Climate change and lifestyle choices

I was intrigued by the report by the Royal Institute of Chartered surveyors “City Climate Change; your city, your responsibility" takes the view that Edinburgh needs to cut traffic by 57,500 cars to achieve a 60% carbon emission reduction.
I think that they are right. The challenge for me as a politician is how do I achieve that aim without being then seen as anti car. Everybody wants to be green, (why else would all the parties be wrapping themselves in their environment credentials?) but what do they want to do about it? Recent opinion polls like the one in the Sunday Times by Yougov showed 63% against higher petrol taxes, 69% against road pricing and 60% against air taxes.
So how do we change behaviour? Better public transport is clearly one answer and trams will make a significant difference but it is no environmental magic bullet. Once again we have the politicians dilemma; what the people want and what the people are prepared to do about it are not yet connected. We need to find a way of working with the voters to persuade them to make that connection in their lifestyle choices without simply using guilt and sticks but we need to do it quickly. I don’t think any of the parties, even the Greens, have really got to grips with that conundrum.

Scottish Langoustine Being Flown to Thailand

The story about the Scottish langoustine being flown to Thailand for hand peeling and back because its cheaper than doing in with Scottish workers was for me also a parable about the challenge of climate change. There is no doubt that in pure accounting terms the decision to fly these outsize prawns half way across the world and back makes sense though not to the 70 Scots whose jobs are lost in the jet stream. But the very act has lost that firm and its product brand value because customers are now saying "I want to pay for a low carbon footprint as well as decent langoustine".Or are they? Once those little seafood critters hit the shelves at a price much less than they would had they never seen the light of a Bangkok dawn will the customers care? There is an opportunity here for people to be really demanding. How about printing of a products carbon footprint as well as it's calorie count? That might mean a very different set of decisions at the checkout. It won’t save jobs but could this be the tipping point for the green consumer to take control of just what choice there is. But, what choices really make business sense back at the accountants desk?