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May 10, 2007
Getting burned: Clive Hamilton and the underbelly of climate change politics
Clive Hamilton's Scorcher: The Dirty Politics of Climate Change is the kind of book that you read with no clear idea why you are reading it. It gets thrown across the room a few times as all remaining semblances of faith or hope in the political system--and the inherent need to believe that our politicians are doing what they believe is the right thing, even if you think or know it's wrong--get torn to shreds. It's not that it reveals anything much new about the way the Australian government has shaped its environmental policy over the last decade at the behest of powerful industry players (to the point on occasion of allowing them to draft legislation), it's not that it shows the sinister forces at play behind the "skeptic" movement (although the links to Big Tobacco were a fun surprise)--it's simply that it confirms your worst fears, and gives you little hope for another, better possibility.
However, one area of Hamilton's book that has me thinking long and hard is his argument on the dangers of green consumerism. Unlike Tim Flannery, Hamilton really doesn't buy the argument that a broad-based movement of consumers demanding cleaner products is the way forward -- it is the kind of furphy that governments and corporations love. It takes the burden of doing something about climate change off of the people who can do most about it, and puts it on those who can do the least.
I have long been one of the most boring and persistent advocates of ethical consumption that I've met (and I've met Peter Singer). It takes a billion drops to make an ocean, that sort of thing. I pay extra for green power and my superannuation is invested in companies who do not pillage the earth. But Hamilton warns of a well-meaning but perhaps ultimately damaging retreat to voluntarism. He argues that while paying for renewable energy is no bad thing, charging those who are willing to pay for it amounts to a tax on concern, and ultimately makes not a jot of difference. If we were to reverse the situation and force consumers to opt out of paying for renewables, how many, he wonders, would opt to pay less for coal?
He points to the example of the CFC wars of the 1980s, suggesting that it wasn't consumers buying friendly deodorants that made the real difference, but governments having the willingness and motivation to work out an international treaty banning their use in manufacture (particularly fridges).
About five years ago, the company that was then Western Power invited me onto a focus group to discuss the marketing of their new green energy products. I was considered a "dark green" representative, as I had taken the effort to sign up for Natural Power despite lack of any advertising or simple means to request it. The marketers running the group said that consumers didn't seem to be responding to the natural power product, and wanted to know what we'd think of a watered down "carbon neutral" product that would be marketed as green power. My suggestion that they might want to try harder at selling the benefits of renewables was met mostly with sniffs. People don't want it, I was told. They won't pay. They'd much rather pay much less for something called Earth Friendly. And do you think this smiling, green house is cute? It's a green house. Do you get it? Do you think people will get it? Because it's green. And it's a house.
By embracing eco-consumerism, Hamilton argues, and not redirecting that power into pressure for political and industrial change, we are no longer citizens, but consumers. Which is where they want us to be. A disengaged citizenry has allowed government inaction for the past decade and allowed Australia's status as an international pariah on climate change. I can very much see his point. But to accept this is not to disengage from one's individual ethical responsibility -- can we accept Hamilton's warning, but still make an individual decision on the carbon footprint of our purchases? I think we can -- to accept that he's arguing against that is to buy into the kind of oversimplified greenwash that our politics all too easily becomes.
I spoke to Clive Hamilton on my radio show yesterday, here's an audio archive of that:
Technorati Tags: climate change, clive hamilton, ethical consumption
Posted by patrick at May 10, 2007 7:59 AM
