Structural issues for sustainability

The holy grail of climate change - behavourial change - is beginning to get interesting. First the government has launched a series of ads that go beyond the concept of consumers behaving rationally to choices they have. I've posted about the Act on C02 ad and I've just seen another one in today's Observer - I can't find a link for it unfortunately - and yet another TV ad on driving. These ads go beyond the rational behaviour approach and attempt to use more pyschological approaches.

In fact, DEFRA have produced a very useful overview of environmental behaviour and combined with Futerra's rules of the game in climate change communication surely we have enough to get change behaviour started?

Well, not quite. Agency versus structure - the old social science dilemma. The issue is that most people believe that climate change is an issue, but that they are not willing to change their behaviour unless there is a a percieved (there often is a benefit, but it's not always seen in the short-term) financial benefit, or if it is easy or if others do so. Do we have time to experiment whether we can convince people or should we just focus on getting businesses to change and top-down government regulation? At the moment, the government is timid in its approach prefering choice editing and nudge economics.

On the other hand, there are flourishing, if niche, alternative community collective approaches to reducing carbon. For example, transition towns, organic box schemes and car pooling to name but a few.  Not all work, but some go beyond niche and become mainstream. Is Social innovation the holy grail of climate change?

The thing is time. We have 10 years to reduce carbon emissions by 34% and we're unlikely to make it: nuclear won't be back on line until 2020; wind, although growing, is not enough; the Severn Tidal barrier may be complete in 2020; wave energy is still in its infancy; there may be an increase in solar but it's not cost effective; and, yes, we'll have lots of anaerobic digestion or biomass, but it's just not enough. We have to have significant reductions in emissions and energy. It's not, in my opinion, going to come from consumers. We might get some interesting innovations from a few community projects, but it's more cost effective to change business behaviour.

What I can see, however, is some smart businesses realising that there is a lot of innovation from community groups. Would it be so crazy to imagine a large business offering to support community groups with the view that they might benefit from a new way of production or consumption? I can see developers offering land and contributions to people who want to build eco homes and go off grid. I can see supermarkets offering funding for local food networks to understand how it may work. We need radical ideas and smart businesses will know they ain't going to come from their own ranks. They will need to fund mavericks or employ them...