July 30, 2010
When Reality and Presentation Diverge
Boris Johnson’s (or rather Barclays’) London cycle hire scheme goes live today. Personally I’m not convinced of the virtues of having 6,000 Japanese and American tourists atop wheels thrown into the chaotic mix of London traffic.
But that’s not what interests me today.
Responding to (and anticipating) criticisms that the new hire-bikes have no cycle lanes to be used on, Johnson’s administration has recently been unveiling so-called “Cycle Super Highways”. Or – to you and me – large strips of (Barclay’s) blue paint, plonked on the sides of existing roads.
So far only two such “super highways” are open. One runs from Barking to Tower Gateway, the other from Merton into the City. Note that these are not exactly tourist-heavy routes, so any benefits they bring will be for existing cyclists – not least because the hire-bikes are all located in central London anyway.
But I’m an existing cyclist, so that should suit me. Except I tried out the latter of these two “super highways” the other week, and was distinctly disappointed.
If I was building a “cycle super highway” I’d seek to do one very important thing: ensure that only bicycles can use the cycle lanes. An obvious way of achieving this is to put a substantial curb in between cycle route and main road (like they do in much of Europe).
But Boris’ CSHs lack this essential feature. As a result you can look forward to sharing your blue strip of paint with motorbikes, lazy taxi- and white van-drivers, and last (but certainly not least) buses. Because there are bus stops in the middle of the cycle super highways. And as any Londoner who cycles will tell you, buses are The Number One Way To Die. Still, the blue will make for artistic contrasts with Cyclists’ Super Insides.
Yet it would be spurious to launch an attack on Johnson. Ken Livingstone was a big proponent of these cycling schemes (though Bo-Jo has typically stolen the glory). And given the money, space and logistical constraints, I’m not convinced Ken would have done things any differently.
The cycle super highways illustrate an important fact about politics: that often relatively crappy outcomes are the (apparently) inevitable outcome of politicians having to navigate competing interests and demands, yet also having to talk-up an end product even when it’s actually a bit naff.
I think, however, that there’s also a comparison with markets. Or more precisely, with marketing.
Environmental sustainability and global warming are much higher in consumer’s priorities than even 5 or 10 years ago. There is thus a selling-point and marketing imperative for many companies to promote their products as environmentally friendly and sustainable.
The problem, however, is that there can be a big disjunct between marketing as being sustainable and environmentally friendly and actually being so. What’s imperative to firms is to make consumers think they are buying green – even if that’s not strictly true.* Think of Honda’s adverts extolling the glory of their “clean” petrol engines a few years back. Or of Sainsbury’s own-brand bog-rolls, whose packaging proudly declares that by buying them you have helped save forests. Dubious claims, to say the least.
I’ve argued before that market solutions must be at the heart of finding answers to questions of environmental sustainability. But the disjunct between consumer belief and reality worries me. It takes a lot of effort to consistently expose dishonest or misleading corporate activities to the point where they stick in consumers’ minds. Plus big multinationals assiduously protect their reputations, lobbying hard to keep inconvenient truths hidden.
Which gives the lie to the naive free market fairystory that naughty firms just pretending to be sustainable will be swiftly abandoned by consistently conscientious consumers. Indeed (focusing more widely than consumer behaviour) you may have noted that BP’s share price recently rose. Which indicates that even being a certified planet-wrecker is no guarantee of abandonment by the forces of capitalism. (Though see Tim).
With democratic politics the structural situation that creates the oft-observed crapiness of decision-making outcomes (for further illustrations see The Wire, Season 3) also contains its own (partial) solution. When elected leaders produce decisions that go too far down the road of rubbishness, we can kick them out and thus keep crapiness within reasonably tolerable bounds.
It’s not entirely clear that any comparably neat solution lends itself to the problem of marketing dishonesty. And as the planet warms, forests shrink, and resources run out, that may turn out to be a very serious problem indeed.
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*Hence as with politics situations can arise where something is presented as being one thing, but in reality is substantially less good, or at least significantly different.
Tom said,
July 30, 2010 at 8:27 am
Honestly, I found that open top lorries (the smallish sort) were the Number One Reason To Die when I was cycling in London, especially if they were laden with building materials. Busses were ok: although, I never did undertake a bus.
“Which gives the lie to the naive free market fairystory that naughty firms just pretending to be sustainable will be swiftly abandoned by consistently conscientious consumers.”
What about things like the rainforest alliance? I’ve seen a couple of segments on the one show adressing this question (what environmental certification is good environmentl certification). The guardian and the times both have green living sections. Which? magazine is running a campaign to lower Britain’s energy usage. I certain more than 20 milliseconds on the internet would bring up even more advice.
All you could conclude from all of this is that consumers aren’t consistently concientious (which is not surprising), or that the naive story might have something to it.