Don't think about it

Whilst trying to get my thoughts about climate change in order, I came across a book, ostensibly about transport and mobility, that clearly expressed several points that I was inarticulately groping for. It's always wonderful when that happens. The author is a Danish academic called Malene Freundenal-Pedersen. She examines transport choices from a sociological perspective, which provides a very interesting contrast to the predominantly technical, pseudo-objective approach transport planners use. But more than that, she describes some important general characteristics of 'late modern' life in the developed world:

1. Individualisation. (Emphasis on individual choices and the need/entitlement to create your own lifestyle that expresses who you are as an individual.)
   
   
2. A disassociation of time and space. (Technology allowing communication, work, and leisure pursuits to take place practically anywhere.)
   
   
3. Reflexivity. (This is a single word for the fact that we are aware of the society we live in, and are both influenced by it and influence it. The term implies a self-consciousness and need to substantiate or legitimise the conditions of society.)
   
   
4. Risk awareness. (Linked to reflexivity, as we are constantly re-evaluating risks based on a constant flow of new information.)

But the most important, to my mind, is the fifth: Ambivalence. This can be seen as a response to the first four factors, which in combination tend to produce insecurity and anxiety. A mass of information, a deluge of risks, a cavalcade of apparent contradictions, and an onerous set of expectations are hard to handle; unless you choose to ignore or deprioritise certain things. This is everyday ambivalence. For example, on a daily basis I'll contemplate which of my library books are close to being due back, whether I need to buy more peanut butter, and what I need to prepare for the next day. At the same time, I know but choose not to dwell on, for example, the facts that women work two-thirds of the world’s working hours but only earn 10% of the income, that China's economic boom is causing environmental catastrophe, and that there are approximately one billion people in the world without enough to eat. Overwhelming, unpalatable information of this kind abounds in the media, but usually loses the competition for attention with minutiae of life. As Freundenal-Pedersen puts it:

Ambivalence can have an overwhelming impact on everyday life and result in paralysis if not dealt with through routines.

As I understand it, ambivalence helps us get around the guilt that should result from awareness of the damage our comfortable lifestyles wreak. Thus, climate change is a phenomenon mired in ambivalence. Although the scientific consensus is unequivocal, we can't feel or touch climate change as such, struggle to fit it into our risk assessment frameworks, and cannot reconcile it with our individual lifestyle choices. The implications of this initially seem extremely gloomy, as it seem that before we even try and remake our economic and political systems to respond to climate change, we have to somehow overcome our collective social mindset and dominant culture.

I've said previously that I think imaginative, utopian thinking about the future is necessary to address climate change. We need to imagine a better world, and Freundenal-Pedersen neatly points out what that is so difficult in today's society:

Modern society has shaped us into individuals, with no room for utopian visions or communities shaping these visions. As individuals, we are too preoccupied with creating our own individualised picture and reality of the kind of life we wish to inhabit; a life which focuses on unlimited freedom and possibilities and opportunities to buy whatever we desire...

Without imagination and aspiration another, more real and significant menace is born when these imaginings, dreams, and utopias disappear, and we subsequently forget how to play and live life beyond the frames already existing...

We are getting swept into a cocktail of freedom as an individual good, with guilt becoming the regulator for how free we can actually act.

Things are not hopeless, though.

Many of the individualised citizens in late modern everyday life still dream about and long for strong communities, close connections, and less fear of the future.

How do we address our ambivalence? By telling new stories, contemplating better lives, and designing utopias together. Freundenal-Pedersen terms this 'social learning', which could be as simple as discussing collectively what you think would make the world better. We use narratives, often generated and reinforced by the media and advertising, to justify our daily choices to ourselves. These are changeable. Indeed, arguably reflexivity and constant access to information via technology allow narratives to evolve relatively quickly.

Now, I enjoyed this sociological theory, but it's only useful if the implications can be used pragmatically. In reality, do social understanding and norms shift slowly or abruptly? Conveniently, there is a striking example of an abrupt, institutionally-induced shift observable right now. It occurred shortly after 11th May 2010. Prior to that date, UK politicians spent their general election campaigns ducking the prospect of government spending cuts. Once the coalition government was in place, the emergency budget appeared and suddenly significant across-the-board cuts were presented as essential. The media, which has pounced on any mentions of cuts during election campaigning, appeared to turn upon the public sector. It was painted as bloated, wasteful, unnecessary, and an impediment to growth. Public services, including the welfare state, were without exception presented as unaffordable, overgenerous, and in need of reform. I don't think the scale of this shift in public consciousness has been adequately acknowledged. Prior to the election, talk of cutting benefits was basically taboo; now this is taken for granted. David Cameron has taken very effectively taken advantage of the UK's ambivalence towards the public sector.

In a slightly perverse way, the successful sale of of the austerity story to the British public gives me hope that a similar shift can occur in relation to climate change. Ambivalence can be exploited to drive through huge institutional change without the need for a public campaign, or even widespread public acceptance. You could even use the 2008 Climate Change Act as an example - it got widespread public support, but was subject to a virtually unprecedented level of political and media consensus. How many people really thought through its implications for their own daily lives? Would it have gained the same support if The Daily Mail had claimed, not without justification, that it would raise petrol prices? (I realise that this train of thought isn't giving much credence to democracy; how that interacts with climate change deserves and will get its own post.)

Freundenal-Pedersen suggests a renaissance of utopian thinking in civil society is necessary to slowly overcome ambivalence. Much as I like this idea, I consider it neither sufficient, nor fast enough. Reawakening utopian dreams is important, but most people will likely remain ambivalent about the infrastructure underpinning them. To have any hope of radically reducing emissions, I think we must also look to institutions.

All quotes from 'Mobility in Daily Life' (Malene Freundenal-Pedersen, 2009).

Social Science Fiction

The future is intrinsically fascinating to me and fiction presents it more vividly than most non-fiction. I will admit to something of a fondness for dytopian literature. Utopias are compelling too, but well-written ones are much harder to come by. So here is a slight digression from my climate change posts, a list of dystopian fiction recommendations. What issue most concerns you? These are all futures that we should try to avoid; pick your poison.

Acute housing shortage? Strikingly depicted in Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison. New York is stiflingly overpopulated, the oil has run out, anyone is entitled to squatters rights over the tiniest empty space and abandoned cars are prized as homes. I strongly suspect this book was written as an extended argument for the better access to contraception.

Endemic pollution destroying human health? Try The Sheep Look Up by John Brunner, a master of the genre. Constant food contamination scares and outbreaks of disease steadily push down American life expectancy and promote political instability. Overconsumption has poisoned the basic essentials of life. This novel has a particularly memorable, distinctly dark ending.

Capitalism gone to extremes? I give you Market Forces by Richard Morgan, in which Naomi Klein's worst nightmare manifests itself and civil wars offer the best investment opportunities. Über-macho traders duel with cars and kill anything in the path of profits. Although written prior to the credit crunch, probably reads more plausibly in light of it.

Dependence on the internet and obsession with celebrity? Gwyneth Jones' Bold As Love series is less depressing than most dystopias, but still depicts the collapse of civilisation and regression to subsistence-based feudal squalor. The catalytic event is the destruction of the internet, and events that follow include a civil war with armies led by pop stars.

Desertification and a precipitous fall in agricultural productivity? Earthworks by Brian Aldiss uncompromisingly shows the starvation and hopelessness resulting from inadequate food and crippling inequality. Unusually, it is centred on Africa, which adds to its punch.

Ground war in Europe with 21st century weaponry and guerilla methods? Kaleidoscope Century by John Barnes brings it to life. This novel is notably uncomfortable to read, in part due to the nature of the narrator. This is a Europe wracked by the horrors of failed states; war crimes and endemic AIDS.

Extreme weather triggered by climate Change? The Carbon Diaries by Saci Lloyd is to my mind the most immediately plausible of the bunch. It realistically explores how carbon rationing would work, through the eyes of a teenage girl. The tragedy is that it is already too late and climate change has taken hold. The discomfort of reducing your carbon footprint is neatly compared to the terror and danger of droughts, storms, and floods.

Withdrawal of public services and urban ghettoisation? The most effective depiction is a French action film, Banlieue 13 (District 13). Although predominantly an action flick, one of my favourites in fact, the premise is excellently realised. A deprived neighbourhood is walled in and has all public services withdrawn, as politicians no longer want to have to deal with it. Naturally, heavily armed drug dealers take over. To my disbelief, I recently read a US planning commentator recommend this exact approach, couched as allowing poorer areas to embrace the benefits of gated communities.

What I think characterises all these novels, as well as the dystopian genre in general, is the sense that things will only get worse. As I've said before, I think this mindset must be overcome in order to make progress in tackling climate change. Dystopian novels try to make a point and act as a warning, it isn't often that they propose a solution to whatever terrible situation humanity finds itself in. Wallowing in disaster is not a luxury that non-fiction, and reality, can afford. The vividness of dystopian novels is deceptive; the real world is much more complicated and ultimately interesting.

If you would prefer not to contemplate hellish theoretical futures, I suggest a recent, wonderfully snide novel of the banking crisis called Other People's Money by Justin Cartwright. Much too gentle and of the current moment to be a dystopia, it nonetheless dissects our relationships with banks and money beautifully. The old certainties of the banking system are dying. This novel could be read as a eulogy.

What do we want? When do we want it?

The first set of questions that occurred to me when considering climate change concern the future. What sort of future do we expect? What do we want the future to be like? Do we value the future less or more than the present? How far into the future do we consider it worth planning? How much risk to our desired future are we willing to tolerate? To what extent do we consider events beyond our lifetime as beyond our influence or interest?

Do we have a duty to future generations? I believe we do, as we should as species take responsibility for the problems that we've created. That's a grand statement, but translating it into policy is incredibly difficult. It's also easy to state that life is expected to improve as time passes, and that we should invest resources now to try and ensure this is the case. The counterargument generally raised to this is the current egregious state of inequality in the world. Billions still lack clean water, food, and basic bodily security. This is encompassed by the Millennium Development Goals, which are as follows: end poverty and hunger, universal education, gender equality, child health, maternal health, combat HIV/AIDS, environmental sustainability, and global partnership. Climate change isn't explicitly mentioned, even under the seventh goal. Is it more important to meet these goals first, before we contemplate emissions reductions? Should our lack of willingness to solve today's problems be an excuse to dismiss those of the future?

In my view, it is deeply unwise to separate climate change from other long term global problems. Clearly climate change is already impeding the achievement of the Millennium Development goals and will continue to do so. Notably, the countries worst effected by climate change are those who have contributed least to it. Subsistence farmers will starve before subsidised agribusinesses notice much of any change in productivity. It is a horrible irony that the United Kingdom, where the Industrial Revolution began, will likely remain attractively temperate whilst millions are displaced from Asian coasts and equatorial Africa. This raises the ethical question: when we contemplate an abstraction of the future, are we really considering the welfare of our whole species? Do we just care about our own children, or those of our own country?

If we in the Western world genuinely believe that reducing our greenhouse gas emissions today is too expensive and would involve sacrificing too much of the comfort and convenience to which we have become accustomed, then so be it. However it is not acceptable to presume this without considering the full ethical ramifications. If we put off reductions in emissions, we are tacitly assuming that the future will be more dangerous, that currently entrenched problems will become more difficult to solve, and that our own wellbeing is both more important than that of future generations in general and those of developing world in particular. If we are to be that selfish, we should at least be honest with ourselves about it.

In the UK we have the 2008 Climate Change Act, a piece of legislation that commits successive governments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80% from 1990 levels, before the year 2050. This is an extremely important thing, as it provides the first inkling of a vision for the future. Although it in no way ensures that the target will actually be met, setting out a framework for the future that is desired, expected, and planned for is a powerful step. The aim of the Act is to prevent each government from deferring action on climate change until the following term of office. If it can survive the current coalition intact, the Act will have started to do its job.

When the Climate Change Act was passed, it demanded consideration of what we expect the UK to be like 42 years in the future. Now 2050 is 38 years away. Consider how much has changed in the last 38, let alone 42, years. In 1974, society, technology, and politics were very different. The rate of change seems only to have accelerated since. Within the constraints of an 80% emissions cut, what do we want from 2050? Personally, I want greater equality, lower consumption, and a fundamental reassessment of economics. I want fossil fuels to be seen as quaint and outdated. I want understanding to be valued above ownership.

From a less idealistic angle, we could simply require security and prosperity in 2050. If ignored, climate change will diminish or even destroy both. A future of rapid warming and dramatic climate shifts is unlikely to be attractive to anyone. And yet approaching the future in this way, as something to be feared, seems to promote paralysis and short-termism. Climate change becomes something too terrifying to contemplate; might as well enjoy life and waste energy while we still can. It seems to me that getting to the point of meaningful action requires greater thought. Once you've accepted that the future will be different, it is vital to consider how you want it to be different. In the current trajectory of increasing emissions and floundering economics, I see a huge failure in imagination. Things won't stay the same. If we value the future at all, we have to consider how we want it to be. In the UK we at least have the Climate Change Act as a starting point.

What is climate change to you?

This term's lectures have got me thinking about climate change as an abstraction and about how we individually try to make sense of it (or not).

I've spent a fair amount of time reading and thinking about climate change, but have always had the sense that there is more I could investigate but choose not to. For instance, I haven't watched 'An Inconvenient Truth' as I assumed it was meant to convert doubters and so wouldn't be so relevant to me. Whether that's true or not is rather beside the point, it was a rationalisation I made as a result of thinking I knew enough about climate change. Essentially, I thought that knowing more would just depress me. I was being, perhaps rationally, a coward.

I get the impression I'm not the only one who has done something like this: avoided reading or hearing any more about climate change because it is just such a vast and terrifying concept to process. Individually, such avoidance seems rational as individually we can do relatively little to alter the scale of climate change, even if we can imagine it. But collectively humanity has caused a quantity of greenhouse gas emissions that are altering the climate. In theory we must, as a species, be able to deal with this. There are a vast array of obstacles preventing us from doing so, and the first is understanding what climate change is.

I do not mean the science. (If you want a crash course on that, try here.) I mean the translation of that science into understanding, into policy, politics, culture, and everyday life. Climate change is a process, it has no fixed beginning or end. It is not directly priced, it has uncertain timescales, and it forces us to confront many difficult questions outside the objective sphere of science, about the future of our species, how we live, and what we value. It is intangible and locationally unspecific. It can be seen as a controversy, as a justification for specific policies, as an inspiration for the reinvigoration of civic society, or as a threat to security. Analogies can be drawn with terrorism or the hole in the ozone layer. Commentators from scientific, policy, economic, legal, and ecological fields interpret it very differently. Different sections of the media frame it in a variety of ways, to fit their particular agendas and narratives.

I am trying to overcome my previous complacency and come to my own understanding of what climate change means. What is certain in that humanity is emitting greenhouse gases at an accelerating rate. We are changing the composition of the atmosphere, and our climate scientists agree that this is changing the climate. Our current economies, lifestyles, and cultures are dependent on such emissions. If we are to reduce our emissions as radically as science tells us we need to, then the process of change in the climate will need to be mirrored by a process of transformative change in humanity.

There is as yet no popular narrative, no story or metaphor, that adequately explains this. Indeed, our popular culture and zeitgeist seem averse to any change that isn't technological. The developed world seems to expect that the current economic, political, and social rut will continue, except with better iPads. Perhaps the first step to confronting climate change is accepting change, full stop. The future needs to be different to the present, very different. I wonder to what extent the denial of climate change and attacks on climate science are provoked by a fear of any change.

I intend this to be the first in a series of posts discussing difficult questions about climate change, to try and clarify my own thoughts as much as anything. Here is the point from which I start, which will doubtless colour everything else I might say on the subject: I believe that anthropogenic climate change is the greatest challenge faced by humanity. We are collectively capable of summoning the intelligence, vision, and resources to confront it, but are equally capable of not doing so. And I agree with George Monbiot that, 'If we fail in this task, we fail in everything else.'

Much Ado About Windfarms

Now that I've been made redundant, I've decided to become an armchair auditor. As an employee of a local council, I was under an obligation not to allow my personal opinions to interfere with the execution of local councillors' wishes. Such is the democratic operation of local government. This can at times be acutely frustrating, as local councillors sometimes made decisions that were very difficult to justify, and which I personally disagreed with entirely. To begin, an issue of particular interest to me: renewable energy.

South Cambridgeshire District Council covers the doughnut of attractive villages and farmland around Cambridge. It has no major population centres and a lot of picturesque and very expensive rural housing. The council has a rather two-faced approach to renewables; they love solar panels but hate wind farms.

This August their Climate Change Working Group were updated on a project to install solar panels on South Cambridgeshire Hall, the council's office in Cambourne. Which I believe is already quite an energy efficient building, as it would built quite recently. At a full council meeting in July it was also resolved to review its policies in order to encourage the installation of solar panels on listed buildings. Moreover, it is encouraging that South Cambs have kept up their local councillor Climate Change Working Group, as too many Conservative councils ditched any such thing as soon as Pickles lumbered into CLG.

However, their seemingly enlightened approach is rather undermined by Motion 90B:

It was RESOLVED that this Council supports seeking energy from renewable resources. However, applications for wind farms (2 turbines or more) cause deep concerns to our residents by nature of their size, scale and noise. This Council believes that a minimum distance of 2 kilometres between a dwelling and a turbine should be set to protect residents from disturbance and visual impact. If the applicant can prove that this is not the case a shorter distance would be considered. This will be addressed during the review of the Local Development Framework.

Notice the absence of any evidence whatsoever to support the figure of 2 km. It was apparently arbitrarily chosen to ensure that wind farm development would be considered unacceptable throughout South Cambridgeshire, as one local councillor commented that nowhere in the district is less than 2 miles (note different metric) from a dwelling. As far as I am aware, there is no map available to show what, if any, area in the district would be acceptable for wind turbine development under this edict. For reference, the government standard for a buffer zone between a wind turbine and a built-up area is 600 metres.

I was pleased to see that a member of the public responded back to this with a very sensible question:

In what way exactly would a wind turbine be judged differently to another structure of a similar size such as a manufacturing plant, water tower, crane or communications mast etc. as regards visual impact or noise? Does the motion mean that a planning application for a wind turbine might be rejected whereas an application for some other development of equivalent size, noise etc. would be considered for approval?

The councillor's answer shows how hollow the motion was - all planning applications must be considered on their merits, and refusals on the basis of, 'I just don't like wind turbines, so there' will be overturned at appeal anyway. Without evidence that a wind turbine within 2 km of a house will have a significantly detrimental effect, the whole thing is pointless posturing.

This stance would be more defensible were wind and solar capacity in the area comparable. The East of England Renewable Energy Capacity Study looked at the technical potential for renewable energy just last year. The whole report can be found here. It doesn't disaggregate to district level, but the whole of Cambridgeshire has the technical potential to produce 45,536.8 Gigawatt Hours of electricity from wind. The figure for solar is 230 GwH. South Cambridgeshire has a lot of agricultural land, ideal for wind farms, but lacks roofs to put solar panels on so the contrast in potential is likely to be even more stark.

I reserve most of my rancor for Cambridgeshire County Council, though. The County owns quite a bit of agricultural land, which it has been trying to use more effectively to bring in money. One plan was to site wind turbines on some of this land. Councillors agreed to this and a considerable amount of feasibility work was done. This was the plan:

Should all of the 4 sites proceed as outlined, based on current values the Council's income could peak at an annual rent of more than £700,000. The corresponding agricultural rent for the land lost would be less than £1,000

Plus, of course, more renewable energy and lower emissions. Local news coverage was positive and a considerable amount of consultation took place in the identified sites.

Then Councillor Nick Clarke became leader of Cambridgeshire County Council. A report went to the County Council Cabinet on the 6th September seeking to defer and basically kill the project.

It's worth reading that report, in order to confirm that there is no justification provided for the decision. Officers couldn't come up with any reasons for it in their report, but politicians did it anyway. Putting aside the environmental implications, £10,000 has already been spent on developing the project, and thus wasted if it stops. These two sections of the report (which, please note, is supposed to set out why this project isn't happening) are worth quoting:

[...] if wind farm development proceeded on all four sites over the twenty-five year life of the leases the Council’s income would peak at close to £900,000 per annum, unadjusted for rent reviews or inflation. In addition there would be direct payments by developers into local community funds of about £80,000 per annum. There are also Government proposals to allow local authorities to retain all of the business rates from wind farm sites in their area.

[...] Several tenants, with the Council’s encouragement, have been investigating the potential for small scale wind turbines on their holdings. One tenant was looking at a 100m tall but most were looking at 20m turbines which are smaller than a telecommunications mast. These capitalise on Feed in Tariffs which are expected to change in April 2012 and are considered by many to be an excellent business opportunity and are mostly receiving planning consents from District Councils.

It is also proposed that these developments are halted too. These have less of a visual impact than full size wind turbines and produce good financial returns for both the tenants and the Council. It is proposed to reimburse one tenant’s abortive costs for feasibility work which will be in the region of £5,000.

So Cambridgeshire County Council is forgoing a considerable amount of money, losing several thousand through contract breaking and abortive work, all because 'Fenland has too many wind farms already'. As the report notes, that is a purely anecdotal view; the people consulted in detail about the projects had much less negative, simplistic opinions.

You might ask why I blame this decision, which I believe is nothing short of moronic short-sighted NIMBYism, on Councillor Nick Clarke. Well, he boasts about it on his blog. His comment about putting people before profit is priceless. His inaugural speech as leader began with the phrase 'open for business'. He believes Cambridgeshire County Council should above all support and involve businesses, although apparently not those that develop wind farms. Choosing to 'put people first' in this context is a bit rich when you consider the cuts to transport, schools, and social care which merited no such consideration. Indeed, some of those cuts need not have happened if the council had, say, uncovered a large and steady source of annual income from its farmland.

Despite Councillor Clarke clearly thinking this decision was a crowd-pleaser, local media coverage was at best ambivalent. But this wasn't the end of the story, as not every County Councillor agreed with Clarke. The Enterprise, Growth, and Community Infrastructure Overview and Scrutiny Committee called in the decision. Although they didn't have the authority to overturn it, they have kicked it back to Cabinet, with a request to give reasons this time.

Quote from the minutes:

In discussion, Committee Members raised the following issues:

Wind farm development was supported and promoted by both local and national policies, and was also the policy of the Administration’s party. There was no rationality, either through evidence or policy basis, in the Cabinet decision;

Pointed out that there was a natural limit to the number of wind turbines that could be constructed. The Cabinet decision would not stop wind turbines being developed, it would merely stop the County Council and County Council tenants receiving any benefits from wind farm development;

A number of Committee Members indicated that they had been consulted prior to this Cabinet decision and had indicated that whilst some of them were not opposed to windfarms in principle, they were opposed to further wind farm development on the basis of the feedback received from their residents. It was also pointed out that the subsidies offered to develop wind farms ultimately came from tax payers’ pockets;

Suggested that the blanket ban approach needed to reconsidered, possibly to include permitting small applications below a certain height, or on a case-by-case basis;

Stressed the Council’s responsibility for its tenant farmers, and the need to reconsider this decision very carefully on the basis of evidence, and in consultation with a wide range of stakeholders; [...]

Cabinet will discuss this again on the 25th October, with a recommendation to at least lift the blanket ban on wind turbines. Cabinet meetings are open to the public, but unfortunately I have lectures that clash so can't attend. No doubt it will be enlightening.

Here is a further insight into the County Council Leader's views on wind farms:

I recognise that there are an extreme range of opinions from eco warriors who want to save the world and think that emitting less carbon in Cambridgeshire is the answer to those who just don’t like them towering over the landscape.

The trouble is if you mix in some political mantra, a Liberal Democrat opposition party who have lost their way and finding it very difficult to make any traction politically and a ruling group who want to make a positive difference for the people of Cambridgeshire a fuss is bound to happen.

(That is a direct copy and paste; I have resisted the urge to correct the punctuation and grammar.)

This should not be a party political issue. The wind turbines were proposed by a Conservative County Council administration and are now being ditched by another Conservative County Council administration. Moreover, Councillor Clarke admits that there hasn't been a proper consultation, just a few people from Fenland saying they don't like wind turbines. When this much money is at stake, that's just not good enough.

Now that I'm no longer working for a local council, I, like Nick Clarke, can 'tell it as it is'. In this case, a huge pile of bullshit. Putting people before profits, huh? People were not given the choice between a few wind turbines and local services cut being because the council ignored a £900,000/year source of income!

Properly designed wind farms, sited with local consultation, do not blight people's lives. Rolling blackouts might, and that is what we will have in 2018 if we do not invest in ALL methods of energy generation, as well as energy efficiency. There isn't a choice between wind farms and business as usual, there's a choice between wind farms and blackouts. Councillors claim that their electorates wouldn't tolerate wind farms, because they are happy to listen to small but very vocal campaign groups. Turbines aren't appropriate everywhere, but councillors wilfully ignore empirical evidence, which they seem to see as threatening. By promoting a needlessly adversarial approach to planning wind farms, councillors are preventing communities from sharing in their financial benefits. Neither is it true that everyone in Cambridgeshire hates them on principle. In Gamlingay the community are installing one of their own.

However, there are reasons to be cheerful. I comfort myself that Councillor Clarke can huff and puff against wind farms all he likes, but it'll do him little good. Although it can impede wind development on its own land, the County Council has no planning powers to prevent it elsewhere; these lie with the districts. Moreover, the anti-wind districts will find that the presumption in favour of sustainable development overturns every refusal of permission on appeal.

I've largely lost faith in the ability of local government to tackle climate change, at least in its current form. The government is wilfully ignoring the incongruence between the binding targets of the Climate Change Act and Carbon Budgets and the fact that many Conservative local councillors won't even listen to the phrase 'climate change'. There is no leadership on environmental issues to be found in most local council chambers, just apathy and cowardice disguised as 'reflecting the concerns of the electorate'. Their electorate includes young people like me, and our voices are not being heard.

This is not the case throughout Cambridgeshire, though. Cambridge City Council deserves much wider recognition for its efforts to tackle climate change. There is also a project trying to approach planning for renewable energy in a constructive, positive manner: the Cambridgeshire Renewables Infrastructure Framework. It is well worth getting involved with, as it brings individuals, businesses, and politicians together to discuss renewable energy reasonably, like adults. Such informed dialogue is badly needed to redress the balance. Local councillors are making retrogressive and short-sighted decisions; their electorates must hold them to account.

Greenpieces

The constant stream of demagoguery coming out of the Department of Communities and Local Government has been getting me down; slogan of the day is 'Accountability to the people not the Government machine'. I therefore decided to take a look at what the Department of Energy and Climate Change was up to.

This, you might recall, is headed by Chris Huhne, a Liberal Democrat who was a candidate for the leadership of the party back in the day. The tone coming from his department, DECC, is refreshingly sensible and un-clichéd. Policy announcements so far are a mixed bag, though.

A scheme will be launched to insulate 3.5 million homes from 2012. It seems to be sensibly structured - the energy company pays the up-front cost of insulation then recoups it through the household's subsequent bills. As the household will be using less energy as a result of the insulation, they shouldn't really notice this. It would be even more effective if energy was priced more sensibly, so that the more you use the higher the unit price, but still.

The development of a new North Sea oil and gas field has been given the go ahead. They got the Conservative Energy Minister to announce this one, I notice. I'm deeply unimpressed. Talk of energy security is all very well, but the level of renewables in the UK is disgracefully low, the lowest in Europe. Prioritising North Sea oil and gas isn't going to change that.

On the other hand, the law that prevents local councils from selling renewable energy to the grid is being axed. Maybe the rule somehow made sense in 1975? Hopefully this will encourage more neighbourhood-scale renewable energy projects.

I also rather like Chris Huhne's speech to the Local Government Association. It couldn't be more different to Eric Pickles' mishmash of references to Tom Cruise films, the Cold War, and the World Cup, garnished with bureaucrat-bashing.

Sample of Huhne's speech:

But at the same time everyone here understands the over-riding urgency of tackling climate change. We have, through the Climate Change Act, a legally binding requirement to reduce the UK’s carbon emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. What we need to do now is to construct a new partnership between local and central government, which enables us to meet these goals in the fastest and most cost-effective manner possible.

Simple as that. The previous government passed the Climate Change Act, then ignored the urgency of actually doing anything to make that 80% cut.

One major environmental opportunity seems to have been missed by the coalition. I was disappointed not to see a carbon tax in the budget, which could have gradually replaced Value Added Tax (a very blunt instrument for taxing consumption). As well as raising much-needed revenue and not being as intrinsically regressive as VAT, this would have boosted the low carbon economy. Which a new report tells us is one of the few sectors of the economy growing and creating jobs during the economic doldrums. Of course, the decision to reform VAT in this way would have to come from the Treasury, which has no remit or apparent interest in the environment.

Sadly, I also suspect that a carbon tax could fall foul of the World Trade Organisation's paranoia about protectionist trade barriers. Horrifying but true, the WTO does not accept that countries should be able to set their own environmental standards.

To digress a bit, I have long thought that environmental policy is dealt with oddly in the current central government departmental structure. On the one hand, environmental impact and in particular climate change should be consistently embedded in policy across all departments - especially you, Department for Transport. On the other, policies specifically to mitigate and adapt to climate change should really be concentrated in one department, to avoid duplication. I think DECC is intended to do this, but its remit overlaps somewhat with DEFRA (the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which includes the Environment Agency), CLG (Communities and Local Government) and BIS (Business, Innovation and Skills).

Shorter post today as its Friday and so hot that my brain has slowed right down. Have good weekend. Coming up next week... Social housing! The Big Society! Transport policy! And so much more.