The Guardian has launched a new environmental campaign the 10:10 campaign, in which you can sign up to cut down your CO2 output by ten percent by 2010. Alex was annoyed by its smugness and woollyheadedness, while Charlie showed the practical difficulties in complying with the suggestions made on how to cut down, as quite a few of them are only partially under your own control. If you live in a listed building e.g. you can’t put up solar panels, though even if it was allowed it won’t make much difference in Edinburgh.
If I look at my own situation, things are much easier. Take a look at the list of suggested cuts. If we can assume that Dutch CO2 admission is equal to the UK average, i.e. 14 tonnes annually, then I’ve already reached the goal of ten percent reduction, through two simple facts: I don’t drive (1.5 tonnes) and I don’t fly (1.2 tonnes). Together, that’s a reduction of a whopping 19 percent on the average person’s CO2 output. They’re also the two biggest reductions you can make.
But I can do this because I live in a public transport friendly city in a public transport friendly country, and I don’t need to travel abroad for my work. Many people are less lucky. You can try to live without a car, but if you can’t get to your job any other way because there isn’t any public transport that goes near it, you’re screwed. And that’s the weakness of this campaign, as anything other than a publicity stunt, a way of showing that there is an electorate that’s serious issues, even if smug with it sometimes. Real change needs more, as you can’t expect people to make environmentally friendly decisions in their day to day lives without changing the system to make those decisions possible. The Dutch Socialist Party has always had the principle that it should not be the workers, but the capitalists who have to pay for the pollution caused by capitalism; the idea that we are all to blame for climate change because we’re all consumers diffuses responsibility too much and overestimates the power we have as individual consumers.