Making the lives of ordinary people more difficult won’t help environmental causes - Andy Brown

They have a point. There is just one small problem with the theory. Actions which damage the public more than the people and the organisations that are the source of the problems tend to be hugely counter-productive. Every time an environmental activist inconveniences people who are just going about their daily lives there is a risk that the fossil fuel companies rub their hands in glee. Ill thought out actions can turn a lot of people against otherwise sensible ideas and makes it easier to drill the next oil well.

There is no shortage of legitimate targets for environmental protest. Oil and gas companies have known about the dangers of releasing large quantities of carbon dioxide into the air for decades. Instead of facing up to the need for change some of them chose to channel millions of pounds into shadowy organisations which promoted the idea that there was little or no problem and there was no great urgency about taking any action.

Tobacco companies spent fortunes on trying to persuade the public that there was no link between cancer and smoking long after the evidence was crystal clear. A lot of people died as a consequence. The similarities with what has happened with climate change denial are very real.

Oil and gas companies are making truly enormous profits but aren’t paying the price for the consequences of their business model. Shell recently made $5bn in profits in just three months which is how long it took BP to extract $8.45bn at the height of the energy cost of living crisis.

The companies that happily increased their margins at the public expense whilst the government was subsidising bills don’t have to pay for costs of washed away infrastructure like the bridge in Tadcaster. They didn’t pay for the cost of the fire fighting when British temperatures went over 40 degrees last summer. They are not required to provide healthcare for people suffering from breathing difficulties because of extra heat and extra air pollution. The taxes these companies pay are not remotely adequate to cover the cost of the public harm they cause.

Scientists have been warning us for years that we need to act with real urgency. Instead of being listened to with respect they have been challenged and questioned in ways that have made those who worry about their academic reputation very cautious about what they publish. It is now looking like this has resulted in a bias towards caution in their models. What is happening to the climate is currently exceeding the top end of their most alarming predictions. More extreme weather more often is the inevitable consequence of dependence on fossilised technology. CO2 traps heat. If you keep a lot more energy in the atmosphere then you get more violent weather. The current plan is to carry on pumping out excess CO2 until 2050.

Some of the actions that need to be taken to limit the steadily accumulating damage we have already baked into the atmosphere are relatively painless. They involve government supporting investments to enable people and organisations to reduce their energy consumption and cut their bills.

Other things that are going to have to be done are a lot less popular. It really is necessary to reduce the number of flights that we take. There genuinely is a case for consuming a lot less meat that is produced more responsibly and therefore costs more. Somehow we have to wean the world off using enormous quantities of plastic and put a lot more funding into recycling and waste processing.

It is going to be very difficult to persuade the public to accept those sorts of lifestyle changes and it will be very easy for dodgy politicians to drum up popularity by telling people comforting nonsense about it being possible to carry on consuming whatever they wish without worrying about the consequences.

In such circumstances anyone who blocks a motorway or ruins a sporting spectacle is being very brave but also very foolish. When you are in a battle to persuade people to take action at sufficient speed it is not a great idea to be making the lives of ordinary people more difficult.

Andy Brown is the Green Party Councillor for Aire Valley in North Yorkshire.