2 January 2008Anthony Giddens
The climate change bill is currently going through parliament and thankfully it has a wide measure of cross-party support. Britain will be the first country in the world to set itself legally binding targets for step-by-step reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Setting targets, however, is one thing - achieving them will be a truly formidable task, whose implications run through almost all of our institutions. There will have to be a return to some form of economic planning, given the timescales involved; technological innovation will be crucial, but so also will lifestyle change. Unless people alter some core aspects of their daily habits, we have no hope of reaching the climate change goals.
Lifestyle change and how to achieve it, it could be argued, are now the name of the game in key areas of politics. The range of issues involved is very wide. Climate change is the big daddy of them all, but others include the obesity epidemic, lifestyle related diseases - including high blood pressure, diabetes, heart disease and cancer - excessive drinking, drug dependence, antisocial behaviour and other areas besides. In many respects it is a new agenda, at least in terms of policy thinking. The traditional welfare state was very much based on dealing with the fallout from problems once they had happened - if you lose your job, the state will provide benefits until you get another one; if you have a child, support will be provided if you need it; if you get ill, there is a healthcare system to treat you.
Today we have to be more interventionist. Rising levels of obesity alone - now something of a worldwide trend, found even in Japan - could swamp the health system 10 to 20 years down the line. In the case of climate change, unless we take action, the world our children and grandchildren will inhabit will be miserable indeed.
An initial and obvious question that arises is that of freedom. What rights have governments to interfere with the lifestyles of their citizens at all? Shouldn't everyone be able to go to hell as they see fit? There certainly are major and difficult issues here, but some overall principles can be stated. First of all, children are in a different position from adults. It is quite legitimate, for instance, to insist that children have the option of healthy food in school; that machines containing junk food be banned from school premises; or that advertising aimed at children should be regulated. In the case of adults the boundaries are not so clear, but at a minimum we can say that intervention can be justified where the freedoms of some limit those of others. For example, if we are profligate with the earth's resources now, we affect the life chances of future generations. Finally, some types of self-destructive behaviour could be said to limit freedom rather than be an expression of it. Thus people who are addicted to a substance or form of behaviour are not free, since rather than being in control of their habit, their habit controls them.
There are quite a few examples around of successful intervention to produce lifestyle change. One of the most celebrated is from North Karelia, in Finland. People living in this area once had a high rate of heart disease and other maladies associated with a diet rich in fat. In the early 1970s a programme was established to help people change their diet. Most of the activities in the programme happened at community level. The food industry cooperated to produce low-fat dairy products and to reduce the salt content in foods. Between 1970 and 1992 mortality rates from heart disease dropped by 75%.
The introduction of compulsory use of seatbelts in cars initially met with opposition from civil liberties groups in some countries. However it soon became generally accepted and has saved many lives on the roads. Drink driving is another example from the field of traffic behaviour. By a combination of punitive laws and campaigns to stigmatise those who drink and drive the result has been a change both in attitudes and behaviour. Campaigns to reduce smoking form another interesting case. In most countries that have introduced them, levels of smoking have fallen; and the public has proved willing to accept complete smoking bans in public places in a number of countries. California has been especially successful. The adult smoking rate has dropped to under 15%, from a high of over 50%, 20 years ago.
In most cases it seems to be a mixture of carrots and sticks that produces results, rather than a single approach. The influence of groups is almost always involved - people will change their behaviour if others who they respect do so. Behaviour that was once widely accepted can become stigmatised, as has happened in the drink driving case. Taxation can play a significant role, especially when used as an incentive. It has least impact where behaviour is addictive. The cost of smoking has increased several fold in many countries, but this fact in and of itself does not seem to have deterred many people from continuing the habit.
Are there any factors influencing behaviour that affect virtually all fields of lifestyle change? Yes. One of the most important is what economists, somewhat clumsily, call "hyperbolic discounting". If you are offered a choice of £50 today or £100 tomorrow, you will pick the £100. But if the time gap stretches to a year, almost everyone tends to opt for the £50 now. Consequences, whether good or bad, that lie some way in the future, have a lower impact on our current choices. Thousands of people undergo heart bypass surgery every year in the UK; of these, only some 10% make the necessary lifestyle changes to prevent further troubles, including the likelihood of an early death.
Hyperbolic discounting is one of the main factors explaining the lazy attitude most people have towards the threats posed by global warming. Surveys show that the majority now accept both that climate change is real and dangerous and that it is created by our own behaviour. However, the proportion that has made any significant behaviour change is very low. The implications are disturbing. Consciousness-raising and green taxes, even if carefully thought out and organised, may have only marginal effects - and they might be widely resisted even then. A lot of thinking about lifestyle change needs to be done, and urgently.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/anthony_giddens/2008/01/this_time_its_personal.html
