A lesson from the G20 – to save the environment, get shopping

April 3, 2009 by
Filed under: Credit crunch, Politics 

The G20 is a real reason for optimism. Not only the scale and range of the communiqué, but the agreement to meet again in the autumn. As I said yesterday, crucial for the future of global governance is the steady thickening of relationships between the political and administrative elites of different nations. The G20 leaders know they will be held to account individually and collectively if yesterday’s impressive words have not started to turn into action by the time they meet again. And, after a few days rest, the ‘sherpas,’ whose job it is to do the pre-negotiation ahead of the summit, will be back at work.

The triumph rightly belongs to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and President Obama (I’m being a bit formal this morning after taking part in a Today programme item about inappropriate use of Christian names).   The UK leader for having the determination  and energy to drive it through – reflecting both his long standing interest in global governance and justice and his domestic political needs – and the US President for making international co-operation not only sexy but a domestic vote winner for the participants (those who are subject to votes that is).

The hope must be that come the autumn there is clear evidence that we are past the worst of the global recession, enabling world leaders – buoyed by their own collective efficacy – to turn their minds to the even more difficult and more important issue of climate change. All the politicians and advisors I have spoken to recently about prospects for the Copenhagen climate change summit have been pessimistic. Not only are there the usual issues between the already developed and the developing nations (which are currently resurfacing at the UN climate change talks in Bonn), but with energy consumption and oil prices down because of the recession there is also a danger of complacency.

Indeed, for the environmentalists who protested against the G20 and the grossly inadequate response of global leaders to climate change, there is a bitter irony. If the global economy does not pick up, popular enthusiasm for international agreements will fade, climate change will look less important as a threat and action to tackle it unaffordable; the Copenhagen moment will pass and who knows when another opportunity for real concerted action will come.

So, far from rejoicing in the collapse of global capitalism, if you are green you should be praying for a return to growth. In fact, forget recycling, the greenest thing to do right now is to dust off the credit card and get out there shopping.

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11 Comments on A lesson from the G20 – to save the environment, get shopping

  1. Joe on Fri, 3rd Apr 2009 9:19 am

    2. A rather simplistic – and actually erroneous – conclusion, if I may say so Mr Taylor.

    The world is in the state it is in because of overspending on (corporate and individual) credit cards by a tiny minority of the population of the world. Extra spending will have limited effects on the people who are most hit by the coming crises and at best will only serve to prop up the privileged position of the few.

    Regarding language, I suspect much of our use of names is related to the form of our school education. Until I was 16, I was only ever called by my surname and the teachers were universally called Sir. An older cohort of the population went through this system and so they naturally associate the use of a first name with this form of power relationship, presumably reinforced by wartime when everyone had a title relating to their importance.

    So whilst my mother’s generation takes the use of her first name as an unwelcome indication of intimacy, I have no such bias. Although my wife and I share six earned titles, we are most often called by our first names.

    Conversely, I rarely use the full version of my first name, hence there is an inbuilt level of caution when anyone uses it to begin a conversation.

  2. Robert on Fri, 3rd Apr 2009 11:00 am

    3. Sadly bull shit is still bull shit, and Labour seems to be full of it, once Brown finds out to day how many people are unemployed in the USA I think people will ask again, why how and when will it stop.

    Brown telling the world it was not my fault it was America, it’s like a boys own club it’;s OK for you to blame me, and when I get home I’ll blame you.

  3. matthewtaylor on Fri, 3rd Apr 2009 11:02 am

    4. Thanks Joe. I was kind of being flippant. Having said which, I do think action on climate change will require a mixture of high level global coordination and personal behaviour change. So I am serious in saying that the best thing for Copenhagen is that G20 is seen to usher in a successful new world of cooperation. Also, given that the main outcome of G20 was to create a pot to help indebted countries the best thing the UK can do for the rest of the world is to not need any of that money ourselves. Getting people out spending is in the short term part of that in that it will slow the rise of unemployment and make the Government’s bank holdings start to look less like debt and more like assets

    Thanks for the stuff on names – very interesting.

  4. Matthew Kalman on Fri, 3rd Apr 2009 12:34 pm

    5. Re collapse of global capitalism – I’ve always thought it was kind of funny that the great stalwarts of overthrowing capitalism – the anarchists – are by the their own admission the very *last* people you want to have involved in your post-capitalist, co-operative future, if you want it to actually thrive! ;-)

    I base this conclusion on an article in the (anarcho-syndicalist) magazine ‘Direct Action’ from 2001 – which surveyed the worker co-operative movement.

    It found that the people attracted to this attempt at building a post-capitalist milieu were “committed individualists” who not only rejected authority, but “also chose not to recognise their own co-operative responsibility”.

    They wouldn’t recognise democratically arrived-at decisions, even though they were involved in them, they wouldn’t turn up for agreed tasks etc etc.

    “In a word, they were selfish, no co-operative”!

    “The co-op movement attracted the very people who did it no good”, the article concluded.

    From the point of view of Kohlberg’s stages of moral development maturation, you could argue that these anti-conventional anarchists are in fact – usually? – pre-conventional rather than post-conventional.

    ie They would have a Hells Angels attitude to breaking the law, rather than a Gandhian one. (Studies of protesters at Berkeley did indeed find an intriguing mix of pre- and post-conventionals amongst arrestees – and you can guess where the violent slogans were coming from!)

    I’m always on the look out for analyses that take into account such (hidden) stages of adult maturation in different dimensions (values, morals, cognitive complexity et al).

    On that note, it was interesting to spot in the Work Foundation’s recent report on knowledge workers that they’ve researched the increasing levels of cognitive complexity found in different groups of workers. Interesting to see their table on how the most cognitively complex grouping of professionals uses more methods to find out new information than any other.

    I suspect that this finding might relate, also, to the proclivity to seek ‘clumsy solutions’ (And Torbert has already done work which found a link between the increasing number of different types of attention people will utilise at work and their leadership/ego maturity level, or ‘action logic’, as he calls it).

    It’s real shame the Work Foundation report didn’t at least mention the decades of work done linking cognitive complexity, levels of work responsibility, transformational leadership, time horizons etc by people like Jaques, Torbert and Kegan etc…

    I haven’t really began to discern exactly how this all links in to the neuroscience/emotion etc findings that we’re all talking about these days.

    It’s on my list… ;-)

    Cheers,

    Matthew Kalman

  5. Kevin on Fri, 3rd Apr 2009 2:29 pm

    6. Mending the economy whilst leaving climate for another day would be like falling off a cliff with a hangover and flapping around for the water bottle in your back pocket on the way down, in order to address the headache. I suggest you stick to subjects on which you can contribute meaningful comment.

    Speaking of which, aside from publish your opinions, what does the RSA actually do? (As in tangible output). One hardly hears about it any more. It could be playing a useful role in marshalling genuine experts from various fields to develop proactive responses to climate change. Couldn’t it? Isn’t the strength supposed to be in the Fellows? Where’s their expert voice on all this?

  6. Susmita on Fri, 3rd Apr 2009 4:01 pm

    7. I can’t say that the G20 has made me feel any more optimistic about the economy and still feel we’re all going to hell in a handbasket. However, I think the point here is that as long as economic problems remain, people will worry less about the environment as of course we’re more likely to fret about what’s happening now than what might happen later (and yes I really did just say “might”). Interesting rationale behind wanting economic change but Matthew, just in case you were concerned, my motivation to shop remains as high as usual.

  7. matthewtaylor on Fri, 3rd Apr 2009 4:43 pm

    8. Thanks Susmita. The point is that people have to believe global cooperation works and works for them. This is why – paradoxically – if the G20 seems to make growth come back people might be more willing to back their leaders in doing a climate deal.

  8. matthewtaylor on Fri, 3rd Apr 2009 4:47 pm

    9. Hi Kevin. Thanks for the comment

    I agree that the way we think about and do economic growth has to be radically different. But I also believe that progress will be almost impossible without global cooperation. And most leaders are nervous about looking like they are making national compromises for global purposes. This is why success at G20 could lay the path for real action in Copenhagen. As Kyoto showed there is no point having a great agreement if most of the world ignores it.

    As for the RSA check out our website – we have never been more bust, including projects on sustainability and innumerable debates on the topic

  9. matthewtaylor on Fri, 3rd Apr 2009 4:49 pm

    10. Hi Matthew, fascinating as usual. I love examples of lefties behaving or thinking in ways that don’t fit their ideology. One of the books I promise myself I will get around to reading one day (maybe when i retire) is Richard Ellis’ ‘The Dark Side of the Left: Illiberal Egalitarianism in America’

  10. Matthew Kalman on Mon, 6th Apr 2009 5:20 pm

    11. Thanks Matthew – I’d not even heard of that one.

    What about Jonah Goldberg’s “Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left, From Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning”….

    It was a “Politics of Meaning” event that I organised and which you spoke at and IPPR sponsored – making us both ‘Liberal Fascists’, I guess… ;-)

    Cheers,

    Matthew

  11. matthewtaylor on Tue, 7th Apr 2009 10:02 am

    12. Oh dear – another book for the list. Thanks Matthew

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