Climate Change - radical action NOW!
I went to a lecture on Climate Change by Sir David King, the recently retired Chief Government Scientist, in the Bristol Council building this week. It was packed - about 400 people waiting to hear the facts and the arguments put by someone with impeccabble authority. He delivered it all in a dry, academic style that employed facts and research to drive home the message that time is short. Among the more chilling revelations was that England will be largely flooded under the Worst Case Scenario, if we don't rapidly re-build our flood defences and drainage systems. There was much talk of the upper limit of tolerable carbon emissions of 450 parts per million in the atmosphere. This is what the international community is working to, but in order to achieve it there needs to be very rapid and radical action right now - not next year or after the 'next round of talks'. Asked what his own recommended upper limit would have been, he suggested 300 ppm.
So - how does this leave us all feeling? Most people seem to be stunned into inactivity by such talk. Those of us who talk publicly about Climate Change are advised never to alarm people lest we generate despair. Yet is seems to be only a form of desperation that drives people to take really effective measures. My own view is that we need to see this as a moral issue as well as a practical one - and go from there, making our own small (or big) changes as we respond to our own moral questioning. Decent behaviour isn't something we need to argue about, is it?
I would be interested in your thoughts. We are tackling these issues in a new book to be called What About China? It will be out in the Spring.
posted by Alastair @ 10:49 am
5 comments
5 Comments:
I work for Cambridge University Press and we publish some exellent text on Climate Change, I guess getting people interested enough to act is difficult because in your life you are distracted by the need to generate cash to survive and fail to be able to see the future and it horrific potential.
I agree that morals or values-based decisions are required. The trouble is we don't believe the information we get about the climate impact of the products and services we buy and so don't make the best values-based decisions. Research indicates that 54% of consumers are willing to make personal sacrifices to prevent global warming. But only 10% trust the guidance they receive from business and government on this issue. We need better more credible information to make the right values-based decisions about the products and services we buy. There is a free downwload that may be of interest at: http://www.accountability21.net/publications.aspx?id=1090
Too many people are 'passively eco' - they think that by recycling their wine bottles they are doing their 'bit'.
A friend said this evening that she couldn't 'do' green because she has four children - this I find difficult to accept - surely that is the exact reason to be ecologically responsible?
Perhaps fear IS what people need to focus their minds on the task in hand.
Hen
We have a responsibility to our kids and grandkids and greatgrandkids and so on.Today Al Gore is more famous than he was when he was the Vice President of United States, and we all know why. I guess we need to support hotels/resorts which are ecofreindly to further the cause. One such example is the Wild Elephant Resort in Munnar, Kerala, South India. The website address is www.wildelephant.net and the resort is truly ecofreindly.
I attended the same lecture when Sir David King gave it at the London School of Economics whilst he was still in office, and also found him very impressive and the message scary.
Obviously accepting personal responsibility and regarding it as a moral issue are both good, but then so are apple pie and motherhood. It is much harder than that.
Firstly, we have to accept the implications of saying that climate change is the top priority (which I think is the case). If we truly believe that, then we have to reconsider our position about a number of things:
1. Climate change is not the same as environmentalism. Being concerned about climate change is just one aspect about being concerned about the environment, and however unpalatable it may be we have to be willing - if it really is the top priority - to give it priority over other environmental issues and reconsider attitudes to eg nuclear power, and similar things, rather than taking the intellectually untenable position of avoiding the choices.
2. The moral position is potentially awful. One could reduce the carbon footprint of the richest people in the world to zero, and the impact on the atmosphere would not be noticeable. The problem is that huge numbers of poorer people each individually emit much less carbon per head, but collectively their carbon footprint adds up to a catastrophe. Does equality matter more than climate change?
3. Whether we like it or not the last forty years or so has demonstrated that one of the most effective ways of changing behaviour is through the price mechanism (eg as money and gasoline are both getting more expensive Americans are stopping buying SUVs). The only way of using that mechanism is through government action (and probably carbon trading too) - but turkeys don't vote for Christmas, so it is hard to see governments pledged to raise prices and potentially reduce living standards consistently winning elections. Ironically totalitarian governments may have a much better chance of imposing change, if they come to believe in the need.
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