In this article we hypothesize that psychopathic leaders may be attracted to positions of power because in such environments they can fulfill their need for domination and control over other people. Although social dominance is a well-established trait in psychopathy, social dominance as a motivational factor in those high in psychopathy has received surprisingly little attention in literature and research. In this article we propose that social dominance and dominance motivation may be part of the psychological profile of certain psychopathic subtypes, but not of others. Furthermore, the scarce theory and research on psychopathy and dominance motivation is reviewed. Finally, we will additionally analyze research on the different motivations between the larger group of the Dark Triad and propose new insights on the importance of the need for domination for those high in psychopathy in comparison to other fundamental life motivations. Based on these analyses we propose a clarification for the (estimated) high prevalence of psychopathic individuals in leadership positions.
= = =
This paper answers why psychopaths keep ending up as CEOs and politicians.
Researchers mapping out the mechanics of "successful psychopathy" found that corporate capitalism and modern political selection systems are not neutral.
They are hyper-efficient filtering machines.
And they are specifically optimized to select for the exact traits normal people find repulsive.
Normal leaders are constrained by empathy, guilt, and long-term risk aversion. They hesitate when a decision hurts people. They feel the weight of collateral damage.
Psychopaths don’t have an emotional brake pedal.
When a company or a political party needs someone to ruthlessly slash budgets, fire thousands of people, bluff through a crisis, or project absolute, unshakeable confidence, normal candidates stutter.
Psychopaths step right up.
Their superficial charm, pathological fearlessness, and total lack of remorse look identical to "strong leadership" during an interview or a campaign.
They weaponize corporate chaos. While everyone else is panicking, they ruthlessly manipulate the narrative, step over their peers, and take credit for the wins.
They weaponize charisma to dazzle the board or the voters, and hide their emptiness behind a mask of high performance.
The system rewards the ruthlessness, promotes them to the top, and punishes anyone who tries to slow them down with ethics.
The researchers call it a feedback loop of structural decay.
Corporations and governments built an environment where being entirely devoid of a conscience isn't a disqualifier.
It’s a competitive advantage.
- - -
I completely disagree! The world today needs leaders with vision and empathy! Leaders who can unite teams and make them work towards a common goal!
Today's CEOs and politicians are not fit for purpose. Maybe, this is the reason that things are not getting better...
If you have ever rowed a boat, you know it’s a pretty intense job. Even something as simple as paddling a canoe keeps you busy most of the time.
To ‘rock the boat’ is both a literal and figurative expression. Any boat small enough to row is also small enough to capsize fairly easily. Rocking the boat isn’t a good idea.
Figuratively, rocking the boat means that someone is making trouble. If you are busy rowing, you have no time or energy left over to rock the boat.
So if you are making trouble, you are in that position because you have time on your hands. The quote implies that’s because you aren’t rowing, but should be.
Why is not rocking the boat important? While the rebel in me says the boat needs to be rocked from time to time, that isn’t the point of this quote. The time to challenge authority is when the boat is safely in port, and you aren’t endangering the lives and safety of others. The same goes for arguing about the direction and destination of the boat. Do it in port.
That said, the people who rock the boat are usually trouble makers. Sometimes it’s because they are bored. You can only sit behind an oar for so long before your mind starts to wander. Once that happens, even if you’re not trying to mess things up, even simple things, like your rhythm, is likely to suffer.
Other times, the people who rock the boat are naturally contrary, or are going through a contrarian phase. This is more for the figurative side of the quote, as you probably wouldn’t invite such a person on a rowboat and expect much out of them, right?
Rocking the boat isn’t what you’re supposed to be doing while the boat is underway. At that time, all are expected to be contributing in some way to the rowing, navigating, or other necessary tasks. Only idle hands have time to rock the boat, so stop and find something to do.
Where can I apply this in my life? Between my time in Cub and Boy Scouts, fishing trips with Grandpa, and my attempt to get on the Crew team at school, I have more than a casual acquaintance with human-powered boats. Such small craft are easily swamped, or even capsized. Rocking the boat is not a good thing, and your fellow travelers will tell you so.
While out on the water, or in the middle of a project, rocking the boat isn’t a good idea. If the need is urgent, call for a time-out, and discuss their concerns. But everyone needs to remember they’re all in the same boat, whether figuratively or literally. You should all be pulling the same direction.
Still, there are people who love to rock the boat. The trick is to help them find creative, not destructive, ways to do the rocking. As mentioned before, all journeys, whether by boat or as a project, have ports along the way. Those are the times to discuss what is going on, and what to do next.
Try to remember the most dysfunctional group in which you ever participated however briefly it might have been. Now imagine being in a boat with people rowing in different rhythms, and in different directions. Is there any wonder people don’t do that in the water? Why do we do it in our projects?
Again, I’m not against rocking the boat, but there is a time and a place for these things, and in the middle of something is neither the time nor place. In case of an emergency, a new port or direction can be chosen, but a fight in the middle of a pond, much less an ocean, isn’t a good idea.
Take a moment and consider how often you tend to rock the boat, and where you are when you are busy rocking? Do you agree with my thoughts on when it is or is not appropriate to rock the boat? Do you agree that to rock the boat, you have to stop what you’re doing in order to get things rocking?
With these thoughts in mind, what would you have done differently, if you could go back to each of those situations? How do you think that things would have progressed, if you had been thinking of this quote? Specifically, would you have done differently in those situations?
Now take a moment to consider all those other ingrates who have been busy making your life miserable by rocking your boat at all the wrong times. What can you do to help them understand that there are good times, and bad times to do their rocking? How can you help them understand?
Rowing, like life, is a team sport. If everyone isn’t in sync, and trying to go to the same destination, life in the boat will be very rough. The same goes for the real world. Hopefully that makes enough sense that you can help others understand, and pull together while on the open water.
Σήμερα, είναι μια μεγάλη μέρα για την Εκκλησία μας, γιορτάζουμε την Ύψωση του Τίμιου Σταυρού. Ο Σταυρός (για μένα) είναι το σύμβολο της Αγάπης, το σύμβολο που μας θυμίζει κάθε μέρα ότι ο Ιησούς πέθανε πάνω στο Σταυρό από Αγάπη για το δημιούργημα του Θεού, τον Άνθρωπο.
Η λέξη Άνθρωπος έχει 8 γράμματα, και το 8 είναι ο κρυφός αριθμός του Θεού. Η ετυμολογία της λέξης «Άνθρωπος» είναι το ον που σηκώνει τις οπές (δλδ τα μάτια του) στον Ουρανό.
Ο φανερός αριθμός του Θεού είναι το 7: 7 οι μέρες της εβδομάδας, 7 οι νότες στην μουσική, 7 οι μέρες της κάθε φάσης του φεγγαριού, 7 τα χρώματα στο ουράνιο τόξο και άλλα πολλά 7.
Ακόμα και στην βιολογία, έχουμε διαμεμβρανικές πρωτεΐνες με 7 αναδιπλώσεις!
Αγαπώ αυτό το τραγούδι γιατί συμπυκνώνει την φιλοσοφία του Ιησού: το σύστημα αλλάζει μόνο εκ των έσω και με Αγάπη.
They sentenced me to 20 years of boredom For trying to change the system from within I’m coming now, I’m coming to reward them First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
I’m guided by a signal in the heavens (Guided, guided) I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin (I am guided by) I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons (Ooh, ooh) First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin
Στο σύγχρονο επιχειρείν στη βιομηχανία τροφίμων, χρειαζόμαστε Ηγέτες με το Η κεφαλαίο. Ηγέτες που να μπορούν να εμπνεύσουν τις ομάδες τους και έχουν το δυναμικό να πάνε μπροστά και την ομάδα τους και την εταιρεία/οργανισμό τους αλλά και την κοινωνία γενικότερα. Ας δούμε πιο αναλυτικά, τις κατηγορίες ηγετών. Ο John Maxwell εξηγεί ότι τα πέντε επίπεδα ηγεσίας είναι τα ακόλουθα:
1.Θέση
Οι άνθρωποι ακολουθούν τον νέο ηγέτη επειδή απλά κλήθηκαν να το κάνουν. Κλήθηκαν απλά από τον προηγούμενο κάτοχο της ηγετικής θέσης και απλά το κάνουν από «υποχρέωση» και μόνο χωρίς να νιώθουν κάτι για τον νέο ηγέτη. Μια «στρατιωτική» προσέγγιση που δεν έχει θετικά αποτελέσματα σε βάθος χρόνου.
2.Άδεια
Σε αυτό το επίπεδο, ο ηγέτης έχει αρχίσει να κτίζει διαπροσωπικές σχέσεις με τους υφισταμένους του. Έχει περάσει λίγος καιρός από την στιγμή που ο νέος ηγέτης έχει πάρει την ηγετική θέση και σε αυτό το διάστημα έχει αρχίσει να γνωρίζει καλύτερα τους υφιστάμενούς του.
3.Παραγωγή
Οι υφιστάμενοι εμπιστεύονται τον ηγέτη τους και νιώθουν ότι τους εμπνέει να γίνουν πιο παραγωγικοί για το καλό της ομάδας. Αυτό είναι ένα σημείο-κλειδί: πώς ο νέος ηγέτης μπορεί να εμπνεύσει την ομάδα του για το καλό της ομάδας και του οργανισμού.
4.Πνευματική εξέλιξη
Οι ηγέτες που έχουν φτάσει στο επίπεδο 4 είναι σε θέση να εμπνέουν και να δημιουργούν νέους ηγέτες. Οι υφιστάμενοί τους τους ακολουθούν επειδή οι άνθρωποι γενικότερα, αναγνωρίζουν την ικανότητα του ηγέτη να επιδρά θετικά στη ζωή τους.
4.Απόγειο – Κορύφωση
Σε αυτό το επίπεδο φτάνουν λίγοι ηγέτες και αυτό είναι και το πιο σπάνιο είδος ηγετών. Μόνο λίγοι ηγέτες και μετά από πολύχρονη προσπάθεια τα καταφέρνουν να φτάσουν σε αυτό το επίπεδο. Αυτοί οι ηγέτες έχουν ακόλουθους επειδή έχουν αποδείξει την αξία τους στην ομάδα τους και έχουν αποδεδειγμένα εργαστεί για το καλό της ομάδας αλλά και για το γενικότερο καλό.
Είναι ενδιαφέρον να δούμε τα χαρακτηριστικά των επιπέδων 4 και 5.
Σε μια παρουσίασή του, πριν από λίγες μέρες εδώ στο UL, o Δρ Aidan Harney της Intel παρουσίασε (φωτογραφία άνωθεν) τα χαρακτηριστικά των ηγετών που καταφέρνουν να φτάσουν στα επίπεδα 4 και 5. Ανέλυσε τις διαφορές των ηγετών επιπέδου 4 και 5 σε σχέση με τα κίνητρά τους (motivation), τα θέλω τους (volition) και τα ανακλαστικά τους (reflexivity). Είναι πολύ ενδιαφέρον να δούμε τις «λεπτές» διαφορές μεταξύ των δυο επιπέδων, 4 και 5.
Ένας ηγέτης επιπέδου 5 έχει κίνητρα την περιέργειά του και το «παιχνίδι», ώστε να παράγει νέες ιδέες. Τα θέλω του έχουν σχέση με την αέναη αναζήτηση νέων τρόπων και ιδεών και τα ανακλαστικά τους είναι πρωτοποριακά: επιθυμούν να μαθαίνουν από μελλοντικές καταστάσεις (δηλαδή κάνουν Projection του παρόντος στο μέλλον) και κάνουν πράξη αυτές τις ιδέες τους, χωρίς να διστάζουν να παίρνουν ρίσκα.
Ένα εξαιρετικό βιβλίο που περιγράφει τα πρότυπα ηγετών και τρόπους εκδήλωσης των ηγετικών τους χαρακτηριστικών είναι το βιβλίο του Peter Northouse: Leadership : Theory and Practice.
If one teenager in Sweden could inspire a global movement to strike and march, surely teenagers could do more than just draw attention to this issue. Maybe they could help solve it?
Half way from coal, half way to diamond. That’s how I would describe the current state of the climate change debate.
I don’t doubt the sincerity of the leaders gathered in Glasgow for the Cop26 event. Yet despite scientific and political consensus that calamity is certain without action, the vast majority are beholden to electoral cycles and thus incentivised to make promises tied to goals in the distant future.
I believe this approach will fail, and by the end of this decade we will have to look to a new generation of leaders with a more forceful and urgent approach. My strong conviction is that the leaders who will solve this issue are sitting in classrooms around the world today.
Peter McGarry is founder of The Earth Foundation. Learn more here theearthprize.org/trailer
Reading entries of the recent Irish Times children’s climate writing competition strengthened my belief that these children will have to grasp the nettle in coming years when the current crop of leaders are shown to have lacked sufficient courage and urgency to address the task at hand.
But we need more than writing competitions to prepare this generation for the tough decisions they will have to make. We need global movements to educate, inspire, mentor and empower these young future leaders.
I happen to be part of one such movement, with teenage students in 76 countries and counting, competing to find the best environmental sustainability solutions.
I believe this is how future leaders will be forged with a solution-based mindset amid the background noise of lofty goals lacking clear delivery plans and enforcement mechanisms streaming from Glasgow.
Street cacophony
Let me take a moment to explain how my journey started on this path, and the movement called The Earth Prize came about. Normally fate doesn’t come knocking at the window. In my case, it wasn’t so much a knocking sound as a cacophony of noise. Sitting in an office in Geneva, you don’t expect to be drawn to stare outside to see what the commotion is.
I was dumbfounded to see hundreds then thousands of kids marching by on the street below. The march was one of numerous school strikes across the globe inspired by Greta Thunberg, the teenage Swedish environmental activist.
That was September 2019, and the experience gnawed away at me until one day during the Covid lockdown of early 2020 when I decided to do something about it.
My thoughts over that interval were on how best to harness and leverage the frustration and passion seen in those teenagers. If one teenager in Sweden could inspire a global movement to strike and march, surely teenagers could do more than just draw attention to this issue. Maybe they could help solve it?
Suddenly it made sense why the school strikes had gone viral; students were frustrated and understandably so
That’s when I decided to set up a global competition for teenage students to find fresh ideas and solutions to environmental problems. Conversations with teachers and students emphasised the frustrations many had with the lack of sustainability on the syllabus.
Suddenly it made sense why the school strikes had gone viral; students were frustrated and understandably so. I decided we needed to educate them on the key sustainability concepts.
Young change-makers
Ideas need a spark, so my team and I decided we also had to inspire. We looked around the globe for young change-makers, people and organisations who were solving environmental problems today in the real world.
We found many amazing change-makers, and are showcasing them on our learning platform so students can learn from their journeys, and the obstacles they had to overcome.
Education and inspiration can create a foundation and a spark, but teenagers also need to be mentored. Students from top universities across the world were interviewed and a pool of 30 were selected.
These passionate mentors are volunteering to help every teacher and student in the competition by sharing their knowledge and experience. It was incredibly gratifying to see a mentor answer the first question from a teacher in Nigeria. a global community had sprung into action.
Students from top universities across the world were interviewed and a pool of 30 were selected
Since registration for The Earth Prize opened on September 1st last, teams from schools in over 76 countries have signed up to compete. From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, from schools in Middle East refugee camps to my own alma mater, Naas CBS in Co Kildare.
Tomorrow’s leaders, who will have to make the tough decisions we are currently shirking, need to go beyond marching and writing essays. They need to start forming a solution-focused mindset.
They need to prepare for their roles as leaders who will solve the climate crisis. I hope many more Irish schools and teenage students will join our movement.
there is a difference between the hand (skill) and the head (knowledge) but within the context of the heart (doing what is right),
one of the key skills of a leader is in balancing the head and the heart in encouraging the hand,
one of the key challenges for leadership in the modern world is that there has been too much management and not enough leadership,
management is doing things right whereas leadership is doing the right things,
there are three types of Leaders, the Old World Leaders (OWLs), the New World Leaders (NWLs) and the Global World Leaders (GWLs), not necessarily global in the sense of global empires but, rather, global in the sense of a greater openness to learning,
courage is one of the earliest characteristics of our OWLs,
a practical problem in comparing OWLs and GWLs is the changing attitude to leadership, the dramatic shift from command and control to cooperation and joint effort,
Aristotle and Phronetic leadership / "intelligent leadership"
Aristotle distinguished the word phronesis from other forms of wisdom (such as episteme and techne) relating it more to practical wisdom rather than simply intellectual wisdom, but withing the context of ethics,
Practical wisdom (phronesis) is the intellectual virtue concerned with doing (Aristotle)
Some of the virtues identified by Aristotle include: 1. happiness as a public good, 2. excellence of character or moral virtue, 3. moral virtue as conscious choice, 4. self-mastery and 5. friendship and partnership,
Aristotle also considered the impediments to virtue, describing three things that humans should avoid: 1. evils or vices are the opposites of virtues, 2. incontinence is the opposite of self-restraint. They are weaknesses in which people passively follow an urge rather than a delicate choice and 3. being beast-like or brutish, which Aristotle describes as the opposite of something more than human, being heroic or God-like,
On 9 August 2003 there were 12,963 books on leadership, if we were able to read at the rate of one per day, this would equate to 35 years of reading, including weekends! By 28th Feb 2005, this had increased to 47 years and 17,138 books,
the origin of the words "leading" and "leadership" derive from the old German word "lidan" (to go) and an old English word "lithan" (to travel). So, leadership could be defined as "leading the way" through one's own action,
the best leaders ask the right questions and allow those with the knowledge to suggest the best answers,
I keep 6 honest serving-men (they taught me all I knew); their names are What and Why and When, and How and Where and Who (Kipling, 1907)
Leaders exhibit two types of behaviours in the achievement of goals: people-oriented (consideration) and task oriented (initiating structure),
in 1939, Kurt Lewin (a psychologist) set out to identify different styles of leadership and identified 3 major styles: Authoritarian (autocratic), Participative (democratic) and Delegative (laissez-faire),
Participative leadership was seen to be the most effective, with an increase in creativity and motivation, but the participative leader still has the final say. Delegative leadership resulted in less cooperation and productivity; it could apply in situations where the group members are highly knowledgeable, but leads to poorly defined roles and a lack of motivation,
Leadership is meaningless without its connection to common purposes and collective needs,
Leaders recognize when the right situations occur in terms of tasks and relationships,
The question of "who leaders are" is much rooted in history and narratives supported by a range of different traits, whereas what leaders do is closely alligned to behaviours and leadership style.
Why do Leaders lead? Aims of inspiring, motivating or stimulating others to achieve a given end,
Transformational leadership occurs when "one or more persons engage with others in such a way that leaders and followers raise one another to higher levels of motivation and morality", within a context of a "higher purpose"._
First minister of Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon attends the opening of The
European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre located in Aberdeen Bay on
September 7th, 2018 off the coast of Aberdeen, Scotland. Photograph:
Jeff J Mitchell/Getty
Imagine a person who can only lose
weight, not by going on a diet, but by accidentally running out of
food. It is a grim fact that Ireland’s only really effective way of
responding to climate change has been to go into recession. We succeed
by failing.
Since
2005 the most significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions were
caused by the implosion of the economy between 2008 to 2012. This
“success” will be repeated in 2020 because of the coronavirus crisis,
whose main benign effect is a likely reduction in Irish carbon emissions
of around 12 per cent this year.
If
the recession it causes is deep enough, we may even, as Samuel Beckett
has it, fail better. It is an Irish twist on the idea of collateral
damage: collateral benefit. Bomb the economy and we get some green
shoots of climate action.
We have a very clear example right next door of the viability of rapid change. If Scotland can do it, so can Ireland
As a
strategy, this surely has its limits. But of course, it is not a
strategy at all. It is accident, not action. The decent environmental
consequences, when we’ve had them, have been not merely unintended but
unwanted. They result, not from getting our act together, but from
things falling apart. Once we get up and running and again, we go back
to pumping out the gases.
What
does it say about leadership on climate change when disasters have been
much more effective in allowing us to meet our international
obligations than any official plans?
If
Ireland is to get anywhere close to fulfilling the stated aim of being a
leader on climate change, it must start with a radically transformed
sense of national purpose.
The
best way to grasp what this means is simply to look to the country that
is probably closest to Ireland in size, geography and culture:
Scotland. The Scottish government is less powerful than ours – it does
not enjoy full sovereignty. Yet its performance on climate change is
light years ahead of Ireland’s.
Scotland
deliberately made things hard for itself. The UK government set a
target of a 32 per cent reduction by 2020 on the level of greenhouse gas
emissions in 1990. In the Climate Change Act unanimously adopted by the
Scottish Parliament in 2009, the target is 42 per cent by 2020 and 80 per cent by 2050.
How has it fared?
Radical change
Scotland
will not reach its 42 per cent reduction target in 2020. It met it in
2015, five years early. It is now at 47 per cent. It went from getting
10 per cent of its electricity consumption from renewable sources 15
years ago to 60 per cent now. It is on track to get near its 100 per
cent target in the early 2020s.
And
Scotland’s neighbour to the west? More like its evil twin. Ireland set
less ambitious targets and failed abysmally to meet them.
Ireland’s
target was a 20 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2020,
relative to 2005 levels. Before the coronavirus crisis, the
Environmental Protection Agency’s emissions projections indicated that,
by 2020, a reduction of between five and six per cent will have been
achieved.
Scotland’s leaders deliberately chose a target high enough to excite their citizens
Without
radical and rapid change, cumulative Irish emissions of greenhouse gases
are also on course to exceed the 2030 target of 376 million tonnes of
carbon dioxide equivalent, by between 52 and 67 million tonnes.
In
Scotland, emissions from transport increased by 0.4 per cent from 1990
to 2017. Over the same period in Ireland, emissions from transport rose
by 133 per cent. Scotland already gets twice the proportion of its
electricity (60 per cent) from renewables as Ireland does (30 per cent).
Scotland
is on course to plant 10,000 new hectares of forestry every year. The
rate of afforestation in Ireland in 2017 actually fell to 5,000
hectares, with provisional figures for 2018 falling even further to
4,000 hectares. At these rates, Ireland will not attain the national
policy goal of covering 18 per cent of land with forest any time in the
21st century, let alone within the lifetime of any current climate
action plan.
At
one level, this shameful contrast is actually good news. It makes a
nonsense of the claims that radical reductions in Ireland’s emissions
are extremely hard to achieve or wildly impractical. We have a very
clear example right next door of the viability of rapid change. If
Scotland can do it, so can Ireland.
But
we have to start with the obvious question: why are the Scottish and
Irish records so starkly different? The answer has nothing to do with
resources and everything to do with leadership. One country has been
well led on climate change, the other – to put it very charitably – has
not.
Looking
at the Scottish experience, five things stand out in defining the way
this good leadership expressed itself. These are the things an incoming
Irish government should copy and paste.
Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon meets Taoiseach Leo Varadkar
at Government Buildings in Dublin in October 2017. Photograph: Artur
Widak/NurPhoto/Getty
1. Pride
First,
Scotland took pride in setting itself a big challenge. People are
motivated by thrilling new possibilities, not by grudging concessions.
While Ireland set the bar low and failed abjectly to clear it,
Scotland’s leaders deliberately chose a target high enough to excite
their citizens.
As
Andrew Kerr, executive director of the Edinburgh Centre for Carbon
Innovation, told the Citizens’ Assembly in Dublin in 2017: “Political
vision and leadership in putting forward a challenging target, and
corralling the resources and narrative around delivering that target,
was as important for setting the framework for tackling climate change
as robust evidence that it was achievable.”
The
dominant tone on climate change from Irish governments has been
negative – this is bad stuff we are being forced to do because we had to
sign all these international agreements.
Even
now, action on the single most important question facing humanity is
framed negatively. It is not climate change that “threatens rural
Ireland”, for example – it is the action needed to prevent it. The Scots
decided to tell themselves a different story: we can do this. Ireland’s
story has never got beyond: do we really have to do this?
Ironically,
one of the reasons for this may be that Scotland has been debating
national independence. The idea of a big collective project, a practical
expression of national willpower, fed into – and was in turn fed by – a
desire on the part of Scots to prove to themselves that they could
achieve big things together.
Ireland,
with a century of independence behind it, seems to have lost that
collective desire. If we are to get serious about climate change we will
have to find it again.
2. Monitoring
Second,
having set these ambitious targets, the Scots had rigorous independent
monitoring and analysis of how they were doing. Measuring how things
were progressing became, in Kerr’s words, “a normal part of
parliamentary debate and engagement, involving extensive consideration
each year”.
Scotland
was a pioneer in developing rigorous systems of monitoring and
evaluation, with annual reporting to parliament and a major assessment
of progress by a fully independent body every two years.
Ireland,
by contrast, did not even pass a Climate Change Act until 2015 – six
years after the Scottish Parliament did so. The EPA monitors emissions
and there is now a very capable Climate Change Advisory Council.
But
“advisory” is the key word. Irish governments are very good at ignoring
advice they don’t want to hear. There is no effective mechanism for
holding government departments or public bodies accountable for meeting
specific targets in specific time frames.
Scotland has had very strong civil society engagement on climate change
As the
Oireachtas climate change committee recommended last year, the “advisory
council” needs to be replaced by a powerful “action council”, which
will, among other things, produce five-year carbon budgets. It must have
its own statutory multi-annual funding to ensure its independence.
But
these changes need to be part of a much bigger transformation of the
official mindset. Behind those appalling increases in emissions from
transport, for example, is an inability to link the way we plan urban
development to climate change.
If
you make housing unaffordable in the big cities, you force people to
commute long distances. If you don’t invest sufficiently in public
transport, commuting is done in cars that emit greenhouse gases. Ireland
has ended up with one vehicle for every two people (including children)
and we now drive nearly 50 billion km a year.
3. No trade-off
Third,
the Scots refused to frame the whole question as a trade-off between
the environment and the economy. Perhaps because Scotland was already a
major oil producer, it was primed to think of the development of
renewable energy as a huge economic opportunity.
Scotland
sought successfully to attract investment into these new energy
sources. Doing the right thing could also be credibly presented as a
strategy for economic growth.
In
Ireland, by contrast, the issues are largely framed in terms of
reductions in activity – cutting the excessively large national beef
herd, for example. Good leadership should articulate the benefits of
replacing expensively imported oil and gas, creating new jobs and
developing new technologies.
4. Ownership
The
fourth thing the Scots have been good at is fostering a sense of
community ownership. This is not just a matter of encouraging and
supporting local communities in developing their own energy projects. It
is also about literal ownership.
The
Scottish government set a target for 500 megawatts of locally owned
energy generation facilities by 2020. It has already exceeded this and
reset the target to 1,000 megawatts. Profits from these projects return
to the communities who can then decide how best to invest the money.
Unsurprisingly, planning objections to wind farms are much rarer in
Scotland than in Ireland.
5. Engagement
Fifth,
Scotland has had very strong civil society engagement on climate
change. It has not been an issue only for environmental activists.
Churches, trade unions, scientists and business leaders pushed for the
more ambitious targets to be adopted and met.
Business groups like the Scottish Whisky Association
have pushed hard on the benefits of Scotland being seen globally as a
clean, green place. Builders switched to constructing timber-framed
houses, which are both more environmentally friendly and a good fit with
large-scale forestry planting.
Absence of leadership
We
don’t have to look very far, therefore, to see what good leadership
looks like. Generate a sense of national purpose. Set up rigorous
monitoring of, and accountability for, very specific targets. Embrace
the economic opportunities. Give communities ownership. Keep civil
society and businesses engaged.
But
none of this is going to happen in Ireland if adapting to climate
change is approached through the usual miasma of grudge and grievance.
Or if we fail to understand that the economy cannot be restarted after
the coronavirus crisis – it must be reimagined. Or if meeting our
international obligations is framed as a concession by the “mainstream”
to the Green Party rather than a collective challenge for government,
society and the economy.
The
absence of leadership emerged in the recent Sign of the Times 2020
study as the biggest factor in public disheartenment about Irish
responses to climate change. Part of the problem, though, seemed to be
that people were looking for saintly figures like David Attenborough to lead them. There won’t be any in the next Irish government.
But
leadership doesn’t need to be saintly. It needs to be challenging,
rigorous, accountable and decisive. If people can’t manage to meet those
standards, they shouldn’t be in government at all. If they can, this is
the time to show it.
