We’re in trouble, no mistake. Every credible scientific source warns of impending environmental catastrophe. Every day delivers another calamitous statistic, tipping points approaching, scientists’ worst expectations realised.
Then, when you think it couldn’t get anymore intractable, Exxon and Halliburton are in the White House. Even the feebly modest Kyoto agreement is blocked. Cars and aeroplanes just get bigger and more numerous, with projections of exponential future growth. Even those few newspapers that run environmental features drown them in adverts for 4x4s and 2-4-1s to Paris. For every single warning about over-consumption, a thousand imploring us to over-consume.
Still that’s the situation and we’re stuck with it. That’s what we’ve got to address rapidly or go the way of the thylacine. That’s my candidate for the real bogeyman.
Not everyone agrees. Some maintain this bogeyman is just a bogeyman. There is no impending environmental crisis, or if there is it has nothing to do with human activity. Melanie Phillips is one. She believes that herself and a handful of uncelebrated scientists understand the situation better than NASA. Who am I to argue, but I’ll stick with NASA.
Matthew Parris isn’t far behind. He accepts climate change is happening, but he doesn’t think the evidence of its linkage to human activity is proven. Contrary to the world’s leading climatologists, he thinks we need to look into it a little further, otherwise carry on pretty much as we are. He also wonders whether our fear of such catastrophe might just be a standard facet of our psyche, whether or not that threat exists. We’ve lost biblical Armageddon, thankfully, but gained nuclear Armageddon – now we’re inflicting eco-Armageddon on ourselves, too. Like Phillips, Parris suspects my real bogeyman is just another traditional bogeyman.
I’m not sure of Nick Cohen’s position on global warming but it doesn’t seem to rank too highly in his fears. Since his overnight conversion to neo-conservatism (or since the rest of us shifted to fascism, as he see it) his principle concern has been the threat of radical Islam.
What this threat might actually involve it’s impossible to tell. His new allies at the Pentagon have already concluded that environmental destruction is a far greater threat to human survival than retail terrorism, so it can’t be that. If he is privy to The Protocols of Islam I think it’s time he let the rest of us have a look, so we can judge for ourselves. Otherwise his position seems very strange. It’s not so bad to leave subsequent generations with no habitat, just so long as they don’t get converted to Islam on the way. Let our granddaughters die, if corporate logic demands it, just don’t let them die wearing burkas.
Sadly, even some traditional leftists (that’s Trotskyite-Islamo-Fascists to Nick Cohen) still treat this bogeyman as an object of ridicule, rather than a real and growing threat. Any mention draws wounded, bitterly sarcastic responses: “So you think we should start reusing toilet paper? Working class people don’t deserve cars and holidays? What sort of a future is that? Let’s all die of pessimism. Complete pie in the sky anyway. No politician who promises to reduce growth will ever get elected.”
To emphasise the selflessness of this stance the consumer rights of ‘all workers of the world’ are also cited: “So, people in India don’t deserve cars and holidays? They don’t have the right to aspire to the things we take for granted?”
In all the above cases it seems to me that another kind of bogeyman is at large: Fear of change. Not least, fear of reduced living standards. Many of us have become used to having money to throw about, and an endless supply of products and services to meet it. Cheap hi-fis and exotic holidays, all washed down with lots of booze. The parents’ generation couldn’t have dreamed of it. Much of the vitriol levelled at environmentalism stems from the horrific thought of this luxury-tap drying up. Weaned onto perpetual purchasing, many of us are traumatised by the mere mention of a slow-down.
Also, quite understandably, people feel indignant at the suggestion that they’re doing something wrong, particularly when it’s something that they cherish. People set their hearts on their products, their cars, their holidays. It’s always annoying to hear criticism of things you desire, or already proudly own, even worse to hear them being blamed for the awful state of the world.
Still, there are greater pains than these. If you accept the scientific consensus on global warming then resisting and obstructing action is morally wrong. Consumer rights don’t enter into it. No matter where you’re from, Coventry or Beijing, no generation of humans has the right to steal from subsequent generations. The motoring aspirations of humans in 2006 can’t be allowed to reduce the life expectation of humans in 2026. How fair would that be on the future workers of the world?
As for the unelectability of candidates who seek to slow growth, well that’s something that will have to change, one way or another. We’d do well to remember universal suffrage and free healthcare seemed impossibly idealistic goals a century ago, yet now we take them for granted. And if the stakes are as high as them seem then we really have no option. If it’s change or perish then it has to be change.
Then some fears are peculiar to some people. If you’ve built your political life around a particular ideology it must be daunting when it turns out to be a disaster. Matthew Parris was a cheerleader for Thatcherism. If that policy is driving us to extinction, then whatever has he been preaching all these years? That’s why he waxes lyrical to the point of incomprehension. He can’t address the science of climate change because science isn’t on his side. Science would tell him it’s all been a terrible mistake, and we need to change course. Not bedtime reading.
Melanie Phillips fears the spectre of communism. She thinks environmentalism is a left-wing plot to derail the monetarist revolution. To some degree, I suppose it has to be. Thatcherism has always been slash and burn and may the most powerful and ruthless win – the very behaviour that has brought us to this point. For scientist Phillips however such conclusions are quite out of bounds. Indeed if the answer to any question isn’t unbridled neo-liberalism then the question must be wrong. If science concludes Milton Friedman is killing us, then it is science that must be at fault. There is no alternative.
Nick Cohen’s big fear we’ve already met, but his reaction to it is also noteworthy. To fight Islamic terror he’s allied himself with its central cause – Bush and Blair’s “war on terror”. His own paper recently confirmed this. Soon after the London bombings Cohen claimed “We all know who was to blame for Thursday's murders ... and it wasn't Bush and Blair.”, yet this month The Observer reported that the “Home Office inquiry into the deadliest terror attack on British soil has conceded that the bombers were inspired by UK foreign policy, principally the decision to invade Iraq.” This is a man who wants to fight terrorism?
Just the same, if he is shrewd enough to fear climate change he couldn’t have picked worse bedfellows. The Bush administration is hell bent on long-term destruction, for short-term booty. Oil and arms, stalking the globe.
What can’t be denied is that there’s a market for this stuff. Much as there are plenty of columnists happy to disseminate doubts about climate change there are a great many people who want to read them. It’s comforting to be told not to worry, that everything is going to be just fine. But it’s a cruel trick. When you hear what real scientists have to say on the subject, and discover the track record of the maverick scientists, and hear which oil companies have funded their ‘independent’ research, such hopes crash back to earth.
I for one would be delighted if Melanie Phillips turned out to be right. Few things would make me happier. But the weight of hard evidence smothers the dream. Her desire for the world to be as she wants counts for nothing. Comforting dreams cut no ice in the physical sciences, and dreams are all she has.
And that’s why climate change is worth worrying about and biblical Armageddon isn’t. True, the sensation caused by each is probably much the same. Rather than momentary blind terrors they’re overarching fears, dark clouds always present at some level of consciousness. But the fact that the kind of fear is the same tells us nothing about the reality of the threat. Armageddon was never scientifically defended, it was always pure unassailable myth. By contrast, human induced climate change has been studied intensively.
Whether or not these kinds of fears have some innate component is hardly the point. What matters is that some fears are bogus and others are justifiable. If anyone’s getting medieval it’s the climate-change deniers. They’re the ones waving the obscure texts, and warning us away from science. They’re the ones preaching unquestioning faith in the everlasting, regardless of what evidence is put before them.
References:
http://www.melaniephillips.com/articles/archives/000255.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1065-2113244,00.html
observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,1525172,00.html
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,,1745085,00.html
