Why did you go for a turn-page magazine format?
There were a number of good reasons, not least it is a fairly straightforward skill to learn. We purchase the technology on license so we don’t need to know much about coding, we can just concentrate on the journalism and design side.

Also we think it adds a familiar process to the art or reading. People are used to turning the page of a newspaper or magazine, and this allows them to retain the ‘idea’ of that. We see it as combining the traditions of print with the best of the web and hope to build a community around it. At this stage not everyone has had a chance to play with digital magazines yet, so there is a certain novelty factor.

Is this your vision of what Web3.0 will be?
Not completely, no. I do think it’s a step on the right path to where Web.3.0 will lead us in terms of greater interactivity, tracking and understanding of user habits. But as technology adapts further, so will publishers. We’ll have more touchscreen availability which will allow people to turn pages with their fingers; we’ll have mobile phones with five inch pull out screens; and e-paper itself, all of which if done the right way can have huge eco and financial benefits.

But the Holy Grail will be whoever can crack the best way to let readers decide themselves what content they want delivered to their handset or computer on a daily basis.

Is it to prepare for a paid content model, or will revenue come through advertising and sales, e.g. merchandise?
We could easily DRM protect the content and charge for it, but that’s not the plan at all. Given that we’re linking to a lot of content and video already available for free on the web, it would be a bit cheeky, and goes against trying to get people to share the magazine, forward it onto friends, colleagues and clients.

We hope that it’s an enjoyable, maybe even useful read, but it is in many ways something of a Trojan horse. By having a digital magazine, we expect people will read it who have never come across the format before, and won’t even realize they’ve broken their duck doing so. If we can educate people that digital is an easy, viable alternative to standards sites and print, then it can only be good for our business. Potentially it could be a loss leader for some time. But if we get the content right and attract the readers, then hopefully advertising will follow and at least cover costs.

What kind of user community are you building with the site?
Feedback so far suggests we are attracting a lot of hits from people at various levels of Government in Scotland and around the UK, quangos, charities, campaign groups, specialist businesses, dozens of PR and marketing companies - the target market you’d expect.

We’re thrilled with that, but we also want the general public to get involved. We want anyone and everyone to feel they can use the magazine. That could be a parent who wants to educate their child; it could be a business wanting to adopt the mag for their customers for CSR uses, or simply those interested in the environment.

That’s why we’ve set up a Facebook Group, a blog and Twitter alerts to sit alongside the website and, ultimately, the digi-mag which it’s all about, and begin to mould the content accordingly.

How will people interact with your content?
We hope people will start contacting us with their own ideas, stories and letters, but for now we’re just presenting information in a readable form. We’re using lots of Flash for interactivity. With the Facebook Group and blog, we’ve opened up a forum of sorts that they can use down the line, or simply keep up to date by signing up to Twitter or our subscriptions on the main site.

We’ll be able to track the way people read the pages, how long they spend on an article, what links they click, if they download, print or forward a section on; that way we will learn to understand what areas are popular and which are less so.

Is eco your thing, or was it a commercial decision?
Essentially we thought there was a gap in the market for a title like this and thought well, we keep telling our clients and future prospects how eco friendly these things are, why don’t we do something ourselves.

The result has been dramatic on everyone in the office. I’d say we have all in some way become greener. I live by the beach and felt I was fairly aware, but we’ve done all sorts of things in the past few months from starting a compost bin, to recycling our waste, turning the heating down, walking to the station rather than drive. It’s just made us more aware of the eco benefits, regardless of whether it eventually turns out to be a success in its own right.

Why did you choose to go solely online?
We’re all former national newspaper journalists so it would have been the easiest thing in the world to stick to the programme. But we felt strongly that, since we could use the technology, there would be little point trying to do something promoting the environment while using newsprint, ink and heavy machinery, long before we look at distribution issues.

There are drawbacks in trying to alert people to the fact that the magazine is there. It’s much easier to, say, flood the supermarkets and newsagents with copies, or put them in dump bins, to make the product easy for people to find.

And apart from the eco benefits, there is so much more you can do with digital – include video, audio, moving images and links. The way we consume news is changing, digital will be part of that, just hopefully without destroying the planet at the same time.

Shaun Milne blogs at Milne Media. (x-posted at OnlineJournalismBlog)

Related posts:

1. Newcastle’s Chronicle, Daily Mail are winners

In particular, Germany is balking at original commitments and seeking concessions for its heavy industry. Along with Germany, Poland and Italy are also seeking concessions, particularly in the wake of the global credit crunch. Poland seems to have been satisfied with some payments its going to receive. But the ‘difficult’ Berlusconi and the under-pressure Merkel could wreck both Poznan and the EU commitments.

What can you do?

You could be a bored cynic. Or, you could join with campaign groups who are staging protests to encourage public democratic action:

• Avaaz are running a campaign to urge Merkel to lead on climate
• Coalition Time To Lead are also running a petition
• The Uk Youth Delegation to Poznan are urging you to jam Gordon Brown’s phone

Background to the EU promises

In January 2008, the Commission proposed the EU make a 20% cut in its greenhouse gas emissions by 2020, or a 30% cut if other countries agree to cut their emissions too. But the proposal also allows a large part of these cuts to be achieved by buying carbon credits for projects to reduce emissions in developing countries. This is one major criticism of the UK Climate Change Bill–what’s the point of an 80% target if the UK can achieve most of that by paying (’offsetting credits’) for it to be done abroad? That option does nothing to encourage behaviour change where it’s needed most–in developed Western industries.

On the targets being debated in Poznan to replace Kyoto–remember that?–even the targets being discussed there (50% by 2050… confused yet?) is viewed as too low by some. Which could be ok if the EU’s new agenda, of making Europe carbon free to lure China into an agreement, works out. (For an audio overview of EU proposals, listen to David Adam at the Guardian).

When these carbon credits from outside Europe are taken into account, the cuts required by Europe are significantly lower than the Commission’s proposal suggests. Even the proposal to cut European emissions by 30% only means around 22% in reality.

As the Time to Lead coalition of Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and the World Wildlife Fund, through the coordination of the Climate Action Network (CAN), say: “If other developed countries followed this lead, we would not make the cuts we need globally, so this proposal is not consistent with the commitments made by European leaders to keep global warming below 2ºC.”

Does everyone ageee 2ºC is the target?

No. In fact, organisations such as PIRC, who recently gave evidence to the UK parliamentary audit committee, believe that this is too high. There are also people arguing convincingly that 2ºC is a political target only, and bears no real resemblance to what is an actual ’safe’ figure. Hence their latest report, Climate Safety. It seems that 2ºC might in fact be the cover for shifting us towards what is ‘politically acceptable’ rather than what is needed. Why would the UK agree to the necessity for 80% cuts but then agree that across Europe only 30% (or 20%) is required? Someone who has been explaining it far, far better than I can here is Kevin Anderson from the Tyndall Centre. It’s worth reading his powerpoint, via the Transition Culture Blog (probably the best tited blog post ever on climate: 9 degrees, the Wizard of Oz, and Sex).

The EU Emission Trading Scheme

It’s not only the targets that will be debated these next two days. The EU Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) is also on the table.

The House of Lords EU Committee yesterday called for “ambitious reforms to the EU’s Emissions Trading System, pointing out that as the EU’s main tool in reducing carbon emissions it is vital that the system is a success.” In particular they focused on the resistance from countries such as Poland, arguing that:

The Committee received evidence that Member States such as Poland, with a high reliance on coal burning to generate power, were opposed to moves to ensure all carbon permits in the power industry were auctioned rather than given away as was the case in phase 1 of the ETS. The Committee argue that the EU should aim for 100% auctioning of allowances by 2013, and where exceptions are made for certain Member States it should be on the understanding that the time limited transition period is used to develop and trial clean coal technologies. [Original emphasis]

However, the EU ETS scheme should be thoroughly assessed for its contribution to fighting climate change. As the House of Lords themselves admit: “The EU ETS has become the cornerstone of UK and EU climate change policy but at the end of its first stage its record - in delivering reductions in greenhouse gas emissions - is as yet unproven.”

What is proven is its abiity to make big companies lots of money, for example:

The biggest beneficiary, according to Carbon Market Data, has been ArcelorMittal. In 2007, the world steel production leviathan had a “huge surplus” of 18.5m tonnes of CO₂ in allowances. ArcelorMittal’s power in negotiating additional carbon subsidies was demonstrated in Belgium at the beginning of 2008, when the firm said it would not reopen a blast furnace in the Liège – raising attendant concerns about lost jobs – without significant extra emissions permits. The Belgian federal and regional authorities freed these up by stripping the carbon allowances from electricity generation plants.

And which desperately in need country, trying to pull itself out of poverty while suffering the worst effects of climate change, is rightly benefitting most? India? Bangladesh? Vietnam?

On the buying side, London is a winner. It is, according to the World Bank, the “carbon finance hub of the world,” a position it consolidated in 2007. The United Kingdom is responsible for nearly 60% of purchases of CDM carbon credits, with London-based institutions, such as compliance buyers, project developers and banks, accounting for the bulk of this…

…other regions of the world profit far less. India supplies 6% of carbon credits, and the rest of Asia (excluding China) 5%. The whole of Africa, notwithstanding its huge renewable energy potential (solar power, for example), supplies only 5%.

London Banks. Hold on–those same banks being bailed out with our taxes…?

This is why pressure groups such as Ieta, which John Vidal in the Guardian on Wednesday noted was the largest delegation (bigger than most countries) in Poznan, with 256 delegates, are attending, to ensure that carbon markets keep working for those who can make money out of them.

As I argued back in my thesis in 2005, carbon markets seem, in the cold light of day, well, another market. And aren’t capitalist markets as we have them exactly what has brought us to this global crisis in the first place? As the Transition Culture blog says, ‘economic growth was a good idea at the time, but…’. And proof that left and right do meet at the other end of the circle: the scpetical scientist Jennifer Marohasy is also launching/promoting a fundraising campaign to resist an ETS for Australia.

And six of the best…

These have been some of my favoured reads on Poznan over the last few days:

• Amplified Green: half-way to Copenhagen
• The WDM Poznan blog: a human face on climate change
• Lo CO2 Travel: Australians go overland to Poznan (22,236km)
• Greenpeace: Pressure builds on Poznan
• Just in Just Out: for quick moving updates and info
• My Trees: Why does Poznan matter?
• Planey in Limbo: 25-hour coach journey to get to Poznan

Yes, we know that’s seven. Want one more? But don’t worry, it’s not all positive and enlightened inspiration. There are those using Poznan as a hook to explain how they still aren’t quite able to get to grips with the Greenhouse effect.

Related posts:

1. Climate change bill becomes law
2. Climate Safety: only decarbonisation will do
3. Climate Change bill passed (in the night)

For Hutton it was the first requirement for a radical politics. One must hold a grievance, and that grievance (be it against class, race, gender, capitalism, money, bankers, New Star Asset Management etc.) must be translated into a vision for a better world tomorrow than we have today.

Giddens agreed, although he firmly rejected the brand of ‘austerity utopianism’ that he saw emanating from the deep ecologists and far-left climate radicals. In this he echoes the views of the right-of-centre ‘enlightened business’ majority that has been best summed up, for me at least, by the Business Editor of the Economist, Tom Standage, when he told me in an interview:

What we’re looking at is the total restructure of our energy supply, and it’s going to cost trillions for that change. The companies who are on the right side of that are going to be well placed. Just look at Toyota: they can’t make their Priuses fast enough.

And all of this can be painted in a bad way, you know, big business only in it for the money, or it can be painted in a good way, that businesses can harness profit from this, and that regulation is going to bring that in and really sort out the problem. People who object to this, those who see it as a problem of capitalism and consumerism, they’re looking at solutions that will take us back to the middle ages, and that’s not an option. Not an option. We need to look at solving this in the least bad way possible.

For Giddens, this position occupies a ‘utopian realism’—and it was on this position that Giddens held most firm, and most directly influenced Hutton’s thinking (it seemed, during the brief debate–a very democratic space). Especially on rethinking mass impact cultural influences, such as the end of the Detroit car.

For me, talk of utopianism felt uncomfortable, as did the implication that an ‘austerity’ of means automatically suggested a regression; in Giddens’ words, “we can’t go back to nature”. That is a worrying thought from such an impressive thinker, a foreclosure on a possibility and privilege that some of us—not necessarily deep ecologists—would not like to throw away so readily.

Giddens’ argument, and one often mistaken for outright ‘climate scepticism’ (or at least hypocricy) although it’s not, is that we should not stop the economic progress of the developing world and their opportunities to lift themselves out of poverty. That is what Giddens meant by “we cannot go back to nature”. Yet the loudest voices in the ‘green’ camp are not advocating this. It would be dangerous for Giddens to think they were—calls for mass investment in renewable technologies is not an opposition to reducing poverty; nor are transition town movements.

The idea of a utopianism at the heart of a radical politics also feeds into a fatalistic and/or teleological mindset that would both feed off and feed into the goals-oriented capitalist mechanisms that have eviscerated the world’s resources—not only the heating up of the world through radiative forcing caused by increased levels of anthropogenic greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, but also the unsustainable reaping of the oceans and the overuse of our water tables. As Andy Revkin said in a recent blog post, climate is not the story of our time, but only a subset.

For me, the articulation of a democracy to come, Derrida’s trajectory towards an unknowable but always coming event, something to strive for with a responsible thought, a just thought, and a justice of thinking and doing, would be a more forceful and radical way of conceiving of the future. In many ways, Derrida’s thoughts fore-echoed the debate of Friday, and particularly the urgency with which these questions must be asked–for a radical politics to counter the “radical undermining of locality“:

Technoscientific acceleration poses an absolute threat to Western-style democracy as well, following its radical undermining of locality. Since there can be no question of interrupting science of the technosciences, it’s a matter of knowing how a democratic response can be made to what is happening. This response must not, for obvious reasons, try to maintain at all costs the life of a democratic model of government which is rapidly being made redundant. If technics now exceeds democratic forms of government, it’s not only because assembly or parliament is being swallowed up by the media. This was already the case after the First World War…

And so, we need a historical perspective. What the acceleration of technicisation concerns today is the frontiers of the nation-state, the traffic of arms and drugs, everything that has to do with inter-nationality. It is these issue which need to be completely reconsidered, not in order to sound the death-knell of democracy, but in order to rethink democracy from within these conditions. This rethinking, as you rightly suggested earlier, must not be postponed, it is immediate and urgent. For what is specific to these threats, what constitutes the specificity of their time or temporality, is that they are not going to wait. (Derrida, Rogues)

As with Foucault, Derrida did not write directly on climate change, but it could be added to this list of “these threats” that “are not going to wait.”

Is utopianism achievable? For housing, for war protesting, for happiness, for curvature? For the ideal can never arrive, because it is only an ideal? Although Giddens and Hutton were both quick to provide caveats (‘a utopian realism’; ‘of course it’s not perfect’) words, particularly words and concepts such as utopianism, have a power that is not maintainable within the sphere of logos in which those who use them would hope to lasso their meaning. The utopian is already too far to reach as a telos. Unlike the democracy to come, which is always already in formation.

More reading on Derrida’s ‘democracy-to-come’:

• Derrida’s enlightenment to come
• Derrida and Democracy (on Foucault.info)
• Plato and Derrida on Democracy
• Derrida’s double question on Democracy

Related posts:

1. Hutton and Giddens on climate change
2. Huttons and Giddens: on the public intellectual
3. Shelling out on sustainability

Neither Hutton nor Giddens linked this question, this dearth of public intellectuals and their political activation, to climate change explicitly. But it resonated with me immediately, for two reasons.

The marketisation of the academy

First, the question of the marketisation of the academy. I am currently writing a piece on the relationship between a transformative learning/leadership culture within higher education and the growing tensions with an ever more transactional structure for academic institutions, as market places with customers, but also with transactional leaders from outside of the academic channels. So my question to Hutton and Giddens would have been: if we are not finding the new public intellectuals, what does this say about academia, and what can be done about it?

Hutton’s answer to his own question was to look to America. In the States, they invest in the public intellectual, and bring them into government and policy in a way that we don’t in the UK.  This was recently the subject of a thoughtful piece in the Times Higher: that in comparison to the U.S. system, our academics are widely under-represented in the development of policy.

Hutton explained that although his book, The State We’re In, is the second biggest selling economics book of all time, it still “made absolutely no difference” to New Labour’s project—they didn’t listen. Or, rather, they cherry-picked, rather than taking the whole package, something they are wont to do, from first-hand experience of their response to the Dearing Commission report on Higher Education. At that time, a ‘jigsaw’ of 93 fitting recommendations was offered with the warning that the package needed to be taken for the whole picture. New Labour cherry-picked tuition fees. Now look at the state we’re in… time for a publicly-funded national university?

The Specialist Intellectual and climate change

Second, I have been following the evidence sessions given to the parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee, where academics and researchers such as Bob Wilson (PDF), Tim Helweg-Larsen, James Hansen et al, have all been helping shape government reports on the matter of climate change. Climate change has its star names, particularly Hansen on ‘this side’ (of course with his critics) but also people such as William Nordhaus at Yale, Nicholas Stern and David Wasdell of the Meridian Programme (also with his critics), and Kevin Anderson at the Tyndall Centre.

And in the blogosphere, people such as Anthony Watts, the scientists of Real Climate (including Michael Mann) and Steve McIntyre communicate to the public as well as to government in the US. Someone I would suggest fills that role is Barry Brook, blogger and Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change and Director of the Research Institute for Climate Change and Sustainability at the University of Adelaide. (And god help us if ever people such as me or the Devil are invited to give evidence…  ;-))

But are these people public intellectuals? What of specialist knowledge that is not only scientific—how do these intellectuals play a role in social policy development? Do we not see them, because they do not recognise that moniker; that is, do they in the words of Foucault, accept their responsibilities as such, “willy-nilly”?

Foucault and the Public Intellectual

Foucault saw the shift from the universal to the specific intellectual reach its most marked point with the atomic scientist at the beginning of the 20th century, although he noted that the specific intellectual “was waiting in the wings” much earlier than this, with Darwin and the biological evolutionaries. The change came as the figure of the intellectual stopped operating as the universal consciousness of the public, and developed “a direct and localised relation to scientific knowledge and institutions.” In asking for the function of the specific intellectual to be reconsidered (“reconsidered but not abandoned”) Foucault raises the same question as Hutton. For Foucault (as I imagine for Hutton) it is an urgent question:

One may even say that the role of the specific intellectual must become more and more important in proportion to the political responsibilities which he is obliged willy-nilly to accept, as a nuclear scientist, computer expert, pharmacologist, and so on. It would be a dangerous error to discount him politically in his specific relation to a local form of power, either on the grounds that this specialist matter doesn’t concern the masses (which is doubly wrong: they are already aware of it, and in any case implicated in it), or that the specific intellectual serves the interests of state or capital (which is true, but at the same time shows the strategic position he occupies); or again, on the grounds that he propagates a scientific ideology (which isn’t always true, and is anyway certainly a secondary matter compared with the fundamental point: the effects proper to true discourse).

This could have been written with climate change or the energy crunch in mind. It is such an urgent question, taking a lead from Foucault, because the functioning of such intellectuals is “linked, in a society like ours, to the general functioning of an apparatus of truth”:

The intellectual can operate and struggle at the general level of that regime of truth so essential to the structure and functioning of our society. There is a “battle for truth,” or at least “around truth”—it is being understood once again that by truth I mean not the “ensemble of truths to be discovered and accepted” but, rather, “the ensemble of rules according to which the true and the false are separated and specific affects of power attached to the true”… and not a battle “on behalf” of the truth but of a battle about the status of truth and the economic and political role it plays.

That “and so on” leads into my question: the role of the public intellectual in the response to the issue of climate change, not only as a scientific but also as a social and political phenomena that leads from the science. We have ‘our’ Hansen (with all of the political baggage that such a ‘claim’ brings with it) and in fact we have a wealth of specialised scientific intellectuals, many gathered under the umbrella of the IPCC, some not.

Who are the public intellectuals of climate change?

But perhaps what is missing is the political specialist intellectual, apart from but advising not only government but also the public. Andrew Simms? Tony Juniper? These people are leaders, but are they political and behavioural change intellectuals? Maybe Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition Town movement. But that is not a specifically ‘intellectual’ (that is, research-based) or (P)olitical project.  Does it matter? Where are they, or where are they coming from? Who are the new, radical public intellectuals of climate change?

Related posts:

1. Hutton and Giddens on utopia
2. Hutton and Giddens on climate change
3. Shelling out on sustainability

The event was not specifically about climate change; it was billed as a discussion on the question: “what is radical politics today?” Both speakers addressed the credit crunch, both the role of the public intellectual, and both the energy crisis, which Hutton references in his Observer column today on the future of the car. But the majority of the debate drew upon climate change as the fundamental problem to which politics needed to respond with both radical ends, and radical means to get there.

For Hutton, the politics and radicalisation of the liberal left was the place where action to counter climate change has been most championed, and will find its most radical solutions. What Hutton argued for, was a “triggering” of the left liberal values that are inside each of us. “We are all yin and yang,” said Hutton, “sometimes favouring left or right policies as they seem fit and appropriate for the time. What we need to do is trigger the left liberal values, on a mass scale, to combat climate change.”

The event, organised by Jonathan Pugh of Newcastle University, founder of the ‘Space of Democracy and Democracy of Space’ network, thankfully let the debate run between the two men, leaving questions from the floor only until the last. This was a brave and energising decision, as it allowed Hutton and Giddens to counter and re-counter each other’s arguments.

“The world is on the edge of a precipice,” Giddens said, “we have intruded into nature too far. What we need are climate change radicals.”

Giddens responded to Hutton by restating he believed it was a mistake to position climate change as a left/right issue. He argued that “it requires a broad spectrum of support—the whole church needs to be radicalised.” Giddens drew on the example of the cross party support for the UK Climate Bill, which became more radical as it developed through parliament. But he also argued that climate change legislation could not rely on parliamentary majorities, and that we should develop a “climate change concordat” of politics, business and NGO groups. “The world is on the edge of a precipice,” Giddens said, “we have intruded into nature too far. What we need are climate change radicals.”

Giddens has been working on a new book, on the intersections of energy, climate change and politics. He admitted that this was the first time he had written on the subject of climate change, and he sometimes spoke with the initial desperation that comes with immersing oneself in the subject. His vocabulary was, surprisingly, unsophisticated, and his arguments not fully rounded in light of political climate realities: he railed against “those who want to take us back to nature” as if A) this was the majority of actors on the left of the climate debate, and B) this was a black/white position held by even those who do consider deeper-ecology responses to be the most appropriate.

Hutton, although working less directly on climate change, was more thorough in his thinking of mechanisms and technologies with which to actually change things, radically. He spoke of the need to (step 1) channel a grievance against how we treat the climate into (step 2) working in active groups with enough mass commitment and energy to (step 3) control or develop the instruments and mechanisms to prosecute change. This step 3 is what I’ve found missing in most of the mass protest movements of the last ten years or so—it was certainly missing in the main Stop the War march in London in March 2003. But there are examples for responding to climate change: first, technically, through Contraction and Convergence, production caps, and Tickell’s upstream Kyoto 2 plan (although, of course, these have their detractors). But crucially, what is still missing is the mass public support to force state operators to make those changes, globally.

It was a fascinating dialogue, stopped only when a student lecture needed to use the space for their 2pm lecture. That’s democracy in action. It generated questions and thoughts which will be followed up in the next few posts, on: the role of the public intellectual and the market academy; rethinking the network; the idea of utopianism in climate change action; and the consequences for politics of our intrusion into nature.

Related posts:

1. Hutton and Giddens on utopia
2. Huttons and Giddens: on the public intellectual
3. Climate Safety: only decarbonisation will do

“The question is no longer what must we do to avoid ‘dangerous climate change’,” the report continues. “Climate change is already dangerous.”

Ahead of Schedule

The problem is that change is happening ahead of schedule: that is, ahead of the consensus schedule of the IPCC reports, and ahead of the schedule to which politicians find acceptable. Not only does this suggests that the climate is more sensitive that we thought—it also means that our preparations, as a society, for a medium-sized climate problem are not going to be enough. Despite evidence that points to the problem being greater than we had anticipated, we’re still not doing enough. And even that, says Climate Safety, is behind schedule.

Climate Safety is an initiative of the Public Information Research Centre, an independent charity integrating key research on climate change, energy and economics. Its director, Tim Helweg-Larsen, is a regular contributor to expert evidence panels in government and across the globe.

Three key solutions

The Climate Safety report was officially launched on Thursday 27th November, the day after Jim Hansen and Helweg-Larsen gave evidence to the parliamentary Environmental Audit Committee. Tim Yeo MP and his committee have heard the message then, central to the report:

1. In the next two years the UK should cut its emissions by 10% - reversing current trends of actual UK emissions growth and peaking our emissions early. Delivering short-term actions provides the essential foundation for mid-term policies and long-term targets.
2. We should then cut our emissions as close to zero as possible over the next 2-3 decades, delivering a clear message of intent and urgency to the rest of the world.
3. At the same time we should be preserving the UK’s carbon sinks and funding adaptation around the world.

As the report says, “Cutting emissions to this degree means decarbonising the UK – a programme of action which combines wide-ranging energy efficiency measures, the rapid deployment of diverse and distributed renewable technologies, and encouraging significant behavioural change.”

Is decarbonising possible?

Acording to George Monbiot, it’s not a question of if it’s possible. It is only a question of when, and how quickly, because, in his words, we’ve only got “one shot left” – and that shot is decarbonising our energy present and energy future:

Is it too late? To say so is to make it true. To suggest that there is nothing that can now be done is to ensure that nothing is done.

Both Monbiot and the Climate Safety report draw upon work done by the Tyndall Centre for Climate Research. In particular, the work by Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows. Presenting at the Crisis Forum ‘Climate Change and Violence’ workshop in Southampton in November, self-confessed ‘bean counter’ Anderson was blunt about the emissions pathways we need to take towards undoing ourselves of carbon reliance. In particular, the budget allocated for carbon emissions to keep us at a ‘safe’ 2 degrees rise in temperatures is a “dangerous rhetoric” and:

Ultimately, the latest scientific understanding of climate change allied with current emission trends and a commitment to ‘limiting average global temperature increases to below 48C above pre-industrial levels’, demands a radical reframing of both the climate change agenda, and the economic characterization of contemporary society.

This radical reframing is interpreted by the Climate Safety project and PIRC as total decarbonisation. Nothing less will lead us towards the safety named in the report. As Nicholas Stern identified in his central report on the economics of climate change, we’ve already dallied for 20 years since the first clear warnings came into the mainstream.

That’s also why a new organisatio, the Zero Carbon Caravan, is mobilising a mass movement protest to converge on the climate change negotiations taking place in Copenhagen in 2009. It’s thinking and doing protesting—a model for transport and movement that can express, clearly and unequivocally, that a zero carbon future is possible. As the Climate Safety report says:

Current large-scale policy responses to the problem have failed to deliver the change we require, and indeed have failed to deliver emissions reductions at all… To deliver the change we need, we will have to overcome the social and political blockages which have kept us from addressing the problem.

It will be necessary to mobilise public will to break the logjam of political progress. Different groups in government, civil society and the public have important roles to play. Rapid societal shifts are not only possible; they are a regular feature of the way our society works…

You can join in the caravan, or sign its petition to send a message to the negotiators in Copenhagen. Their message is “we demand a zero carbon world, as fast as we can.”

Links to the latest science:

• Bob Watson’s Advice to UK Govt - Mitigate for 2 degrees; adapt for four (PDF)
• Kevin Anderson and Alice Bow, Tyndall Centre, mitigation scenarios (PDF)
  
• David M. Lawrence et al., 2008. Accelerated Arctic land warming and permafrost degradation during rapid sea ice loss. Geophysical Research Letters, Vol. 35, 11506.doi:10.1029/2008GL033985.

Related posts:

1. EU meets to decide climate fate
2. Climate of coverage: Lord Turner’s report
3. Climate change bill becomes law

In a piece of research conducted over the summer, this author looked at the different frames employed in the coverage of UK and international policy processes, such as the UK Climate Change Bill and the IPCC 4th Assessment Report. The full findings of that research are to be published in a book later next year. As a brief overview, the research found was that nearly all reporting of issues, such as Lord Turner’s report, used one of three organising ‘frames’ to emphasize the angle or treatment of the issue. These were:

1. Accepted-positive: That the text or policy was a welcome political development and/or tool to help combat anthropogenic GHG emissions;
2. Rejected-negative: That the text or policy was a negative political development and/or unhelpful tool to help combat anthropogenic GHG emissions;
3. Ambiguous-Use: That the text or policy was of ambiguous and/or uncertain political/GHG emissions control benefit.

This was a useful way of looking at the articles that were published this week. Although only a brief analysis of the press coverage of UK climate policy processes and texts, this post argues that this week’s patterns are indicative of the larger picture of the way in which press partisanship and ideological positions are implicated in the decisions made when covering climate change. This is both the left-wing / right-wing divide, but also along socio-economic and conservative (with a small c) lines. When combined with news values such as the need for drama and entertainment and brevity, this contributes to a complex but important aspect of how climate is covered.

Accepted-positive

The only clear cut acceptance of the report was from Michael McCarthy, writing in the Independent, and from Juliette Jowit and David Adam in the Guardian. McCarthy writes knowingly and wryly, emphasising the harsh but positive realities that “there is more chance of  meeting those targets than there was six months ago”. In the Guardian, Jowit and Adam present a double page spread (next to an ad for Halfords promoting winter driving…) that delivers a harsh and fairly focused report. Adam’s report ends with the caveat that political achievements have not always met their rhetorical positioning. “We must hope,” he ends, “that this time, it does.”

Ambiguous-use

This frame delivers an ambiguous message: is the text/policy/initiative useful or positive, or not? It is often along the lines of “not enough” or “too late” but also “is it politically-motivated?” or “they’re not telling you the whole truth… wait a bit” - which leads to either fatalism or inaction, or both. Writing in the Independent, Emily Beamant has a long piece (online at least) in which the “woeful inadequacy” of the report and government action is flagged up a number of times by her sources, such as Tim Jackson, economics commissioner at the Sustainable Development Commission, who:

warned that the Goverment’s commitment to building a low-carbon Britain was woefully inadequate. “The only appropriate response to both the current economic crisis and the impending crisis of climate change is a comprehensive programme of investment in low-carbon technologies and upgrading Britain’s buildings,” he said.”What we need is a wholehearted political and economic commitment to achieving a sustainable Britain.”

Shadow energy and climate change secretary Greg Clark welcomed the “stretching” targets in the report, but said the Government had a long way to go to meet them.

George Monbiot, with technical detail and an urgency not found in most writers, notes in the Guardian that “Turner’s report - polite, measured and impressive as it is - proposes is more procrastination.” Monbiot consistently contributes his own solutions to the problem, which, when read in the light of say evidence given to the Environmental Audit Committee by people such as Tim Helweg-Larsen of the PIRC, seem perfectly acceptable actions. But if Monbiot’s tone has already framed the report from Turner as “futile”, will readers turn off after this? Possibly. But then not all commentators think Monbiot’s solutions are right either, particularly Tim Worstall criticizing Monbiot for getting his economics muddled up.

The strangest headline was from the Times, over Lewis Smtih’s article: Electric cars with bells to steer 2020 emissions targets. This headline framing of what is actually a very positive, clear and responsible article is a strange decision. I very much like and admire Lewis, personally as well as professionally in the minimal dealings I’ve had with him, but this type of headline framing is not uncommon from the Times. It hints at a trivialising of the issue that is not apparent in the article itself. It is not the web headline, either: ‘Government set tough new target for cutting carbon emissions by 2020′.

Critical-Rejected

And then there are the stories that put a headline focus on the cost to homes and families by surging energy bills, and which quote known sceptics rather than the raft of scientists, campaign groups, politicians and (dare we suggest it) normal people who are witnessing climate change, to respond to the report.

In the Daily Mail, environment correspondent David Derbyshire focuses on the ‘£500 per home to fight climate change’ tapping into what Brian McNair calls the ‘middle-England (as opposed to middle-Britain’ target audience for the Mail (McNair, 2000). Derbyshire goes on to quote Bjorn Lomborg, author of the Skeptical Environmentalist (for analysis of this book, look at Spiked-Online and Grist) who is quoted as saying:

‘The price tag by the committee’s own estimate could reach £14billion annually but the effect would be minuscule. Climate models show that the impact up to 2030 would mean the UK would help reduce the global temperature increase by about one three thousandth of a degree Celsius by the end of the century.

‘An economic analysis would indicate that the UK, for every pound spent, would only do about 4p worth of good for the climate. By any standard, this appears to be a gigantic waste.’

Of course, some critics think the Mail should go further, and tell the ‘truth’ that there “is no man made climage change!” However, Derbyshre and the Mail are not alone in their framing of the article in this way–on the cost now to individuals, rather than to all costs, to all societies–as this is also the headline and frame found in Fiona Harvey’s report in the FT (Fiona was just commended as 2nd prize for environmental journalist of the year by the Press Gazette) and by Louise Gray in the Telegraph.

And the absent…

As academic Anabela Carvalho argues, what is absent says as much of the ideological practices of newspapers as what is present (Carvalho, 2005:12). The story was not covered on Monday or Tuesday (as far as I can tell) in the largest circulation newspaper, The Sun, nor in the other red-top The Star, nor in the black-top Express.

So what does it mean?

It means that readers of two of the top five newspapers, by circulation (Sun, Express) knew nothing about the report or its consequences from reading their paper. They could get the news from elsewhere, but not from their daily press. This is very much in line with Futerra’s 2006 report, Climate of Hope, which showed that:

Most newspaper readers are seeing very few stories about climate change. The vast majority (76%) of UK national newspaper readers purchase tabloids and middle market newspapers, and see only 16% of the stories concerning climate change.

Here’s some more from Futerra on media coverage of climate change policy.

It also means that readers of the 2nd and 4th most popular papers were reading negative messages about the impact of the government report–it will only lead to increased energy bills. Neither the Daily Mail nor the Telegraph gave enough emphasis to the urgency or necessity of these proposals in light of the latest scientific understanding of climate change and the need to act. This ‘framing’ of every goverment policy development as negative for ‘the public’ is an unsatisfying method for approaching responsible media reporting on the climate.

It also means that reporting is very complex, often contradictory within the same newspaper (the Independent has a particular track record in this), and that reporting is generally organised along ideological and partisan lines: the left-learning papers provide most coverage; the right-leaning papers do provide coverage, but often cannot disconnect necessary policy changes from their need to attack the government that will be implementing them. Would it be the other way round if the Conservatives were in power?

In detail

These were the headlines of articles published on Monday/Tuesday this week:

The Guardian (circulation 354,272)

• Long, detailed, impressive - but futile in the face of runaway climate change
• Don’t wait for the planet to go up in smoke
• UK climate watchdog urges dramatic emission cuts
• Editorial: End of the Party
• The scary reality buried in Adair Turner’s report

The Independent (circulation 201,019)

• 12 years to halve UK CO2
• Comment: The first test for the other Miliband
• UK emissions must be cut by a third

The Telegraph (circulation 843,196)

• We need 80% cuts’ (published a few days earlier)
• UK climate change targets will push up fuel bills, warns Government advisor
• Motorists must go green to meet climate targets

Financial Times (circulation 451,676)

• Climate taskforce urges tough targets
• Climate pledges to hit UK energy bills

The Times (circulation 629,561)

• Electric cars with bells to steer 2020 emissions targets (headline different online)

Daily Mail (circulation 2,261,423)

• £500 per home to fight climate change

Daily Mirror (circulation 1,425,287)

• Fuel bill rise to go green (headline different and article longer online)

The Sun (circ. 3,140,928), The Express (circ. 723,958) and The Star (circ. 688,582) no coverage. Which is a shame, because the report, all 467 pages of it, can be downloaded here: ‘Building a Low Carbon Economy - the UK’s contribution to tackling climate change’

References
Carvalho, A., 2005. Representing the Politics of the Greenhouse Effect: Discursive strategies in the British Media. Critical Discourse Studies, 2(1), pp.1-29.
McNair, B. 2000. Journalism and Democracy. London: Routledge.

Related posts:

1. Newcastle’s Chronicle, Daily Mail are winners
2. Peter Lilley MP: physicist, sceptic, petrolhead
3. Climate Change bill passed (in the night)

Most importantly, the special commendation for Newcastle’s Evening Chronicle and it’s Go Green initiatives over the course of a year. The relationship between regional living, local media and environmental sustainability may be one of circumstance as much as anything, but initiatives such as the Transition Town movement over here and the Locavores in the US provide a hint that regional media can both survive the industry downturn and develop ecological living patterns through such environmentally-focused editorial. The Chronicle are running their own awards for local environmental champions.

Scoring a couple of half-points for nearly right decisions, the judges (BBC Newsnight’s Justin Rowlatt, former Gloucestershire Echo editor Anita Syvret, Co-op Environment manager Chris Shearlock, Greenpeace communications director Ben Stewart and Press Gazette editor Dominic Ponsford) also gave a highly commended certificate to Fiona Harvey of the Financial Times and to The Independent’s Johann Hari for Story of the Year: The Cruel Sea, his investigation into the possible effects of climate change on Bangladesh.

Only half right, because

a) Fiona is a much better journalist than the winner, Richard Girling of the Sunday Times Magazine.

Of Girling, the judges said this:

“He argues complex issues with clarity, an unassailable knowledge of his subject, intelligence, and humour, offering all sides of the debate without preaching. His writing style is captivating, keeping even the most hardened eco-sceptic turning the pages through more than 2,000 words.”

So, did the judges read the article? I read it when it was first published, how eco-towns will be the ’slums of the future’, and I just re-read it this morning, and it has left me considering what exact definition the judges used to define the term ‘environmental journalism” - definitions are always a problem.

Girling is a clever, subtle, intelligent and notable writer–even captivating. I don’t often read the Sunday Times, but I read this article. But environmental…? What does that mean. His writing is no doubt conservative, with a small c, but the tone and tenor of this article, to which the judges refer, is one of scathing poltiical failure on behalf of the government–it is almost secondary that it is about the environment at all. “His writing style is captivating, keeping even the most hardened eco-sceptic turning the pages.” Not a surprise, really, when the article is so clearly set out to play to eco-sceptic viewpoints, e.g.:

All this reinforces the obvious argument that the only genuine eco-communities are the existing towns and cities, which have infrastructure already in place, and that the most sustainable form of development, exemplified around Cambridge, is the “densification” of the urban fringe.

Really? So what about the Transition Town initiative then? What about looking beyond the ‘obvious’ to reinvigorate potential forms of living that we don’t as yet enjoy. Again, no surprise Girling’s article is picked up and amplified by a number of right wing sites. But more relevant, the eco-town story has been picked up and rubbished everywhere, from the Guardian to Student Beans. Where was the eco-town article that revolutionised the idea and reported what it should or could be? How about Sarah Lewis’s article on Transition Towns in the Guardian?

Girling’s article is eloquent and no doubt factual, but the issue of eco-towns should at least offer a writer the opportunity to envision some future, rather than simply criticising the present. This would be ‘environmental journalism’ as I would like it defined.

And b) because Johann Hari is good…

But nowhere near contributing to the dialogue of environmental action as much as Mainstream Media (MSM) writers such as Rob Edwards of the Sunday Herald, George Monbiot of the Guardian, or Mark Lynas in the New Statesman, or even Girling’s colleague Lewis Smith, of the Times, or Hari’s own colleague Michael McCarthy.

And that raises the point as well: what about the environmental awards for the non-MSM? The bloggers and media watchers who are, most probably, contributing more to a realistic dialogue over climate change and environmental issues. The last two alerts from Media Lens are essential reading, and you could pick many from their archive that would vie for story of the year, such as their Notes from a Dying Planet.

And if you’re talking non-MSM, how about Shaun Milne’s new zero carbon magazine, Eco4You, or Environmental Graffiti, or Treehugger, or The Ecologist, all of which deliver news, and can be considered part of the ‘press’.

But the coup de grace is…

In a result that would compare with Boris Johnson winning GQ’s Man of the Year for his “undisputed elan”, the Press Gazette has forever sullied the future of its environmental awards by picking the Daily Mail’s “Ban the Bags” initiative as its campaign of the year. Well, I say ‘their’ initiative, although as I wrote in an earlier piece for Journalism.co.uk, yes it’s theirs if you consider co-opting an already successful and growing campaign as proof of ownership.

This is what the judges said about the Mail:

“This campaign was executed brilliantly, the editor got behind and they were brave enough to put it on the front page consistently. The objectives were simple and achievable.”

Brave? What I’d like the judges to explain is how running a handful of stories about plastic bags in 2008–the world is overheating, people–long after the much broader, grass-roots campaign for banning plastic bags was already underway, is brave. Let’s look at some of the coverage that the Daily Mail (and Mail on Sunday) has given to environmental issues over the past five years:

Between Jan 2004 and July 2008, the Daily Mail ran five (yes, five) stories about the Kyoto Protocol. Compare this to The Guardian over the same period (227), The Independent (174) or even The Sun (18). And of those five, how many were positive that the Protocol was, as flawed as we all know it to be, contributing in some way to helping combat climate change? One. One article in 43 months.

Now, from January 2006 through to July 2008, how many stories did the Daily Mail run about the Climate Change Bill? 45. Big improvement, even if small compared to The Guardian (145) or even the Times (68). Until you recognise that the DM’s coverage of this world-leading (yes, flawed, but still hugely important) piece of legislation was mostly dominated by it’s ‘Great Bin Revolt’ campaign that rejected the Climate Change Bill with barely a mention of the threats of climate change. Far more important was the potential £100 extra charge for over-polluters in middle-England. Of those 45 articles, 31 (that’s 70%) outright rejected or cast the Bill in an ambiguous light. These stories were running at the same time as the Mail’s ‘ban the bags’ campaign which, as noted elsewhere, it co-opted from The Marine Conservation Society.

Brave?

That’s a question for one of the judges in particular. Ben Stewart, communications director for Greenpeace, who was recently one of the six defendents who used climate change as a defence against public damage at the Kingsnorth coal-fired power station towers. I met Ben seven or eight years ago. He was just off for a six-month stint on the Greenpeace flotilla. Ben is brave, for all his work, as well as dealing with the ire of heavyweights bloggers such as Ian Dale and The Devil’s Kitchen which would have, I hoped, hardened his resistance to the Daily Mail. But nowhere near as brave, if that’s even the right word, as the Bangladeshi people that Johann Hari writes about.

And by brave, of course, the judges mean ‘economically’ brave to put it on their front page consistently… That is, to suffer lower sales. Sterling effort, DM.

Journalism doesn’t have to be jingoistic

What about giving the award to the Sunday Herald in Scotland, who worked with the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition to put positive and constructive pressure on the parliament to pass the Scottish Climate Change Bill in its strongest form. There were many constructively critical articles written over the same 2006-8 period, but NONE that rejected the need for a climate bill.

The Daily Mail? Brave? Brave to devote its front-page to a populist campaign with momentum? As I’ve already writren, as environmental group Friends of the Earth have been quick to point out, in the context of climate change and biodiversity threats, plastic bags account for only 0.3 per cent of domestic waste and are not a top priority.

No. As commendable as a new set of environmental awards are, paricularly in this hard time for journalism, where it seems every other question is about whether or not environmental principles will survive the credit crisis, and the other half of questions are about the next round of job losses… commendable as it is, the judges got this one very, very wrong.

Related posts:

1. More on the Daily Mail’s plastic love affair
2. Climate of coverage: Lord Turner’s report
3. Climate change bill becomes law

This and future governments will be committed to cutting emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases by 80% by 2050. Progress towards this target will be laid out and monitored by a new independent climate change committee, which on Monday will recommend the first three five-year “budgets”.

Important to note is that:

The committee will not be able to hold ministers to account if they miss the targets

Which begs questions asked a while ago by The Corporation, the film that looks at corporate responsibility and the ability of the people to pass the responsibility to the incorporated entity called ‘the business’. So what the climate change bill’s legally-binding status will allow is

an annual report to parliament on progress towards the budgets.

The UK is the world’s leader in legislation to combat climate change:

Other countries have announced similar or deeper emissions cuts, but none have committed them selves by law. At the same time the energy bill, which includes measures to enable energy companies to pay “feed-in tariffs” to homeowners, community groups and businesses who export spare low-carbon energy to the national grid, was also approved.

However, there’s more still to do:

Environment campaigners are angry, however, about elements of the planning bill, the third “green” bill on the schedule, which will set up a national committee to decide on big developments, leading to accusations that it will be used to push through big infrastructure schemes such as the expansion of Heathrow.

Related posts:

1. Climate Change bill passed (in the night)
2. Climate of coverage: Lord Turner’s report
3. EU meets to decide climate fate

Hansen has had a busy week in the news and on the blogs, particularly for his letter to Obama. It’s been critiqued as alarmist on a number of skeptic blogs, such as SkepticsGlobalWarming and CO2Sceptic, but not only from the sceptical side of the debate. Joe Romm of Climate Progress also critiques Hansen, and splits from his conclusion that are firmly behind the 350.org call for change (he’s one of their identified ‘messengers’:

The conclusion – at first startling but in retrospect obvious – is that the human-made increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2), from the pre-industrial 280 parts per million (ppm) to today’s 385 ppm, has already raised the CO2 amount into the dangerous range. It will be necessary to take actions that return CO2 to a level of at most 350 ppm, but probably less, if we are to avert disastrous pressures on fellow species and large sea level rise.

The debate is being billed as a “humdinger” as much for Hansen’s reputation as for the science. He’s the vanguard of outspoken criticism of inaction on climate change–although he’s often misrepresented, for example in his supposed call for sceptics to be thrown in jail. CEOs of oil companies knowingly peddling disinformation and uncertainty where there is proof, yes; ordinary everyday sceptics, no.

Hansen’s appearance shouldn’t overshadow that of the other participants, either:

Tim Helweg-Larsen is director of the Public Interest Research Centre and publisher of the Zero Carbon Britain report.

Professor John Beddingtonhas an academic background in environmental technology at Imperial College, London, and has been adviser to the government for a number of years.

Professor Robert Watson is chief adviser to DEFRA, and part of the Tyndall Centre. He has also played a role as chair of the IPCC between 1997 and 2002.

Related posts:

1. Peter Lilley MP: physicist, sceptic, petrolhead
2. Climate Safety: only decarbonisation will do
3. Pachauri’s blog and the President