Narrative Appropriation: Energy-Security-Climate Narrative Develops

At around this time a new narrative emerged which appropriated arguments from the geopolitical ‘national security’ narrative and utilised them to underpin long-standing claims about the need for policy change, specifically to boost investment in renewable energy. This narrative, referred to below as the energy-security-climate narrative, in combining elements of geopolitical and climate narratives, seems to have been more effective in providing impetus for change than either of the two above narratives alone. It has been observed that narratives emphasising the need to act in order to avoid climate change had often in the past utilised evocative language of “catastrophe” evoking Doomsday type images of the world’s future if we continue with business-as- usual energy and climate politics (Giddens 2009: 28; cf. Bernstein 2001). This thesis has observed in previous chapters that this narrative might have found more purchase amongst those with the ability to think in terms of la longue durée (cf. Braudel and Matthews 1982), but might be less tangible for those who view the world through more short-term, and/or culturally localised, lenses. The argument here is that elements within climate groups strategically changed their narrative because they understood aspects of the geopolitical narrative to be capable of evoking political reaction, and change (Interview 18).

Specifically climate groups, such as NGOs, climate teams within think tanks, and some academics started to actively utilise fears about dependency on ‘unstable’ foreign

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suppliers and related conclusions that the UK needed to focus on increasing its domestic energy production (Interview 18; Plesch et al 2005; Roberts 2004; Greenpeace 2006; Bird 2007; Ochs 2008; Giddens 2009). One example is a report for Greenpeace entitled ‘Oil and Peace Don’t Mix’ which overtly used geopolitical ideas about energy and conflict, and growing UK reliance on imported fossil fuels, to argue for change to UK energy policy (Greenpeace 2006).113 Interestingly, analysts from within the ‘blood for oil’ school referenced in chapter one, had also started to use their evocative geopolitical visions of future conflict over fossil fuels to make arguments for an end to the industrial paradigm (cf. Klare 2008a).

Others started to formulate arguments linking the notion of upcoming peak oil with the need to invest heavily in renewable energy for electricity and transport, as well as further changes to energy policy (Hodge 2010). A particularly politically active example of the use of such arguments is the UK Industry Taskforce on Peak Oil & Energy Security (ITPOES) which included amongst its members Richard Branson and Jeremy Leggett, formerly of Greenpeace (ITPOES 2008 and 2010). The specific notion behind this group is to provide wider publicity for the argument that the world is already facing peak oil in order to remind government, and the populace more generally, about the finite nature of fossil fuels and to promote sustainable energy transition. As the report states: “(o)ur message to government and business is clear: Act now” (ITPOES 2010: 5).

As such, the growing political purchase of the geopolitical narrative, which concluded that the UK should reduce future foreign supply dependency, was held to be capable of provoking responses in a way that arguments about the urgent need to invest in and facilitate renewable energy sources for climate reasons had not.114 This perception might be particularly evident in the UK where public support for the notion that energy security represents a national security threat far outstrips interest in climate change as a threat (Niblett 2011).

This form of narrative appropriation was clever, however, in that many of these groups were also arguing, and showing empirically as seen above, that continuing to assign

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companies  and  about  the  de-­‐stabilising  effect  that  this  war  had  on  the  world  (Greenpeace  2006:  5).  

responsibility to the private sector to produce these investments was already resulting in poor renewable results (van der Horst 2005; Mitchell 2008; WWF 2010). DTI assumptions, as seen in the 2007 White Paper, that the European emissions trading scheme would take much of the burden of incentivising business and industry to lower carbon emissions were increasingly seen as insufficient (Green Alliance 2010: 8). As we have seen above, a number of changes had been proposed from within the climate narrative, many of which would constitute greater state intervention, specifically to boost renewable production. They ranged from new green taxes (Greenpeace 2006; Sentence 2009), to ‘real’ feed-in-tariffs (FITs) which would remove the risk for renewable energy producers (Mitchell 2008), to a radical overhaul of the electricity system whereby a central, single buyer would be put in place who would discriminate over type of energy technology bought (White 2009). Suggestions about the need to integrate energy and climate policy remained an ongoing part of the solutions offered (Greenpeace 2006; Held 2006; Carter 2007; Giddens 2009; Scrase et al 2009; cf. PIU 2002).

This might be characterised as an instrumental process of ‘narrative appropriation’ and in this way the supply crisis becomes, in some respects only, consistent with the climate crisis. As such it managed to encapsulate both elements of the dominant, geopolitical crisis narrative whilst also offering non-business-as-usual solutions which challenged the PEPP. There might, however, be some irony involved in climate campaigners, who had so often in the past been more overtly focused on the ‘shared commons’ and long- term issues, now using national security and domestic production needs to underpin their campaign. Questions were being raised, for example, about the degree to which the notion that energy independence was indeed constitutive of energy security was accurate (Watson and Scott 2009: 5098). But by conflating energy security with climate change solutions these questions remained sidelined.

There were other difficulties associated with this ‘narrative appropriation’ specifically for those proposing clean, renewable energy. Arguments about the need for more domestic, or home grown, energy production were just as easily utilised by those who supported the building of a new generation of nuclear plants in the UK (Blackhurst 2004; Helm 2007; Wheeler 2007; Interviews 13 and 14). The emergence of nuclear as a ‘low carbon’, domestic source of energy is just one of the areas of conflict which can

arise when combining narratives, based on different historical perspectives, in such a way.

As one report put it,

…those concerned with ecological stability and those concerned for geopolitics and defence are sometimes not amiable acquaintances and generally operate in different spheres (Nuttall and Manz 2008: 1250).

Such differences can be pinpointed on the different ontological positions underlying the perspectives that inform climate and geopolitical security narratives. By utilising geopolitical arguments about energy security to further climate ends there has arguably been ample room for policies to ensue that might not sit well with traditional climate, read ecological, understandings of the world, nuclear energy being just one example. Such a notion ties in with those who have criticised the use of securitising language in respect of climate change specifically in that it might shift the issue into the realm of national security and zero sum political conceptions (cf. Deudney 1990 and 2006; Barnett 2001; Dalby 2009). Such conceptions have often in the past lead to state-centric nationalism, conflictual and, at times, militaristic solutions, at the cost of notions such as inter-dependence within a global commons (cf. Deudney 2006: 249-50). This thesis suggests, in line with recent critical security analysis, that ‘speaking security’ can (re)politicise subjects, in that it has implied greater state interest and involvement, but does not necessarily lead to militaristic solutions (cf. Browning and MacDonald 2010). The way in which this alternative narrative developed is significant also in a number of other ways, not least in that it is echoed, see below, in important policy documents and decisions made around this time. It built on the idea, already noted by policymakers, that domestically produced, low carbon energy production will serve as a solution to both the security of supply and climate crises (DTI 2006c and 2007). But it also presented an interesting challenge in that it provided a further degree of urgency to the question of how this could be better achieved, given that existing policy was at the same time being shown not to be effective in providing for investment in renewables.

As Anthony Giddens had pointed out in his 2009 book on the politics of climate change what was starting to emerge was not the question of where energy needed to be going as