“We Need a Radicalism of the Centre”

May 3, 2010

Anthony Giddens, author of The Third Way, in conversation with Ralf Fücks about the politics of climate change, the reshaping of our civilisation, the relationship between utopianism and realism, climate policy beyond left and right, and the role of the state.

Ralf Fücks: Anthony Giddens, your book The Politics of Climate Change opens with the statement: “At present we have no policy of climate change.” After all these conferences, after lots of national and international legislation, after a first boom of renewable energies, promoted by the German red-green coalition government – how can it be that we have no policy of climate change?

Anthony Giddens: What struck me, was how little political scientists discuss the issue of climate change in the context of the democratic institutions. How to go forward in a system with conflicting political parties; how to get sustained politics over time; how to develop something we’re not used to anymore – long-term planning – when planning failed, some 30 years ago. What kind of institutional changes do we need to do this? What are we going to do about the countries that are not fighting climate change?

We are dealing with an issue, which is different from any issue we had to deal with in our whole history. It demands a truly global response, yet a lot will have to be done on a national level because there is no global system of sanctioning. Of course, it’s worthwhile having international agreements, but they operate against the background of power, which pit nations and regions against one another and at the same time promote some collaboration.

We will have to look for new sanctioning mechanisms. International agreements are pretty worthless if you can’t back them up. We know that even the EU has a lot of trouble implementing the Lisbon Agenda. We will have to be as innovative and creative politically and internationally with our institutions as we are on the level of technology.

Ralf Fücks: In your book you write about a fundamental transformation of civilisation…

Anthony Giddens: We agree on that, don’t we?

Ralf Fücks: Yes, we do. Yet I was wondering – you state that we will have to work within existing institutions and respect parliamentary democracy. Parliamentary democracy seems to be a value we don’t want to sacrifice in the course of saving the climate. You explicitly say: “More of the same will be needed, not less.” How do you reconcile your call for fundamental change with that?

Anthony Giddens: I have this overall approach I call “utopian realism.” We have to combine those two things. It’s no good being a pure utopian, because you have no purchase on reality that way. It’s no good just being a realist because you miss the elements that have transformative value.
I’ve come across the notion that we need a more authoritarian system to cope with climate change; I’m very unconvinced by that. Only an open society will be able to develop the kind of creativity and innovation we need.

We’ll need a certain element of utopianism because we do have to think of a different world. We cannot just suppose that renewable energy is going to save the day. We need to make pretty substantial changes in lifestyle. We don’t know where that will lead us.

The American model has reached a terminus. Cheap energy and cheap credit – we can’t let that go on. But how do we replace it? China can’t simply recapitulate the development of the West. Even the Chinese leadership has become aware of that.

Ralf Fücks: I agree. Open, democratic societies are better equipped to come up with creative solutions. At the same time: Is a democratic system with political parties able to introduce a long-term perspective into both politics and economics? Parliamentary systems have an inherent tendency to favour short-term effects and avoid difficult decisions. How can we get past this impasse?

Anthony Giddens. The future is open, yet we must think long-term. I can’t see any other society apart from an open society, which is able to reconcile those two things. Third sector groups have got to play a key role in monitoring what the political parties do.
I’m in favour of the political parties developing a kind of concordat. The British have now got a legally binding system whereby every successive government is obliged to reduce emissions. That is an attempt at least to create a kind of institutional structure.
Neither the return to more authoritarian, top-down politics, nor a bottom-up led system will do. You must have a certain amount of co-ordination of power alongside bottom-up power to be able to deliver a long-term programme.

Ralf Fücks: You hold that climate change is not an issue of left or right. Does that mean that climate change is not a class issue? I’m reminded of a slogan from the early years of the green movement: “We are neither left, nor right, we are ahead.” Environment and climate do not fit into the old left-right mould.

Anthony Giddens: That’s my view. We need a radicalism of the centre. I don’t think you can identify radicalism simply with the left or the right. We will need pretty substantial public support to introduce the measures that are going to allow us to contain climate change. That means you must go beyond left and right. It’s dangerous if this is not happening. Take the US. There climate change has become a powerful left-right issue. Many Republicans see Obamas policies as a package – health care, intervention in the economy, climate change. That is a natural tendency in democratic countries. So we have to build a long-standing consensus.

Ideologically climate change has nothing much to do with left and right, but the issues that the left has focused on like inequality and poverty plainly overlap with climate change. But when the left says: Climate change is our project – that’s a big mistake because then you get political polarisation. The left has a certain responsibility to recognise that you have to limit political polarisation regarding climate change.

Ralf Fücks: So, combating climate change shouldn’t become a Trojan horse for a kind of new anti-capitalism?

Anthony Giddens: No. There is a connection between climate change, the critique on consumerism, the reaction to the financial crisis... But trying to turn this into a new radicalism or to replace a failed leftist project by an environmental one – for me that is not the way forward.

Ralf Fücks: What do you mean when you say the state will be an all-important actor in reorganising the markets and in supporting new technologies? What will be the relationship between state, markets, and civil society?

Anthony Giddens: The reason why I stress the state so much is the lack of enforcement mechanisms in the international system. The nation states retain an enormous amount of power and they are the main source of law. We do have international law but it doesn’t have very strong sanctioning mechanisms. So a lot has to be carried by the major nations collaborating with one another, not necessarily universal Kyoto-style, but regional collaboration, too.

Given the urgency we’ve got to go for what we can achieve. We have to limit greenhouse gas emissions by whatever means. And that to me affects technology. I presume you are sort of anti-nuclear but I don’t think things are that straightforward. Some countries are just not going to be able to totally reduce their greenhouse gas emissions without nuclear power. In that area, we shouldn’t make the best the enemy of the good. The same with some forms of conversion from coal-fired to gas-fired power stations.

Germany is not a typical country. Sometimes it’s right, for a certain time, to go for nuclear power. The key point for every industrial country should be: No more coal. A real danger for the world is an expansion into coal. At the moment, coal-fired energy has increased far more than any other energy – partly because of China. But if a country like Germany comes along and says: No more coal-fired power stations ... well, how are you going to cope for the next ten, fifteen years? Every country has to explore its own energy mix with the overriding goal of reducing emissions.

Ralf Fücks: About more conceptual issues: The politics of the third way and New Labour were much about the enabling state. Now you are taking a new step – I’m not sure whether to call it “backward” or “forward”? You are using the term “ensuring state,” that is, the government has to make sure that there is a definite outcome in terms of reducing emissions and transforming our economy. All in all, this seems to assign a more powerful role to the state compared to what you postulated fifteen years ago.

Anthony Giddens: I don’t think you should identify me with New Labour. The things I argued helped to build a bit of a framework for them in a period I worked very closely with them. But politicians make their own decision. I always thought there should be more regulation of the financial system; I always thought you should tax the wealthy more; and I always thought the super-rich should help the super-poor.

Ralf Fücks: For me and for many reform-oriented Greens The Third Way was a very important book.

Anthony Giddens: The idea was traduced by many people. Labour followed a fairly liberal line and people identified The Third Way with that, which was a mistake. The Blair-Schröder paper was a hopeless thing because it only focused on one half. It didn’t focus on social justice and other things that were my priorities.

Ralf Fücks: Another key concept in your new book is that we have to create synergies between climate policy and other political aims. One of the most important synergies is the link between climate and energy security.

Anthony Giddens: Most people are not doing very much about climate change. It is too remote. A thousand pictures of polar bears sliding down ice flows will not mobilise many. Yet, most people respond quite well to the idea of clean energy and energy security. Insofar as we can mobilise them and thus reduce greenhouse gas emissions, we should do so.

We have to use whatever is available to us while trying to couple it to a more utopian vision. We have to look for areas of convergence, areas where we can couple realism and utopianism – that is where things get really interesting.

Ralf Fücks: So one of the core messages is that we have to turn negatives into positives, turn risks into opportunities?

Anthony Giddens: That’s a bit too utopian for me.

Ralf Fücks: But it is not about frightening people, it is about encouraging them. Martin Luther King didn’t say “I have a nightmare,” he said “I have a dream.”

Anthony Giddens: Some things really surprise me. Most of my friends in academia are actually climate change sceptics. They don’t accept that climate change is caused by humans. And although they’re all well-educated, they don’t even know the mechanism of global warming. We still have a long way to go…

Ralf Fücks: You are rather critical towards green ideas. In your book, you propose a strong link to a pre-industrial romanticism, an anti-modernist position. To me, this a caricature, something more to do with the beginnings of the movement, than with the reality of green politics today.

Anthony Giddens: At the least I’m ambivalent about the Greens. The reasons are: They developed from extra-parliamentary movements. Now you have green parties, fine, but they are mostly small parties. If we want to do something about climate change we need consensual political support on a large scale. The core political parties will have to carry most of the burden. Also, it is not about saving the planet. What we’re talking about is saving a decent way of life.

Ralf Fücks: As soon as the Greens are in parliament, in government they lose their status as outsider. Still, their ideas, aims, and values make them distinct. They are not conservative, liberal, or socialist. And there are many urban regions – not only in Germany – where we already win 20 % of the vote or more; the Greens are really beginning to compete with the traditional major parties.

Anthony Giddens: This is a process of normalisation, isn’t it? And by that token the Greens are losing some of their identity and people in the movement have ambivalent feelings about that. For me green politics are too vague, too many issues are lumped together. So I avoid using the term “green.”

Ralf Fücks: Much success with your book! Although, in one respect, I’m afraid, it will not succeed. “Green,” the metaphor you are trying so hard to avoid, has already become the slogan for the kind of change you are calling for.

Photo: © Stephan Röhl

Green New Deal / Great Transformation

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