The Guardian’s self-defeating climate campaign

The Guardian has started a campaign. If you’re at all interested in climate change, you’ve probably seen it. It’s called ‘keep it in the ground’, and calls on the world’s fossil fuel companies to leave about 80 per cent of their known reserves unburned.

This picture pretty much sums up the idea:

To make this happen, the Guardian is encouraging businesses, charities, trust funds, and anyone with skin in the game to ‘divest’ from fossil fuels. It’s doing this, in the words of its editor in chief, Alan Rusbridger, “in the firm belief that it will force the issue now into the boardrooms and inboxes of people who have billions of dollars at their disposal.” For the Guardian, this “simple idea” is the key to meaningful action on climate change.

I’m not convinced.


In fact, i’m more than just unconvinced. I’m concerned the Guardian’s campaign will backfire, and become yet another obstacle to efforts to curb emissions and tackle climate change. Here’s why.

Big risk

This week, the Guardian held a Q&A about the campaign with Rusbridger and a few other editors. I submitted a question, and was lucky enough to receive a fairly robust response from the assistant national news editor, James Randerson.

I have a few issues with his answer.

“politicisation of this issue has been a huge barrier to progress.”

I have a lot of sympathy with this position. Climate change could have been solved in a technocratic way. It’s a scientific problem, which command and control regulations could maybe have sorted out.

But the world doesn’t work like that. Climate change has been politicised. Climate change is a political issue. And the Guardian’s campaign can only serve to exacerbate this.

To start with, it’s a campaign. What is the point of a campaign other than to politicise an issue?

And the campaign focuses on a particular end point and one specific path to get there - keeping fossil fuels in the ground via divestment - rather than discussing and exploring multiple ways that goal can be achieved.

The Guardian says it wants to “delegitimise the business models of companies that are using investors’ money to search for yet more coal, oil and gas that can’t safely be burned.” But there are many different and, I think, better ways to encourage companies to ‘keep it in the ground’ than divestment. A proper carbon tax or a decent carbon market, to name but two.

The Guardian has chosen to back a very particular approach.That’s a political decision. The Guardian’s is a political campaign.

So I really don’t see how Randerson can suggest the campaign does anything other than add to the ‘political’ barrier he identified.

“We are very much wanting to build a consensus around this issue.”

This was Randerson’s response to me questioning whether the Guardian was essentially preaching to the choir, or whether it hoped to reach a wider audience.

Now, maybe the Guardian has better data on this than I do, but i’d bet most of their global readership is left-leaning. It’s well known that people seek news to confirm their world view, and the Guardian provides this service for many, many people (including myself).

Randerson rightly points out that the political left doesn’t own this issue, and points to an article in which columnist Jonathan Freedland argues it would be a “disaster” if that were the case.

But the Guardian does and will continue to put forward the left-leaning case for climate action. By backing divestment - a non-market, counter-market, solution - it has already nailed its flag to the mast.

And those on the political left are more likely to back such an approach. YouGov polling data shows Liberal Democrats and Labour supporters are more likely to back strong action, such as divestment, than Conservatives or UKIP supporters:

Source: YouGov

The Guardian’s ‘keep it in the ground’ coverage will be read, appropriated and regurgitated by those on the left. It is only going to entrench the idea that this is an issue for the left.

That’s not a recipe for depoliticisation, it’s a way to galvanise those already supportive of tackling climate change.

“if we did not mount a serious journalistic response to the biggest issue of our age it would be a dereliction of editorial duty”

That may be the case. But the Guardian was already covering this issue, and often very well. The ‘keep it in the ground’ campaign is an extension of its activities way beyond ‘coverage’ and into ‘campaigning’.

I would argue that by acting in such a way, the Guardian risks neglecting a wider social duty to depolarise and depoliticise this already hobbled issue.

Climate change becoming branded as a ‘Guardian’ issue could be the death knell for real progress. That runs counter to the Guardian’s no doubt sincere intentions, but seems to be a risk it is willing to take. I'm not sure it should.