The wicked public policy problem of climate change
by Alison Reeve
Like many people around the world, I was transfixed by footage from the Artemis moon mission. Seeing a small blue-and-green dot floating in infinite blackness, I was reminded that, as far as we know, the Earth is the only place in the vast universe that supports life. It is where we live, and there is no other place we can live.
One of the reasons the Earth supports life is that its surface temperature is very stable. Compared to other planets, it stays within a narrow range, and we, and all other living things, are adapted to exist within this range.
Human activity has raised the average temperature of the Earth by about 1.4 degrees since the Industrial Revolution began. This is disrupting climate all around the world. It is changing weather and rainfall patterns, from the monsoon in India to the rains over western Tasmania.
It is making the effects of multi-year climate and weather patterns such as El Niño stronger. It is slowing ocean currents that modulate temperatures across continents. It makes natural disasters more frequent, and their impacts more devastating.
These impacts are with us already. It is too late to stop or reverse them.
These impacts are not isolated events. They flow through to every system that underpins our society, our economy, and our culture.
Take insurance as one example. More natural disasters are leading to more payouts to insurance holders. More payouts mean higher insurance premiums. Higher premiums means those who can’t afford it drop their insurance cover. This leaves fewer policyholders to share the risk of future natural disasters, pushing premiums up again.
While it hasn’t yet happened, the cumulative effects could lead to the financial collapse of an insurer. This would leave thousands of businesses without insurance and unable to operate, and would leave banks exposed to a higher risk of lending. These sorts of impacts flow through to macro-economic indicators such as unemployment and GDP.
Minimising the impacts of the systemic effects of climate change will be a defining public policy challenge of the 21st century. But because we live in an increasingly disrupted and volatile age, it will be one crisis among many. The next pandemic or war will have to be responded to in a context where climate change has already disrupted our systems.
The way the public sector is organised is a formidable barrier to dealing with systemic disruption. The division of responsibility consists of vertical reporting lines, each with a single minister at the top. The Department of Health works with a health minister, the Department of Transport works with a transport minister, and so on.
But as with many wicked problems in public policy, climate change is not a vertical problem, because it is a systems problem. And the response is therefore not the responsibility of one minister. It requires many ministers to act, and to act together.
The challenge is to find the enduring structure to do the work. Most cross-government tools are useful for short-term co-operation on short-term tasks: think the taskforce, or the inter-departmental committee.
Central agencies provide a helicopter view and can facilitate the joining up of different policy areas, but have limited capacity to go deep. Communities of practice are good for skills, but not for policy change.
No one anywhere has cracked this problem. Governments everywhere are struggling with how to do this.
There might not be an institutional answer. Instead, the answer may lie in what is considered a ‘good’ public servant.
When senior public sector figures talk about their careers, what emerges is a pattern of deliberately acquiring experiences. Time in a regulator, to learn how to apply law in the real world. Time in a central agency, to learn how budget and decision processes work. Time in a delivery agency, to experience the front line.
If climate change is now a permanent part of the operating environment, and responding to climate change a permanent feature of every policy area, then we should see understanding climate change and learning about emissions reductions as part of the portfolio of experience that a successful public servant requires. It is notable that the current secretaries of PM&C, Treasury, DFAT, Health, Education, and Defence all spent significant time working on climate or energy policy.
Climate change is not just about weather, disasters, events. We humans are adapted for that narrow temperature range, and we don’t operate well outside it. Climate change and its impacts will change us, and every aspect of culture, including the culture of the APS.
Today’s public servants are the stewards of an APS culture built by the public servants of the past. They will bequeath this culture to the public servants of the future. Their tenure is the hinge between the old and the new — they are the people who decide what is worth saving, what needs to be left behind, and what must be built.
Choose wisely. The future of our home on the pale blue dot depends on it.