We are all Green now

The current US President George Bush and the Australian Prime Minister John Howard have, interesting enough, simultaneously announced they will act on global warming. Bush and Howard were the last important hold outs, and their announcements signal the start of a new age.

There will still be argument about exactly how to act, but the principle that action is required has been established. Slowly but surely, politics will be reshaped to focus on dealing with the greenhouse gas emissions problem.

What is most striking when we look at the current political situation is the triumph of the set of ideas that have become known as “green”. Energy policy, transport policy, urban design, pollution, habitat destruction - these were the key issues of concern to environmentalists from the outset and they are now central to the global warming debate.

I first came in contact with these ideas when I went to university in 1975. The book Limits to Growth had recently come out and a series of commentators were ringing alarm bells about the state of the planet. Responding to this wind of change, my very first essay as an undergraduate was on transport policy.

Some of these ideas were off the mark in their predictions, underestimating the potential in new forms of organisation and technology, but the basic message - that there were physical limits to economic expansion - was right. However, just as this concern started to coalesce and governments act, there was a sea change in world affairs and concerns about the physical environment were pushed into the background.

Basically, a new version of Rightist ideology, known as neo-conservatism, which focused on markets and in particular large corporations as drivers of global development, arose to challenge the authority of governments.

Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, who championed these ideas, were elected leaders of their countries, beginning a trend to leaders who disparaged the role of government in social development.

At the same time, more capable information technologies enabled new forms of industrial organisation, higher profitability and the rise of industrial and financial markets. Once the Cold War ended, full-blown globalisation occurred and it was about economics, everything else lagging far behind.

Concerns about the physical environment, population growth, resource depletion and pollution faded into the background, and increasingly so did governments. At the end of the 1980s, warnings were sounded about what the pollution from fossil fuels was doing to the global climate, but this was mostly ignored as globalisation got into full swing.

Those of us who were concerned with the environment all those decades ago did not think of ourselves as “green” as such. For most of us it was a question of balance. It was obvious to us that economic development had to be matched with social fairness and environmental responsibility, otherwise trouble would ensue. Many thought it would the social inequality - the great problem of the previous two centuries - that would cause the crisis, but this was not to be.

I sometimes think my own concern with “balance” comes from my early childhood, most of which was spent in the bush. Often we had no electricity, and no running water, so such things were not taken for granted. Furthermore, you could die all too easily if you failed to pay attention to the environment. Getting lost could mean death by thirst or exposure, and a careless mistake could burn out property and threaten life. In the bush, especially at night, you can feel the vast power of nature, and you know to ignore at your peril.

So the ideas of the environmentalists, that we had to pay attention to the natural world and not get so caught up in the value of our own clever creations, was to me just common sense.

Watching Bush and Howard squirm as they change direction, without, of course, ever admitting that they got it wrong before, just seems like the world moving back into better balance. Of course we have to pay attention to what the waste from our inefficient use of fossil fuels is doing, and how much natural resources we have left. As we now know from the images sent back from space, big as it is, this huge world is in fact finite.

So what does it mean now that the world is going “green”?

It means markets and business will recede from their primary role in driving development. Our leaders are scrambling to try to reconstruct the issue in terms of economics, hence the focus on carbon trading. Howard wants to let the “market” decide what the cost of carbon should be, but this won’t work. There just isn’t time to let markets work this out, with no guarantee that they ever would.

When disaster strikes, like earthquake, drought or war, government must lead and markets follow, and this is how it will be with global warming.

It means science and education will grow in importance and commerce will become less important. We desperately need more information, not just relating to climatology, hydrology, meteorology, biology, botany, and so on, but about everything in regard to how our hyper-modern society works.

The actual physical changes in environmental processes are one thing, but we also need to know what they are doing to how we live and how we must change. Just about all the physical and social sciences will need a huge and rapid injection of resources so we know what is going on and what to do about it.

It means a new economy will take shape, based in becoming more efficient (in energy and not just monetary terms) in our dealings with the physical world, and so it will operate on new principles. It will still be centred on technology and organisation, but it will see different approaches : to work, to decision-making, and to success and failure. Over time the huge transnational corporations that now dominate the economy will likely lose out to smaller, faster and smarter forms of business.

It means everyone will need to pay more attention to their daily lives. Health, domestic activity, work, play, socialising and political participation will all be transformed by the new rules. Everyone will need to become more responsible in how they do things, how they relate to each other and how they spend their money.

It also means some hugely important issues which have been ignored will at last receive serious consideration. First will be the question of what constitutes socio-economic development anyway - is it just GDP growth, or should other factors be included? Another will be global governance - can we deal with global warming without global government, and how can we have that if wealth is distributed so unevenly? And another will be population growth - just when is enough people enough?

Dealing with global warming is the biggest challenge faced by civilisation since at least the long war from 1914 to 1945, or perhaps the Black Death that wiped out as much as a third of Europe’s population in late medieval times, or maybe ever. If we are smart, we’ll get by OK, and we’ll fix up a few abiding problems along the way.

Everyone is getting on board now, even the tardy travellers, and we can finally set out on the voyage. There will still be some fighting over the tiller, and just which direction to head in, but we are finally under way. It’ll be rough for a while, but as long as we all remember that we are in this boat together, chances are we’ll make it.