“If everyone does a little, we will achieve a little.  Every BIG helps.” David Mackay, Sustainable Energy Without The Hot Air, 2009

“Sweden has invented a word to encourage people not to fly.  And it’s working.” The European Sting, 6 June 2019

You don’t have to be Nina Simone to be misunderstood.  As long as what you say is not what the other person wants to hear, it may be surprisingly hard not to be.

Individual action 

There is a widespread belief that, when it comes to climate breakdown, individual actions are insignificant.  That only politicians and large corporations can do anything meaningful.  So if climate breakdown bothers you, lobby and protest but don’t worry about how you live.

Did not the great David Mackay endorse this view?  After all, anything we do individually is little in the scheme of things and only big changes can save us. 

Err, no.  He was not conflating individual action with token gestures.  What he meant was that only large changes in our way of life and/or means of production will suffice.  And if we place all of our trust in the latter – in science and technology to sort out emissions capture or heat reflection or nuclear fusion –  we are taking a gamble.  Blind faith in science in the 21st century is as scientific as blind faith in spirits in the 12th century.

When people asked him what they could do in their own lives, Mackay did not say “Don’t bother; just lobby Parliament” but instead suggested individual actions that make a difference.  They are ‘big’ personal actions, such as putting on more clothing in the winter, changing your diet, not buying clutter, driving less, stopping flying; and, for those who can afford it, switching to an electric vehicle, installing a heat pump, re-building your home …  What Mackay meant, when he remarked that if we all do a little we will achieve a little, was that actions that are trivial in percentage terms (like turning off a laptop instead of leaving it on standby, for instance) remain trivial in percentage terms when they are aggregated, whereas the sum of significant changes we take individually is significant in aggregate.  What we do nationally or globally is the sum of what we do as individuals.  Politicians do what we vote for and corporations sell what we buy.

Campaigning – spreading the message – is also important.  But if we only campaign, those in power may be forgiven for doubting our sincerity.  We need both public engagement and private action: neither on its own will suffice.

But some of us (I include myself) are good at inventing reasons for inaction.  For example, a common myth is that you might as well fly because the plane is going anyway.  That might be true if we were ruled by a dictator who imposed a schedule of flights regardless of passenger numbers.  In the real world, airlines, like other commercial businesses, respond to demand.  Arguing that a personal decision not to fly makes no difference is like arguing that, if you leave the house wearing a coat early in the morning when it’s still cold, you will wear it all day, however hot it gets – because any incremental change in temperature, of 0.1 degrees say, is unlikely to be the trigger that makes you take it off.

In Sweden, a national campaign against flying (“flygskam”) appears to be having an effect.  During Q1 2019, Swedish air traffic reportedly fell by 5%  (Daily Telegraph, 31/5/19) or 8% (European Sting, 6/6/19), bucking the overall EU trend of a rise by 4.4% in the same period (Daily Telegraph).  At the end of May, the chief executive of SAS told a Norwegian newspaper that he was convinced flygskam was behind the slump; and his comments have been echoed more recently by airline chiefs around the world. 

We too can have such an impact if we choose.

Motivation

The trouble is that we need to believe a gentler way of life will make us happier.  If we don’t, then we will carry on with dubious rationalizations for inaction.  We will continue to believe in climate unicorns, just as some of our politicians believe in Brexit unicorns.  Carbon sucking will save us, or nuclear fusion, or fuel cells.  We might think we’re superior to Donald Trump (“America’s got a clean climate”), but the self-delusion will differ only in degree.

In the last couple of years, several economists and commentators have challenged the conventional wisdom of economic growth.  Kate Raworth (Doughnut Economics, 2017) has reiterated Donella Meadows’ 1970s message that growth is not to be desired for its own sake: that we need to curb consumption and live within planetary boundaries.  George Monbiot (Out of the Wreckage, 2018) is more forceful in his denunciation of the planet-wrecking economy in which we live.

But neither of these authors really addresses the problem of how we motivate ourselves to live more simply.  Perhaps others have and I just haven’t discovered them; but for the most part, environmentalists seem to be presenting their version of Project Fear.

Fear aside, where is the motivation for change?  Isn’t a life without foreign travel pretty dull?  Won’t fine dining, a large car, and a big house make life more fun?  Is it really true that shopping doesn’t make us happier? 

Speaking personally, some of the holidays I have enjoyed the most have been in the UK.  I struggle to see evidence today to support what once might have been true, namely that those who are well travelled are more culturally refined than those less so.  The business world claims that face-to-face meetings are so much better for doing business than video conferencing, but where is the evidence?  Agreed it’s nice to put a face to a name; and we have the technology to do so without queuing at airports or tucking into boring buffets in internationally monochrome hotels.

It’s not as though we cannot travel long distances.  The Manchester University academic Kevin Anderson doesn’t fly but sometimes attends international conferences via boat and train.  We need a mindset whereby the journey is part of the experience.  Travelling less and more slowly is not to preclude travelling entirely.  We might even enjoy it more.

In my own experience, eating out is ok occasionally, but has the disadvantage that one has to get home afterwards.  Like shopping and holidays, it seems to be all the more enjoyable if it is infrequent.  

I don’t think I’m that unusual in having such feelings about travel, food and possessions.  Most economists I suspect would disagree, pointing out that the evidence from people’s behaviour suggests otherwise.  But if we are addicted to consumerism, is behaviour a reliable barometer of contentment?  Are addicts happy in their addiction?

Education might help us, if we could find a place for the meaning of life in the national curriculum.    Schools have the advantage of starting with minds whose prejudices have not yet been formed.  The physicist Niels Bohr thought that new ideas succeed not because their opponents are persuaded by them, but because such opponents eventually die out; and the next generation is open to change.

Perhaps foolishly, I am more optimistic.  It is not too late for any of us to change our attitudes.  But unless we do, we’re liable to pin our faith on climate unicorns – the existence of which is a matter of some doubt.