Cast Your Fate to the Winds…. Looking to the Great & the Good for Eco-Salvation?
What on earth are we to believe when it comes to global warming and the health of our planet? For every scientific claim that says unless we take drastic action now we are headed for catastrophic climate change, that the planet is grossly overpopulated and we will be unable to feed ourselves, that pretty soon most of our major cities will lie beneath the sea, that the tundra and glaciers are melting away - there are other scientific claims to say such claims are not just flat wrong, but in fact the exact opposite is true.
How can that be? Either the world population is growing, or it is not. It can’t do both. Either the world’s rainforests are being cut down or they are not; the glaciers are either receding or they are not; species are disappearing and the oceans dying, or they are not. You would have thought by now the science would be clear one way or the other about it, but somehow it doesn’t seem to be.
Do not be fooled. The science is clear. We are in deep environmental trouble. The major climate change deniers have all been conclusively rebutted. Martin Durkin’s film ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’ was shown to be scientifically invalid, Denmark’s climate sceptic Bjorn Lomborg was found to be scientifically dishonest (…but not criminally so - because, the investigating body said, he lacked scientific expertise in his subject!), the Australian scientist Ian Plimer was shown to have distorted the facts to suit his case. Or the meretricious Jacqueline Kusan, who would have you believe that the rain forest is not disappearing and that there are more trees, because she includes palm oil plants in her tree count. If our species falls for that kind of argument then we really don’t deserve to survive and should hand things over to the ants. And now, most recently, Christopher Monckton, an eccentric British peer, has been scientifically deconstructed and exposed as a fabulist and scientific buffoon.
And yet all the opinion polls tell us that the public at large increasingly believes that global warming is not something they need worry about and that its effects have been greatly exaggerated. This defies common sense and flies in the face of clear visual evidence over decades for all to see via satellite imaging of shrinking rain forests and photographs of massively retreating glaciers, quite apart from the vast preponderance of scientific knowledge to date.
How to explain cognitive dissonance on such a colossal scale?
The answer I believe, is not that we have been led astray by fools, liars or self-serving mountebanks, nor that don’t believe we are in deep environmental trouble. The sheer volume of post-climate apocalypse movies clearly shows that we do. The real reason, I feel, lies in our fundamental belief that there is nothing we can do about the predicament in which we find ourselves. A view that is essentially correct. There really isn’t a lot we can do as individuals that will make a difference and the collective will to act simply does not exist as yet. At this juncture we are simply not prepared to sacrifice our lifestyles except at the most superficial level. Any politician foolish enough to try to make us would not last long. And, as for us in Bali – we have opted out of any political process in any case and what we do or think counts for little. Even if we were prepared to accept effective action, we do not trust our governments to take the necessary steps to get it right nor to implement such steps fairly. We know some financial wide boys would co-opt the process and make a killing. Better by far the entire planet goes down the plughole than the Bernie Madron Green Hedge Fund should thrive….
We are, in short, paralysed into inaction by fear and ignorance or at very least wishful thinking. And that is something that will only change when the situation becomes so dire that drastic action is forced upon us. Deep in our hearts we know this but hope against hope that when it eventually comes down to it – it won’t be too late. Without conviction we look to our political leaders in the hope that among them there are sufficient numbers of the great and the good who, despite our lack of support, will nevertheless save our hides without our having to pay too high a price.
Are there grounds for hope here? It doesn’t look good. For almost 20 years, world leaders have gathered at regular intervals to discuss the threat of global warming with little to show for it. Hillary Clinton was being nice when she described last December’s Copenhagen climate conference as the “worst meeting I’ve been to since eighth grade student council”.
And yet leaving it to the Great & the Good may just be our best, if not only, hope….
US heavy hitters from the bygone Clinton administration, Strobe Talbott, former Deputy Secretary of State, and Bill Antholis, President and Senior Fellow respectively of Washington’s venerable independent think tank, the Brookings Institute, are the latest to step up to the plate with a call to climate action. They have effectively given up on the UN as the sole vehicle through which to tackle climate change. They argue the world’s most important powers, particularly the US, China, India and the European Union, should supplement multilateralism with “minilateralism”, since the number of participants is inversely related to the speed of action taken. I hope that’s not another way of saying goodbye to the Maldives.. but whatever the case it still leaves a lot of players to slow things down, even if it does work. A big ‘if’ given that domestic politics have, if anything, become even less favourable in Washington and Europe since last December. As for China, it seems to want to pollute at will while accessing first world clean technology to manufacture cheaply and sell back to us so at least we can clean up our act.
In spite of the recent launch of a watered down Senate bill to cap carbon emissions in the US power sector, the momentum has yet to show much sign of revival. Any Republican who votes in favour of what has already been dubbed an “energy tax” is political dead meat.
Talbott and Antholis are unapologetic in making the case that it is effectively now or never (the scientific consensus says 2015) for the world to begin to reverse emissions growth.
“Our forebears had the excuse of ignorance,” they write. “Our descendants will have the excuse of helplessness. We have no excuse.”
In the face of such challenges, we have to ask whether we have the collective stomach for what’s required of us. Right now, obviously we don’t. Likening the threat of climate change to that of nuclear Armageddon during the cold war, Talbott and Antholis point out it is far easier to mobilise opinion to tackle a threat of immediate destruction.
In contrast, the slightest flurry of snow is taken by sceptics as proof that climate change is a myth. Any variance or irregularity in the scientific consensus for climate change is seized upon by sceptics to throw out the baby with the bathwater. To deny climate change and the global environmental mess we have created on the strength of a few minor scientific procedural irregularities is now becoming the mark of a fool or a villain. It is equivalent to finding a needle in a haystack and then declaring there was no hay to be seen. Nevertheless the fallout combined with the Great Recession to stop the US legislative process in its tracks.
Improving on the political process that has stretched from Rio in 1992 to Copenhagen in 2009 will require “nothing less than a revolution in global civics - our understanding of our duties as citizens of the world”, they argue.
This must start with the recognition that “Americans are more responsible than anyone else both for causing the problem and for leading the search for a solution”, they say. Well, good luck to us all with that. The climate bill enacted in the US lower chamber last year stalled in large part because the upper chamber believed the cost would be too high for the average American to accept. That burden was estimated at between $80 and $400 a year.
Messrs Talbott and Antholis have produced a well-argued call for action. But people only respond to emergencies when they believe they are in one. Right now, most people clearly do not. And that means all of us in the developed world, soon to be joined by Chinese, Indians and Brazilians - it’s not just Americans.
