After nearly a week of pristine blue skies, the sight of aircraft con-trails this morning got me thinking again about climate change and why organisations like BeThatChange struggle to get us angry enough about it to participate in direct action. Or even put our vote where it counts and elect a government that puts environmentalism at the heart of its agenda.
It's well documented that the simple answer is that it seems too far off and too abstract an idea and we can't see how it really impacts on our lives. Yes we care about our kids' future, but it's a lovely day today and even when we are snowed in or flooded out, it's hard for us to blame the mess on Easyjet flight 413 to Malaga. If I took that flight last summer am I to blame when the river rises into my kitchen? Does the patchwork quilt of vapour in the sky today really mean that there won't be food on my son's table in a decade? It's simply too hard to make the two things fit together in a comprehensive way. So I'll go about my business and hope that the government sorts it out like they sorted out my free health care and the financial crisis. Small things I can deal with. The big things are for government; somebody else's problem.
In Douglas Adams' Life the Universe & Everything, Ford explains that the way to cloak a spaceship and make it invisible is to use an SEP field.
"An SEP is something we can't see, or don't see, or our brain doesn't let us see, because we think that it's somebody else's problem.... The brain just edits it out, it's like a blind spot. If you look at it directly you won't see it unless you know precisely what it is. Your only hope is to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye. The technology required to actually make something invisible is so complex and unreliable that it isn't worth the bother.
The "Somebody Else's Problem field" is much simpler and more effective, and "can be run for over a hundred years on a single torch battery. This is because it relies on people's natural predisposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting, or can't explain."
When searching wikipedia for the quote I was delighted to find that many finer minds than mine have already used the SEP concept when trying to describe big problems that we struggle to deal with. Obama and Sarcozy join environmentalists and economists in paraphrasing Douglas' wit. The sad reality, however, is that because we don't care - or care yet - the government doesn't either. Modern politics is rarely keen to push wise policies for the future if voters don't say they are important today. The SEP flaps its powerful cloak and the problem disappears again. For now.
I've come to believe that the size and scale of climate change is so big that it will always be an SEP until it is really too late, so we might as well ignore it, but in a clever positive way. In Adams' book the only way to unpick an SEP is "to catch it by surprise out of the corner of your eye." and Ford goes on to explain that if you can ignore the fact that you're ignoring it, then you'll see it. Or words to that effect.
If we ignore the seemingly insurmountable problem that the world is changing dangerously fast, and concentrate on using our refuse to generate power, for example, the SEP can be uncloaked. It's The tired old maxim about thinking globally acting locally writ true.
The key to getting voters to get agitated is to give them small solutions that they can get their heads around and that they think are sensible to demand from politicians. Campaigning for carbon reductions is noble but I fear futile. No one I know, knowingly emits carbon. But I know plenty of people who would love to see their rubbish go to a local plant to produce sustainable power. I know lots of people who would rather take a train or bus to work, if only they could rely on them and they were cheaper.
To make a serious green agenda stick we have to break it down into do-able parts. One will knock on to another and the SEP can be banished harmlessly into space.
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