For anyone who has spent time campaigning for change, any victory, however small, can feel like a major breakthrough. Whether it’s preventing Eurostar from forcing people to breakdown their bicycles and store them in a box for travel, or securing the public’s right of access along the coast, I’ve been there and had that sense of achievement from change for social and environmental good.
But incremental changes rarely creates tipping points. It rarely acts as a catalyst for much bigger behaviour change. And tipping points are often a precursor and prerequisite for large, whole-systems scale. When we look at the scale of the challenges posed by climate change, it simply doesn’t move us far enough, quickly enough.
As we faced the hottest day on record in the UK, over 40 degrees, George Monbiot’s Guardian article (18/7/22) on extreme weather argued that the theory of change used by environmental organisations in the UK has failed. The fear of alienating people has made environmentalists timid in their demands, he says. This leads them – he posits – to the only realistic and manageable approach, which is incrementalism, campaigning issue by issue and sector by sector, for gradual change and improvements.
But the problem wasn’t ever that systems change was too big a challenge. The problem was that an incremental approach was too small an ask to ever cause enough momentum for real change. “Lets stop bringing buckets of water when only fire engines will do” he argues.
A shift to whole-systems change is needed. We are hearing increasing references to it in the media and elsewhere. Earlier this month, Buddhist monk Vishapani spoke to Radio 4’s Today programme saying “If we want to affect change, we must look at the system that caused the problems and ask fundamental questions about its structure.”
It is clear that change within the energy system is a vital step towards addressing climate change and energy regulator Ofgem has a huge challenge in making much-needed fundamental reforms. A recent report by the House of Common's Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, condemned the regulator for its inadequate measures to protect consumers and promote a viable energy market. Ofgem "granted energy suppliers a licence to operate in the market without ensuring they had access to sufficient levels of working capital, an acceptable business plan, or were run by individuals with relevant expertise."
But Ofgem does recognise that long term we need a resilient, low carbon power sector that enables the shift to Net Zero. According to its’s latest discussion paper, Net Zero Britain: developing an energy system fit for the future, althought Great Britain’s energy system is undergoing rapid changes, this must be accelerated over the next decade, if the UK is to meet its Net Zero target by 2050. The unprecedented rise in gas prices over the last twelve months only reinforces this need to accelerate our shift away from fossil fuels and head for rapid decarbonisation. But we still haven’t had a real public debate on what we want from our energy system, for customers, the economy, the environment and society.
Wilful blindness?
Some of the most altruistic agencies and their systems, like the UN’s global marketplace (the system used for tendering projects of all scales), appear to be part of a flawed system. At humanitarian architectural charity, Article 25, where I was until recently Managing Executive, we often had insights into the processes for assessing tenders, that appeared to undervalue the importance of sustainable design in earthquake prone communities. Bids were undercut by proposals that meant hospital buildings could be built only to collapse in the next big quake. This wilful blindness to price in resilience to earthquakes will cost countless lives in the future, as well as waste the resources of well-intentioned philanthropists.
It is possible to make whole systems change happen, and at a global scale. Take the example, of changes in the financial system - a human institution, made by humans for humans, which could become a major source of climate finance and change in favour of a sub-1.5C future, like the Climate Action 100 initiative which includes more than 700 investors who are proactively engaging companies on improving climate change governance, cutting emissions and strengthening climate-related financial disclosures.
Launched in December 2017 at the One Planet Summit, this campaign has grown into the largest investor engagement initiative on climate change. The network is responsible for over £56.68 trillion ($68 trillion) of assets under management.
But in order to bring about change we must understand the multiple players and factors at work. Tinkering at the edges in terms of policies or in limited sectors will not work. We need, for example essential service firms including water, broadband, transport and energy, to work together and for businesses to cooperate cross sector. This is particularly the case to secure resilience for households and society given the interdependency between these different sectors. This won’t be possible without joined up thinking and collaboration.
Tipping points
Consumers increasingly need to be part of the solution – whether reducing their water or energy use, making sustainable purchasing choices, or simply not flushing wet wipes down the toilet. Yet delivering sustained behaviour change is notoriously difficult. This is why we are setting up a collaboration network for behaviour change for Net Zero and sustainable living which brings together cross-sector organisations and businesses to share learning and drive the changes needed to deliver change.
It is all too tempting to think that if we essentially leave things as they are and adopt new technologies, we can continue life as normal and solve the climate crisis. But we can’t. For example if every car on London’s ring road, the North/South Circular, were electric, that wouldn’t in itself reduce the traffic or make getting from A to B faster. The road is choked regardless of the engine type. We need to campaigns for systemic change including a new transport model.
We need to reach a 1 in 4 threshold of public acceptance for change beyond which a number of scientific studies conclude social tipping points can happen. Climate change will not impact everyone equally, and many of those who have done the least to cause it, have (and will) suffer the most.
But if we are brave and bold enough, we can address the challenges we face together by creating a better model that meets environmental, social and economic needs. Failure to do so will benefit no one longer term - we need more people to join the critical mass and enable the positive societal tipping points required to create a Green Industrial Revolution with more ambition and concrete action than the one that’s currently being bandied around by outgoing and incoming Prime Ministers.