Chris Stark is out of f**ks about Greenlash - The Jagged Transition, pt 3
The mild-mannered, normally apolitical, CEO of the UK Climate Change Committee let rip speaking at an industry event this week. Here's what went down.
Welcome back to Wicked Problems. The climate tech newsletter some people are saying is like listening to Edward Bernays1 during his weekend absinthe bender with the Ghost of Christmas Future.
Chris Stark isn’t a political communicator. But communications about climate are too important to be left to the politicians, he may have decided on Wednesday.
More consistent arguments like Stark made last week would go a long way to making the Jagged Transition that bit smoother.
The Climate Change Committee CEO was addressing a few dozen energy and finance CEOs and VIPs at a Westminster event billed as “Business of Leading the Energy Transition”.
From the jump, he signalled this wouldn’t be his normal sort of talk. Because this is not a normal sort of moment.
This is also the time usually when I … tell you that UK is off track from Net Zero. Well, I'm not going to do that today. All of that is undoubtedly the case but the stakes for me are at least still pretty high on all this now, after the summer that we had, which for me at least felt like a pretty torrid time to work on these issues; to work on climate and to work on energy.
I try and extol the benefits of getting to Net Zero. It's been a tough summer to do so with British politics as it is. So, I don't normally do political commentary, but that's where I want to start today.
He then goes straight at our Greenlash moment:
…the backlash since Uxbridge, and that election has felt pretty vicious, for me at least caught me by surprise. I wonder how you feel about it. I feel I should have been better prepared for it. I think there's also an inevitability to some of these things but I also want to say to you that I feel very disappointed about where we are now that some of these issues.
Disappointment
the disappointment is that we seem to have ushered in a kind of unnecessary defeatism about decarbonisation, about Net Zero.
Stark acknowledged some worrying signs, including the fact that if you remove the power sector from the calculations, the rest of the UK economy has only reduced emissions by about 1% per year. Meeting the 2030 targets the UK pledged around COP26 means quadrupling the pace of decarbonisation.
And that was before the 5GW CfD offshore wind auction was confirmed to have attracted zero bidders.
But his talk offered solid advice for communicators and journalists on how to reframe the Net Zero conversation and the cost of becoming mired in delay, distraction, and despair.
Four key points before we get to his big conclusion:
1. Net Zero consensus is not dead.
Stark praised William Hague’s Monday Times column. In part.
I don't know if you've read it. It was excellent. I thought he makes a very good case that we've left the period of sort of boosterism on Net Zero now and we're into a more difficult period on Net Zero/climate politics, where governments of whatever hue are going to have to pilot us through this period of inertia and uncertainty in the early years of the Net Zero transition in the real economy.
Where he took issue with Hague was on some of the detail.
In his column, Hague notes:
but the costs and practical difficulties of changing the way we power our vehicles and homes are becoming apparent. The German government was plunged into crisis by its plan to phase out gas boilers. In France, more expensive fuel can bring riots across the nation.
Stark replies2:
I think William Hague is wrong about how much cost there is in this transition. And what we can offer is some new analysis over the course of the next year or so to support that assertion.
Stark then goes on to agree with the broader point about the reality that any transition that successfully obtains democratic consent will need to seem fair to a sufficient amount of voters to make it sustainable.
2. Despite the Greenlash wobble, progress has momentum. And the benefits (and comparative national advantage) of leading on Net Zero are clear and still within reach.
Transport still our biggest sectoral emitter, biggest polluter at the moment. Case you missed it there, things are really happening now in the UK on transport. Electrifying transport is really picking up the pace as we always said it would — the SMMT published their monthly data yesterday [and EVs were] 20% of all car registrations in August. It's nearly a third if we include the plug in hybrids.
I can tell you from personal experience of driving an EV, charging infrastructure isn't where it needs to be yet. But that is moving too and this is all I think a strong rebuff to people who were seeing before the summer that 2030 to 2035 phaseout date couldn't be achieved in the country. We are going to be ahead of it.
We need an energy system of course that's ready for that.
He also cites measurable progress in other sectors, particularly in power, and notes that government - despite whatever pressures from your Jacobs Rees-Mogg et al - is holding the line on its commitments.
“That's good, and we should hold them to that,” he said.
Even if some of the maths of how to get there seem to strain credulity.
3. But the UK can’t afford to sacrifice the next 12 months to general election politics. Climate, consumers, and international competitiveness would all suffer.
I'm worried when I see the evidence that's before us on the slowing investment in renewables and offshore wind and worried when I hear that the investor interest is shifting to the US. I'm worried with lots and lots of those things. And I think we've lost our way a bit actually on decarbonisation
Later he continues with the threat of leaving that unaddressed:
It would be a disaster if we waste the next year. If we are wasting that next year anticipating a general election as the answer some of these problems, then I'm afraid we are not going to get on track to those targets. More importantly, we're denying people in this country the benefits of this transition, if we waste that year, I'm very worried that that's what we will get. So I don't want to see hiatus in policy support for the next 12 months on this transition.
we need to probably get into a broader discussion of this where not everything is framed as a Net Zero question. ULEZ being one of those actually has nothing to do with Net Zero, it doesn't have anything to do with it at all…
I think there are plenty of interests on the other side of the argument who are happy to use it in that way.
4. So business must lead and warn against the cost of delay and distraction. And frame Net Zero’s benefits not focusing on the abstract “decarbonisation” but lower costs, greater security, and greater prosperity for ordinary people in the UK.
This is the red thread of the speech, and where his coda brings it home.
I think we've forgotten something quite important in all of this, which I hope we can rediscover quickly, which is that we can do it. That we can get to Net Zero that it will bring real benefits if we do so…
There is a movement now in this you know otherwise pretty difficult situation that we face. We are I think crucially opening the door now to cheaper energy for consumers; cheaper, more secure energy through decarbonisation, rather than putting the decarbonisation first that for me is the secret sauce, the recipe that will work for us.
He called for “a return of enthusiasm to the discussion of net zero and green technology and green investment.”
And his coda was to show the 1960s Country Life ads above, placed by those trying to build public support for a new generation of needed energy infrastructure.
These are a couple of adverts that were passed to me just at the weekend. And I think they're absolutely wonderful… this is a really interesting period in the early 60s on because of the need for new energy infrastructure at that time. So at that point, we're talking about 400 KV towers…
I think this was probably the last occasion when we confronted the need to do big things in energy infrastructure in this country, things that people would see3. And I think crucially confronted the fact that there are tough decisions and this is the kind of 1960s version of what I'm talking about today: Honesty, clarity, the need to make a national energy transition happen. Clear on the benefits, clear on the trade offs.
So ask yourself when you read that text there. Where is the equivalent of this today?
For a guy not used to making political speeches, Stark is pretty damned good.
Corporate instincts generally shy away from even acknowledging controversy in communications for fear of being seen as partisan. But what a refreshing moment to hear someone in his role make the unapologetic argument:
We’ve made real progress
now there are those who would undermine it, and we can’t pretend otherwise anymore or be complacent
because there’s a lot to lose if we fail
so, shaken out of our complacency, we are morally obligated to fulfil our role as leaders:
I’ll leave you with his final passage on that:
This is exactly what we need to do - this kind of honesty. The numbers and the analysis really on net zero are pretty settled. So I didn't come on today with the technical analysis, the charts that I sometimes do, I wanted to show you this instead. Leadership is this, I think, and this kind of language about the path ahead. And the benefits in that path is what we get from government over the course of the next 12 months and beyond.
Amen.
Pursued by a Bear
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father of modern PR and ‘double nephew’ of Sigmund Freud. Amy Westervelt’s Drilled take on him is worth revisiting.
Personally I think a more generous reading of Hague’s column would be to note his agreement with the argument of “Tory MP Chris Skidmore explained in his review of such policies earlier this year that ‘net zero is the growth opportunity of the 21st century'‘ and that ultimately the benefits outweigh the costs.” So even though Stark’s point was how much consensus remains once the Uxbridge fever subsides, he’s actually underselling the amount of consensus — at least Conservatives with a column in The Times.
“Things people would see” - this is so crucial. We need to dig in to associate the iconic artefacts of a Net Zero energy system with the values and self-image people aspire to in their best moments - fairness, but frankly a more personal benefit of progress and optimism for the listener and her family. The “interests on the other side of the argument”, as Stark puts it, are not shy of using all the tools in the comms toolbox. See above - Bernays taught them how. (He even turned cigarettes into “Liberty Torches”, appealing to Suffragettes, and doubling the tobacco market.)
But tools are given meaning by the people who use them - so I say we use them to win this argument.