by Charles Clover
We nearly didn’t buy a 4x4. But after we ripped out the sump of our ancient and reliable family diesel on a rock in the drive of our rented house in Scotland last year, my better half was insistent. We needed ground clearance.
Actually, climate change also came into our decision. As we looked around, we found that instead of buying a thing the size of a Hummer that runs in permanent four-wheel drive, we could have a diesel family estate with 20cm ground clearance that runs in two-wheel drive most of the time and does an average of around 40 miles per gallon.
Having gone to all the trouble to find something that had twice the fuel economy of many 4x4s, we found to our bafflement that our new car scraped into Gordon Brown’s new “gas guzzler” tax bracket, by one gram of carbon - alongside lumps of metal like Jeremy Clarkson’s Ford GT40, which does 70 miles to the tank.
After writing about the environment for 20 years, I still find it hard to make virtuous decisions. We had a gas condensing boiler before most people. We chose to have a water meter. But what caring about the environment actually means is that you travel around with a shopping list of things you would like to do if you could afford it or had time to find a way round the obstacles.
There’s paying to offset my air travel (something I must set aside a few months to talk to my company about one day), then there’s the rainwater harvesting system (minimum £2,500 for our size of house), the ground source heat pump (optimists say it would cost only £8,000 to dig up the lawn and install one), and the two new 5 litre loos that I now need to fit to replace our 9 litre flush Victorian ones (up to £1,500 fitted). The last one will get done because the plumbing has given up, but the others? It would take a lotto win or a revolution in Government policy for them to get done.
“Work carried out with focus groups for the ESRC is intensely critical about programmes that focus on individuals as if they had a completely free choice in their buying or transport choices”.
So it was with a degree of wry amusement that I noted that a new emphasis on personal responsibility has crept into Government announcements about climate change. There it was again in Tony Blair’s most recent speech on climate change and Africa. He said: “We need to recognise that taking action on climate change is not just a matter for governments. Yes, the Government needs to give a lead. But ultimately each of us also has a responsibility to act in our daily lives. In the choices we make - whether it’s in the energy we use in the home, or how we move around - we also can each make a contribution towards tackling this global challenge.”
The majority of studies by academics or public opinion pollsters register higher-than-ever levels of willingness to do something about climate change in our personal lives. But how much are we really prepared to do, or can we do, without being placed under regulatory compulsion, given tax incentives or having the Government remove the obstacles? Most of us believe we are willing to do the right thing - but we also feel trapped in our consumption patterns.
“Work carried out with focus groups for the ESRC is intensely critical about programmes that focus on individuals as if they had a completely free choice in their buying or transport choices”, says Jacqui Burgess, Professor of Geography at University College London and a member of the ESRC's Research Strategy Board.
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