Climate change, emissions and our ecological footprint

The debate on climate change does not yet focus strongly enough (at least in the public consciousness) on the link between climate change and global warming on the one hand and overuse of resources and large ecological footprints on the other.

There is a hierarchy of topics and 'labels', which follows a descending order in the public mind:
~ top are climate change and global warming - 'the planet's getting hotter' + 'we must do something or we're doomed'
~ next is carbon emissions - 'we must cut them back to stop global warming, climate change etc'
~ then come a range of concrete things we feel we should be cutting down on (flying) or doing more more of (recycling) or changing to doing (buying local produce)
~ and right at the bottom, debated mainly among better educated sections of the population, comes reducing our own use of resources altogether in line with Ghandhi's belief that 'the earth has enough for all our needs but not for some people's greed'

The focus of the debate therefore needs to be inverted, so that overuse of resources becomes the top priority and central plank, if that's not too mixed a metaphor.

A good analogy would be the fight against AIDS and the stages involved in the debate and public awareness over the past 25 years.
~ For AIDS read climate change - dramatic, scary, huge and unknown.
~ For HIV read carbon emissions, the cause - initially debated and now overwhelmingly accepted.
~ The recycling and other small cutbacks (with which most lay people are currently attempting to combat climate change) are analogous with practising safe sex to combat AIDS.
~ But, just as the root cause of the escalation of AIDS lies with the situation of a particular section of the population, so too with climate change, although with one major difference: with AIDS, the section of the population involved is those living in poverty and thus poor health, whereas with climate change it is the reverse - the people escalating the problem are those living in the wealthy industrialised countries, with their overuse of resources.

Tragically, as with AIDS, it is still the poor who will suffer the worst.

Cathy Aitchison, London

How green is your local authority?

Interesting article in The Guardian recently discussing the top ranking councils on action to cut carbon emissions and prepare for climate change. See "Leading by example", Wednesday, 3rd January.

One dimension is still not at the forefront of thinking, however, namely a measure of resources use. Below is my letter of response (or read the published version here: Society Guardian letters).

Dear Sir
I welcome Terry Slavin's report highlighting the actions and initiatives of some local authorities to combat climate change. ('Leading by Example', Wed 3 Jan)

However, we also need to start ranking local authorities by their Ecological Footprint, ie. measuring their use of resources in global hectares per person (as calculated by the REAP project from the Stockholm Environment Institute at York University).

There is a strong link between wealth and size of footprint: the richest areas, such as Kensington & Chelsea, Woking, Guildford and Epsom & Ewell, have a footprint of 6.5 and above, whilst the lowest consuming local authorities are also among the poorest: residents of Merthyr Tydfil, Rhondda Cynon Taff, Torfaen and Blaenau Gwent each use less than 5 global hectares per person for their needs.

So whilst Woking should of course be praised for slashing CO2 emissions, it is starting from a very different point from Blaenau Gwent (4.8) or indeed many others, eg. Easington in County Durham (5.07) or Barking & Dagenham in London (5.02).

What is needed now is more recognition, incentives and support for areas with smaller ecological footprints and the people living there - people who have less and so consume less, thereby producing fewer emissions per person. If this led to new ways of measuring the health and success of the country, instead of in purely economic terms, so much the better.

Yours faithfully
Cathy Aitchison

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(see my website for a list of some of the local authorities with their ecological footprints)