An ocean apart on climate change

Pragmatic president: Obama in Copenhagen displayed little of the"Yes We Can" spirit. Photograph: Official White House Photo by Pete Souza

In the closing hours of last December's Copenhagen climate negotiations and the days that followed, political leaders from both sides of the Atlantic set out to communicate the results of the meeting to their domestic audiences. They had all been at the same meeting, but you would never know it from the different stories they told.

President Obama declared agreement on the Copenhagen accord, hours before most countries had even seen it, calling it a “meaningful, unprecedented breakthrough”. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper was well in tow, calling it a “good agreement” that was “comprehensive and realistic”. The takeaway message: Don’t worry – everything is fine.

In Europe, the message was much different. According to Denmark’s climate minister, the deal in Copenhagen was not good enough. Britain’s Climate Change and Energy Secretary Ed Milliband and Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for major reforms to the United Nations climate process. In France, President Sarkozy immediately offered to convene a meeting in spring 2010 to rebuild momentum toward a more ambitious climate agreement. The takeaway: We have much work to do.

This difference in messaging is not trivial. Instead, it reflects a fundamental difference across the Atlantic in the relationship of government and civil society vis-à-vis the climate change issue – one with a massive implication for our capacity to respond to this crisis.

The European approach is perhaps a nascent form of what British sociologist Anthony Giddens calls “the ensuring state” – whose primary role is to help energise a diversity of groups to reach solutions to problems demanding collective action. The ensuring state acts as a facilitator and an enabler, rather than as a top-down agency that offers policy prescriptions as if they were solutions.

Intrinsic in the European approach is an embrace of citizens as partners in a successful climate regime and a belief that the whole of European society, working together, can lead the transition to a low-carbon world. Over time, this approach has helped to craft an understanding of climate change as a matter of common sense, morality, politics, economics and culture, and to make climate action a publicly-supported priority across the continent.

Not surprisingly, Europe came to Copenhagen with the most ambitious emission reduction targets in the developed world, and pushed hardest for a strong Copenhagen agreement.

In the United States, climate scepticism amongst the general public is higher than in Europe. Over the last year, it grew modestly – and this was even before the controversy surrounding the “Climategate” email scandal. President Obama’s address to the Copenhagen conference was anti-climactic, to say the least – he simply reaffirmed the US’ commitment in a take-it-or-leave-it fashion that did nothing to advance the negotiations. Disappointing as it was, Obama’s approach was certainly pragmatic, and arguably even ambitious, given the tenuous support for climate action in the US Senate, and by extension, in the US population at large.

In Canada, public opinion polls consistently rank climate change as a high priority; however, this has failed to make it a high priority issue amongst any of the three consecutive minority governments over the last six years. In its first year in office in 2006, the Conservative government dismantled public education and outreach on climate change; it has since fronted three environment ministers, but has failed to produce a single climate change plan, instead deferring repeatedly any commitments until finally declaring its alignment with whatever is decided in the US.

What matters here is where these different approaches are likely to lead. The European approach will foster a generation of active citizens responding in a myriad of ways through both individual and collective action. This is the foundation for the transformational changes that will chart us, hopefully, toward a more sustainable future.

The North American approach is a sort of generational colonialism – a government-sponsored denial of our social-ecological reality, in favour of a mythology that we can carry on in our lives and with our lifestyles, as we always have. It is backward-looking, it treats the climate regime as an arcane matter of bureaucratic control, and it is hugely limiting on the capacity of citizens and groups to contribute to climate solutions. It is exactly the opposite of what reality demands of us.

It is ironic that the European experience is very much an expression of Obama’s "Yes We Can" philosophy (that is: Yes we can, if we all play our part – now let’s roll up our sleeves and get to work!) – certainly more so than the American approach since Obama’s election. As the climate regime evolves in the months and years ahead, and surely it will in the wake of the Copenhagen meeting and the forthcoming US climate legislation, let’s hope that Europe forges ahead with its whole-of-society approach and pioneers a model that North American leaders will emulate. And that Team Obama, with Canada in tow, finds a little more of its founding spirit. Our hope depends on it.

David Noble is a member of the British Council’s Transatlantic Network 2020, a network for action which brings together young influencers from business, civil society, the arts, science and media to revitalise transatlantic and global links for the future. Importantly, TN2020 reflects the changing demographics, ideologies and dynamics of Europe and North America. Its members collaborate on projects which address one of three focus areas - sustainable living; building resilience in communities; creativity and innovation.

The views expressed in this piece are those of the writer and not the British Council.