Before I start I’ll say, if you haven’t already noticed, I'm a cynic and a pessimist. I’m a cynic because I live in London and the place breeds cynicism. I’m a pessimist because it means that I’m never disappointed. I’m not really a pessimist but I’m more pessimistic than I am an optimist.
Being bored with Climate Change is a very off message comment. I almost feel ashamed saying (writing) it. Its old news now except it’s the kind of news that just won’t go away. Come to think of it it is recorded in the newspapers but as it isn’t even new news how can it be described as news? Still, that isn’t my gripe with it. Here are my Climate Change gripes:
1) Seen it, heard it, experiencing it
Haven’t got the t-shirt but when I buy a hemp one I’ll let you know.
2) Its too late
What’s too late? We’re too late. The scientists are too late.
3) Human Nature can’t be changed
We all know that wars are bad and yet we carry on having them. Through history one of Man’s many defining achievements has been his affinity with war. Its something that we do a great deal of, its something we do well, its something that some of us enjoy a great deal, and we as a collective whole make a great deal of money out of it. Somewhat perversely it also provides the catalyst for our greatest inventions and entertainment. To fight amongst ourselves seems to be human nature.
So for this fight against Climate Change we’re expected to draw together as some kind of homogenous non-competitive happy family and say ‘no’ to C02, to curtail our industrial growth (I’m looking at you China and India) and say ‘yes’, the planet’s health is more important than modernity and all that defines modernity? As part of this mass pissing on bonfires we’re also expected to change radically how we carry out our daily lives, turning our backs on our entire history – no more ‘me, me, me’ and instead ‘oooh, save the planet’.
And we’re expected to do this preferably in the next 8 years (UK government) and at most by 2020. I need to check these target dates, and those of the beached whale that is Kyoto.
We’re also meant to do this in an environment which is changing rapidly around us, where fuel prices are going through the roof, and fresh water is becoming a scarcity whilst there’s going to be a big problem with the saltier stuff.
4) We’ll war before we tackle the environment
Frankly I reckon there will be a war before that happens. The good news is that we’re well practiced at war. The bad news is that it isn’t really the answer this time. It’ll help decide who controls the natural resources that are most important (I’m looking at you freshwater), but in the big picture we’ll still all be screwed. Just for the record, I reckon that the war will start somewhere in central Asia and will involve the stans, Iran, India and Pakistan. It’ll be to do with limited water resources as there are only two major supplies in the area (Himalayan meltwater and the Caspian Sea and the rivers that flow from it), and a whole swathe of countries depend on them. And if climate change is going to continue the way it is predicted then these resources are going to be radically reduced.
5) Climate Change is a 21st Century Millenium Bug
i.e. its all a load of crap. Climate Change (CC) is all a bit of a cult. Dare to say that CC is a myth and that nobody really knows and you’ll be slated as some God-fearing intelligent design believing Texan oil megalomaniac, which is absurd. There is so much supposition in all these dire warnings of what ‘might’ happen in the future if we don’t mend our ways. Articles are full of ‘may’ and ‘could’ but nobody ever says ‘we don’t know for sure’ as that would cast doubt on their findings. And might it not be the case that all these pronouncements of the imminent green holocaust are only coming about because nobody has ever bothered to investigate this part of science before?
Denouncing Climate Change is a Thought Crime.
6) Solar Flares
Blame it on the Sun. The sun is getting hotter, and all the other planets are getting hotter, so it stands to reason that that is why we have global warming. I have absolutely no evidence of this as I have done no research on it but it sounds like a good argument to me. Of course I’ll do some research and probably find out that Exxon sponsored it and then I’ll be torn between the inter-galactic answer and the no less partisan Friends of the Earth conclusion.
7) The need to fear
Its good to be scared: we thrive on it, except we’re a bit short of things to be fearful of. We’ve had in the last century: War, Nazis, War, Communism, lots of wars, Terrorism, Globalisation (how quaint), Millenium Bug, Terrorism, Environment.
[Aside: notice how the anti-capitalist anti-globalisation movements collapsed when we realised that a) we liked the internet and b) cheap stuff comes from China]
We now need to be scared of the environment. How else are the mega-corporative military industrial complexes going to foist new exciting green ways of driving cars. Look, it runs on bio-fuels. No more being nasty to the environment. Hope the factory it came from was green and powered by sustainable sources. Robots do need a lot of electricity.
8) The Earth has a blowing hot and cold cycle
It gets hot and then it gets cold. When it gets hot things dry up, and when it gets cold it gets icy. Not much we can do about it. Maybe this should be slotted in the inter-galactic category.
9) Carbon Footprints
Not something that Father Christmas leaves on the carpet but the big new phrase. I’m terribly worried about my carbon footprint but I allay this fear by fastidiously recycling my newspapers and taking public transport. The irony is not lost on me that my recycling is carted off in a great big diesel powered truck and put on another great big diesel truck and taken to the coast where its put on a great big heavy fuel powered ship and carted off to China to be turned into loo roll in a great big factory powered by a great big coal burning power station and is then put on another great big heavy oil fuelled ship and chugged all the way back to my loo roll holder via more diesel powered trucks before being wiped on my bum, flushed down the loo, processed in a nuclear powered filtration place before being chucked in the sea.
And I only take public transport as I don’t have a chauffeur driven Mercedes to cart me to work and if I could afford a Mercedes I would probably instead have a Hummer just so I could sneer at all the other less fortunates stuck in the bus all thinking what an oil-guzzling bastard I am whilst conveniently forgetting the energy expended in making sure their bums were kept clean and their consciences clear.
Conclusion
We’re screwed. Its too late, we’ve missed the boat, and even if we hadn’t missed the boat (which by all accounts we’ll be needing) we would still miss it. There is no way in hell that we are going to achieve the targets we have set for ourselves. This doomsday scenario that the eggheads keep on telling us is incoming will happen, and will happen when they say it will. I just don’t have faith in the human race changing its ways before it is too late. This opinion doesn’t even take into account the opinions of most of the big industrial nations. China is starting to think seriously about its polluted water-ways and lack of drinking water but play this off against the new coal power station it builds every week and the resultant industrial revolution it is undergoing. India too has a rapidly expanding economy. That’s just two countries that are expected to stop right now and think of a green way to do it. I mean come on, its just NOT GOING TO HAPPEN.
Oh, and if does all turn out to be as threatening as a circus clown (subliminally frightening but overtly harmless) by then we’ll all be tootling about in electric hover mobiles with wind vanes on our heads and at least we’ll be greener, and no harm can really come from that…
