Yes to a duty, no to local carbon budgets: my take on the CCC report
So the Committee on Climate Change has published its report on the role of local authorities in addressing climate change. This is significant, as it has previously only addressed things from a central government perspective, and was only asked (by the Government) to consider the role of local government, after a fair bit of lobbying by Friends of the Earth. The Committee’s views are significant as it exists to advise government on how to achieve the UK’s statutory carbon budget.
I only have time today to make two points. One for, one against.
First, the report has to be welcomed for making it clear that not acting on carbon is not an option. The Committee is clearly concerned that “at the moment there is no requirement for councils to set targets and implement measures to reduce emissions within their area. And the scale of ambition is generally low given limited funding and lack of obligation”. As a result, it recommends “the introduction of a statutory duty for local authorities to develop and implement carbon plans, and that national funding to support such programmes is increased”. It’s a shame that the Committee has had to say this, but they’re absolutely right. The Green Alliance report, Is Localism Delivering for Climate Change? made clear in October 2011 that many local authorities’ commitment to address carbon reduction has waned recently.
Statutory duties are, I admit, a mixed blessing. They jar with me as a Localist, but I have sometimes argued for local authorities to have a single statutory duty: to ensure the future viability of their area. Everything else should flow from this; it seems to get to the point of local governance which, for me, is all about place. I could argue that a statutory duty on carbon is a proxy for this, but in practice, it’s more straightforward than that: acting on carbon reduction cannot be optional for any place. Localism cannot be about whether or not my place does anything to reduce emissions; it should be about deciding how. So I don’t have a problem with a statutory duty – but let’s avoid the classic centralist model, where local plans are sent to a central template and signed off by civil servants.
Which brings me neatly to my second point. The Committee comes out against the introduction of local carbon budgets. Their rationale is that this would not be appropriate “given the multiple drivers of emissions, many of which are beyond their control”. If this is the case, then why do councils have ambitions about job creation or waste reduction? Pretty much everything a council does that could be broadly described as ‘community leadership’ or ‘place shaping’ (ie everything except simple service delivery) is subject to forces “beyond their control”. Why should this be a barrier on carbon? Further to this, based on this logic, the UK should not have a national carbon budget; success, after all, is dependent on factors which the national government can’t fully control.
I’ve written plenty about local carbon budgets in the past, and still see the case for them as straightforward: we have a national carbon budget; our emissions are the sum total of emissions in each locality; so it makes sense for each local authority area to have a local carbon budget – that way, there is a clear role for each place in contributing to the national commitment to reduce carbon. The LGA has argued that this would be ‘centrally-imposed, top-down’ target setting; I see it as taking responsibility, arguably subsidiarity.
So I would argue for local carbon budgets as the mechanism for ensuring both that the UK meets its commitments and that each local authority is able to be ambitious about their own place. I’m disappointed that the Committee on Climate Change hasn’t taken this view, but pleased that what they do suggest looks like progress. I hope the Government listens.
Official: emissions aren’t falling, and some in #localgov are doing something about it
Today could turn out to be a significant day in history of Britain addressing climate change. Why? Because an influential cross-party Committee has called the Government to account on the myth at the heart of UK policy on carbon emissions: that the UK’s emissions are falling. And I’m pleased to say that pioneers in local government have played a part in demonstrating to MPs that this is worth doing.
The report Consumption Based Emissions Reporting is the result of an Inquiry by the Energy and Climate Change Committee. The lead story is its assertion that the Government should be open about ‘outsourced emissions’, quoting Chairman Tim Yeo as saying that, “the Department for Energy and Climate Change likes to argue that the UK is only responsible for 2% of the world’s CO2 emissions, but the Government’s own research shows this not to be the case. We get through more consumer goods than ever before in the UK and this is pushing up emissions in manufacturing countries like China.”
All governments since Kyoto have happily based policy on the principle that the only carbon metric that counts is ‘territorial’ emissions: in practice, the emissions this country is directly responsible for. This is an understandable conceit for government, as it can influence the energy efficiency of UK manufacturing in a way that it cannot mandate a factory in China.
This exclusive focus on territorial emissions, as the Committee recognises, leads to perverse incentives (if I fly for a weekend in Barcelona, and turn my central heating off while I’m away, this looks like a negative-carbon trip in the UK’s carbon accounts). And it leads to a total failure to recognise the carbon implications of our behaviours and decisions as citizens, beyond the realms of home energy and travel.
So, in challenging this – and the previous – government’s assertion that the UK’s emissions are falling, the Committee has made a massive leap in policy terms: it asserts that we, as individuals, have some responsibility for the emissions in the supply chains of the goods and services we buy and use, and that policy-makers should have an interest in this. In fact, it has asked DECC to “explore the options for incorporating consumption-based emissions data into the policy-making progress”.
Amen to that. Because this matters.
In projects I have been involved in over the past year with Mike Berners-Lee of Small World Consulting, we’ve established that mainstream policy-makers are completely at odds with people’s intuitive understanding of what they are responsible for. If you ask someone to compare the carbon impact of a flight they could take with the impact of a product they might buy, they do not distinguish between emissions in the UK and those elsewhere.
Yet policy-makers do nothing but, at national and local level. This is incongruous and helps explain why government action on climate change has so little salience with the public. It is why local government, for example, has an established track record encouraging behaviour change and demand management on the ‘territorial’ segments of our carbon footprint (transport modal shift, home energy, but relatively little on our broader consumption patterns. Food, in its different guises, accounts for approaching 25% of the consumption-based emissions of any locality, but local low-carbon food initiatives barely register compared to work on retrofitting, etc.
Let’s be realistic, though: in calling out policy-makers, the Committee hasn’t really made a giant leap: to extend the long-jump analogy, it’s really marking the start of the run-up. The real question is how we act on this.
Encouragingly, the report also says: “Ministers should explore the options for incorporating consumption-based emissions data in to the policy making process and setting emissions targets on a consumption-basis at the national level”. And I’m delighted to see that the Committee acknowledges the work of the three local authorities who have explored the consumption perspective (West Sussex, Manchester and the Lake District NPA) in showing that this perspective is useful for local policy-makers.
What needs to happen now? In my view, though the Committee’s asks are for Central Government, the consumption perspective makes even more sense at a local level, and this is where local policy needs to be developed. It builds on local government’s strengths, as we have influenced behaviour to manage demand for a long time. However, there is no budget available for innovation in this vital area; all the work to date has relied on the political leadership from the likes of Louise Goldsmith and Sir Richard Leese.
Overall, the Committee’s report is as encouraging about using consumption-based metrics as we could reasonably have hoped. Credit to them, and also to the pioneers who have been prepared to make the early running on this. As I write, I’ve just remembered this photo I took in Parliament when the Inquiry heard evidence from local government witnesses. 
I hope they feel the time spent was worthwhile. I do.
Being Clear About Green Deal’s Risks
Let’s be honest, it’s not often I am impressed by Ministers on carbon. So praise where it is due for Greg Barker’s speech on Green Deal to Ecobuild a couple of days ago.
Speech by Greg Barker at the Ecobuild Conference – Department of Energy and Climate Change.
His summary (below) is interesting, particularly the second and third bullets:
Today, I wanted to draw out three key points to unpack that simple description of the Green Deal:
- Firstly, this is a brand new way of approaching energy efficiency. Not a continuation of CERT, CESP, not a son of this or daughter of that;
- Secondly, it will create a brand new market and opportunities for industry. A market for the aspirational, not just for the worthy or energy sensible;
- Thirdly, don’t underestimate the power of communities in their many shapes and forms. These will be key to delivering this agenda
Along with many others, I’m often heard emphasising that ‘doing the right thing’ on carbon and sustainability needs to be seen as aspirational, not hair-shirted or twee. Unfortunately, many ‘green’ messages do come across as the latter. So it’s good to recognise this.
My present concerns about Green Deal, though, relate to whether we will be able to deliver on – and build on – an aspirational approach.
Green Deal will fail if, in the first instance, not enough households take up the offer. This is recognised by all as a real risk, but little work has been done on how to manage this risk.
A second risk of failure is if Green Deal in practice does not build local skills and economies. This risk needs to be understood and addressed by local government; the centre will not take the lead. So when I hear tales of local authorities taking the lead in bringing together local consortia, with clarity about building local skills and using local SMEs to deliver, I’m pleased. But I don’t hear these stories often enough.
A third risk is beginning to be recognised by some in local government. This is the very real fear the the actuals savings on householders will not be realised as they ‘take comfort’. As it stands, there is no real incentive for private sector installers to tackle the behaviour change issue head on. My concern here is that it is now quite late in the day for local authorities to be solving this. And yet we’ve known since Kirklees first carried out mass retrofitting that half of the potential (carbon and financial) savings can be lost to people taking advantage of living in more energy efficient, less draughty homes by ‘walking around in t-shirts’.
The fourth risk I would identify is less recognised even by sustainability professionals and climate officers. This is the risk that we do not take the opportunity of engaging with people on energy use – with a clear carbon imperative – to also find ways of encouraging behaviour change in relation to our consumption-based carbon footprint. In reality, household emissions are a small proportion of our total footprint. This could be a great opportunity to help people take responsibility for their wider footprint. I suspect that few authorities are on the case with this, but I’d love to hear from any that are.
Like this:
Exposed! How to encourage #behaviourchange when changing the default is a step too far
You might have noticed that England and Wales are taking different approaches to increasing organ donation rates. They’re both addressing the problem that the UK’s ‘opt-in’ system gives a much lower rate of donation than ‘opt-out’ systems in some other countries. You can guess which nations in the chart below use which approach! The difference in outcomes is stark.
In terms of behavioural effects, this is all about defaults. And the plan in Wales is to use this insight to change the default to presumed consent. In England, a different approach – just as legitimate – has been chosen: relying on Exposure Effect, rather than Default Effect. So, when you apply for a driving license, you will have to choose between being on the donor register, or not.
There won’t be a ‘don’t know’ option, which strengthens the effect, and we are sure to see donor rates increase.
So I was pleased to be reminded (by@alex_north) that Boots is helping the drive to improve rates, by asking people if they want to be added to the register when they apply for a store loyalty card. I’ve clipped their web page on this (right). Again, this is about employing Exposure Effect.
My reason for posting this is simply to flag up how straightforward it can be to use behavioural effects. It doesn’t require masses of academic input; it just requires a bit of literacy about behavioural effects.
Speaking of which, good to see Boots adding the clip below, using Emotional Engagement to encourage people to ‘do the right thing’.
Behavioural Insights: Can Local Government Use Reciprocation to Improve Outcomes?
The With The Grain tool, which gives local authorities access to behavioural insights, draws on the (now quite extensive) literature on behavioural economics and psychology. One thing pretty much all practitioners agree on is the power of reciprocation.
Reciprocity is a very powerful urge. When someone has done something for you, you want to do something for them. When you consider how our species’s success has depended on our very social nature, it makes sense. And there’s plenty of evidence for this. In fact, there’s evidence cited by Cialdini as an extension of the behaviour change experiment that nearly everyone has heard of: the ‘getting hotel guests to reuse their towels by telling them most other people do’ story. You know the one.
It seems the most effective way of getting guests to reuse towels is to tell them that the hotel has made a donation to an environmental charity, and ask them to play their part by reusing their towels. Note the past tense: not ‘will make a donation for everyone who reuses’, but ‘has made a donation’. If it’s the other way round, it feels like a transaction and that it simply less motivating.
So, it seems that reciprocation is a much more powerful motivator of our behaviour (whether we are aware of this or not, and whether or not it’s rational) than incentives. You can see where this discussion is going, can’t you? In public services, we are used to thinking in terms of providing incentives to people to make smarter choices. For many, it’s pretty much a default setting when considering how to encourage behaviour change. We are not used to thinking in terms of reciprocation; and, what is more, there are real barriers to thinking in terms of, say, a local authority providing something in advance of the reciprocated action. It feels too risky to many; and we might worry about being criticised for being extravagant with public money.
And yet, and yet … there are examples of local authorities using the reciprocation effect. I’m thinking in particular of LB Sutton’s approach to gritting over the past couple of years. There are now 10,000 households who accept free grit from the Council. The expectation is that they’ll clear their – and their neighbours’ – pavements when there is snow. There is no obligation to do so, but sure enough they do it, which takes pressure off of local services. It’s interesting to contrast this with the (shall we say ‘mixed’) reactions to communities being asked to expected to staff libraries on a voluntary basis to replace an existing service.
Two points seem worth making. First, the Sutton grit example has legs: if we’re looking to encourage new behaviours, show that you trust people by fulfilling your end of the bargain first. In this way, what looks like a transaction, a ‘deal’ in a committee paper, might not even feel like one to residents. Second, more complex, is to consider how we might apply this principle more to relationships which are already transactional. Can we find ways of moving towards more reciprocal relationships, where the authority’s trust is rewarded by more independent behaviour and choices on the part of local communities, citizens and customers? I think this one has a long way to run.
Can #advertising be ‘not evil’? #behaviourchange #neuroscience and cats with thumbs
I think the blog I’ve amplified below is significant because it’s from someone at a big agency and starts to respond to the “Think of me as Evil” report. I’ve posted my comments on the blog page (linked below and shown below. So I don’t need to add more comment here. Oh, and there’s a cute cat picture.
neuroscience vs cats with thumbs
There seems to be a lot of talk in the trade press recently about ‘neuromarketing’. And there was an interesting piece ‘advertising is a poison’ in The Guardian last week. George Monbiot makes some good points in the article. At W+K we don’t tend to think of our work as a ‘battering ram’ of ‘pervasiveness and repetition’; the people behind the likes of Go Compare may well have a different point of view.
But is advertising the cause of a society that celebrates image, power and status, or is it a symptom of this society? People have aspired to these values since they were jealous of the neanderthal with a better cave. The societies where the state has tried to enforce the suppression of these aspirations – hello, Stalin’s Russia, North Korea – have in the main been pretty miserable places. It isn’t just advertising that makes humans want a bigger house and a new car.
Since the publication of Hidden Persuaders in the 1950s, academics have been suggesting that advertising has the power to manipulate the subconscious. But it’s pretty rare that an agency team will have a conversation with clients about neurobiology, or how our message will be processed by the prefrontal cortex of our audience, or how we can conceal some sort of secret mind-control message in an ad. It’s just not that scientific or simple. We wouldn’t deny that advertising has the power to manipulate the unconscious mind. But pundits overestimate our ability to control or predict how we’re doing it.
Meanwhile, it’s ironic that Monbiot suggests advertising is to blame for low savings rates by UK families when at the bottom of the article there is an ad for… Barclays Investments.
In Marketing magazine this week, Dr AK Pradeep ‘one of the world’s leading neuromarketing experts’ says, “One of my clients trying to sell milk experimented with various imagery – farms, grass, hay, barns farmers…The one that always wins out is cows. Somehow the source of a product is more evocative in the deep subconscious than anything else. This is something we’ve learned through neuromarketing.”
So, what about cats with thumbs, as featured in our highly successful campaign for Cravendale milk then?
Our view: the difficulty with showing cows or talking about the other familiar benefits listed above by Dr Pradeep is that it gives the audience immediate permission to ignore you because they assume you’re telling them what they already know. But something dissonant and unexpected like a polydactyl cat slaps you across the face (not literally, we don’t yet have the technology to make that possible) and makes you pay attention in a way you wouldn’t have done otherwise for such a functional product. An 8% sales increase suggests that this approach has merits.
Of course, perhaps if we had done a campaign featuring cows with thumbs, we would have sold even more milk.
Irish President’s Inaugral speech: wisdom on prosperity, materialism and dignity we hope to hear one day from UK leaders
Nothing to add, save that it’d be good to hear this narrative from British leaders BEFORE a financial crash or similar.
In full: the inaugural address of President Michael D Higgins
However, in more recent years, we saw the rise of a different kind of individualism – closer to an egotism based on purely material considerations – that tended to value the worth of a person in terms of the accumulation of wealth rather then their fundamental dignity. That was our loss, the source in part, of our present difficulties. Now it is time to turn to an older wisdom that, while respecting material comfort and security as a basic right of all, also recognises that many of the most valuable things in life cannot be measured.
New analysis suggests we’re cutting resource use but let’s not over-interpret #decoupling #degrowth
I’ve copied a few paras below, but you really should go to the Guardian website and read the whole article.
This is important because it allows us – very briefly, and possibly illusory – a glimpse of decoupling. Could it be that it is possible after all to reduce material throughput while economic activity increases?
Like I say, it’s just a glimpse. Even if Goodall’s tentative conclusions turn out to be true (and there are important caveats), the degree of decoupling would be nowhere near that required to reduce our resource use enough to sustain our civilisation in the long-term. But – hey – when you thought you’d never see even a glimpse, be pleased.
Two quick points:
One of several important caveats about the metrics is that the story on carbon looks different. ‘Offshoring’ our emissions to China not only gets them off our books; it also multiplies them massively, according to recent (not yet peer reviewed) data I’ve seen.
My main reflection on this article is that this is exactly the sort of discussion that needs to be at the heart of our political and policy debate. This is just the sort of finding that we look at the implications of if we are trying, as Tim Jackson has challenged us, to create the new macro-economics.
We can’t pretend that it is in the mainstream. Yet. But we need to use the influence we have to make it so.
Why is our consumption falling?
From food to paper and water, Britain has gradually been guzzling less over the past decade. Why?
With so many significant events to look back on, one thing that few people will remember 2001 for is its entry in the UK’s Material Flow Accounts, a set of dry and largely ignored data published annually by the Office for National Statistics.
But, according to environment writer Chris Goodall, those stats tell an important story. “What the figures suggest,” Goodall says enthusiastically, “is that 2001 may turn out to be the year that the UK’s consumption of ‘stuff’ – the total weight of everything we use, from food and fuel to flat-pack furniture – reached its peak and began to decline.”
Goodall discovered the Material Flow Accounts while writing a research paper examining the UK’s consumption of resources. The pattern he stumbled upon caught him by surprise: time and time again, Brits seemed to be consuming fewer resources and producing less waste. What really surprised him was that consumption appears to have started dropping in the first years of the new millennium, when the economy was still rapidly growing.
In 2001, Goodall says, the UK’s consumption of paper and cardboard finally started to decline. This was followed, in 2002, by a fall in our use of primary energy: the raw heat and power generated by all fossil fuels and other energy sources. The following year, 2003, saw the start of a decline in the amount of household waste (including recycling) generated by each person in the country – a downward trend that before long could also be observed in the commercial and construction waste sectors.
Can’t argue with conclusions of @greenallianceUK @mrskumquatkid report on #localgov & climate change
I recommend this report as an overview of the current state of play in local government on climate change strategy and action. Download it for free from the site linked below. It doesn’t make for happy reading, suggesting a retrenchment overall, with few authorities seeing the arguable additional ‘localist’ freedoms as an opportunity to move action on carbon and climate up the agenda.
I like that Green Alliance (author Faye Scott is @mrskumquatkid on Twitter) seed the report with reminders that local action needs to be about building resilience and making the transition to a low carbon economy and society. Sounds like one of my blogs. But I’d like to see more recognition from them that this will require a major focus on lifestyles and (in carbon terms) acting on consumption emissions. Local government is free to ignore these, and nearly all authorities do; the report contains just two explicit references to local authority interest in the consumption perspective.
So, on the gloomy side: there is a downward trend, and many authorities aren’t hitting the low bar that has been set. On the plus side, the green shoots of local interest in consumption metrics. I hope Green Alliance and others will encourage these.
Is localism delivering for climate change? Emerging responses from local authorities, local enterprise partnerships and neighbourhood plans
This report explores the impacts of the coalition’s localism agenda on climate change action. It asks:
- Are local authorities continuing to work on climate change?
- How is action being encouraged?
- What potential do local enterprise partnerships (LEPs), local nature partnerships (LNPs) and neighbourhood plans have to strengthen local action on climate change?
Based on extensive interviews and two surveys, the report finds a three-way split between local authorities. A third are maintaining their action on climate change, a third are narrowing their work and a third are opting out of action altogether. Overall, the results suggest that climate change work has narrowed, is very weak or absent in 65 per cent of local authorities.
The full report can be downloaded above, or read the executive summary
Yes, but … you don’t really think (do you?) that the fact that humans had differential status before advertising wipes clean the ad industry’s responsibility for encouraging the type of consumption that is trashing ecosystem services, increasing inequalities, reducing social cohesion, increasing mental illness, etc, etc. Hope not.
By the way, my understanding is that our ancestors out-socialed neanderthals, though I guess they may have been jealous of the blighters’ caves as well. Status envy probably dates to about 10,000 years ago with settled agriculture. Some people had bigger crops, and they didn’t share it all.
Maybe a cool question to ask yourself as an ad industry person, on the back of this debate is: given that we know how to use behavioural insights to drive behaviours, how can we use this to make people feel good about doing low-impact stuff? A future blog maybe?
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25 November 2011 at 01:33 PM