downsizing 80%
Everyone is talking about the latest mass media and celebrity campaign, known as the 10:10 campaign. The Guardian, for example, is promoting this in a big way. We're now just waiting for Bono to be wheeled out and tell all the politicians how wonderful they are for jumping on this particular - pointless - bandwagon.
The truth is, sadly, rather more uncomfortable. Far more than a 10% cut is necessary. Indeed, what is needed is a cut of over 80%. That is going to hurt. And we're not going to have smiley politicians and celebs showing off their designer bling the next time we push for a percentage reduction. What we actually need are role-models who are grasping the bull by the horns and committing themselves to major lifestyle changes. Without glitz. Without interviews. Without photo opportunities. Just doing it. Imagine Bill Gates moving from his mansion to a two bedroom terrace. This is the level of change we need. This is the leadership we need. This is what will make a difference. So this is the point where those of us who actually understand the significance of real rather than cosmetic changes need to stand up. I commit myself to a personal reduction of 80% over the next five years. The way I am going to measure this is by the cost of our outgoings. If we can reduce our outgoings by 80% it strikes me that it is highly likely we will have also reduced our impact by a high value (although obviously not necessarily). We have another pull factor in that we want to use our income to support more small projects in developing countries, and we can only do that if we reduce our outgoings. Our baseline is this: we live in a 3 bedroom terraced house in a Coventry suburb. We have a mortgage, of which we have paid off around £75,000. We drive around 10,000 miles a year. We have a convection boiler. We have more than the minimum loft insulation and double glazed windows. We buy most of our vegetables fresh from a local market. Most have been grown within 50 miles of Coventry. We only wear second hand clothing. The plan is to downsize our house - possibly buying something smaller with the money we have saved. The question is how to chose something which would be more cost effective. We also are beginning to consider the benefits of shared living, growing more ourselves, and making our own clothing.12 comments
1) It is difficult to measure this without figures, I think you should try and quantify this by explaining exactly how you measure your current outgoings, and what an 80% reduction actually means. I suspect, knowing you to be a person of some intellect and sophistication that you are applying this not just to financial spending, so it would be good to know how you will measure it.
2) on the topic of finance though, I think it must be very much easier for some to do this than others, for instance if my outgoings were 1 million pounds per year, and I had to reduce to 200,000 pounds a year, this would be rather more straightforward than if my current outgoings were 10,000 pounds, and I had to reduce to 2,000. Financially this doesnt work across the board, in other ways it might.
Trust you know I'm with you on this, although without having a better understanding of how I could do so, I dont yet feel I can make such a commitment.
Regarding your second, I think we've got a long way to come down to the downsizing you've already done. I think we need to work together on helping each other to take this big, hard steps - not try to trip up the low paid on unrealistic financial reductions. I'm sorry if it sounded like that.
But in general, we have to start somewhere. My family has the 'blessings' of a house which isn't huge but could be smaller and education. We want to use those things to support others and feel the obligation to downsize. Where to start this thinking is a major problem. Obviously we could live somewhere much cheaper, but if one of the main objectives is to reduce outgoings to give more money away, then there isn't much point moving somewhere that has no work. And so on..
That said, I think this is a great goal, and its the kind of thing we've been aiming for (and missing!) for some time, so hats off to you for boldness and commitment, two things which you certainly dont seem to lack.
Your attitude speaks volumes about the way that we can be good role models, which applies across the board regardless of income or lack of it.
One last thought, on the topic of giving money away. I am more and more of the belief that this is not the point. I think ones gives what one has, if one has money, then yes give it, but lets not get ( I know you arent) fooled into the thinking that money is the most important thing one can give.
There's so much more to say, and I have no time right now, but I look forward to talking more about this.
Regarding money - I think the issue for me is that I've been living without it for a long time, working on the assumption I've other things to give. But it turns out that some of the people who I know really need it and I feel the obligation to help them by raising it.
I think we're talking about different models of existence - it strikes me that a group/family/person might very well make a choice to forsake money and live and work in an inner city, for example. But to me it seems another reasonable choice to use the money we've legitimately (if that makes sense) earned. Money isn't everything, but to some it is what it is holding groups in poverty. If I can't live and do something for them myself, maybe the best I can do is find ways to give them what I have.
As for your idea that an 80% reduction in expenditure will translate into an 80% reduction in carbon emissions – well, I think that is very unlikely. If you personally are responsible for emitting (say) 10 tons of CO2 a year, you are looking to trim your lifestyle down to emitting two tons a year – a little more than the average Indian (in a hot country) does, or as much as two "typical" Africans. I don't believe that is possible for an individual in this country as things stand. The only way we can do it - in time - is if the Government helps us – with massive investment in renewable energy, superinsulated housing &c &c. And that takes us back to the 10:10 campaign trying to get the whole juggernaut moving. Please don't knock it!
I think 10:10 is dangerous nonsense. We cannot fight climate change with mealy mouth rubbish fronted by celebrities. We were taken in by the makepovertyhistory and (red) and tradejustice campaigns, and I for one am not prepared to be taken in again. Just because celebrities make something glitzy does not mean it is any way adequate or enough. It isn't. Not even close. When we see campaigns fronted by smiling Prime Ministers, this is a good sign that it is going to have zero effect and that he is only doing it because he thinks people will be impressed.
I've no confidence that the government will ever do more than promise things on emissions cuts, so I'm afraid for me that point is moot. We need to drastically reduce our lifestyles. If too few of us do it now, we will be forced to at some point in the future.
I'm not prepared to say what I can or cannot do. I've not yet tried beyond the entirely superficial to reduce my impact. The irony is that the 80% reduction is what we need yet you've already dismissed it as impossible. How are you expecting governments to meet the targets? Magic?
(For one thing, the experts say that each of us accounts for a ton of CO2 emissions a year *without even getting out of bed*, as our share of the carbon costs of the country's infrastructure - the postal service (ha!), road maintenance, street lights and so on and so on and so on. So, for you as an individual to get down to ?two tons a year *on your own*, without the whole country changing as well, you would need to be emitting no more than one ton yourself – ie living at the level of an average person in Africa - where heating, for example, is not generally needed.)
As for 10:10 being "adequate or enough", I'm not sure where you are getting this from. I went to the launch and distinctly heard someone say that after cutting our emissions by 10% by the end of 2010 the next step would be (say) 20% by 2012 (the next 10% is bound to be harder, because we've already cut the easiest stuff), and then 30% by 2015, and then 40% and so on. No one, in Not Stupid (the people behind 10:10) or the Guardian, has *ever* said, to my knowledge, "A 10% cut should do it." How stupid would that be? If you are going to criticise people, at least criticise them for what they actually say!
The way I see it, it is like this: somehow we have to get our whole tribe to migrate from Wasteland to a better place, 500 miles away. But how are we going to do that? The eager, strong young men are confident that they can do it - but it's no good if only they go! How can we get the whole tribe - the old, the weak, the lazy, the fat, the very young - to make that trek? Everyone is just sitting around, in despair, saying, "It's too far! It's hopeless." Then someone says, "Look, there *is* no hope if we never even start. Let's just try the first 20 miles. We can all do that, can't we? And when we have done that, we will feel more positive about doing the next 20 miles. And when we've done that…"
And then, just as many of the old and the weak and the lazy are starting to feel that yes, maybe they *can* make a start on the journey, up jumps a young brave called Gentlemandad (sorry, I have Native Americans on the brain at the moment!) and shouts: "Twenty miles? Are you joking? It's 500 miles or we're all fucked! I'm going to run it, all on my own! And as for these people who are trying to coax you into walking the first 20 miles – well, I can tell you, they're all just liars and cheats and charlatans. I wouldn't listen to them for a moment! Goodbye, suckers!" And what is the result? Oddly enough, the old and the weak and the lazy don't, as Gentlemandad was hoping, exclaim: "You're right! We're all going to run the 500 miles with you and we'll be there in no time!" No, they all sit down again, in despair, to await their fate in Wasteland.
As for MakePovertyHistory et al… You know more than me. Sure, they didn't achieve as much as they hoped to - they certainly haven't made poverty a thing of the past – but did they achieve nothing at all? I don't believe that's the case.
A large collection of small changes amount to a small total. So small actions are never going to bring the changes we want to see no matter how many people we convince to do them.
You might not like the fact that large changes are required. I don't particularly either. But that doesn't change the fact that is necessary. And if nobody is going to model, talk or think about how to reduce our lifestyles by a large and painful amount, nobody is ever going to do it. Telling me it is difficult is not telling me something I don't already know. What everyone else does is not really my problem.
I don't believe this "I don't believe that is possible for an individual in this country as things stand. The only way we can do it - in time - is if the Government helps us – with massive investment in renewable energy, superinsulated housing &c &c. And that takes us back to the 10:10 campaign trying to get the whole juggernaut moving"
Sorry, I just don't. The 60 odd million people who live in our islands and who along with North America and the Pacific make up 17% of the world population could have done something dramatic about the suffering of more than 50% of the world who live in Africa, Latin America and Asia (excl China and the Middle East). Because we 17% consume far more than the 50% and on our own belch out 50% of all the emissions, never mind those generated by all the unfortunates who slave to make us stuff.
We don't because we've bought into the lie that says we deserve the wealth we have not earned. We don't need a change of government or grand plans or great targets. We actually need to change. And this is the great moral question of our time - are we prepared to, or not. Past performance suggests we are not.
My jaw dropped - not literally - when you said, "What everyone else does is not really my problem." I don't know what planet you live on, but on this one I'm afraid that what everyone else does really *is* your problem, and my problem, and the problem of all of us. All of us in the far-too-rich North share the blame for the threat to the biosphere, and some in the South share it, too; but it is all our actions together that has caused this disaster and unless all (or at least almost all) of us change the way we live, we're fucked. Hence my analogy of the tribe. 10:10 is addressing the real problem, with some understanding of human psychology, of how to get our whole society moving from here to there. You (as far as I can see) are just righteously marching off on your own saying: "I'll get there without you!"
And of course you may get there without the rest of the tribe. And it may give you a clear conscience. Unfortunately, it will not save the biosphere.
As it happens, I interviewed Franny Armstrong yesterday and we discussed one very dangerous tipping-point that is not often mentioned: where the mass of people go from saying, "I'm not sure that global warming is really happening, and I'm not going to change my lifestyle till I'm sure it's necessary" to "Oh my God, global warming really *is* happening - and it's already too late to do anything about it, we're all doomed - and so I might as well enjoy life to the full while I still can." If that happened, it would be a total catastrophe. One aim of 10:10 is to try to prevent it - to catch people between denial and despair and to give them some hope and to get them started on the road to change. It all comes down to the Chinese proverb "A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single step."
There's no point sneering at the idea of a single step and saying, "Well, that won't get us to our destination!" No, of course it won't.No one ever said it would. But unless we can persuade people to take the first step, the greatest danger is that they're not going to move at all. Is that what you want?
One final thought: why are you so quick to say that politicians get bored once the glitzy campaign is over? Are you suggesting, for example, that Gordon Brown's efforts to relieve poverty in Africa ended when Make Poverty History ended? If you think that, I would suggest that you need to do a little more research. I remember reading that George W Bush complained to another world leader that Tony Blair (I think it was) was forever banging on about Africa. I think you should give some credit to some politicians for being idealists, too, and for wanting to change the world, however flawed you may think them.
OK, I'd better stop now because I need to do some work and also I suspect that you and I will only continue to mishear each other.
All the best with your journey.
Personally, I am far more concerned about those I know in developing countries (who are far more suited and resilient to change) than those in the UK who do not want to face reality (and who are actually totally unsuited to the coming changes). If the UK as a whole wants to continue kidding themselves about the reality, that is up to them.
But I agree with Huw that the journey does have to begin if we are going to get there. And it matters more than the tribe analogy if we leave people behind because we will all suffer from those people staying where they are.
It was such a disappointment that the government wouldn't support the 10:10 vote. The way I understand it is that 10:10 exists to show the government that there is commitment from the general public. This I believe will pave the way towards meaningful policies that will change behaviour such as carbon rationing.
Back to your original point:
I think that you make a very good point and I think that an 80% cut in your spending would certainly result in some reductions in your emissions but I don't think this is always the case. I can think of two quick examples where it wouldn't, for example locally manufactured goods tend to be more expensive than goods shipped half way around the world, green tariff electricity is more expensive than the coal inclusive version from e.on. &c.
Either way I very much appreciate the blog post and the ensuing debate that it sparked - thanks
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