Thirty-five reasons why business drags its heels over climate change

British bureaucrats' resistance to change has been adapted by businesses today to avoid taking action over climate change
Man at desk with head in hands
Anxiety makes us resist change Photograph: Getty

The 35 British Standard Objections to Change is a list I first came across in the 1980s while preparing training materials for the Local Government Training Board. I've recently updated it to show how similar attitudes prevail today in the way busineses resist taking action on climate change.

The 1980s list starts "Our work is different", and ends "We haven't got money for this at present". On the way it covers such gems as We've been doing it that way for 25/15/10/5 years, We've never done it before, We tried it once before, No-one's ever tried it before, Nothing new about it, We've been doing it all the time, It's so completely new to us, The boss/committee/staff/clients/treasurers/personnel won't like it … and so on.

The list captured the culture of local government bureaucracy at the time and produced wry smiles from anyone who had tried to shift the entrenched attitudes of hardworking people who were accustomed to their routine ways of doing things. You can see the full list with my modern day amendments on climate change here.

The idea that change is resisted through cultural attitudes and social systems is an important one, first suggested in the work of Elliot Jacques and Menzies-Lyth who identified anxiety as the key factor driving resistance. Most people are made anxious by demands for change. Such demands may:

Imply criticism of the status quo or suggest that work is not being done efficiently or effectively.


Threaten loss – of familiar tasks and goals, relationships or responsibilities.

Have practical implications such as redundancy, heavier workloads or additional responsibility.

Touch more primitive anxieties. This seems particularly true of climate change, where fears of having done irreparable damage to the world or guilt about greed can easily be stimulated

In the face of such anxiety, defensiveness is natural. What is unique about organisations, however, is the opportunity to frame the defence in terms of the organisation's culture and systems. In each of the British Standard Objections, recourse was being made to some aspect of the culture or workplace system that was seen as part of the natural order or beyond the individual's influence. In 1980s local government, this tended to be the well-established routines, roles and hierarchies of an inward-looking bureaucracy.


Do any of the following sound familiar?

It's not competitive, It won't be profitable, There isn't a market, It will inhibit innovation, The board/customers/IT department/sales department won't like it, We can't afford it, We haven't got time for it, It will reduce efficiency, It's not viable for a small company, It's not viable for a large company … and so on.

Avoiding an impasse involves a two-fold approach. Systems have to be reviewed but the anxieties stimulated by demands for change must also be understood and dealt with. If they are not addressed, they will fuel resistance to change, usually through a strong defence of the existing system and culture.

Rosemary Randall is a psychotherapist and originator of the Carbon Conversations project. She writes and lectures widely on the psychology of climate change and is a contributor to the new volume edited by MaryJayne Rust and Nick Totton Vital Signs: psychological responses to ecological crisis, to be published by Karnac in February 2012. Her blog is at
