Saturday 10 January 2015

Thinking Long Term: Why "Doing it for the kids" is not good enough

Principle 3: Intergenerational Stewardship (or Thinking Long Term)
This post examines the concept of intergenerational stewardship, the 3rd principle of sustainable infrastructure (see the introduction to this series inspired by the book “Sustainable Infrastructure: Principles into Practice”).
We don't inherit the world from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children (Anon)
The concept of protecting the earth for our children has been one of the key ways that people have understood the environmental movement over the last 30 years. It has been posited that as a direct appeal to people's emotions, this is a strong motivation for people to act. Unfortunately, the evidence doesn't seem to support this view. There are a few reasons for this. Firstly, it seems to immediately exclude anyone who is childless (ie most people under 30, including me). Secondly, talking about the next generation means most people think its an issue that will affect someone else in 10 years' time, so it provides a convenient way to file environmental problems under the heading of "not now, dear". We need to find different ways to talk about climate change and biodiversity loss that effectively communicate why these are very real issues affecting real people right now: Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines, the Somerset Levels, most of the population of Holland where my parents live at risk from rising sea levels.
Put bluntly, if my parents' generation had actually been motivated by "doing it for the children", why on earth have they done nothing about climate change for the last 25 years? We have known the severity of the problem and the need for significant changes to our lifestyle and energy systems since the first IPCC report was published back in 1990, and recent analysis has demonstrated that the predictions made in 1990 have been borne out by observed changes in weather since then. The climate talks in Lima this year mark the 22nd year of trying to get an international solution to this, and there is still little sign of progress.
So let's be clear about this: back when I was 7 years old, the world started talking about this problem and my parents' generation have been studiously ignoring it while actually INCREASING their energy consumption ever since. What makes you think that my generation will do any better, now we're old enough to have children of our own?
Reference:
Sustainable Infrastructure: Principles into Practice, Charles Ainger and Richard Fenner, ICE Publishing, 2014

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