Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
the American navy in Pearl Harbor, prompting the US to enter World
War II, might be a major break-up of the west Antarctic ice sheet which
“could raise sea level a frightening two or three feet with a matter of years”.
Unfortunately, as Brown points out, “if we wait for a catastrophic event to
change our behaviour, it might be too late”.
Brown has two other scenarios for social change. One is “the Berlin
Wall model”, wherein “a society [in this case, eastern Europe] reaches a
tipping point on a particular issue - often after an extended period of
gradual change in thinking and attitudes.” The other is the “sandwich
model”, where “there is a strong grassroots movement pushing for change
on a particular issue that is fully supported by strong political leadership
at the top”. Brown's example of the Berlin Wall model working in the US
is the shift of opinion against smoking tobacco. This shift occurred over
several decades, reaching a tipping point in the last 10-15 years, after
which controls on sale and advertising tobacco soon followed. However,
the parallel understates the importance of climate change. While smok-
ing grows more dangerous over time to the individual smoker and raises
overall health costs, it does not get dramatically more dangerous to society
as a whole over time, as climate change does.
So Brown argues that the sandwich model of strong grassroots pressure
- hopefully working with, rather than against, political leadership - is
more appropriate to the more urgent problem of energy-induced climate
change. The expedient tactic of government ministers inviting environ-
mentalists to pile pressure on their own governments has worked in the
past, as shown by the success Friends of the Earth's campaigning in the
UK. At present, most people in the industrialized world are more preoc-
cupied with recession. Nonetheless, if there were greater mobilization on
climate change, those mobilized would very likely find themselves leaning
on ministers' open doors.
So what should individuals push for?
Here are a few suggested principles:
Lead by individual example
The point of taking individual action on energy is to make a difference,
where possible, in saving, efficiency and perhaps even generation - but
even more to build the idea that energy waste is socially unacceptable (as
 
Search WWH ::




Custom Search