A new approach
Where we are starting from
What we are up against
Where we might be falling down
How we might do things better
Where we are starting from
Not enough people have 'gone green'
Environment is our life support system
Environmentalism began at Yellowstone
We're bigger than we think
Green lifestyles cover multiple areas
People have the power
NEXT: What we are up against
Not enough people have 'gone green'
A glance out of any window, or into any window, reveals that the environmental movement has failed, so far, in securing widespread adoption of green lifestyles. Sure, recycling is taking off and more people are buying organic food (probably because they think it's healthy and tastes better, rather than to enhance the countryside) and, of course, some people are being very green indeed. But overall, the picture is dismal. Traffic is increasing year on year by around 2 per cent (albeit with a few blips), aviation is soaring, we are walking and cycling less than ever, the acceleration in food-miles of the average shopping basket is beginning to defy mathematics, we are using more and more water at home, the cupboard under the sink is filled with ever more powerful detergents in our quest for cleaner homes, we overheat our houses and offices, we repair items less and less and insist on new ones instead, and we are obsessed with interest levels on savings rather than where our money is being invested.
The hard truth is that too few people have 'gone green' to make enough of a difference at the society level. Green, ethical living across a broad range of behaviours remains niche and common only among certain types of people.
At the moment, the social groups most open to environmental messages appear to be the more affluent, upwardly mobile, professional and young. Interestingly these people are likely to be among the heaviest consumers with perhaps the most to change in their lives. Women seem to be more receptive to the way environmental messages are presented than men, who can see being environmentally friendly or green as a softer or more feminine thing that many of them cannot aspire to. There are particular challenges with communicating environmental messages to low income groups who are often overwhelmed with everyday concerns, to ethnic minorities for whom environment is not an established part of their culture, and to older people who might feel they have done their bit for society and should be allowed to live out their lives as they wish. 'Gadget Man' and 'White Van Man' have also been identified as particular challenges for the green movement.
Environment is our life support system
One of the accusations frequently flung at environmentalists in badly chosen public bars is that we are more concerned about the welfare of newts and earwigs than human beings. After all, how can they be as important? Some people even see the environment as a bolt-on extra to human society that we could well do without if we had to. It's only another thing to worry about from an already long list that includes much more urgent and apparently important issues, such as crime, poverty, natural disasters, education, racism, etc. Even among those who enjoy a countryside walk or value wildlife, there is little understanding of the real importance of the environment.
In trying to get people to value it, we often seek to gain recognition that the environment is important from an aesthetic and human well-being point of view. After all, everyone would like their grandchildren to have the chance to see their favourite wild animal or area of countryside. We talk too about the interconnected web that is the world of wild plants and animals, and how an upset in one area can send shock waves through the whole system. Neglect the earwig, and you might say goodbye to the skylark too. Wild plants in particular, we tell people, are important for developing new and better food plants, identifying new medical drugs and so on, although people might think that doesn't hold anymore because genetic engineering will enable us to design new plants in the laboratory without needing to put our shoes on and go outside.
Few people seem to understand that the environment is important because it keeps us alive. It provides our life support system, feeding us with oxygen, water, food and the means for shelter. Like someone in an intensive care unit, we rely on it totally. And like the vulnerable mass of tubes, machines, switches and flashing lights in the hospital, it probably doesn't take much for one small hiccup to bring the whole environment 'machinery' to a grinding halt. Put simply, if we don't take care of the environment, it just might not take care of us.
In 1991 an experiment in the Arizona desert in the US proved that it would not be easy to create an artificial life support system for humankind. In the Biosphere 2 project, eight people were sealed in a huge glass structure with 4000 species of plant and animal with a mission to be self-sufficient for two years. The 'planet in a bottle' covered an area of just over a hectare and included living areas, farmable land, a mini-tropical rainforest, a bit of desert and even a piece of ocean with coral reef. On paper, the system was self-perpetuating and sustainable, and the inhabitants able to live happily ever after. But the experiment went horribly wrong. The sealed atmosphere inside the biosphere went out of balance, key animals such as pollinators died out, and other animals and plants expanded out of control. A review of the project in 1996 concluded: "There is no demonstrated alternative to maintaining the viability of the Earth. No-one yet knows how to engineer systems that provide humans with the life-supporting services that natural ecosystems produce for free."
The fragility of the whole Earth system is perhaps best expressed by counting up the number of planets that we know to support life. It's a chance in a million that things ended up right on Earth and a sobering thought that a dead planet is the norm.
The trick might be to communicate humankind's own selfish reasons for protecting the integrity of the environment without falling into the trap of sounding gloomy, alarmist or apocalyptic. After all, we've been trying that and it doesn't seem to work.
Environmentalism began at Yellowstone
Environmentalism goes back further than we might at first think. In the 19th century, the first signs of apprehension about how our surroundings were being treated were already emerging, focusing on the threat to special landscapes in particular. In the US the first national park was set up at Yellowstone in 1872, out of awe for nature's splendour, and in the UK the National Trust emerged in 1895 out of concern over the effects of development and industrialisation. Our own national parks started appearing in the 1950s, though more the result of the growing 'countryside for the people' call perhaps than concern over landscape and ecology.
It was not until the 1960s that apprehension over humankind's relationship with nature gave way to growing and widespread disillusionment with 'progress' and a degree of real worry for the future. It was a time of idealism and 'who are we, what are we, why are we' thinking that found its focus from growing environmental degradation, particularly industrial and agricultural pollution of air and water. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring made it clear that the scientists didn't always get it right.
Populations began to explode and simple sums were done that came up with massive projected figures for the number of people on tomorrow's planet. Schoolchildren were told to draw bar charts that looked like an ever steepening flight of stairs. The concept of billions had arrived.
In the 70s the forests shrank, the world's big 'game' animals were no longer fair game, acid rain was identified and the fragility of energy supplies became apparent. Whaling, Antarctica, 'monotonisation' of the farming landscape, and the ozone layer made it onto the environmental map.
In the 80s growing traffic and its voracious appetite for new roads took the gloss off the great car economy, paving the way for showdowns later between people and bulldozers on hillsides and in woods in southern England.
Towards the end of the 80s, concern over the environment snowballed. In the European elections in 1989 the Green Party spectacularly won 15 per cent of the vote in the UK, although the first past the post system denied it any seats. Many people seemed to have swapped their Thatcher-era Union Jack underpants for green ones. Even Margaret Thatcher. She announced in 1989 at the Conservative Party Conference that she was a "true friend of the earth".
The term 'sustainable development' was invented. With the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, hopes were raised but the dreams remained unfulfilled. After the summit ended, many activists felt that the political mainstream may have colonised the agenda but that little action had been forthcoming. A banner hoisted on Nelson's Column said: "Words failed us."
During the decade it became clear to more people that our rubbish wouldn't go on fitting into the holes in the ground we had left for it, global warming became indisputable (although some people continued to dispute it), water stress and more violent weather took hold, and El Nino became an unlikely buzzword. Finally burning rainforests filled our television screens with smoke.
A new millennium and there is almost constant news of increasing global temperatures, retreating glaciers, rising sea levels and collapsing ice shelves. Kyoto has arrived, and perhaps almost gone; predictions of peak oil are coming thick and fast; the fuel-hungry 4x4 has burst onto the UK market and accelerated quickly.
Beards and sandals, samba bands and placards, rubber dinghies and treehouses... the traditional images associated with those concerned about the environment are giving way to the white coats of scientists and the suits of politicians as climate change in particular engages the establishment. There are new frightening images of hurricanes, fire and cracking ice to absorb, and the dolphin, the polar bear and even the suburban sparrow have become the unfortunate symbols of a deteriorating environment.
We're bigger than we think
We often underestimate the range of players in the 'green movement'. In effect, it is anyone, any organisation or any institution involved in presenting information, developing or implementing policy, making decisions, or campaigning on environmental issues.
So the green movement is not just the usual suspects - the more obvious campaigning organisations such as Friends of the Earth or Greenpeace - but a broad spectrum encompassing politicians with an environmental remit, political advisers, central government institutions such as Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, local government departments promoting sustainability, statutory bodies like Sustainable Development Commission, academics working on the science behind the environment, communications specialists working to promote better and more productive links between providers and receivers of information, green businesses attempting to generate jobs from green behaviour, environmental commentators, campaign groups, consultants, authors and journalists. It's a huge framework with many interconnections, and sometimes no interconnections at all.
Green lifestyles cover multiple areas
'Green behaviours' are specific lifestyle choices that reduce personal environmental impact and help ensure consumption of resources is sustainable at a society level. A fully green lifestyle involves ethical choices over a broad range of behaviours, including:
- Transport: Buying greener cars, minimising use of cars, doing without a car, using public transport, walking or cycling as a means of transport rather than just a form of recreation.
- Holidays, leisure and travel: Choosing locations, activities and transport modes to help the environment.
- Waste: Refusing excessive packaging, reusing packaging and other items, minimising waste, recycling, composting, disposing properly of unwanted goods.
- Food: Buying local produce, choosing organic items, avoiding depleted wild foods, adopting 'seasonality', reducing meat consumption, growing food at home.
- Energy use: Turning down heating, using low-energy lighting, switching off appliances fully, reducing energy demand through less 'home mechanisation', insulating properly, sourcing greener energy.
- Chemicals: Reducing use of polluting chemicals, such as detergents, bleaches and other cleaning fluids, and garden and houseplant chemicals.
- Materials and resources: Refusing items made from depleted resources such as tropical timber, actively seeking goods made from recycled materials such as waste paper, avoiding clothing and other products arising from trade in endangered plants or animals.
- Water use: Cutting consumption, cutting waste, reusing, home gathering.
- Consumer goods: Repairing rather than replacing, passing on unwanted goods to others, disposing of items properly at the end of their life.
- Finances: Choosing environmentally responsible savings schemes, bank accounts, mortgages, pensions.
- Participation: Donating money, joining organisations, taking part in voluntary activities.
- Voting: Casting votes on environmental grounds.
- Bearing witness: Promoting environmentally friendly behaviour to others.
People have the power
People tend to blame government for environmental problems and expect it to sort everything out; government itself might blame the globalised, consumption-based economy for resource problems; business and industry would probably answer that they are simply providing what the people want at the price they're willing to pay.
But people continually underestimate the power of individuals to change the world. One of the reasons often given for not doing more to help the environment at a personal level is "What difference can I make?" There is a presumption that one's own activities are insignificant and therefore irrelevant.
People also often forget that, by definition, they have the ultimate power in a democracy. Although they tend to blame governments for the state of things, they elect those governments. Similarly, although they might distrust business, individuals are the ones who provide companies with their profits and they could disable them at a stroke of the wallet. Imagine, Coca Cola, one of the biggest multinationals on the planet, would be brought to its knees in one week if everyone, everywhere stopped drinking its product. People really do have the power, if only they would wield it.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead once famously said: "Never doubt that a small group of dedicated people can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has." Most people need more reassurance on this. They seem too small a cog, and society too large a wheel, for there to be any real motivation to take the plunge and change their way of doing things. They will only act if they think others are acting too. To bring about mass change in behaviour, we have to convince the individual that everyone is acting together and that they need to get on board or else get left out.
NEXT: What we are up against