South West London Humanists: Discussion on Climate Change

Despite what the lack of postngs to this blog suggests, I have continued to be a good attender at South West London Humanists monthly discussions and it is only a lack of time that has stopped me from writing them up.

It was all a lot easier before I retired because then I could do things in the office and the activity I was displacing was work but now I have to give up something nice, like walking, to make time to do these write-ups.

It was made easier for me this month as we split into three sub-groups for the main discussion and as I was asked to feedback on one group and I had to take some sensible notes! What follows is a summary of the discussion that uses those notes and also my subsequent thoughts. It is a write up of my thoughts on the topic rather than a report on the meeting.

The question we were asked to conjure with was: How can countries do enough to tackle climate change if it makes today's citizens poorer?

Before the discussion the scene was set with a short presentation on climate change. This probably helped to level the understanding but I think that we all already believed that climate change is a significant threat and needed a significant response, one that is lacking so far.

In our group we spent sometime disputing the framing of the question, yes we need to tackle climate change but why should this make us poorer?

What needs to be done and how it is paid for are two different questions and there are plenty of ways to pay for tackling climate changes apart from raising general taxation, e.g. wealth and windfall taxes.

Also some of the measures we should take will actually make most people richer, e.g. renewable energy is cheaper that gas/oil so was can expect energy prices to fall in future. Similarly if we Reduce and Reuse what we buy then we are spending less and Right to Repair will enable us to keep devices for longer.

We also queried the meaning of "poorer". Is someone who wears a jumper rather than switching the central heating poorer? Or someone choosing to cycle to work rather than driving?

And even if we do become poorer we will still be richer than we were, say, twenty years ago (which felt pretty good at that time) and richer than most people on the planet.

We veered slightly off topic (as good conversations often do) to discuss how to make the changes. We thought that changes should be introduced to make it easier for people to move to greener lifestyles, e.g. have more public transport (free!) before banning cars. 

We also felt that any changes should not penalise people who had made what seemed like reasonable decisions at that time and the ULEZ car scrappage scheme is an example of how to do this.

It was a good discussion in which everyone in our group participated enthusiastically and which reached a broad consensus. That does not always happen!