MP Challen rejects 'climate porn' charges

OneWorld UK

By Daniel Nelson

To charges that his new book is an example of “climate porn”, Labour MP Colin Challen yesterday retorted he was fed up with politicians “prettifying” global warming by telling the public that individual actions such as switching to eco-light bulbs would solve the problem.

“It’s obvious that more than individual steps are required”, he said at the London launch of his book, Too Little, Too Late: The Politics of Climate Change.

“You can buy a dozen books on what you can do as an individual, but few that tell you what politicians must do,” he said. But individual actions that were good in themselves, he noted, became dangerous if used to displace decisive political measures.

Challen said he wanted to puncture the hubris of Britain’s political parties, all of which proclaimed the need for actions but had policies that made climate change worse.

Politicians claimed they could not challenge consumerism – which prevailed “even on the edge of a [financial and economic] crisis” – but “the need for action is desperate, the need for change is desperate.”

He said the message of his book was that behavioural change was the solution.

Yet he saw no evidence that any party was ready to bring about such changes. When the government, for example, spoke of the worst economic crisis for 100 years, why could it not use the same language when referring to climate change?

Challen is chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Climate Change, but says he will stand down as an MP at the next election.