National Trust goes green

nick cowen, 25 July 2007

The National Trust is to celebrate reaching a 3.5 million-membership landmark by changing its focus. No longer will it just look after the buildings and artefacts that constitute our national heritage. Now it will “advise people how to adapt their lifestyles to climate change and challenge government to be more ecologically aware.” How is it beginning? By throwing its weight behind opposition against the expansion of Stansted airport.
As it so happens, there are a number of simple things that the National Trust could initiate in order to reduce its own ‘carbon footprint’, if indeed that is to be considered a genuine priority. The most obvious would be to eliminate the farming of animals on all its land. Since, according to the currently popular theory of anthropogenic climate change, world meat consumption is a large contributor to global warming, this would mean the National Trust would reduce its own contribution to climate change and be taking a principled stand for other landowners to follow. Indeed, they could set aside their land not for carbon inefficient British agriculture but to grow more forests to act as carbon sinks. Whether the National Trust will commit do doing this remains to be seen.

The trend of institutions taking a stand on green issues rarely seems to centre on internal reforms and genuine changes. Rather initiatives mean participating in the political process: or more bluntly, forcing other people and institutions to make those changes for you, at their own cost. And although, green issues are perhaps becoming the more popular grounds for charities getting involved in politics, this is part of a much wider trend of charities coming to consider the state as the only way to change society and of the state co-opting charities to support its own values and initiatives (see Nick Seddon’s report, Who Cares, from earlier this year).
Of course, the National Trust claims to represent its 3.5 million members and if the National Trust’s supporters all agree with this new objective to campaign for new government policies, then to campaign is certainly within its rights and remit. But do all its members really support this move? One certainly doesn’t.