Where do we stand?
Where should CPRE stand in the current debate about climate change?
- George Monbiot argues that the latest government initiative is a great green ripoff (March 2010)
- Andy Boddington from CPRE Shropshire considers all sides of the climate change debate (Dec 09)
CPRE Shropshire's Andy Boddington considers sides and comes down... well, read on to find out! If you agree with him - or if you don't - please let me know and I will post comments here. Or join the debate on the CPRE's national online forum!
Charting a Route Through the Climate Change Debate
Energy and climate change are perhaps the difficult issues of the moment within CPRE.
On housing, transport and most other planning issues we have a clear national, regional and local line. It is true that we often tack a different line from branch to branch, but we are on the same course.
This has not been true with climate change and energy. Some local groups have been more sceptical of climate change than our national team and very resistant to renewable wind energy projects, though some have been strongly supportive of the broad climate change agenda (for example, Kent & Peak).
The Times recently published a poll showing that public attitudes towards climate change are split:
- 41% accept as an scientific fact that global warming is occurring and is largely man-made
- 32% believe that the link is not yet proven
- 8% say that blaming man is environmentalist propaganda
- 15% that the world is not warming
We have no specific data for CPRE, but it is clear that many CPRE members are sceptical about climate change, whether it is happening and whether mankind has a major responsibility. They are supported by a number of scientists and a deep rooted scepticism in some areas of the press (particularly the Telegraph and Mail).
The British National Party and UKIP reject mankind's responsibility for climate change. My impression from social networks such as Twitter and Facebook is that there is a correlation growing between social intolerance and climate change scepticism, though this cannot be quantified.
Perhaps an equal number of CPRE members are convinced that climate change is happening and that mankind is responsible. Some of these take the view it is a global emergency. They are supported by the majority of scientists, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change consensus.
Since 2007, no scientific body of national or international standing has maintained a dissenting opinion.
Newspapers such as the Guardian and the Independent take a pro-consensus line. The Conservatives, Labour & Liberals all accept mankind's responsibility for climate change. Climate change activists have an energetic presence on the social networks, which have become an essential part of campaigning (though not for CPRE).
In this divided landscape of political and public opinion, CPRE needs to take a line that is not only acceptable to our members but allows CPRE to function effectively in the current policy environment and to recruit new members.
We are not, and cannot be, experts on climate change at a national or local level. We cannot be effective champions of the scientific consensus or the dissenting lobby because we ourselves are divided. But we cannot ignore the politics and policies of climate change, or I would argue, the implications for our own membership.
When I look around Shropshire at the growing transition town movement, OS21, No Way and similar groups, I see them fighting supermarkets, bypasses and unwarranted destruction of green fields - all these classic CPRE territory. Their members are perhaps an average of twenty years younger than ours.
We need to be allies of these groups, they are the next generation CPRE, but to be allies we need to recognise that they all to a greater or lesser degree support the climate change consensus and have concerns about peak oil.
There is no future to my mind in a CPRE that ignores the agendas of the next generation of landscape defenders, whatever the views of current CPRE activists about climate change and peak oil.
Some hope that CPRE will recruit sceptics, now or in the future. When I look at the sceptics of my age (54) or younger I do not see natural allies of the landscape. I do not see potential recruits that will carry forward the historic mission of CPRE.
Our future recruits are over in the climate change camp, not in groups like Plane Stupid! but in the myriad of community campaigns that have sprung up to deal with climate change concerns.
The government is implementing climate change policies throughout the planning system. Whatever happens at a national or international level, planning polices are likely to reflect climate change for years to come. We must tackle this by contributing both to the formation of those policies and to examining their consequences.
Planning and environmental policy is at best a crude tool. We will not agree with some of the anticipated consequences (for example, wind farms) and we can except that there will be many unanticipated consequences. Its our job to address climate change policy and campaign for it on behalf of the landscape and rural communities.
For all these reasons, I think that CPRE's position on climate change should be one of debate, discussion and raising awareness of environmental and planning changes that are likely to have an impact on our landscapes.
We should not get involved in arguments about the science of climate change. We should not campaign to convert people to the scientific consensus. But we should embrace the climate change debate, and actively engage with climate change centred groups.
If we do not, CPRE will dwindle and the landscape will be much the worse for it.
Andy Boddington
6 December 2009 Back to top
... so, what do you think?
Fiona Cowan
3 March 2010