Many observers expressed outrage and surprise at the lack of attention to environmental issues in the election campaign. While the outrage is justified, the surprise is not. It would have been astonishing if the environment had featured strongly. Some reasons are to do with the UK political system. Some concern the nature of politics in 'market democracies'. And some stem from the 'diffuse' environmental problems that pose the greatest risks of unsustainable development.
"...there is a great challenge to convert latent social anxieties about the environment into genuine demand for change to which parties must respond."
First, consider the UK electoral system and over-centralised government. The voting system concentrates attention on marginal seats. Only a few hundred thousand votes really count. Parties focus on the messages that will win them votes in these seats. It is a recipe for short-termism and bidding wars. Then there is the centralisation of government. Many observers were struck by the obsessive debates over the minutiae of taxation and local services. But this is inevitable in a system where Whitehall has such power over local finance and services. UK general elections are hugely scaled-up local elections, concentrating on issues elsewhere left to regional and community governance.
There are wider problems for environmental politics in market democracies. As affluence advances, so parties and other collective bodies have weakened. Politics becomes, as JK Galbraith argued, a matter of satisfying the 'culture of contentment' - the affluent majority who have most clout in elections and lobbies. A widespread response from parties has been to treat citizens as consumers, to dilute messages about common risks and civic responsibilities, and to seek to outbid each other in safeguarding the affluence of the 'contented'.
This trend connects to problems posed by the nature of the worst environmental risks. These concern the massively 'diffused' pollution from deeply rooted and popular mass consumption patterns (cars, air travel, shopping, etc). As Tom Burke has said, 'the buck stops everywhere'. Facing up to this calls for policies for demand management, lifestyle change and restraint - all affecting the majority 'culture of contentment'. Great political courage is required even to raise these issues, and it is in short supply. Diffuse pollution problems (waste, transport, carbon emissions, energy use) are thus leadership-resistant issues in modern market democracies. Parties are easily tempted into conspiracies of silence. Moreover, many of these problems are literally invisible to voters (and to many politicians): at the moment, they only become 'salient' in exceptional circumstances (as with extreme weather events).
This is also a problem for NGOs and others seeking to raise the profile of environmental issues. They have yet to find ways to translate their large membership figures into unignorable bottom-up pressure on the political process. At the moment there is no electoral penalty for parties for failing to focus on the environment. We cannot rely on disasters to provide the motivation for politicians to do better. So there is a great challenge to NGOs and other actors in 'civil society' to rethink their strategies for influencing citizens, parties and institutions, and to convert latent social anxieties about the environment into genuine demand for change to which parties must respond. Two tasks stand out: first, develop new ways to engage NGO supporters in Green consumption and political pressure; and second, promote more inter-party competition on environmental issues. This means taking a long-ignored group seriously as potential converts - the Conservative party.