Know Your Place
Wednesday, February 13
I wish I could fly
This intriguing, if badly-scanned, graph appears in today's Guardian. It's a stark illustration of the pollution caused by the global shipping industry. The darker the area, the more particulate pollution its suffers from - and some of the darker patches overlay major shipping lanes very precisely.More interesting than this, though, is what the Guardian's report reveals about shipping's contribution to climate change. In short: it's big. This is interesting because, in the ongoing battle to target the villains in the global emissions game, shipping has escaped almost unscathed. Keys have been scratched down the paintwork of SUVs, camps held outside airports, power station chimneys climbed and locked onto. Yet all the time the world's vast container ships, backbone of the global economy, have been going about their merry business polluting the planet in order to bring us the latest straight-to-landfill must-haves. And nobody's said a thing.
But the most interesting thing about this story, to me, is this:
This graph - which is also badly-scanned, not to mention wonky - is the big story. It compares the relative emissions of aviation and shipping - and look which comes out on top. Shipping produces 4.5% of global industrial emissions; aviation just 2%.For a while I've been increasingly uncomfortable about the green movement's intense and, I think, irrational focus on airline emissions as a major target for their climate change campaigning. I think environmentalists have made a big mistake in making this such a major issue, and I think they're going to regret it.
Why? Firstly because, as this report shows, aviation is not the biggest problem. Car traffic is a bigger problem. Home energy wastage is a bigger problem. Forest destruction is a bigger problem. Shipping, it seems, is a bigger problem. Aircraft emissions may be the fastest-growing cause of emissions, but they're not the biggest, by a long chalk. And how fast are shipping emissions growing? Does anyone even know? I doubt it.
But this is not the main problem. The main problem is a typically green refusal to try and grasp human psychology. Flying is, I think, to most people, one of the great unalloyed benefits of 'progress.' People love it - not the journey itself, perhaps, but the destination. We can go to places our grandparents never dreamed of, cheaply and fast. People love this. They will cling to it, and do. Going all-out to tackle flying, in this context, is effectively an attack on peoples' aspirations. Once again, the greens end up looking like they want to stop people enjoying themselves. Out comes the puritan instinct, so badly-hidden, and suddenly we're all playing I-fly-less-than-you in public. It turns people off. It's dull and lentilly and counter-productive.
So why do it? It's not politically sensible. It's not tackling the biggest problem out there. It alienates people. If you really want to stop climate change (and in my view it's too late, but feel free to try) this is a suicidal way to do it. It resurrects all the old doubts people have about the greens and, instead of inspiring them, makes them feel guilty.
If I was running Greenpeace, say, or Friends of the Earth or any other big cheese green NGO, I know what I'd do. I'd take virtually everyone off my aviation campaign, and stop beating the public around the head with their desire to take their kids on holiday (oh, and did I mention that most of the environmentalists I know fly far more than Joe Public ever will?) I would put all of those people to work on my forests campaign, and I would shift the main focus of my climate change work from something negative to something overwhelmingly positive: protecting the world's rainforests.
This is a win-win-situation. The great forests of the world are falling, still, at a rate of knots. Climate change or no climate change, this is a planetary tragedy. Stop the destruction and you help stop climate change anyway. You also save thousands of species, the homes of tribal peoples and the last untouched wildernesses of the Earth. Best of all, you give the public a positive message: 'help us save the great forests and stop climate change', rather than 'don't go on holiday and stop climate change.'
That would make sense to me. Granted, it wouldn't give us the familiar thrill we get from telling people what not to do - but it does seem far more likely to actually work.
Posted by Paul at 5:55 PM 
7 Comments
I agree about the forests business.
But with the shipping, it's still the case that it uses far less energy to transport a shipload of goods, than to transport the same goods the same distance by air.
Shipping represents more fuel in total because a lot more goods are shipped than flown.
The trouble with getting a green message over to people is that it can be reduced to: "if you really want to stop carbon emissions, the best thing you can do is walk off a cliff".
I'm not sure this is an either or. Especially if you're talking about the focus of these big NGOs. If you look at FOE for example, they are currently campaigninhg for the UK's share of international aviation AND shipping to be included in the Climate Change Bill they've managed to campaign successfully for. There is also work ongoing internationally by green campaign groups for international agreements to tackle shipping emissions. I agree that it's not getting the level of attention that aviation is, but it's also not being ignored.
Aviation is not the biggest source of CO2 but as you say it is growing, and it's growing fast. If it's not tackled but continues to grow at the current rate, it will be a startlingly big share of our CO2 within a matter of years. It does need confronting and in truth if we do want to reduce CO2 emissions significantly then we do have to reduce aviation. It can't be ignored.
As for rainforests, well again, if you look at FOE, they are launching a huge new piece of work on global biodiversity loss that's going to get going over the next few months. That will no doubt incude rainforests, although it's a broader brush than that and probably rightly so. If an NGO thinks properly, it can tackle climate change emissions and biodiversity loss simultaneously.
In my humble opinion, if you only want to promote policies that won't "turn people off" then we're unlikely to stand a chance of stopping the problem of climate change. The problem is probably more one of how to persuade people to adopt new lifestyles than it is in not promoting these changes in the first place. And to be fair to FOE and others, they do put a lot of work in to communicating their messages positively and in a way that will engage the public.
Peter - true about goods, but I was primarily talking about the focus on individuals flying. As Neil says, and rightly, most intelligent NGOs campaign more widely than this - but what's the message people hear? And what's the one that is put out the most? It's the Climate Camp/'Binge Flying'/Planes Are A Sin message. nothing to do with freight, everything to do with harrying the public.
Neil's quite right to say that we need people to change their lifestyles. This is why, as I have written here many times, I don't think we can stop climate change. People are not going to voluntarily change their lifestyles, or not many of them anyway, and for greens to imagine otherwise is pie in the sky. And banging on about flying is only going to make them retrench, not rethink.
The reality is - and everyone in the big NGOs knows this - that if there is any chance of action at all it will come through government diktat, not voluntary measures. Western Governments forcing planes from the sky (with taxes rather than bombs)and paying Brazil and Indonesia not to destroy their forests (rather than encouraging them to plant palm oil plantations)is the only way you might stand a snowball's chance in hell of reducing emissions in the necessary timeframe.
That, as we all know, is not going to happen either - or at least, not yet. But I reckon it stands even less chance of happening if greens continue with the big strategic error that their aviation campaign has turned out to be.
I agree that it is wrong to focus on a few specific bogimen, and it certainly isn't either/or. I also agree that just doing the guilt thing is counter productive, but it is still important to educate that less consumption of anything is the only way there can be an acceptable future or even presence. The government can aid change with the right policies, but the fuel price demos have shown that there has to be a bottom up support. They have to work together. I think the carrot and stick way is likely to create the best results. Show the consequences of unfettered consumption, but also show that there are benefits of reducing consumption, and that it creates or sustains a more beautiful world.
Instant gratification is our reactive brain at work. The linked post is about time management, but gives a very good layman's description of how the the rational and reactive brain work, an understanding essential in creating effective campaigns.
Thanks for drawing attention to the villain in the shadow, but here a link to a page I recently found with very similar maps of aviation pollution and environmental consequences. If you hover over one of the maps you will see a projection for future figures. Just so that aviation is not let off the hook too easily.
However, the real villain is neither the plain nor the ship, but as you rightly pointed out consumption of the goods which need to be transported. We must address the root of the problem, which goes even deeper than consumption. Why do people have the need to consume so much?
Posted by: 
judyofthewoods at 1:39 PM
I think your last line says it all, Judy, and asks the key question. There is nothing rational about our desire for continued consumption, and therefore rational alternatives and rational proposals won't stop it. Why is advertising so effective? Why do we want the latest everything? Why has the whole world caught this disease? It's not about providing material necessities anymore, so what is it about?
If we knew the answer we could perhaps begin to act to change things. Psychology again. But one thing's for sure: persuasion will not cut it. This is a primal addiction.
It's because the world has allowed its values to be discarded. Instant gratification and sensual pleasure are the consumer paradigms.
Some may not like what I am about to say but the reasons why the west in particular is so fixed on consumption is because we have lost religion. Christianity encourages us too look for hope beyond stock markets and joy more spiritual than material.
