Beacons

by Gregory Norminton

  Perhaps for the first time in our history, we need to learn to be sustainable.

  Legions of scientists have researched and understood these issues, and have accepted the peer-reviewed scientific evidence. The nature of science is of course that nothing is completely certain, but when a hypothesis has been thoroughly tested and reinforced repeatedly by consistent, objective evidence, it becomes an ‘established theory’. Man-made climate change is one of these. However, a number of influential and well-funded vested interests are determined to exaggerate doubts and exploit any seeming uncertainty to foster inaction. They accuse scientists of not being impartial. But aren’t scientists allowed to be concerned? It is difficult for anyone who has read the science not to be.

  There is no great scientific doubt about the fact of anthropogenic climate change but there is, quite rightly, doubt around how quickly the worst effects will start to happen and exactly how severe those effects will be. Some countries are already being affected, and all the models point to severe changes in the not-too-distant future. Until the glaciers have melted and swamped their respective valleys, cutting off a vital source of water to many arid regions – until sea levels have risen and inundated settlements or whole islands – the science will only ever be able to best estimate these events, and their exact timing and severity will remain a matter of hypothesis.

  That doesn’t mean they are not going to happen though.

  Through their respective Climate Change Acts, the UK and particularly Scotland have shown outstanding moral leadership in tackling this issue. The governments’ commitments to reducing our greenhouse gas emissions by 2020 are to be commended, although it is critical that these are honoured and translated into real progress on the ground. The emissions targets set in Westminster and Holyrood are testament both to the validity of the science and the strength of concern raised by civil society through the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition.

  This doesn’t mean that it is going to be easy – finding palatable and credible solutions is a minefield. Yet civil society needs to stay united in its determination to deal with this issue, and will be crucial in shaping the transition to a lower-carbon economy, helping people get to grips with what climate change is all about and encouraging the rest of the world to follow our lead.

  To do this, it is essential that we fund the continuing science. If civil society is the heart and conscience of a just society, then science is the brain, and we need to keep feeding the brain. But we need to do much more than that. We need people who can communicate in a way that reaches those parts of our psyche that science alone cannot reach. We need to find the courage of our convictions and develop an inspiring and engaging vision which people can rally around. We need to promote new thinking and help to challenge short-termism. We need to interpret what the future might look like and take the fear out of behavioural change. We need to develop intelligent, joined-up thinking, understanding better the interdependence of people, the planet and the places where we live and on which we have an impact. We need to embrace the opportunities available to lead the world on a sustainable path by appealing to more than the analytical and scientific parts of the imagination.

  They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself. — Andy Warhol

  People cannot be expected to understand climate change if they are not persuaded to listen. They cannot be expected to care if they do not understand. And they cannot be expected to act if they do not care. Yet we need people to act. Environmental writing has an important role to play in encouraging people to listen, care, and act.

  Sometimes it feels as if we fear evasive behavioural change more than climate change itself. Or maybe we just feel helpless in the face of such large-scale global concerns. This is quite understandable, but not acting is really not an option. Ultimately change is inevitable. The question is: will change be forced upon us, its helpless victims, through the accidental consequences of our unsustainable behaviour? Or can we influence it and help shape and define it?

  At least the fact that we are causing climate change means that we can stop it getting worse. If we choose to.

  We need our artists and writers more than ever to help personalize these issues, to engage our hearts and souls and to engender self-belief and confidence in our ability to tackle what otherwise seem overwhelming, long-term or remote intellectual concerns. We need more positive role models which reflect the values we think are most important.

  Writers and artists can voice our concerns and build up our confidence to act. By experimenting with different scenarios, they can lessen our fear of change, appealing to people’s right brain: heart, soul, gut, eyes, fingers, ears, and skin; they can immerse readers in, and create a mood for, new thinking in a way that constant recycling of the science simply cannot. They, more than anyone, can help interpret what the future might look like, and take the fear out of change. Ultimately that is what Gregory and I wanted this book to be about.

  It doesn’t suit anyone to believe in climate change; it’s an appalling thing to have to contemplate. But it isn’t a matter of belief. It is a matter of scientific observation.

  Deep down I believe we all know this is something we have to address, however hard it may be to stomach. And the sooner we stop prevaricating and pretending we can’t hear the alarms, the sooner we can look forward with hope and a belief in our future.

  Undoubtedly we face daunting challenges, both domestically and globally. But if we want a chance to prevent the worst, to choose our path rather than to have it forced upon us, then we need to take responsibility and act now. We need to be creative. Resourceful. Thrifty. Some of us will be brilliant, entrepreneurial. Maybe, at last, we will learn as a species to work within natural limits and the parameters of a stable climate. And if we can get there, then just imagine for a moment what we might be able to achieve.

  Would you welcome a more altruistic society, one that is more localized and with greater equality? Would you like to have a better quality of life, with less pollution, greed, and waste? How about greater social cohesion, better health, less stress; better co-ordinated transport, a more sustainable economy, and less debt; more robust supply chains; greater self-dependence, and job security? These things are within our grasp. If we really want them. And if we commit to those actions needed to slow down the climate beast.

  It’s up to all of us to choose…

  No man ever made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he himself could only do a little.’ – Edmund Burke

  Mike Robinson is chief executive of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society (RSGS) based in Perth. For the past six years Mike has been heavily involved in many aspects of climate change policy in Scotland and further afield. Since 2006 he has established, chaired, and remains a board member of Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, sat (informally) on the board of Stop Climate Chaos in London, and represented SCVO at the Climate Agora in Brussels in 2008. He is a grant panel member of the government’s Climate Challenge Fund (CCF), a member of the 2020 Business Leaders’ Climate Delivery Group, and chaired the Scottish Parliament Short Life Working Group on annual targets. He is a board member of a number of other charities and co-ordinates a carbon reduction scheme in his local community. He has been working with Gregory Norminton to get this book off the ground since they first met in 2007.

  ‌Contributors

  Tom Bullough is the author of three acclaimed novels, Konstantin, based on the life of nineteenth-century Russian space scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, The Claude Glass and A. He lives in the Brecon Beacons in Wales.

  Poet, writer, and translator David Constantine has won several literary prizes, most recently the BBC National Short Story Award in 2010. He is a Fellow of Queen’s College Oxford.

  Siân Melangell Dafydd is the author of Y Trydydd Peth (The Third Thing) which won the coveted 2009 National Eisteddfod Literature Medal. She is the co-editor of literary magazine Taliesin and writes in both Welsh and English.

 
; A scientist by training, Clare Dudman has published a number of short stories and four novels: Edge of Danger, Wegener’s Jigsaw, 98 Reasons for Being and A Place of Meadows and Tall Trees. Her writing has won two awards and a prize.

  Janice Galloway’s awards include the E.M. Forster Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and the Saltire Award. Her Collected Stories came out in 2009 and All Made Up, a ‘true novel’ follow-up to This is Not About Me, was published by Granta in 2011.

  Rodge Glass has published three novels and a graphic novel, and won a Somerset Maugham Award in 2009 for his highly acclaimed biography of Alasdair Gray. His latest book is Bring Me the Head of Ryan Giggs, published in April 2012. He is a lecturer at Strathclyde University and associate editor at Cargo Publishing.

  Alasdair Gray, described by Will Self as ‘a great writer, perhaps the greatest living in this archipelago today’, won the Whitbread and Guardian Fiction prizes for his 1992 novel, Poor Things. He lives, writes, and paints in Glasgow.

  Jay Griffiths won the Discover Award for the best first-time non-fiction author published in the USA with Pip Pip: A Sideways Look at Time. Wild: An Elemental Journey won the Orion Book Award and was shortlisted for the Orwell Prize and the World Book Day Award.

  Best-selling author Joanne Harris’s novels include Chocolat (adapted for the cinema, and starring Johnny Depp and Juliette Binoche), Five Quarters of the Orange and Coastliners.

  Author and illustrator Nick Hayes has won two Guardian Media Awards. His graphic novel, The Rime of the Modern Mariner, was published by Jonathan Cape in 2011.

  Holly Howitt is an author and academic. Her most recent publications are The Schoolboy and Dinner Time, both with Cinnamon Press.

  Liz Jensen is the author of eight novels, including the best-selling ‘ecological’ thriller The Rapture and most recently, The Uninvited. Her work has been widely translated.

  A.L. Kennedy is one of Scotland’s most highly regarded novelists and short story writers. She has twice been included in Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists list. She has won a number of awards including the Costa Book of the Year in 2007 for her novel Day.

  Toby Litt has published eleven works of fiction, most recently Journey into Space and King Death. In 2003 he was nominated by Granta as one of the 20 Best of Young British Novelists.

  Adam Marek is an award-winning short story writer. He won the 2011 Arts Foundation Short Story Fellowship, and was shortlisted for the inaugural Sunday Times EFG Short Story Award. His first story collection Instruction Manual for Swallowing was published by Comma Press in 2007. His second story collection is out in summer 2012.

  Maria McCann has published two novels, As Meat Loves Salt and The Wilding. The latter was longlisted for the 2010 Orange Prize and was a featured book in the 2010 Richard and Judy Bookclub.

  James Miller has published two highly acclaimed novels, Lost Boys and Sunshine State. He teaches English literature and creative writing at Kingston University.

  Lawrence Norfolk is a highly regarded novelist whose work has been translated into many languages. He won the Somerset Maugham Award in 1992. His latest novel, John Saturnall’s Feast, was published by Bloomsbury in 2012.

  Gregory Norminton (editor) has published four novels, all with Sceptre, including the highly acclaimed Serious Things. He teaches creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University.

  Jem Poster has published two novels with Sceptre: Courting Shadows and Rifling Paradise. He is currently the chair of creative writing at Aberystwyth University.

  Adam Thorpe is an award-winning poet and novelist, and the author of two short story collections, Shifts and Is This the Way You Said? (Jonathan Cape). His first novel, Ulverton, is widely regarded as a modern classic. His tenth novel, Flight, was published in May 2012.

  ‌Acknowledgements

  Particular thanks are owed to the Perthshire villages of Guidtown and Wolfhill, who hosted the authors’ briefing weekend in May 2012, and who helped to support the book in other ways.

  We were joined in Perthshire by a number of experts, including Dr Richard Dixon of WWF Scotland, Rachel Nunn, founder of Going Carbon Neutral Stirling, Clive Bowman from the Alyth Community Carbon Project, Gail Wilson from Stop Climate Chaos Scotland, Aphra Morrison of the CCF, and Mike himself, in his various roles, with advice from many other leading community groups including Comrie and the Isle of Eigg.

  Thanks are also due to Isobel Dixon at Blake Friedmann Ltd and Juliet Mabey at Oneworld.

  Stop Climate Chaos Coalition is the UK’s largest group of people dedicated to taking action on climate change and limiting its impact on the world’s poorest communities. Our combined supporter base of more than eleven million people spans over a hundred organizations, from environment and development charities to unions, faith, community, and women’s groups. Together we demand practical action by the UK to keep global warming as far as possible below the 2°c danger threshold.

  Stop Climate Chaos Scotland is the largest coalition ever formed in the country, representing all the main faith groups, humanitarian agencies, and environment charities, along with unions, student and community groups and a host of other partners. It was central in lobbying for the Scottish Climate Change Act, the best in the world today (with a forty-two per cent reduction target by 2020), and went on to produce a forty-two per cent proof whisky called ‘twenty, twenty’, which was distributed to the G20 finance ministers, world leaders, and contacts at Copenhagen, Cancun, and Durban, and continues to be used to promote the example that we all hope other countries will adopt. John Swinney MSP, cabinet secretary for infrastructure, said on the day the Climate Change Act was passed:

  ‘Many of the non-governmental organizations with whom we have been familiar over the ten short years of this parliament have worked together under the Stop Climate Chaos banner to send to parliament and the people of this country a coherent and co-ordinated message that we should consider and, frankly, be inspired by.’

  ‌

  Views or opinions expressed by this work or its authors do not necessarily reflect those of the organizations associated with the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition.

  A Rocha • AirportWatch • APE • AW Scotland • Associaton for the Conservation

  of Energy • Baldernock Community Council • Be That Change • British Humanist Association • CACC • CAFOD • Cambridge Carbon Footprint • Cap and Share • Carbon Neutral Bradford on Avon • Challenge to Change • Changeworks • Christian Ecology Link • Christian Aid • Church of Scotland • COIN • Colombans Faith & Justice Group • Come off it • Commitment for Life • Concern Worldwide Scotland • CRNN • CTC • Eco-congregations Scotland • Edinburgh Uni Student Assoc. • Fife Diet • Friends of the Earth • Friends of the Earth Scotland • Glasgow Eco-renovation Network • Glasgow Students Representative Council • Global Climate Campaign Scotland • Greenpeace • Guildtown & Wolfhill Carbon CAP • Heriot Watt University Students Association • HIYE • IFEES • Internuncio • Iona Community • Islamic Relief • Jewish Community Centre for

  London • John Ray Initiative • Justice & Peace Scotland • Low Carbon Communities • MADE • Make Poverty History NE • Medsin • Mercy Corps Scotland • MRDF • Napier Students Association • National Trust for Scotland • New Environmentalist • Northfield Eco-centre • NUS • NUS Scotland • One World Week • Operation Noah • Orpington Methodist Church • Oxfam • Oxfam Scotland • Peace Child International • People & Planet • Plantlife • Population Matters • Portsmouth Climate Action Network • Practical Action • Preserve the Rainforest • Progressio • Quakers • RSPB • RSPB Scotland • Scottish Action on Climate

  Change • SCIAF • Scottish Episcopal Church • Scottish Seabird Centre • SCAN • SCVO • SEAD • Salvation Army • Simpol • Speak • Spokes • Student Christian Movement • Students for a Free Tibet • Surfer’s Against Sewage • Sustrans • Take Global Warming Seriously • Tearfund • The Big Green Jewish Website • Tipping Point Fi
lm Fund • TRANSform Scotland • Transition Linlithgow • Tzedek • UK Youth Climate Coalition • UNA UK • Unicef • UNISON • World Development Movement • WDM Scotland • Winacc • Women’s Institute • Women’s Environmental Network • Woodland Trust • Woodland Trust Scotland • WWF Scotland • WWF-UK • WWT • 999 Planet in Peril