rather than backwards.

The time has come for us to be Resourceful. To apply Resourcefulness to our problems and issues and become "ingenious, capable, and full of initiative, especially in dealing with difficult situations" (Collins Dictionary) or develop, as Wiktionary describes resoucefulness:"  "the ability to cope with difficult situations, or unusual problems".

We can also be more aware of the resources we use - as, for example, via a circular economy. We can direct the best use of the resources available to us so that the most possible is made from them. We can apply our unique characteristic - ingenuity - to the multitude of environmental demons which beset us, whether we consider mitigation or adaptation or both, and apply well-found principles to seek imaginative solutions.

It is probably no coincidence that as a word 'Resourcefulness' is phonetically and structurally similar to the Buddhist concept of 'mindfulness', implying a constant and considered awareness of what is around us as we live, and the causal consequences of actions, inactions, decisions and desires. For me, there is a strong sense that this has the potential to be a truly powerful and worthwhile re-alignment of the language of future-building. 

Sit back for a few seconds and think about the idea, the message, the implications; I hope, like me, you find it positively stimulates the imagination and leaves you replete with the sense of possibility.

Resourcefulness is a fundamentally positive conception. It is pragmatic - it implies a process involving thought and decisions and action which is so necessary to the global environment. It is also a very Human concept - it applies to people in particular, but also to groups of people of all kinds. It also connects us more directly to the things of the planet, be they raw material, product, or finance, as things we are bound up with, rather than objects of our intercession.

As of this moment, for me it is an idea which requires more fleshing out, some further defining and limiting - otherwise it is in danger of suffering the same fate as 'Sustainability' - of meaning both too much and too little at the same time. This is work I and I hope others will be undertaking, to raise the bar, change the negative into a positive, and start actually working on these many problems of our World with Hope rather than Resignation.

This is the message: the time has come for us to be more Resourceful, and to use our Resourcefulness for the betterment of the human condition.

Side note: Similar usage of the term, relating to sustainable practice in the built environment, has been used recently in Architecture and design, for example, here.