Wednesday 17 July 2013

Racial profiling and guns

The sad death Trayvon Martin has reminded me of two of my own minor experiences in the United States.

Back in the early 1980's I spent a year living in West Hartford, Connecticut. Unlike most of my neighbours I could often be found walking the streets for the simple purpose, not of walking the dog or having a jog, but to get somewhere else; usually the bar where I got my bike stolen (in a land of big vans it's not enough to leave a bike simply chained to itself) opposite the School of Mixology (that's cocktails) On more than one occasion I found myself joined by young black men who'd otherwise be walking by themselves. We'd have a chat about this and that but it turned out that the real reason for choosing to walk with me was that it made it much less likely that they'd get harassed by the police. What would a young black man be doing in this neighbourhood if he wasn't up to no good?

About ten years later, I was with my then young family on a camping holiday in Washington State. Early one morning, at a site half way up the side of Mount Spokane, I eventually lost my patience with the two hippies in a camper van nearby who were playing loud music, of all things The Beatles, and went over to ask them if they would mind turning it down. This was obviously a novel experience for them but the music went quiet and I did eventually get some sleep. Next day I overheard them talking to a fellow camper about this incident. It turns out that in their version I'd been armed. Perhaps this was the only way that they could imagine I'd had the nerve to do what I'd done. I can only be grateful that either they hadn't been armed themselves or they'd shown a certain amount of restraint in the face of my "provocation". 

Monday 15 July 2013

Traffic and smog masks

The story that I tell of the growth of environmentalism gives a key role to the Apollo space programme. Images of an all too small blue planet couldn't help but remind at least some of us of the fragility of our existence. Since then the challenge has been to find a way to get these ideas taken seriously by the establishment. 

Since we tend to judge the person who's telling us something before we're prepared to listen to what they're saying, it soon became clear that the message was unlikely to get through if delivered by stereotypical sandal wearing beardies. So, for those of us who began to believe that the challenge was as much one of public relations as it was of sound science, we began to adopt three major tactics.

The first of these was, to put it simply, to try to appear a little less weird. Our ideas might have been off to one side of the cultural spectrum but that didn't mean that we couldn't occasionally put aside our beards and sandals and put on a suit or at least a clean T shirt.

The second was to make change seem possible by talking down the scale of what would be necessary. This might be summarised in the slogan "Every little helps". We ended up presenting the challenge as one of simply making a few relatively modest life style changes. We knew that these wouldn't be enough but at least we wouldn't get thrown out of the room for trying and they might just give us time to get more realistic, i.e. likely to be effective, changes onto the menu. A good example of this would be the progress of the Kyoto Protocol and the UNFCCC. The initial aims were modest, nothing like enough to get the job done, but at least there were international talks about global issues. Since then, I think it would be fair to say that the only solid outcome of all the grand conferences has been "at least we're still talking".

The third was to translate things into the currency that every nation and business understands and that's money. Don't talk about carbon emissions that will only make them feel guilty, tell them how much money they'll save instead. 

I think it's now clear that these strategies haven't really worked; though I'm no closer to working out what would. The first perpetuates the least helpful aspects of social identity theory (see an early post Dispositional or situational ). A rapidly changing world needs less conventional thinking and we need to celebrate the cultural outliers rather than oblige them to conform. The second fails to challenge consumer capitalism and its emphasis on growth and consumption. The third simply confirms what business men and most politicians think they know already which is that money trumps everything else.

The end result is that we've failed to challenge the patterns of consumption in the developed world that have brought us to this position. To quote Stephen Emmott from his recent book Ten Billion  

The only solution left to us is to change our behaviour, radically and globally, on every level. In short, we urgently need to consume less. A lot less. Radically less. And we need to conserve more. A lot more. 

So, it seems likely that in 500 years time just as our history books look back on Henry VIII they'll be looking back on us. They'll live in a world where there are far fewer native species, where much of the world is barely habitable and where extreme weather is taken for granted. Assuming that there are still some functioning societies, the history books of the future will probably regard us with despair. "They knew that if they set fire to all those fossil fuels it would bring about chaos and destruction but they couldn't manage to do anything about it". It'll be a tale of short sighted greed in a grab what you can world that didn't appear to give a damn about the future, about them. 

Apart from the entirely predictable stuff about mass extinctions and climate change there's one other prediction that I'm prepared to make. That's that one the images in the history books of the future will be a visual representation of pointless self destruction. Traffic and smog masks. 





Monday 8 July 2013

Man in a suit

A couple of weeks ago I went to a college re-union. 

For many years I never quite felt comfortable going back. Not so much all the mellowed old Cotswold stone more the sense of being surrounded by young folk who thought they owned the place; for the very good reason that they probably did. A bit like a favourite episode of Top Cat where Brain is accused of having an acute inferiority complex on account of his acute inferiority.

This feeling has eased in recent years. Partly because I became reacquainted with the City by helping out in a friend's bike shop (see Football in Space) and partly because I now know that the swaggering sense of self confidence simply won't last.  Even Tony Blair and David Cameron might grow up one day.

Our college was known for its political activism and, in the absence of a proper central students union (not to be confused with the private debating society known as The Oxford Union and which we pointedly boycotted), most of the University's conscientious rebels seemed to hang out in our junior common room (JCR) This meant that the traditional student activities of dressing up, abusing oiks and being manly in boats were things that we actively avoided. Instead we were putting grandiose motions to the JCR (giving our ever so important opinions on world affairs), organising demonstrations, producing pamphlets and, above all, getting stoned and having very serious conversations. I survived, and did what work needed to be done, by using the simple tactic of getting up in the morning.

What this all means is that the invitation to go to a rather traditional re-union, one where you get dressed up in the play wear of the ruling elite, was never likely to be particularly appealing. Never the less, an old friend who's still based in Oxford encouraged me to go and eventually, despite the Black Tie preferred bit of the invitation, decided "what the heck.."

But, whilst I'd been fully intending to simply put on the tidiest and least grubby things I could find in my wardrobe (i.e using the "preferred" opt out clause), my mother got wind of my trip and couldn't but help mention it to one of her neighbours who quite correctly guessed that I'd be unlikely to have the right gear, and also equally unlikely to hire it, but offered to loan me her husband's. 

So, on a trip over to see my parents, both in their eighties but still sprightly in mind if not so much in body, I felt obliged to try on the offered suit and blow me if it wasn't a perfect fit. 



Man in a suit

Those of you who are concerned that I might have completely abandoned my rebellious streak will be disappointed to know that, rather than the preferred summer wear of sandals, I borrowed back the one pair of black shoes in the house from my son and was therefore properly dressed from head to toe. 

In anticipation of the occasion I'd imagined conversations in which success and status were on prominent display but,  to my surprise, that didn't happen at all. Perhaps if I'd gone to a similar event a decade ago it would have been different. As it was, I spoke to people that I'd probably never spoken to at any length before and discovered that, by and large, the prominent motivation of everyone there, no matter what prominent positions they might now occupy, was to try to do the right thing. Of course, it may well be that the truly ambitious had more important things to do than hang around in Oxford talking to people who were probably of no further use to them. We'll never know.

Postscript 1: Before going to the event I popped into Walton Street Cycles and, for those who know the tale, can report that business seemed to be going well and that they'd just got the maintenance contract for Oxford's soon to be launched public bike scheme. Meanwhile the despicable neighbouring venture is going broke and is up for sale.

Postscript 2: The day after I went for a bike ride and pub lunch with another old friend who's a serious academic at the Institute for Environmental Change. I was delighted to be able to reaffirm, at least to my own satisfaction, that I'm not a complete bullshitter.


Monday 1 July 2013

Above the parapet

An extract from Stephen Emmott's book Ten Billion appeared in last week's Observer. The book looks at the likely impact of having a global population of ten billion and is disarmingly candid about the need to dramatically reduce consumption in the developed world.  I'm sure that he, and the Observer, won't mind if I lift this quote from the accompanying interview. 

"It might be useful to first distinguish between growth and behaviour. The problem is less the current number of us in itself (yet) but more the way the majority of the 7 billion of us live and consume. This is principally the cause of almost every global problem we face. Critically, every one of these problems is set to accelerate as we continue to grow. "Confronting", as you put it, the way we live and consume is not something politicians want to do. Doing so would be immensely unpopular. And politicians do like to be popular. Indeed, our entire political systems are set up for the opposite: to promote and encourage us to increase our consumption and irresponsible behaviour. As for scientists – my colleagues, I should add – the vast majority choose to do what I have chosen not to do; to keep their heads well below the parapet on this lot."

Now I can understand the politicians not wanting to face the consequences but what is it with the scientists. What is it that stops them from stating the obvious? To what social norm are they anxious to conform? Was that a pointed question?

I know that it all gets a bit boring banging on about the environment and eco-systems and stuff, but that hasn't stopped the Today programme running a daily slot on the archane nonsense of the financial markets. I find it hard to imagine that there aren't more of us with an attachment to the natural world than there are who get their kicks from thinking about  the made up stuff of the financial markets. So how about replacing half of these with an update on the state of our eco-services. What's happening to biodiversity in palm oil plantations? Have they identified the coal that won't get burned because we're going to use fracked gas instead? How are the attempts going to uncouple personal status from spending power? 

And when they do the inevitable linking shot during a documentary, the one where the celebrity/presenter drives to the next location, how about putting him on a bike, on the bus or even on his/her own two feet. 

And when the weather report says that tomorrow's going to be rainy, how about showing a picture of someone with an umbrella rather than traffic drowning in spray.

So instead of normalising driving let's normalise walking and cycling and using the bus.  Let's normalise giving a damn. 

If only so that Stephem Emmott's colleagues can start putting their heads above the parapet without feeling that they're boring or weird.