As a nation we tend to characterise any debate in terms of competition rather than consensus. Sitting on the fence is seen generally as being weaker than having a definite and opposing point of view.
Nowhere is this polarisation more marked than in the question of green economy and green investment.
Thankfully the idea that you can be ‘for’ or ‘against’ climate change has been somewhat (and quite literally) undermined by the procession of storms, sink holes, broken railways and flooded marginal constituencies (27 at one count) along the Thames Valley and across the West Country.
Skepticism, it seems, is scant defence against 100 feet waves and overflowing rivers.
Has climate change gone mainstream?
The more significant shift, however, is the way in which the weather has forced the silent majority to start to question their own apathy and lack of engagement in the face of seemingly intractable arguments and positions.
It would appear those that form part of the ‘squeezed middle’ have been shocked out of their slumber by images of people ‘like them’, wading waist deep in water full of god knows what filth and the suburban streets divided by massive flood defence ‘sausages’; specifically in Chertsey. Homes that could be their own and lives turned upside down that could also have been their own; climate change is no longer something that happens to people and a time far away, it is now and it is lapping at a doorstep near you.
The effect is to elevate climate change from being a ‘dog whistle’ policy issue (where politicians talk to particular constituents in terms which are ‘inaudible’ (or just not interesting) to the mainstream to a key election issue.
What about the politicians?
“Money no object” went the cry and suddenly soldiers, pumps and people in hi-viz jackets could be seen all over the 24 hour news channels. One thing that politicians hate more than looking powerless in wellies, is appearing in the living rooms of the UK mainstream with what seems to be an extreme, dogmatic and (in the face of the mounting evidence) increasingly irrational point of view.
Alastair Campbell famously advised Tony Blair – not to ‘do god’ – and no politician with an ounce of Westminster nous will want to be seen agreeing with people for whom opposition to climate change is now a question of belief and bombast.
Can we expect some brighter spells to encourage investment into green and sustainability based projects?
A report published by Ernst and Young last week showed how the previously unsettled political weather has discouraged potential investment flows into the green energy industry. We can start to hope that arrival of climate change into the mainstream living room will generate a more balanced and nuanced debate, pushing the minority views to where they belong, at the margins, and allowing more considered assessment of the evidence.
Certainty is everything for investors, not certainty of outcome, but certainty that what they are doing is something real and valuable. The climate is changing, and we are going to experience more ‘weather’ as a result. Stormy seas may have the effect of calming the political squalls around renewable energy and shift focus instead on the best way of getting on with the job of avoiding increasing the probability of more extreme events in the future.