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A social contract for the climate crisis

2020; Wiley; Volume: 27; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1111/newe.12202

2573-2331

Rebecca Willis,

Climate Change Communication and Perception

Why the public need to be involved Picture the scene. Fifteen people in a church hall in the small town of Penrith, on the edge of the English Lake District, one of the most northerly English parliamentary constituencies. The people have been selected to mirror the make-up of the constituency as a whole, in terms of age, social background and political outlook, and they've been told they are there to take part in some research. Before they arrived that morning, they didn't even know what the research was about. Then they were told they would be giving their views on climate change, and specifically, on the role of government in managing the climate crisis. But as discussions about the science and impacts of climate change got under way, there was one overriding feeling emerging from the participants: a feeling of confusion. The people assembled that day had heard about climate change, and were worried about it, but they were confused: if the reports that they were getting, from scientists, from the media and from programmes like David Attenborough's recent TV documentary, were right, then why wasn't there more political attention on climate? They couldn't understand why, if it was so serious, government was not taking a lead. They knew that there were things they could do for themselves – like recycling and driving less – but these seemed like insignificant contributions if they were not backed up by a coherent strategy, led by politicians. As one said, “the government needs to lead by example – everyone from the top down needs to play their part”.1 Those Penrith discussions got me thinking about that most fundamental of political concepts: the ‘social contract’. It's been much discussed and dissected, but in its most basic form, it is a simple and powerful concept. This is the deal: agree to be ruled, and in return, your rulers will offer you protection. Once you strip it back to basics, you begin to see just how deeply our rulers are failing us on the climate crisis. “global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions must decline well before 2030 if we are to prevent catastrophic changes to the climate system” No wonder the citizens of Penrith were confused. We rely on the state to keep us safe. They had just heard about the dire climate predicament we are in, and yet politicians don't really seem that bothered. How could this be? Thomas Hobbes was probably the first to theorise a ‘contract’ between citizens and the state. Writing in 17th-century England, a time of civil war, he argued that if people agreed to be ruled, this would allow enough stability for them to live their lives without fear. This was not a democratic vision – in fact, it is barely a contract, because the ruler does not have to negotiate terms. There's no checking the small print. It comes down to the basic idea that being ruled is better than what Hobbes called “the war of all against all”. In the many centuries since then, Hobbes’ fundamental idea has survived: the idea that surrendering some of our liberty to a ruler benefits each person and society as a whole. There are many variants of the social contract, including, of course, representative democracy, in which we choose our rulers periodically, and can boot them out if we don't like them. But whatever variant, we have internalised the basic idea of the social contract so thoroughly that we find it hard to articulate it explicitly. In a country not riven by civil war, with a functioning state and the rule of law, it's easy to take all that for granted. Then along comes a pandemic, and suddenly, we're back with the fundamentals. At times of crisis, the role of the state in providing for the basic security and wellbeing of its citizens suddenly comes into sharp relief. Just how quickly this happened is quite remarkable. On 12 March 2020, the ex-MP and London mayoral candidate Rory Stewart gave an interview calling for the closure of schools, working from home and self-isolation, enforced by the police.3 The interviewer suggested that such things might be possible in authoritarian countries like China, but not in a democracy. Fellow mayoral candidate Steve Baker went further, accusing Stewart of “sensationalising” coronavirus.4 And yet, less than a fortnight later, Boris Johnson, a prime minister who prides himself on his libertarian outlook, introduced all these measures and more. People agreed to the state reaching far into their lives, dictating when they could leave their home and who they could meet. The state agreed to pay the wages of millions of people who found themselves unable to do their job. The deal between the state and citizens – the social contract – was renegotiated at lightning speed. It was unthinkable beforehand, yet the weeks since March 2020 have shown that people are willing to accept stringent measures, if they see the need for them, and if they are given full information. Compliance went beyond expected levels. The modelling of non-pharmaceutical interventions by Imperial College,5 used by the UK government to plan lockdown measures, assumed compliance rates of 50–75 per cent, whereas surveys in April 2020 showed over 80 per cent compliance with social distancing.6 “politicians have been reluctant to speak out about climate change, for fear of being branded a ‘freak’ or a ‘zealot’” In 2016, the novelist Amitav Ghosh turned his hand to non-fiction. In his book, The Great Derangement, he describes a conversation with his elderly mother, who lives in Kolkata, an area suffering from increasingly severe flooding. He told her she should perhaps move: “I tried to introduce the subject tactfully, but it made little difference: she looked at me as though I had lost my mind. Nor could I blame her: it did seem like lunacy to talk about leaving a beloved family home, with all its memories and associations, simply because of a threat outlined in a World Bank report. It was a fine day, cool and sunlit; I dropped the subject.”8 Ghosh speculates that future humans will look back on the current moment as a brief era when our planet seemed relatively inert. The rug is being pulled from under our feet – but for now, we are all Ghosh's mother, not wanting to contemplate change. Ask a climate expert about the role of the state in the climate crisis, and they will probably talk about something like ‘setting standards’, ‘pricing carbon’ or ‘encouraging investment’. They go straight to the policy detail, without standing back to consider the most fundamental point: the state is here to keep us safe. This takes us back to the citizens of Penrith. Of course, they had views on the policies – but above all, they wanted to know that the state had their backs. That it was facing up to the enormity of the issue, not, like Ghosh's mother, clinging on to a familiar but outdated reality. Covid-19 has taught us that citizens are remarkably adaptable, despite what politicians may think. And confronting the climate crisis is very different from the immediate, personal sacrifice of lockdown, isolation and economic strife. Climate action requires change, and quite radical change at that – but not such personal hardship. It is instead a transformation: moving away from fossil powered economies and societies; valuing greenhouse gas reduction, both financially and morally; reskilling workers; and reorienting consumption and investment to align with climate goals. “It's easier for politicians to deny and to prevaricate than it is to act” The first, and most fundamental, task is for politicians to speak openly about the significance of climate change. This is what the Penrith citizens wanted: for government to acknowledge the climate crisis, and commit to tackling it. This will need unflinching honesty, if politicians are to face up to the fragility of human society, and its dependence on increasingly volatile earth systems. It's a difficult thing to do. Politicians have tended to present climate change as a less significant, more manageable issue, playing down the scientific evidence and presenting a straightforward account of climate change as something that can be ‘solved’.9 Last year saw an important step forward. As school strikers and protesters took to the streets, politicians in many local areas, as well as the Welsh, Scottish and UK parliaments, declared a ‘climate emergency’. In essence, this is an acknowledgement of the severity and urgency of the issue. “Politicians may have acknowledged the climate crisis, but they have also compartmentalised it” These examples show that we are still very far from the honest debate we need, not just acknowledging the urgency of climate change, but acknowledging that climate action will require significant change to our economy and society. Unlike Covid-19, we're talking change rather than sacrifice; but change nonetheless. An honest debate would also address issues of power, and the very deliberate strategies employed by those who have a stake in the high-carbon status quo: countries, and companies, who depend on fossil fuels. There is very good evidence that, over many years, the oil majors, airlines and other high-carbon interests have deliberately slowed or derailed climate action, through questioning the science, putting forward inadequate solutions and influencing the public debate.11 A brilliant new research paper documents an even wider set of ‘discourses of delay’ – arguments for why climate action should not be seen as urgent. Some of these arguments – such as the view that some climate measures are too expensive, and money would be better used elsewhere – might be put forward in good faith. But, as the study authors say: “in the absence of high-quality public deliberation, and in the hands of interest groups fighting against regulation, our concern is that discourses of delay will disorientate and discourage ambitious climate action”.12 We have seen that politicians have not spoken out on the need for urgent climate action, worrying that they would not have public support. This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. People are less likely to support climate action if they don't see their politicians leading the way, and offering up a strategy that is as serious as the problem it is designed to address. Climate politics has become a silent stand-off, with neither citizens nor representatives willing to make the first move. But this deeply unhelpful stand-off contains the seeds of a solution. If politicians have the confidence to lead, to see climate action as a social contract between citizens and politicians, then they are likely to be supported. Imagine, for a moment, that politicians stated, clearly and without equivocation, that urgent action was needed, and that government would lead the way, to do all it could to keep us safe. But, they would say, we can't do this by decree. We need a climate strategy that is effective at bringing emissions down. They would design something that works for people: in a practical sense, making their lives better; and also in a moral sense, meeting people's expectations of fairness and justice. In essence, they would rewrite that social contract, through an explicit negotiation between citizens and the state. This may sound hopelessly idealistic. But it has already happened. This is exactly what Climate Assembly UK, a national citizens' assembly on climate change established by parliament, has done. In discussions over four weekends, a representative group of more than 100 citizens heard from experts, learned about climate science, impacts and action, discussed and deliberated, and then voted on their recommendations to parliament. I was part of this incredible experiment, and it was quite an experience. It's a different way of doing democracy. It confirmed for me that if you give people this responsibility, together with the space to learn, think and talk, they come up with very sensible answers to difficult questions. I'm not suggesting that we should entirely replace our system of representative democracy with this sort of direct deliberation. Instead, I see processes like the Climate Assembly as a way of making our democracy work better, giving politicians and citizens alike the chance to contribute their expertise to a joint endeavour. Citizen deliberation does not have to be restricted to one-off events like this, either – it could be woven in to the way decisions are made. Done properly, it could even provide a counterbalance to the vested interests whose money and access hold sway in the current system. Initial results from the Climate Assembly, which have just been released, confirm how useful these processes are. Asked about the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic, participants were adamant that the UK's economic recovery should be aligned with climate goals. As one citizen said: “There has never been a better opportunity to change … We are at a crossroads of change – train people to take up new jobs rather than pay unemployment benefit, evolve new industries – now is the time to do it. There is no choice”.13 “keeping quiet about climate, hoping to bypass citizens and voters rather than including them, is immensely short-sighted” Given a meaningful opportunity to have their say, most people would support action in the fact of the climate breakdown that is unfolding in front of us. But our democracies, in their current form, are just not offering people that choice. It's time for that contract to be renegotiated. Rebecca Willis is professor in practice at Lancaster Environment Centre, and author of Too Hot To Handle? The democratic challenge of climate change, published by Bristol University Press.