Icon prepares for take-off
They're not yet calling it "the new DDT", "the new Brent Spar" or "the new Narmada Dam"; but Heathrow Airport's third runway is shaping up nicely for the lead role in the global storyline of environmental protest.
It has all the right ingredients. It's a single issue at a single site, with (ironically) good transport links to a major population centre guaranteeing easy access for activists and television crews.
The anti-runway campaign has the backing of intelligent, telegenic celebrities such as actress Emma Thompson.
Campaigners cast as the villain of the piece the government that according to its own expert advisers is adept at talking the talk on climate change but not so clever at turning its pledges and targets and ambitions into something as solid as the Heathrow tarmac - and which is itself divided on whether the runway is a good thing.
Most importantly, it has in the director's chair Greenpeace, the acknowledged master of turning an issue that could have died a quiet death into an "event", boosting the public profile and assumed importance by orders of magnitude - sometimes, beyond its true environmental significance.
Aviation is the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions and there are few alternative technologies on the horizon.
So it is an important player on the climate field; but not as important as deforestation, which contributes a bigger greenhouse gas burden as well as having other major impacts, nor power generation.
But, for right or wrong, it is the runway that appears cast in this storyline as the touchstone issue whose resolution symbolises the UK government's lack of fibre on climate change ("the first big test of the Government's environmental credibility since the Climate Change Act became law last year. It has failed spectacularly," in WWF's phrase) - and, by extension, the lack of will among richer nations generally to diverge too far from the path of business as usual.
History tells us, though, that there is often something of a disconnect between the icon and the reality.
American farmers were using far worse pesticides than DDT when Silent Spring directed attention to the issue - aldrin, dieldrin, endrin - but it was DDT that people talked about, it was DDT that Joni Mitchell sang about, and so it became the iconic chemical, the one that's now embedded in the public consciousness whenever the spectre of "chemicals" is raised.
From the beginnings of modern environmentalism, activists concluded that the public would become interested only if messages were simple.
In the run-up to the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment, the organisers produced a large book - Only One Earth - that distilled the ideas of prominent thinkers in a challenging but rather wordy way.
The UN media people dealing with the summit decided they needed something simpler and sexier to grab public attention. Negotiations led to Friends of the Earth writing another book - slimmer, with far fewer and far simpler words - and far more pictures, many of emotive subjects.
Greenpeace honed the strategy to perfection. The organisation realised a simple video of its activists bravely blocking a Soviet harpooner would ramp up public awareness of whaling - and of itself - far faster than all the words in the world.
Issues grow to be iconic, too when celebrities are involved. To be frank, news editors like a bit of glamour with their environmental peril - and with most editors being male, an attractive female figurehead (such as the Booker Prize-winning author Arundhati Roy who campaigned vigorously against India's Narmada Dam) will always help move the story up the TV bulletin running order or nearer to the front page.
The tendency to draw public attention to simple icons obviously works - in part. It brought the commercial whaling moratorium, it has led to bans and taxes on plastic bags and, lately, incandescent lightbulbs.
Despite Greenpeace making (and later admitting) factual errors during its campaign over the Brent Spar oil facility, the campaign did result in reforms to the way such structures are to be disposed of in future.
But there is a counter-argument: that concentrating on the simple, easy, iconic target obscures the bigger picture.
So commercial whaling was banned, but the wider health of our oceans continues to decline. Plastic bag bans or charges may reduce their usage, but as (in the UK at least) they make up less than 1% of just the household waste sent to landfill sites, does focussing on them allow us to forget about the rest of the waste we generate?
You can, of course, argue it the other way round; that without a whaling ban we would not now be talking about tuna - the next marine icon - or that banning incandescent bulbs shines a light on the greater issue of domestic energy consumption, and opens up a path to legislation on other wasteful appliances (patio-heaters?) that will cumulatively have a major impact.
It's interesting, too, to look at some of the issues floating around that don't acquire that particular melange of activist protest, media interest, celebrity endorsement and political squirming that marks out an issue as iconic.
Here's an example. For several years, campaigners have been trying to raise the profile of gas flaring from Nigerian oil wells.
It's a contender for the title of Africa's largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions, and the gas wasted could help provide millions of local people with the energy they badly need.
Campaigners describe high-profile western oil companies such as Shell as the villains of the piece. But still, for some reason, the issue refuses to take off in the same way that Heathrow's new runway appears to be doing.
So how can we expect things to evolve? The government has said the runway can go ahead; but Greenpeace and the other campaign groups involved appear equally determined that it will not.
The issue offers plenty of scope for direct action - the familiar "bulldozer vs man tied to a tree" scenario that we saw regularly during the era of major anti-roads protests a decade and a half ago.
It also offers scope for legal battles, as the airport's owner BAA (presumably) tries to buy the land it needs, some of it now owned by campaigners, through compulsory purchase orders.
Perhaps the battle-lines will spread out to some of the same capitals where Heathrow's jets currently touch down; this is, by definition, a global issue.
We shall see. In 20 years' time, perhaps we will look back on this day as the birth of an iconic battle symbolising humanity's response to the warnings of climate scientists; or perhaps hindsight will show us an iconic distraction from the wider imperatives of curbing consumption and the growth in the human footprint.
Whatever history's judgement, I suspect the dispute over Heathrow's third runway really is going to be one that we'll remember.
I'm Richard Black, environment correspondent for the BBC News website. This is my take on what's happening to our shared environment as the human population grows and our use of nature's resources increases.
~RS~q~RS~~RS~z~RS~06~RS~)
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I think giving the go-ahead for a new runway at Heathrow is simply madness, although not for the same reasons as Greenpeace et al.
It would make a lot more sense to improve regional airports to take some of the traffic away from Heathrow - Southampton perhaps? Or build a new London airport towards the East.
But!
DDT was actually safe for humans and greenpeace have a long record of deceit and exaggeration when trying to draw attention to things that they consider to be wrong.
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It's no good allowing business people to run the country,as this non-government does.Many of them don't give a damn about the destruction of the planet,just their own short term interests. Why not build a fourth runway to be even more "competitive"?Jobs can and should be created in the green economy.The underlying problem is the old chestnut of overpopulation.
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Richard; a very poignant article.
IMHO you are so right in your statement when you say; "From the beginnings of modern environmentalism, activists concluded that the public would become interested only if messages were simple".
‘Silent Spring’ was and still is the death nail to countless millions who were denied the use of the life saving agent DDT. As you say, one of the "least worst of the chemicals that you site", if I may paraphrase your words.
No words I can conjure up can absolutely describe the diabolical genocide (i.e. already poor and deprived peoples) that was perpetrated by this action. And I speak lightly.
Well done in bring to attention.
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The average person is not interested in the complexities of environmental problems (Or interested in the true scope of subleties of any other problem, for that matter). A simple message gives you a simple way to appease the conscience, problem solved.
When an appeal to their conscience is made, people are generally willing to do something about environmental problems (as long as that does not interfere with the contents of their wallet).
But the thing is, that an effective appeal to the general person's conscience, involves a simple message. And preferably a villain that one can go to shout boo at, and then feel good at having taken some real action. Conscience appeased, problem solved.
What needs to be done, is to get into people's heads, that effective environmental problem-solving is not as simple as protesting to one runway, or one chemical, as you pointed out. And then to keep them really interested and motivated at the same time. To get into people's heads, that these problems are theirs too, only it's not very visible to the layman.
But this could be asking too much of human nature. To the majority of the population, when it comes down to it, the contents of their wallet are their number one priority and any other action is charity that the earth should be very grateful to them for. And one charity is plenty to silence the average conscience.
That's what we have a government for then, to regulate society so that all can live safely and prosper. To protect us from ourselves and each other and to provide a stable framework. Only the short election cycle combined with our obsession for the weight of our wallet means, that any problem that will not get grossly out of hand within four years' time becomes nobody's problem.
Not of business, because it needs to make a profit before all else. Not of the people, because it is too complex for the layman. Not of the government, because the people will punish it for anything that costs money and of which the necessity is not immediately apparent.
The key thus lies in public opinion. If public opinion is unable to comprehend all the complexities, than at least let it feel a sense of urgency. Al Gore's film was much more effective at that than the runway issue, even though I sympathise.
Media of the world, here lies a challenge!
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I agree with #1 on both his points, and add a third:
- I used to live in Africa where DDT was part of our daily lives - there was no practical substitute. I understand that in certain places they have gone back to using it.
- I now live within 15 minutes walking distance of a major airport (literally) but everytime I fly anywhere I have to waste several hours getting to and from Heathrow.
- I work in humanitarian aid and normally we would re-use 3,500 carrier bags each year. Now we have to buy them, reducing the amount of help that can be given.
My impression of GreenPeace et al is that they are a bunch of well-fed Luddites with no positive answers for the problems they highlight.
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To #6. Luddites: "English historical movement [...] the term Luddite has been used derisively to describe anyone opposed to technological progress and technological change." (Wikipedia)
GreenPeace et al ARE advocating technological progress and change, namely to progress technology and society as a whole into a sustainable way of doing things. Is it not those who want to keep things going as they are (unsustainably) who are the Luddites?
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I'm not so sure Greenpeace are advocating technological progress. It seems to me that by saying no to nuclear they are taking a step back from reality
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Ah #8 , so taking a step back to take a critical look at a power source that can have immense effects both good and bad is a step back from reality ? Thats the way we ended up feeding one set of herbivore animals to another . It works ...they get fat and we eat them . Whats the problem ?Business is all important. The same with GM food issues . We are now at a point where we NEED and MUST look and evaluate the effects of what we are doing . Humans no longer have a minimal effect on the planet . Our sheer numbers and the use of technology without thought is now showing results that are becoming irreversable . Thats what Greenpeace and non members of that group are saying with our step back from reality . The days of 'shoot first , ask questions later' must stop .
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There is someting particularly nauseating about seeing protestors, usually female, and obviously from affluent middle-class backgrounds, giving self-righteous condemnation of the plan to build the third runway at Heathrow.
No doubt every one of them has enjoyed an annual family holiday by air, flown to the Alps skiing in winter, done the middle-class rite-of-passage gap year trip to Australia, flown to Africa to ease their guilt by visiting poor people - all financed by Daddy - but now want to deny others, less fortunate than themselves, the opportunity of doing the same.
If they want to be taking seriously, perhaps they should sign a public, online pledge never to fly in an aeroplane anywhere. If enough of them do that, the need for a third runway will just disappear. At least they would be seen to be more than a bunch of hyprocrites.
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