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Should liberties be sacrificed for a greener future?
Posted by jamie on 21 February 2008.
There's a great opinion piece in today's Independent, in which Johann Hari argues that leaving the fate of planet to consumer choice and voluntary action isn't going to work. His words echo those of George Monbiot and Mark Lynas, and he looks to government to force us all to use less stuff:
In reality, dispersed consumer choices are not going to keep the climate this side of a disastrous temperature rise. The only way that can ever happen is by governments legislating to force us all – green and anti-green – to shift towards cleaner behaviour. Just as the government in the Second World War did not ask people to eat less voluntarily, governments today cannot ask us to burn fewer greenhouse gases voluntarily.
Restricting personal freedoms is a knotty problem but I can't help agreeing with Hari's conclusion: that personal liberty ends when you're harming someone else. Outside the boxing ring, no one would argue that we should have the freedom to beat up another person, but when you're talking about crops failing and water sources disappearing due to dramatic shifts in climate, the freedom to own a 4x4 or take umpteen flights a year becomes less defensible.
(He also gives us and other campaign groups a nice plug - cheers!)
Do we need legislation to make us consume less and create far fewer greenhouse gas emissions, or is our current government's faith in the market sufficient? Let me know what you think.
Yes!
I totally agree!
At my school we are having a public speaking contest the first Monday in March, and I'm talking about climate change. One of the teachers lent me An Inconvenient Truth on DVD, and I did lots of research on the internet.
I found out that if the Greenland ice sheet goes, global sea levels will rise about twenty feet. This would mean both my house and the Tuvalu islands would be entirely submerged!
It's so important we do something now. It is simply not a matter of choice.
No, we don't need green fascism
Presenting our challenges as if they require Green Fascist measures - which is what many people think Greenpeace stands for - is heinous, almost criminal.
What Greenpeace must do, instead of being a green fascist party, is to be rational instead.
There are technologies that allow us to end climate change todday (not merely reduce its impacts a bit, but end it). Only, Greenpeace never reports on these.
The question is why.
Sandals, etc
but what I really want to know is.. does Johann Hari wear a hari shirt?
Jonas should let us know what these magical climate change solving technologies are. No, don't tell me, if he told us he'd have to kill us?
Gina.Ribena - check out the downloadable Greenpeace film 'Convenient Solution' if you haven't already. It talks about truly sustainable energy for the UK. And there's also EfficienCity..
Wrong target
I can understand your frustration with all the hype about climate change but you should rectify it at source,and that is with the rain forests that are being destroyed at an astronomical rate,even if we can reduce pollution without the rain forests which are the lungs of the world you are fighting a losing battle and it will only be a matter of time before everyones way of life changes and then not long after that we will run out of air to breathe.