Follow the children’s lead on climate

“I don’t know how to want less,” is one of the more arresting lines from the excellent play, The Children, written by Lucy Kirkwood and currently playing at The Gate theatre in Dublin.

Do you know how to want less? Me neither, but it’s something we’re all going to have to get used to if the show is to stay on the road.

The play is set in the aftermath of a nuclear accident and raises serious questions about where the planet is headed, who is responsible, and what should be passed onto the children coming after us. It’s also seriously topical in today’s world of rolling anxiety.

Currently, there are two existential threats to the way life has been lived in recent generations. These are climate change and the erosion of liberal democracy. Both are already under attack and the burning issue is whether the assaults can be arrested or reversed. Any strategy to fight back will have to be underpinned, in various quarters, by an acceptance to want less. Take the assault on liberal democracy by the likes of Donald Trump, Brexit, the election of various strongmen, the rise of populism.

Much of the dissatisfaction that led to these events is rooted in the growth of inequality. Capitalism, as it has evolved over the last 40 or so years, has alienated huge multitudes, particularly since the economic crash in 2008. For many people, the tide has gone out on a system that promised real advancement through hard work and education. As globalisation has taken hold, the rich have got richer and the alienated have got madder.

Even those who have benefited most through the system recognise that something has to change. This acceptance was on view in Davos last January when the majority of the wealthiest and most powerful people on the planet had their annual shindig.

The gathering gave plenty of voice to concerns about inequality and social unrest and breasts were wildly beaten over what could be done to alleviate the suffering.

Then, during one panel discussion, Dutch historian Rutger Bergman suggested that the emperors hadn’t a stitch of clothes between them: “Nobody raises the issue of tax avoidance and the rich not paying their fair share. It’s like going to a firefighters’ conference and not taking about water.”

His preposterous notion was met with silence. Did he expect these masters of the universe to want less for the sake of the greater good? This is not a question of asking anybody to adjust their lifestyles. All of these people have more money than they could ever spend. It’s just that the idea of wanting less is simply beyond the vast majority of them.

Such a paucity of imagination is not confined to the super wealthy. Accepting that it would be in the best interests of the wider world if you were to want less in various respects is something that is simply alien to the vast majority.

Inherent in tackling climate change is the concept of wanting less. That is the primary reason why it has been so difficult to achieve a coherent approach to this massive threat. Targets for lowering carbon emissions have been set and missed. In the USA, Donald Trump has opted out of the Paris Accord, largely because he refuses to contemplate the idea of telling his base that they need to think of the children.

In business, it’s the same old story. Michael O’Leary, who is not lacking in the intelligence department, suggested a few years ago that climate change was “complete and utter rubbish”.

Would his opinion have anything to do with the fact that acceptance might compel him to admit that air travel should be modified or controlled? Is he simply unable to grasp the concept of wanting less?

Few in politics — bar the amazing Healy-Rae brothers — deny climate change. But neither are they willing to tackle it, because it would require leadership to explain that less today will be more for tomorrow’s children.

Politicians, by and large, are either not equipped or simply unwilling to tell their constituents that it will be necessary to adapt, adjust, suffer pain, all in the name of preserving the planet. This endeavour, in turn, will only produce results through avoiding a catastrophe that has not yet occurred, and might not in this country for maybe another half dozen electoral cycles.

One primary tool in attempting to arrest climate change is carbon taxes. Hikes in these taxes can be painful for some, particularly those in danger of fuel poverty or sections of rural Ireland. But these are challenges which can be met with a little imagination and leadership.

Last October the Government was expected to introduce a hike in carbon taxes as making a small contribution to the global effort. They funked it because it might have cost them electorally. The ice caps are melting, but what matters that, when there’s a few stray number twos to be snaffled in a marginal seat.

The Oireachtas committee on climate change is deadlocked over recommending carbon taxes. Those who purport to be on the Left, such as Sinn Féin, People Before Profit and Solidarity, are opposed. The Greens and the Labour party espouse various ways in which pain can be alleviated with the introduction of carbon taxes, but that doesn’t wash for some who see electoral advantage in pending disaster.

Maybe some of these parties view the introduction of carbon taxes as a re-run of the water charges fiasco which temporarily led to a spike in the fortunes of those who led the opposition. Maybe some are still obsessed with fiddling while the planet burns. Maybe, like Mr Trump, they can’t bring themselves to face the prospect of telling people that everybody must learn how to want less if things are going to change.

The children know the score. While those with a voice or in power in the adult world are happily putting change on the “never never”, the next generation is applying the urgency that they observe to be sadly lacking.

The children’s protest on climate change on March 15 was hopefully just a taster of things to come. They are in a position to see the future clearly, unsullied by vested interests or petty concerns that so many find difficult to discard in the face of pending disaster. The children are still in a position to shape their own world in which wanting less will be seen as something to aspire to rather than dread.