The tree-hugger, the public and the politician
How receptive to change are we?
Dear folks, welcome back to The Social Life of Energy! It’s time for Issue #2. For this edition, my goal was basically to repeat last week’s set up of covering a bunch of random but significant articles, but cut the letter’s length by half. In this, I failed miserably. Also, I couldn’t resist selecting articles with a loose theme in mind, which I’ll sum up with the question: what is the power of the people in shaping their energy futures?
‘I'm not a tree hugger, I'm just like you': changing perceptions of sustainable lifestyles
Our first article addresses one of the central topics in the energy transitions literature: the mainstream vs. the niche. In particular: can niches wind up transforming the mainstream and if so, how? In this article, the authors from Cardiff and Exeter Universities take a slightly different tack by seeking to understand the experience of engaging in niche practices, of adopting ‘niche’ lifestyles. How do you relate to mainstream practices? How do people with mainstream lifestyles react?
They start their investigation with an observation by Black and Cherrier*, who
“discovered that despite performing what could be considered ‘radical’ behaviours in aid of conservation, respondents rejected labels such as ‘tree-hugger’. Black and Cherrier suggest that fear of being seen as outside the mainstream restricted the performance of some practices” (on p. 59).
Basically, Shirani et al wondered if UK environmental activists had a similar Peter-complex, feeling the need to denounce their niche identity (i.e., Peter the saint, not the pan).
They chose to tell the story of 2 respondents (and mix in a few quotes from other interviews). One comes from the ‘semi-mainstream’ site of affluent suburbanites who have undertaken some pro-environment activities in their neighbourhood. The other is taken from a full-blown niche site – an eco-village, off grid, built with sustainable construction materials, living off the land – you get the picture. In different ways, then, both kinds of respondents had some experience with ‘trying something different’.
The result is a good read, with some delectable quotes:
I’ve been an environmentalist all my life and I’ve been plugging insulation and renewable energy since the seventies, when they almost dragged you away to the lunatic asylum for talking such things. (62)
When I was in my late twenties, I had reached probably about a low energy a lifestyle as is possible in this culture. I was living in a homemade straw bale roundhouse in the woods, I was working horses for a living, laying hedges … used to go shopping on a horse you know really really eco. And having kind of realised that dream and that place it was like ok but so what? I’m just some crazy guy living in the woods on my own, so what? (67)
The authors’ final reflections take them back to the idea of niches being ‘encounter spaces’, where people in the mainstream can get a bewitching taste of the niche, provoking new feelings and inspiring new ideas. Indeed, both respondents express some concern about being attractive enough for the mainstream. That concern provides a nice segue to the next article.
Shirani, F., C. Butler, K. Henwood, K. Parkhil, and N. Pidgeon. 2015. "`I'm not a tree hugger, I'm just like you': changing perceptions of sustainable lifestyles". Environmental Politics. 24 (1): 57-74. https://doi.org/10.1080/09644016.2014.959247
* Black, I.R. and Cherrier, H., 2010. Anti-consumption as part of living a sustainable lifestyle: Daily practices, contextual motivations and subjective values. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, 9 (6), 437–453. doi:10.1002/cb.337.
Grassroots innovation for urban sustainability: Comparing the diffusion pathways of three ecovillage projects
This article in fact addresses the niche’s strategic engagement with – and potential transformation of – the mainstream.
The author, Robert Boyer (from North Carolina at Charlotte), paints the state of the art of the literature on this topic thus: if a niche is too niche (i.e., too detached) or too much “in tune” (i.e., too embedded), inspire change in the mainstream it will not. What you need is the “intermediately” situated niche initiatives. So, Boyer went and selected three ecovillage projects that achieved “perforation into the mainstream” (324) and asked: how did they pull it off? Boyer distinguishes between 3 kinds of strategies, which are immediately 3 measures of success:
Replication: diffusion of practices among fellow niche sites
Scaling-up: diffusion beyond just niche sites, but falling short of large-scale adoption
Regime translation: adoption of practices by the mainstream (“regime” is the transition literature’s technical term of choice for ‘mainstream’).
Of the three ecovillages, only an eco-village in Ithaca was successful in going beyond replication and scaling-up and actually translating new practices into ‘the regime’. It managed to introduce many of its ideas about sustainable communities into new ordinances and building codes in the local county, a project of translation aided by a federal grant.
Now why, you might ask, were they the only one achieving translation success? Boyer says their ‘intermediate’ position came from a careful (and, actually, costly) balancing act of rejecting and accepting conventions in land-use regulation, construction, and municipal utilities (think electricity, sanitation). When the local county learned of the federal grant, it:
had an obvious partner: an award-winning initiative that had achieved impressive energy savings yet without breaking land-use laws or defying industrial/technological conventions critical for application in the mainstream housing market (334)
Alright, now let’s look at this niche-mainstream relation from the mainstream’s perspective. What might be the basis for support for niche concerns or innovations among the environmental muggles?
Robert H W Boyer. 2015. "Grassroots Innovation for Urban Sustainability: Comparing the Diffusion Pathways of Three Ecovillage Projects". Environment and Planning A. 47 (2): 320-337. https://doi.org/10.1068%2Fa140250p
Public values for energy system change
In order to answer that question, authors Demski et al (Cardiff and Exeter) argue we need to understand the values underlying preferences for this or that energy arrangement or innovation. By values, they mean “beliefs about how the world should be” or “ideals about what ought to happen”. Therefore, their task is to uncover “the kinds of concerns citizens bring to bear on a decision-making process regarding potential energy pathways” (61).
As it turns out, public values in UK predisposes people positively towards clean energy transitions (except if that means becoming vegetarians or conscientious airplane objectors)! The table on page 64 (which you should scroll to directly if you just want to get a better sense of the findings) is a neat map of what people think the ideals for the energy transition should be: reducing the waste of resources, protecting nature and environment, guaranteeing the stability of energy supply, distributing risks and benefits according to capacity and need, enhancing local and national self-sufficiency, oriented towards the long term.
This is not a map of the unwilling, foot-dragging, NIMBY public. These values are also definitely not represented in the current populist pushback against sustainability policies. On the contrary, they would suggest policy makers can be more daring and demanding when it comes to setting targets for businesses. The authors also close this brief article with useful recommendations for policy-making.
Demski, Christina, Catherine Butler, Karen A. Parkhill, Alexa Spence, and Nick F. Pidgeon. 2015. "Public values for energy system change". Global Environmental Change. 34: 59-69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2016.07.002
The Influence of Value Orientations, Personal Beliefs, and Knowledge about Resource Extraction on Local Leaders' Positions on Shale Development
Speaking of policy makers, Crowe, Ceresola & Silva (Southern Illinois) polled a number of local politicians, who govern constituencies above the Marcellus shale gas field. As a quick reminder, shale development relies on
“horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing [...] to access massive oil and gas reserves that were unreachable 15 years ago. As a result [...] oil and natural gas extraction in the United States has risen tenfold since 2005” (398) and “the United States […] is expected to produce more oil than Saudi Arabia by 2020” (399).
It has been quite controversial and in fact multiple local and state level bans have been issued around the world. (You can find a helpful overview of drilling techniques, positive and negative impacts of all sorts on pp. 399ff., if you’re interested.) The authors were therefore interested in what might tilt local decision-making one way or the other.
Like Demski et all, they polled for values. To be precise, for ‘beliefs’, ‘valued objects’ and ‘norms’, based on the aptly called “belief-value-norm theory” (for discussion, see p. 404). However, they also expanded their explanatory model with “knowledge” (about shale development) and “social network” (i.e., contacts with towns that have experience with shale development).
Little gold nugget of a result:
Government officials in communities that visited another community experiencing shale development are over eight times as likely to favor a citywide ban on fracking as government officials in communities that had not visited another community to learn about its shale development. (418)
Well, there you go! The closer the experiences, the stronger the repulsion! (OK, fine these visits might not be the actual reason for the position on the ban – see for discussion of possible spurious connections and interaction effects p. 424.) Similarly suggestive: “Leaders in communities that have a strong economy are more likely to want a state-wide ban on hydraulic fracturing” (420).
In strong contrast with Demski et al’s assumption, “values” (in their definition) turned out to have no meaningful correlation with positions on the ban. One take-away therefore: if values aren’t determining, then there is room to sway decisions armed with knowledge and experience (425). “Speaking truth to power” might actually make the “power to the people” here.
Crowe, Jessica, Ryan Ceresola, and Tony Silva. 2015. "The Influence of Value Orientations, Personal Beliefs, and Knowledge about Resource Extraction on Local Leaders' Positions on Shale Development". Rural Sociology. 80 (4): 397-430. https://doi.org/10.1111/ruso.12071
That’s all folks! I’ll keep working on making this shorter, I promise!