We really need to stop suggesting, either implicitly or explicitly, that we can decarbonise society without people making any changes. It's not only dishonest, but is sure to bake in further distrust in Gov when it turns out not to be true.
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Thatcher’s burden was to get the nation off coal. Perhaps it is Starmer’s burden to make this case and the other one which gets the UK to turn its face towards Europe again.
Even relatively simple changes, like charging for plastic bags required a change. And ultimately it has been welcomed. This government is so nervous, not the behavioural trait of winners
"force" is becoming another one of those words that when it's used I assume it's done conservative nonsense being spewed. Like "common sense" or "axe the tax".
Sure, society in general will need to change. But it's highly unlikely that an individual will have someone forcing this change upon you.
Therein lies the genius of "New Zero" rather than "decarbonisation", because it tolds out the tantalising possibility that social change (for us) can be avoided by forcing huge changes elsewhere in the world. An attempt to comfort & keep ppl onside (like old colonialist Telegraph-readers).
Suggesting that change isn't needed denies people the agency to co-design the shifts we do need, and ignores that changes are already being imposed on us, some more than others. Isn't nanny statism just blaming the public to avoid confronting vested interests that favour the status quo?
But people's lives change all the time. It's just cowardice in explaining the benefits and drawbacks together in a reasonable way - I guess the media environment has some blame there but ultimately a failure of politics (creating cohesion) and imagination.
With you 100% on this. As Nate Hagens eloquently points out, increasing simplicity can also increase sophistication - of time, relationships, wellbeing, legacy and more.
Each of those was an expansion of human agency enabled by the exploitation of 100MY old sequestered fossil energy. Removing constraint is one thing. Adding constraints, either perceived or real, is entirely another.
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Sure, society in general will need to change. But it's highly unlikely that an individual will have someone forcing this change upon you.
It is more often a semi-deranged, extremist observer.
Beeching 'forced' Brits out of trains and into cars.
Various companies in the US 'forced' (via lobbying, marketing etc) people out of trains and into planes and automobiles.
Are people supposed to choose between a heat pump and being drowned in a flash flood?
Recent provincial election results offer insight about how the public respond to such policy.
Amitav Ghosh calls this faulty approach ”the bourgeoisie belief in the regularity of the world”
#10 Spok spin devoid of reality; all too familiar 😫