We've known about the possibility of man made climate change for well over 100 years but it wasn't really until the 1980's that the idea fully entered public consciousness. Even then, the scientific community, bound by the evidence, was unwilling to say that it was definitely happening. They knew there was a mechanism, CO2 absorbs infra red radiation and then sends some of it back where it came, they knew that by burning fossil fuels we were putting more CO2 into the atmosphere, but we hadn't been measuring global temperatures for long enough, or well enough, to say whether the observed warming was down to us or was part of a natural cycle. There is now no such doubt.
This scientific reticence enabled those who had lots to lose, or little to gain, by admitting the possibility of anthropogenic climate change (i.e caused by us) to argue that it was just scaremongering. At best this led to indifference at worst to the idea that it was just an idea dreamed up by pinko liberals to give the state more control. Socialism by the back door as it were. The one thing that can be said about this position, now only seriously supported by the American right, is that at least it acknowledges that dealing with climate change will mean drastic changes in the way some of us live. Many others try to pretend that the rich 2 billion can somehow not only retain our high energy lifestyles but also that the poorer 5 billion can join in as well. All it takes is the right techno-fix and anyone who suggests that such a fix might not be possible is letting the side down by suggesting limits to human ingenuity. In an earlier post, Insulation and Bicycles, I suggested that two key technological innovations already existed but that, by implication, what was missing was the political will to take them seriously.
The few climate sceptics that are left, powerful though some of them may be, are having to make increasingly tortuous arguments to justify their position and what we're now left with is a debate not about the science but about if we can actually do what it is that we know we need to. It's gone from being a question about the science to questions about personal, social and political change.
As individuals we tend to adopt the value systems of those around us and we tend to favour evidence that supports our existing positions. If our social status is seen to depend upon our ability to demonstrate how much we can consume, conspicuous consumption, then it is unlikely that we'll want to lose status by restraining that consumption. We can't wish away our need for social status but, precisely because it is a socially defined quality, we can seek to change what we think gives us that status. Societies have existed, and can exist, in which status is defined in different ways; by how much you help your neighbours, by how much you know, by how well you can play an instrument, wield a paintbrush, make a chair, console the elderly, teach the young, look after public space. So, a start could be made by celebrating the lives of the rich and famous not by pointing at their bank balances, their ability to consume, but by the contribution they make to the common good.
This is easy to say, much much harder to put into practice. We can no doubt create little social bubbles where the individuals feel like this and are supported by others who feel the same way. We can all be cyber buddies, share witty pictorial memes, click on worthy petitions and go about our days in the happy glow of shared values. Meanwhile the rest of the world will carry on dancing to the tunes of the powerful vested interests that want to define us as consumers, to set us up against each other as competitors, define the rich and successful as winners, the poor and the needy as losers.
So, whilst its easy to see that consumer capitalism predicated on continued economic expansion in a world of clearly limited material resources is unlikely to come up with a solution we've still got no idea how to get from where we are to where we need to be. It's now a psycho-socio-political problem.
Of course, in a few centuries or so, the blink of a geological eye, we will have been obliged by ecological catastrophes of our own making to live in a very different way with a very different set of values. Quite how many of us the planet will then be able to support we'll just have to find out.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has a list of all the species at threat of extinction. The entry for Homo Sapiens from the global mammal assessment team says
"Listed as Least Concern as the species is very widely distributed, adaptable, currently increasing, and there are no major threats resulting in an overall population decline."
