Abstract
This paper explores the politics around the role of agency in the UK climate change debate. Government interventions on the demand side of consumption have increasingly involved attempts to obtain greater traction with the values, attitudes and beliefs of citizens in relation to climate change and also in terms of influencing consumer behaviour at an individual level. With figures showing that approximately 40% of the UK’s carbon emissions are attributable to household and transport behaviour, policy initiatives have progressively focused on the facilitation of “sustainable behaviours”. Evidence suggests however, that mobilisation of pro-environmental attitudes in addressing the perceived “value-action gap” has so far had limited success. Research in this field suggests that there is a more significant and nuanced “gap” between context and behaviour; a relationship that perhaps provides a more adroit reflection of reasons why people do not necessarily react in the way that policy-makers anticipate. Tracing the development of the UK Government’s behaviour change agenda over the last decade, we posit that a core reason for the limitations of this programme relates to an excessively narrow focus on the individual. This has served to obscure some of the wider political and economic aspects of the debate in favour of a more simplified discussion. The second part of the paper reports findings from a series of focus groups exploring some of the wider political views that people hold around household energy habits, purchase and use of domestic appliances, and transport behaviour-and discusses these insights in relation to the literature on the agenda’s apparent limitations. The paper concludes by considering whether the aims of the Big Society approach (recently established by the UK’s Coalition Government) hold the potential to engage more directly with some of these issues or whether they merely constitute a “repackaging” of the individualism agenda.
Highlights
Environmental issues have become more central to government decision-making in the UK in recent years, gaining a noticeably higher profile in relation to the traditional hierarchy of policy
This paper considers some of the reasons why attempts to forge this synthesis have been instrumental in driving environmental policy in the UK in recent years, grounding politics in serving the needs, preferences and agency of individuals as an integral element of ―third way citizenship‖
While some individuals argued that they ―did what they could‖ in relation to environmental messages from the UK Government it was suggested that the quantity of these goods in the modern household often made this difficult in respect of changing behaviour: Well, we never used to have them we when we were youngsters...sort of DVD players and stuff like that, they weren’t around...you had a record player
Summary
Environmental issues have become more central to government decision-making in the UK in recent years, gaining a noticeably higher profile in relation to the traditional hierarchy of policy. A series of energy white papers during the last decade have been among the higher profile policy statements reflecting the UK Government‘s intention to address the urgency of climate change through mainstream policy. This intent was confirmed in 2006 by the appearance of the government financed Stern Review which provided a comprehensive economic, social and environmental hypothesis of future scenarios should the UK fail to address the causes of climate change. The 2008 Climate Change Bill—incorporating the UK government‘s pledge to oversee the transition to a society which is based on an 80 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 2050—clearly indicates a more central role for environmental issues in consideration of the UK‘s present and future policy agenda. Our overarching goal is to be able to continue to pursue economic growth with all the benefits it brings without damaging the environment at home or oversees [1] (p. 23)
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