Climate Change: why you should be angry, and why anger isnt enough

Expanded transcript of a TEDx Talk by John Ashton, Bedford School, 23 April 2013. Most of the audience were 16-18 years old, from the Bedford School Sixth Form

1. Good evening. Id like to do this talk with you not at you, and to do that we need to begin with a quick rehearsal. 2. Can anyone tell me the most famous thing Lauren Bacall ever said on screen to Humphrey Bogart? [Response from audience] No, I dont think it was play it again Sam. Wasnt that Ingrid Bergman? Lauren Bacalls immortal line was: You know how to whistle dont you. just put your lips together and blow. 3. Well, Id like to ask you to put your lips together and blow. Were going to have some whistling in a moment and I just want to make sure were all ready for it. Im going to try to whistle a short phrase its well known and Id be really grateful if you could join in with me. Here goes. [Whistling with audience]. 4. That was great. So keep your lips nicely warmed up and when we come to the whistling moment, when I raise my hands like this, it would be really helpful if you could whistle that same phrase and keep on repeating it till I bring my hands down again. 5. Now, theres another film, a wonderful film from the seventies called The Life of Brian. If youve seen The Life of Brian could I ask you to put your hand up.

6. Thats better than I expected. Pretty much everyone. So youll remember the famous scene at the end of the film. Eric Idle is in the early stages of crucifixion. Considering his predicament with a jaunty air that is perhaps incongruous in the circumstances, he looks around and says to the two common criminals on the crosses on either side of his: When youre chewing on lifes gristle / Dont grumble, give a whistle / And thisll make things turn out for the best and then, picking up the pace, he sings his way through Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, with its whistling chorus, which goes like this [raises hands, audience whistles]. 7. Thank you so much for helping me with that. This may be the first time weve had whistling in a TED talk. 8. And by now, you may be thinking that Eric Idle and The Life of Brian dont have much to do with climate change. But I would ask you just to hold this one thought in your heads. At least Eric Idle was being ironic. At least, as he whistled his life away up there on the cross, Eric Idle was being ironic. 9. I want to give you two illustrations of where we are right now on climate change. 10. The first is from an official assessment, published by our own government last year, of the risks posed by climate change to the British national interest. In that document there is a passage that reads I swear to you, this is word for word:

Although the melting of Arctic sea ice could have long-term implications for the UK's climate and may damage the Arctic's biodiversity, one potential positive outcome could be the opening up of new shipping routes to Asia and the Pacific. These offer

the potential for shorter journey times, lower fuel costs and savings in Suez and Panama Canal transit fees.
Yes, thats what it says. 11. The second illustration of where we are is from an experience I had recently. I was at a dinner in London. Among the other guests was a senior security official an extremely senior security official - from a major NATO power. The conversation turned to the geopolitical implications of the melting ice in the Arctic. 12. Asked to give his opinion, people around the table hanging on his every word, the security official declared that as far as he could see the implications were positive. After all, the melting would make it easier to get oil out of the Arctic. That would push down the price, and make it harder for oil rich rogue states to cause trouble. Iran was mentioned. 13. So now, lets put those two illustrations together. What are they saying? It seems to me they sum up rather nicely the current position of establishments and elites in most of the major economies. And that position goes something like this. 14. Climate change may be changing the Earths geography at a scale and pace unprecedented in history. But on the other hand we will be able to extract more of the oil and gas that are causing it and what is more well be able to ship them around the world more cheaply. Hey, well even make a saving on transit fees in Suez and Panama.

15. You could call that the Eric Idle position. Climate change may be the ruin of us. But, give a whistle, lets look on the bright side. 16. Ive been in the climate business for 15 years. I have to say I do get a little angry, in a good-natured way. What makes me angry is not actually the Eric Idle thing. Its not that we cant deal with this problem, in the way that Eric couldnt do much about being crucified. It was his destiny. What makes me angry is that we can deal with climate change. 17. We can deal with it but we arent dealing with it. 18. You have more of your futures ahead of you than I do. You are more exposed to the consequences of failing to deal with climate change. If Im angry about that failure, you have a lot more to be angry about. 19. What do we need to do to deal with climate change? Its not rocket science. We really need to do three things. 20. First, we need to take carbon emissions out of electricity (and a few industrial processes that also give off carbon dioxide). That is, no more power stations running on coal or gas unless they bury the carbon they emit. 21. Second, we need to use electricity instead of oil and gas for transport and heating. Those are the point sources. There are millions, perhaps billions, of vehicles and boilers. You cant bury the emissions from those. 22. Third, we need to stop wasting energy. Efficiency can give us a big multiplier for our direct efforts on carbon.

23. When you put all that together you get a carbon neutral energy system, and we need to build that more or less by the time most of you get to my age. 24. We can do that. 25. All the technology is available or soon will be, and we know how to accelerate its deployment. 26. We can afford it. Many people will tell you we cant. But there really is enough capital available to the major economies to do what needs to be done. And here in Britain, if we could afford to bail out the banks and go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq, we can certainly afford to build a modern energy system. 27. Furthermore this is an exciting prospect, an opportunity not a burden. 28. It will be about using electricity to do more things in smarter more efficient ways, while transforming how it is generated. A new golden age of electricity and of engineering. 29. That will give us an infrastructure makeover that we badly need anyway. Not just in power generation. In the power grid. In public and private transport. In our buildings. 30. It will help us rebalance towards the real economy, the manufacturing economy, away from casino finance, and redress the disparity between the rest of the country and the privileged southeast. 31. It will send a pulse of low carbon innovation through the economy.

32. It will get us off the oil hook and the gas hook, so we no longer need to worry about price shocks that hit growth, push up inflation and push up fuel bills. 33. It will also reduce the disproportionate hold of the producer interests, the energy behemoths. As Germany, which is ahead of us on this path, is discovering, power over energy choices will shift towards the consumer as we move to a more distributed system. 34. So we can do this. The prospect of doing it is an exciting one. Why are we not doing it? 35. For a long time I thought the problem was what I call the three is, ideology, interests, and a kind of intellectual decadence. 36. Although we can do what we need to do, it will as it proceeds feel transformational. You cant do that by stealth. It has to be offered to society as an explicit political choice. And at the moment neither the right nor the left, for different reasons, is offering that choice. Each is obstructed from doing that by its own ideological preconceptions. 37. Moreover, in any process of change, the interests of incumbency start in the strongest position. They are stronger, wealthier, better organized, worldlier than the forces of change. They are better at influencing political outcomes. 38. And on top of that, for more than a generation now there has been a consensus among those in charge, backed by a body of economic theory, that governments should interfere as little as possible with the market. That body of theory, at least in its extreme

versions, has been discredited by events since 2008. Kneejerk market fundamentalism has no credibility with publics - as opposed to people who do not want their freedom of operation to be constrained by considerations of public interest - if it ever did. 39. But it still exerts a kind of tribal pull among those who hold the levers of economic policy on your behalf. The result is a continuing aversion to the kind of intervention that is necessary to build a carbon neutral energy system quickly. Perhaps its a bit generous to call this an intellectual problem. It actually owes more to dogma than rigorous analysis. 40. Now, the three is are genuine obstacles. But actually, perhaps they are just the visible manifestations of deeper blockages in the structure of how we see ourselves and how we make choices as societies. Again, let me highlight three of these. 41. First, dealing with climate change demands an intensity of effort, sustained over time, that is very rare, and pretty much unprecedented in peacetime. Usually, to mobilize on this kind of scale, to organize so many choices in the necessary pattern across whole societies, you need a clearly defined enemy. The Cold War is not a perfect analogy, but each side saw each other as an adversary in existential terms. 42. In this case, there is no clear enemy. Or, to be more precise, if there is an enemy it is us. At the root of the problem is the high carbon economy, the high carbon model of growth and development, and we all have a stake in it. Carbon intensive production is plugged into all our lives, though the daily choices we all make though the wealthier you are, the bigger your stake.

43. Second, in many countries at the moment, I think it would be true to say the prevailing mood is one of anxiety not confidence. People are worried about the future, they dont particularly look forward to it, confident that it will bring them better lives. This anxiety was there before 2008, but the financial crisis and what has followed - continued financial instability, low or no growth, austerity, lack of job security and so on - has certainly deepened it in many places. People feel in the grip of forces they dont understand, cant control, and want to be protected against. 44. Not all of you will remember the 1990s but I can assure you they were not like that. Nor were the1950s, which Ill come back to. And when anxiety prevails, people hunker down, they look in not out, they are harder to inspire. It is harder to do big things in President Obamas phrase. 45. Getting off carbon is doable, but it is a big thing not a small thing. 46. And beneath all this is a much bigger problem. You cant fix the politics of climate change if politics itself is broken. 47. How many people would honestly say that politics in this country and across the modern liberal democracies is working at the moment? There has been a collapse in confidence in the ability of politics, and the will of politicians, to secure the public interest. That goes for many of the institutions that need to be trusted and to be working well if politics is to work: the media, government, finance and business, even science and the clergy. The elites at the top of them seem quick to look after their own interests, slow to admit responsibility if anything goes wrong.

48. The result is disaffection, even alienation, particularly among young people. Not a taking to the streets, but a turning inward, away from the public square, which is nevertheless the only place where we can decide things together. 49. Politics is how we steer the ship. There is no other way of doing it. If it breaks down, the ship will sooner or later run onto the rocks. 50. So, to recap: climate change is an existential threat; we know how to deal with it; our elites even claim to be dealing with it; but they are not really doing that. They are giving a whistle. They are clinging so tightly to the familiar that they do not seem to see the predicament they are in.

51. So if you do want the climate problem fixed, its OK to be angry. 52. Angry yes, self-indulgent no. Because you see, anger really isnt enough. 53. We are talking about reconfiguring the entire energy system. And the energy system is what the modern industrial economy is organized around. All productive activity uses energy to make and remake things. Thats what the industrial revolution was all about. And embedded in the economy is an entire system of what Marxists call power relations. Such systems are very good at resisting change.

54. Now Id be surprised to find many diehard Leninists in a well appointed school like this. Perhaps only a handful. Can I ask you to raise your hand if you are a diehard Leninist? Dont worry your headmaster left the auditorium a while ago, and I wont tell him, it will just be our little secret. [No hands raised]. 55. Oh well, never mind. Lenin is not exactly a hero of mine either, but he did have a certain clarity of mind when it came to the question of power. 56. Well, Lenin once wrote a pamphlet called What Is To Be Done? It was about how to channel anger, or grievance, into effective political action, in the particular circumstances he faced at the time. 57. Thats the right question. Its a hard question, not an easy question. 58. I dont know the answer. 59. But I do know that you, and what I might loosely call the under 30s, are a big part, an essential part, of the answer. 60. You have more of your future ahead of you than my generation. You are not complicit in the way the levers are currently being pulled. 61. What is more, as I said, as a generation, you have turned your backs on what you see as a political mainstream that is not focusing on what really matters, that has lost the will and capacity to lead and has lapsed into a kind of self-interested managerialism. You have in a sense chosen self imposed exile a terrible thing, a whole generation of exiles in your own lands. This breakdown in the political conversation between

the under 30s and the over 50s should be the biggest issue in the whole of politics. That it is not is itself is a sign of malaise. 62. But my point is this. Mainstream politics cant fix this problem by itself. In a sense it is the problem. 63. The only way out is for new unsullied forces to enter the arena, new voices to be heard. And potentially the most powerful new voice is yours. 64. Exactly because you are the voice of the future, you are not complicit, you have turned your backs: for all these reasons you now have a moral authority that is unassailable. If you can find your voice - your collective voice as a generation, it wont work as a cacophony, and its not just about airing grievances if you can find your voice together you will send a jolt of electricity through the cynical elites who still cling with a zombie grip to a zombie model. 65. I cant tell you how to use your voice. Im 56. I may be with you but I am not of you. I can encourage and give advice if you ask for it. My generation has been in the corridors of power, the boardrooms, the negotiating chambers. We know what happens there and we can make that experience available. 66. The ideas, the leadership, the capacity to mobilize can only come from your sense of who you are, and of the kind of society you want to live your lives in, to bring up your children in. Your voice has to come from you. 67. But I do have three thoughts Id like to share, not to prescribe but at least to stimulate debate.

68. First, dont turn away from politics any longer, turn back to it. Engage but do so in a way that is purposeful, strategic, organized, on the basis of a debate among yourselves about what you really stand for. 69. Second, the Occupy movement was, is, more significant than detractors claim. But its significance lies not in what it is but in the direction it points towards. The question is: what now? 70. Dont just occupy vacant spaces public squares, corporate buildings and so on. The next step surely is to take your place in the crowded spaces, take your place and make your voice heard. Join political parties, government departments, companies, NGOs, academic committees, local institutions. Join everything, but do it with confidence, with strategy and purpose. Dont join to accept. Join to renew. 71. And dont let anyone tell you, when having joined you start making the case for change, building coalitions for change, that you have no authority, you lack experience, you should be more patient. Remember, it is you who would have to deal throughout your lives with the consequences of failure on climate change, and failure to accomplish the political renewal we all desperately need. It is you not the incumbents who have authority. 72. So third, never let the question be: what can we do to avoid change? Ask, and demand that my generation asks, how can we make possible the change we need, so that our future can once again seem as full of promise as yours was when you were our age.

73. When you think about it, there are really only two ways of thinking about the future. It can just be whatever is going to happen to you. But if thats how you see it then dont blame anyone else if what happens is not to your liking. Or the future can be what we decide to build, to build together. 74. Pupils and staff of this wonderful school, I really dont care what you think about climate change. I dont care what you think about coal or nuclear energy or solar panels or carbon trading. 75. I dont care what you think about the Conservative Party or the Lib Dems or Labour; the CDU, the SPD or the Greens; about Congress or the BJP, about the Democrats or Republicans or the Communist Party of China. 76. I only care what you think about your future. Is it a future that will happen or a future you will build? 77. If you choose to be a generation of builders, we can fix politics and we can deal with climate change. If you dont, well, then you will find out what it is like to try to cling to some prospect of security and prosperity, a prospect of a fairer world, when the combination of a changing climate and our fossil fuel addiction puts under increasing stress the systems we depend on for food, water, and energy. 78. When I was a small child - I can just remember the end of the 1950s - our country was recovering from a devastating war. I remember the bombsites near our flat in Fitzroy Street near Kings Cross, at the foot of the Post Office Tower whose construction was just beginning. Those bombsites fascinated me and worried me. I couldnt understand why fenced off fields of rubble

should be scattered like missing teeth, disrupting the built up pattern of the city that was then my entire world. 79. And it was not only our cities that had taken a battering. Lives and families had been shattered. And people knew a thing or two about austerity. Rationing only ended in 1954, two years before I was born. I grew up in its shadow, and again remember feeling, once I understood it, vaguely worried that it might come back. As a nation, we were immeasurably poorer in material terms than we are now. If the capacity to do big things were set just by how much wealth there is, we really would have had a dreary prospect. 80. I have recently been asking my mother and others of her generation about that time and what it felt like then to be young. And what quickly becomes clear if you do that is that they were a generation determined to build a better future. They didnt just build the welfare state. They built freeways, power stations, power grids, houses and offices, centres for the arts and public libraries. They didnt on the whole grumble about the cost of doing this as I said at a time when the nation was poorer and public debt was incidentally higher than it is now. They didnt see it as a cost. It was an investment; an investment in modernity and a better future. 81. You will get the inheritance that my generation passes on to you. Your problem right now is that my generation is not trying to build a future. The best of us are trying to manage a crisis, to stop crisis turning into catastrophe. I was not really being fair to compare us to Eric Idle: we are doing our best to get through. But we are not looking as something it is our responsibility to build.

82. You can wait, and get the inheritance you get. Remember, you cant send it back to us if you dont like it. Or you can claim it now, by engaging, building, joining to renew. 83. Its in all of us. If my parents could do it, so can you.

John Ashton is an independent commentator and adviser on the politics of climate change. From 2006-12 he served as Special Representative for Climate Change to three successive UK Foreign Secretaries, spanning the current Coalition and the previous Labour Government. He was a cofounder and, from 2004-6, the first Chief Executive of the think tank E3G. From 19782002, after a brief period as a research astronomer, he was a career diplomat, with a particular focus on China. John is a Fellow of the European Climate Foundation; a Non Executive Director of E3G; a visiting professor at the London University School of Oriental and African Studies; a Distinguished Policy Fellow at the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College; and a Trustee of the UK Youth Climate Coalition and Tipping Point.