More people are growing concerned about climate change and environmental decline. But when will society respond with real change? Is it just a matter of waiting for a majority before we get the transformative change that scientists are crying out for. What actually catalyses transformative change, anyway?
A prominent US climate campaigner recently tweeted with excitement that a Gallup poll found that “a record-high 48% of US adults anticipate that global warming will pose a serious threat to themselves or their way of life, up from 44% a year ago and 25% in 1997.”
She then went on to say “When that number crosses 50%, we’ll finally see some real action.”Here’s hoping she’s right.
Unfortunately, I don’t think she is. What’s more, waiting for that ‘tipping point’ in the hope of change might actually be another siren song of delay propping up BAU (Business as Usual). We expect it will happen, so we wait for it, and wait, and wait…
As it happens, a recent poll in Australia shows almost two thirds (64%) of Australians are concerned about the impact of climate change, and yet Australia is still opening up new fossil fuel developments, and Business as Usual proceeds unchanged. No tipping point seen here where a majority of people are concerned about climate change. (In another recent survey, 96% of Australians believe that more action is needed to look after the natural environment, with over half (58%) agreeing that ‘a lot more’ or ‘a great deal more’ action is necessary. And yet reforms in environmental protection are going nowhere.)We change when…
So, if a simple majority of concern isn’t enough, what does catalyse real change? And by real change I mean deep transformative change, not incremental stuff that only seems to cause incremental improvement in the short term that too often causes a rebound response in the economy leading to higher growth and greater consumption (look it up, it often goes under the title of Jevons Paradox).
Here are a few categories of possible change agents.
We change…
…when the evidence suggests we need to change
This seems a simple and rational proposition most would agree with. Unfortunately, the evidence on environmental decline (global warming, biodiversity collapse, etc) is overwhelming and growing. The consequences of not changing are also now emerging with powerful, unequivocal evidence (bleaching coral reefs, burning forest biomes etc). Despite a tsunami of evidence, real change remains elusive. Evidence by itself isn’t enough.
I often see scientists, of all makes and sizes, point out the unsustainable trajectory of humanity using a fist full of good evidence and then calling for ‘transformative change’. Then, a few years later, a new bunch of scientists using updated and even more compelling evidence, get up and make the same claim – we’re heading for trouble – and the same demand – we need transformative change – with the same outcome – no action; the status quo prevails. I suppose they think we live in a rational world.
An excellent example of this is when the Union of Concerned Scientists and more than 1700 independent scientists, including the majority of living Nobel laureates in the sciences, penned the 1992 World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity. Citing an abundance of biophysical evidence, they called on humankind to curtail environmental destruction and cautioned that “a great change in our stewardship of the Earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided.”
Nothing much changed so, 25 years later in 2017, another group of eminent scientists published a follow-up in the journal BioScience titled World Scientists’ Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice in which they proclaimed, again citing even more compelling evidence, “We are jeopardizing our future”. It’s not that the first warning wasn’t clear or compelling. Indeed, the authors of the second notice said “This prescription was well articulated by the world’s leading scientists 25 years ago, but in most respects, we have not heeded their warning.” It’s just that these warnings based on rational evidence aren’t making a difference to the status quo.
This is just two examples of evidence-based warnings penned by leading academics, there are many more (for example, see the very recent Earth at risk: An urgent call to end the age of destruction and forge a just and sustainable future published in 2024).
…when the economics provide an overwhelming case for reform
Some would argue that biophysical evidence is one thing (and, anyway, those disasters are hitting other people, not me, so why do I need to change?) but economic loss is another. You want people to respond to a changing world, convince them in terms that mean something to them – then convince them with dollars and cents, not parts per million of carbon dioxide or numbers of threatened species.
All well and good, many researchers have done just that. Indeed, a quarter of a century ago a major thrust in the sustainability movement was to measure the benefits from nature in terms of economic return. The Millenium Ecosystems Assessment ran from 2001 till 2005 to assess the consequences of ecosystem change for human well-being, and was a springboard for the idea of ecosystems services. The Assessment found that human actions are depleting Earth’s natural capital, compromising the planet’s capacity to sustain future generations.
The Assessment didn’t produce the changes many hoped for but it was followed by many attempts to demonstrate that we needed to look after Nature for our own sake just as much as for Natures’. The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity was another major project along these lines, running from 2007 till 2011. It found, among other things, that for an annual investment of US$45 billion into protected areas alone, the delivery of ecosystem services worth some US$5 trillion a year could be secured. Sounds like a great investment but deciding who pays (how and when) and who benefits is a complex issue that has defied the world community since the beginning of history.
However, again, the work didn’t provide the change or the investments being sought.
Similar studies have constantly been undertaken since then underlining the economic losses we can expect if deep change doesn’t occur. One recent study, for example, finds that the average person will be 40% poorer if the world warms by 4C. (Others have suggested at 4 degrees warmer, we may all be 100% deader as well. All models are wrong, some are useful and some aren’t. Any modelling of a world at 4 degrees C that assumes all else is equal is a deeply flawed model.)
…when an environmental advocate (person or group) galvanizes us into action
“We can all make a difference,” we’re told. “Think global, act local”, “Green and clean, that’s the dream” “Reduce, reuse, recycle, it’s the ecocycle”. Anyone concerned with sustainability has at one time or other dabbled with environmentalism and environmental interest groups (eNGOs) or gone even further and joined political or protest movements. For my own part, I gave significant chunks of my life to environmental education and landscape restoration groups. They can make a difference, consider the Sierra Club’s success in establishing national parks or Greenpeace’s influence with antiwhaling reforms.
However, for all their success and influence, humanity’s trajectory into a hot and uncertain Anthropocene remains unchanged; with a strong likelihood of every NGO success being undone by the growing climate crisis (whale populations and national parks are under growing stress everywhere).
And claims of bigger events, more people signing up, greater awareness are well and good; but they are not changing the bigger picture. Just consider the massive ‘success’ of Earth Day over the past 55 years, then have another look at the Keeling Curve. Are such events helping or blocking the reflection and change we need?
…when we cross a tipping point
Sudden shifts in the social order are sometimes referred to as tipping points, and they are one of the characteristics of complex systems. That is, a hallmark of complexity is that small changes can sometimes produce unexpectedly large and enduring shifts in the structure and function of the broader system. However, to say we change when we cross a tipping point doesn’t really advance our cause because in a very real sense the change is the tipping point. Of greater importance are the ingredients that lead to a tipping point. Is it possible to ‘engineer’ a tipping point to catalyse change?
Back in 2000, the popular-science author Malcolm Gladwell wrote a best-selling book titled The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference in which he suggested it was possible to create a tipping point if you could identify and harness the three groups of people (connectors, mavens and salesmen) that enable social trends to take off. “The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts,” explained Gladwell. (Connectors are people who know lots of people, mavens are helpful information specialists and salesman are persuaders.)
The idea that you can create your own tipping point seems ridiculous to me. Indeed, some of Gladwell’s detractors suggest that if it was possible then marketeers and politicians would be creating tipping points all the time. The reason they don’t is because complex systems are unpredictable and uncontrollable.
Yes, tipping points exist but they usually only recognised after we’ve crossed one. Yes, highly connected people (Gladwells’ ‘connectors’ and ‘mavens’) can play important role is precipitating a tipping point, but their part in making it happen is usually serendipitous and unplanned and highly contextual. And, yes, social media, hyperconnectivity and AI are all potent forces that might influence tipping points, but I am yet to see any analysis that can actually explain how these various forces interact to create deep transformative change.
…when a sudden shock shakes us out of complacency
Deep change is clearly very difficult to bring about. Evidence in any form or quantity seems to bounce off a status quo fortified by vest interest and fear of change. Sometimes the notion of incremental environmental degradation over time simply doesn’t register, a bit like the metaphor of the frog in the slowly heating water. Maybe we need a sharp sudden shock to shake things up, cut through the malaise, push us over a tipping point? We need a ‘Pearl Harbor’ moment, in which a WW2 Japanese bombing raid on a US naval base in the Pacific transformed an isolationist America overnight into a total fighting machine.
Twenty years ago I covered an environmental futures conference in Canberra where the mood was decidedly glum (It was titled ‘Can Homo sapiens survive?’ and included luminaries such as Frank Fenner). The general consensus was that prospects for the future of our planet were not looking good. Many said we needed a wakeup call. One scientist commented that he felt nothing short of a massive crack in the Greenland Ice Sheet would be enough.
A ‘crack in the Greenland Ice Sheet’ moment did indeed occur in Australia in 2016. It was in the form of a mass bleaching event of the Great Barrier Reef. Unprecedented in size and intensity, this bleaching event led to the death of up to a third of the reef; and it was followed up by a similar sized event in 2017. And these events received enormous national and international attention triggering considerable public discussion and concern. The Great Barrier Reef was also well known to be an important economic asset underpinning an ecotourism industry generating $6.4 billion every year and employing 64,000 people (Deloitte, 2017).
The cause of the bleaching was crystal clear: climate change and overheating. The scientific consensus on what we need to do about it is overwhelming: reduce carbon emissions and, specifically, stop burning coal.
And what was the political response at the national level? It was one of denial and withdrawal from any engagement with the topic of climate change (though millions of dollars was thrown at a Great Barrier Reef to give the impression the government was doing something).
Then, in the fateful summer of 2019/2020 the forests of the eastern seaboard of the Australian continent went up in flames in the horrific Black Summer. Here, surely was the ‘crack in the Greenland Ice Sheet’ moment. As I wrote back then: “The Black Summer of 2019/20 has shaken me to the core. In addition to scorching forests and beaches dear to my heart, it’s trashed the economies of regional towns where I know people; it’s battered the life out of the city in which I reside; indeed it’s poisoned the very air that I breathe. I’m also bracing myself for a set of dramatically increased insurance premiums on policies I’m already struggling to sustain.”
Again, no change in overall government policy to the growing climate crisis. Cutting back on carbon emissions will cost too much, was and still is the standard government line.
Since then the world has witnessed several mass coral bleachings, and they’re getting worse in intensity and extent, and global warming is now an existential threat to the world’s coral reefs. We’re also seeing more ‘unprecedented’ wildfires, floods and extreme weather events. We’re seeing so many of these events that they often don’t feature in the news; their shock value has been lost; we seem to have accepted them as part of a new normal.
Oh, and guess what, we’ve just starting noticing huge cracks appearing in the Greenland Ice Sheet. Unfortunately, no-one is listening.
What enables change?
So here is a set of frequently discussed agents of change. Which ones actually work? Which ones should we prioritise? Which ones should we ignore? I’ll provide the answer in my next blog.
Banner image: What enables deep change? Strong evidence? More than 50% of the population being dissatisfied with the status quo? A catalyzing leader? A massive climate event?
(Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)
Gosh, I’m looking forward to the next blog. Anyway, the Rising Tide pro festival is on again end of November this year.. we’re also train-ing over to Canberra so might see you within the next month