CLIMATE CHANGE PROTESTS - AN INEVITABLE CONSEQUENCE?
When I predicted at the end of 2006 that we would see direct action by climate protestors at Heathrow I felt that it was as inevitable as night following day. The travel and tourism industry has been so slow in responding to opinion that this 'protestation' is a natural reaction.
So just why has the travel and tourism industry been so ineffective in its response to climate change? Has it been sitting on its hands and ignoring the facts or has it been acting but not getting its message out in an effective way? In my view there is a combination of factors that has caused the protestors to concentrate on air travel. Firstly, the industry has been very naive in presenting its main battle plan as the fact that air travel is a relatively small contributor to climate change. This is a silly argument. Just as I get cross when I hear rail companies or ferry companies saying they are less damaging than air travel we cannot as an industry deflect criticism away from our own actions onto others. Protestors simply do not buy this sort of reasoning. They see it like recognizing we are overweight but not as overweight as someone else.
We have to take control over our own actions and focus on what we can do rather than what others can do. We have been very slow to do this and the travel and tourism industry is not working as a unit to address its impact on climate change. Until we do this in an effective way protests will go on. They are likely to escalate and become a further barrier to smooth operations.
Secondly, we have to have coherent and factually based policies in place. If you run a tour operation or an airline do you know what climate change will mean for your business? Have you incorporated climate change into your risk management and have you assessed the problems and opportunities that you will face? Do you know the size of the 'carbon footprint' of your business and could you actually debate with the protesters on the basis of knowledge? The interviews I have heard in the media during the protest have left me in no doubt that those speaking for the industry do not really have the technical knowledge or answers and have been outscored by those speaking for the protestors. The public (our customers) will pick up on this and draw their own conclusions.
Thirdly, where is the aggregation of the industry action to date? What is the overall level of activity in terms of carbon reduction and offset? There are literally dozens of different carbon reduction initiatives and offset programmes in operation but no collective information. Until we know what we are doing at the industry level we cannot give any conviction or evidence as a part of our arguments.
Whilst I am very much against the sort of protest that occurred at Heathrow I do understand the reasons for it. The travel and tourism industry is seen by protestors as uncaring and unresponsive and this has to change otherwise we will see more similar action in the future. Action will also become more widely manifest and extend to other airports and other forms of leisure and business transport.
At the moment there is little public sympathy with the protestors and little support for the protests from serious environmentalists whose job is made much harder by the perception that they are a part of a fringe element of malcontents. Protests lead to hardening of opinions and barriers and I know that my job becomes that much more difficult. Doors will close as some companies will harden their positions. We saw this with the recent APD increase which seriously curtailed voluntary environmental action by some large companies.
I believe that there are a number of things we need to do - and quickly to respond to the arguments behind the protest!
1. Hold a (closed) industry wide debate to determine how best to respond to the overall pressures from climate change. No holds barred and no scoring off each other. We are all in the same lifeboat.
2. Move the debate away from the silly arguments that we are not as bad as something else. This does not work and we need to address our particular issues.
3. Aggregate the overall industry action in terms of carbon reduction and offset. It is claimed that we only offset a tiny fraction of the emissions from air travel. Is this true?
4. Set some clear and precise objectives and targets to improve public confidence that the industry is responding to climate change. These should at the very least match up with those set for regulated industries.
5. Drastically improve the knowledge within the industry about the consequences of climate change. Use this knowledge to develop programmes and services which will help to 'climate proof' the future of the industry.
What is clear from last weeks protest is that the industry has failed miserably to respond effectively to the concerns of the protestors. Whether this is because we do not have the answers or whether the protestors are in fact right that we do not care is unproven within the public arena. We need to rectify this quickly, if only to restore public confidence.
Dick Sisman
19 August 2007.