As I move around Carnegie UK’s offices in Dunfermline, I am reminded to switch the lights off by a red sticker above every switch. These stickers were put up as part of a raft of simple changes we are making to become more environmentally responsible.
People right across the UK are making similar changes just now to help reduce their energy consumption. This might be an environmentally-motivated choice like ours. However, for many people we know it won’t be a choice at all. Despite the UK government’s recent commitment to cap average annual household energy bills, skyrocketing inflation is eroding the value of wages and benefits. This has forced us to consider the previously unthinkable, such as converting public spaces into ‘warm banks’ for those of us forced out of our homes by unaffordable heating costs.
Systemic action to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels could have mitigated the effects of this sudden energy price rise. Our planet has been telling us to make this transition for a long time. Burning fossil fuels has already caused irreversible damage through the greenhouse effect, with the warming of our planet by over one degree celsius since pre-industrial levels. It was not long ago that my colleagues were reflecting on the frightening impacts of this summer’s heatwave in the UK, including forest fires destroying homes and woodlands. Now, we’ve had an economic wake-up call, with the changeability of the fossil fuel market being made all too clear to us through the effects of the war in Ukraine on global gas prices.
Whilst the climate movement demonstrates the positive contribution our individual behaviours can make, the cost of living crisis reminds us of the danger of giving individuals no choice but to cut their energy consumption overnight. On their own, stickers incentivising us to switch lights off aren’t enough.
Several governments have had the longer-term solutions at their fingertips, such as investing in cheaper renewable energy and reducing household energy consumption through large-scale retrofitting of homes across the UK with insulation. Frustratingly, the latest Government mini-budget instead prioritised tax-cuts for the rich, burdening future generations with public debt.
At Carnegie UK, we also believe that collective wellbeing is not just achieved by specific policy solutions, but the way we implement these solutions. For many people in the UK, reducing our energy consumption has been a decision made for us by the markets. The policies to mitigate the effects of this have been done to us from the top down.
Several local communities across the UK, such as those participating in citizens’ assemblies run by the IPPR, have shown the valuable insights people have on these issues when they are listened to. Their ideas included combining national leadership with local ownership, so that communities can execute a transition away from fossil fuels in a way that suits their unique strengths and needs. They also highlighted their right to have a say in larger scale policy choices that affect them. This might be through processes like participatory budgeting.
So many of us feel helpless. The people of the UK deserve our agency back, and to be given voice and choice about how we tackle the cost of living crisis and climate crisis in tandem.