News Dec 31 | Jarvis Cocker
"I think you're the man to lead, Jarvis"
Drawing on his experience with Cape Farwell this autumn, Jarvis Cocker interviews Lord Stern for R4's Today Programme, chiding Secretary of State for Climate Change Ed Miliband for the lack of government will on global warming.
This morning as guest editor for Radio 4's Today Programme, Cape Farewell voyager Jarvis Cocker suggested decisive government action over the financial crisis underlined its indecision over climate change, questioning Ed Miliband about whether the free market was the correct mechanism to deal with the environment.
Miliband replied that government action was limited without a mass movement on climate change, repeating a plea made earlier this month for a coalition along the lines of Make Poverty History campaign: "Having a big movement around the world that demands we take action is absolutely crucial," said Miliband, adding to an apparently horrified Cocker, "And I think you're the man to lead it, by the way, Jarvis."
Cocker also interviewed climate expert Lord Stern, who likewise drew parallels between the economic crisis and the climate challenge, suggesting there were two lessons to be learned from the world financial meltdown.
"The first one," said Lord Stern, "is that the longer you let risks fester, the bigger the impact and the bigger the crash and consequences.
"If we emit greenhouse gases the concentrations in the atmosphere build up and it gets more and more difficult to act the later you leave it.
"The second lesson is that we're really going to have to collaborate on this one."
The interviews reflected Cocker's experience on this year's Cape Farewell expedition. He talked about this in an editorial in which he talked with a Cocker-esque mixture of profound passion and laconic humour about returning from the Arctic to find the world's economic system in a tailspin:
A few months ago - Jarvis told Radio 4 listeners - I went on a trip to the Arctic set up by an organisation called Cape Farwell to see the effects of climate change at first hand. Whilst on board we also went to lectures by scientists who told us, among other things, what it was that individuals could do to try and help with the biggest problem facing the world at this time, and that part I found profoundly depressing because it basically came down to things like, “Go and buy some energy changing light bulbs.”
Although I believe that the actions of individuals are important, it seemed to me that the problem was so large and so profound that it would be nice if we got a bit of help from somewhere else. If the only things that would have the necessary impact would be to make radical changes to things like food transportation, deforestation or air travel, it would be nice to think that the government might help out with some legislation designed to address those issues. And that's why I got depressed. Because non-interventionist laissez-faire free market policies have been the order of the day for so long, why would they change now?
Then I came home.
The thing about being on a boat in the middle of the arctic ocean is there's no telephone or wi-fi coverage. Whilst we'd been up there observing one kind of meltdown, it seemed that another kind of meltdown had been taking place in the world's financial markets. In fact, we came through Reykjavik airport on the day that Iceland basically went bust, though none of us knew it at the time.
Banks were going under and a massive stock market collapse had occurred. And lo and behold, one of the first things that followed was a massive government intervention. And I thought, "Hang on, perhaps, bizarrely, there's a chink of light here. If the government is wiling to intervene decisively in such a huge way in this area, maybe it would intervene in another area – climate change – too."
Hear the whole of this and his other Today Programme interviews here.
Photo: Jarvis Cocker on Cape Farwell by Nathan Gallagher
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