[Mb-civic] Global Warming: Mocking Our Dreams

[ean at sbcglobal.net]

2 takes on climate change and the Kyoto agreement--One from 
George Monbiot and the other from Al Gore....

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0215-25.htm

Published on Tuesday, February 15, 2005 by the Guardian (UK)
Mocking Our Dreams
The reality of climate change is that the engines of 
progress have merely accelerated our rush to the brink
by George Monbiot
 

It is now mid-February, and already I have sown 11 species of 
vegetable. I know, though the seed packets tell me otherwise, that 
they will flourish. Everything in this country - daffodils, primroses, 
almond trees, bumblebees, nesting birds - is a month ahead of 
schedule. And it feels wonderful. Winter is no longer the great gray 
longing of my childhood. The freezes this country suffered in 1982 
and 1963 are, unless the Gulf Stream stops, unlikely to recur. Our 
summers will be long and warm. Across most of the upper northern 
hemisphere, climate change, so far, has been kind to us.

And this is surely one of the reasons why we find it so hard to 
accept what the climatologists are now telling us. In our 
mythologies, an early spring is a reward for virtue. "For, lo, the 
winter is past," Solomon, the beloved of God, exults. "The rain is 
over and gone; The flowers appear on the earth; the time of the 
singing of birds is come." How can something which feels so good 
result from something so bad?

Tomorrow, after 13 years of negotiation, the Kyoto protocol on 
climate change comes into force. No one believes that this treaty 
alone - which commits 30 developed nations to reduce their 
greenhouse gas emissions by 4.8% - will solve the problem. It 
expires in 2012 and, thanks to US sabotage, there has so far been 
no progress towards a replacement. It paroles the worst offenders, 
the US and Australia, and imposes no limits on the gases produced 
by developing countries. The cuts it enforces are at least an order of 
magnitude too small to stabilize greenhouse gas concentrations at 
anything approaching a safe level. But even this feeble agreement 
is threatened by our complacency about the closing of the climatic 
corridor down which we walk.

Why is this? Why are we transfixed by terrorism, yet relaxed about 
the collapse of the conditions that make our lives possible? One 
reason is surely the disjunction between our expectations and our 
observations. If climate change is to introduce horror into our lives, 
we would expect - because throughout our evolutionary history we 
survived by finding patterns in nature - to see that horror beginning 
to unfold. It is true that a few thousand people in the rich world have 
died as a result of floods and heatwaves. But the overwhelming 
sensation, experienced by all of us, almost every day, is that of 
being blessed by our pollution.

Instead, the consequences of our gluttony are visited on others. The 
climatologists who met at the government's conference in Exeter 
this month heard that a rise of just 2.1 degrees, almost certain to 
happen this century, will confront as many as 3 billion people with 
water stress. This, in turn, is likely to result in tens of millions of 
deaths. But the same calm voice that tells us climate change means 
mild winters and early springs informs us, in countries like the UK, 
that we will be able to buy our way out of trouble. While the price of 
food will soar as the world goes into deficit, those who are rich 
enough to have caused the problem will, for a couple of generations 
at least, be among the few who can afford to ignore it.

Another reason is that there is a well-funded industry whose 
purpose is to reassure us, and it is granted constant access to the 
media. We flatter its practitioners with the label "skeptics". If this is 
what they were, they would be welcome. Skepticism (the Latin word 
means "inquiring" or "reflective") is the means by which science 
advances. Without it we would still be rubbing sticks together. But 
most of those we call skeptics are nothing of the kind. They are PR 
people, the loyalists of Exxon Mobil (by whom most of them are 
paid), commissioned to begin with a conclusion and then devise 
arguments to justify it. Their presence on outlets such as the BBC's 
Today program might be less objectionable if, every time Aids was 
discussed, someone was asked to argue that it is not caused by 
HIV, or, every time a rocket goes into orbit, the Flat Earth Society 
was invited to explain that it could not possibly have happened. As it 
is, our most respected media outlets give Exxon Mobil what it has 
paid for: they create the impression that a significant scientific 
debate exists when it does not.

But there's a much bigger problem here. The denial of climate 
change, while out of tune with the science, is consistent with, even 
necessary for, the outlook of almost all the world's economists. 
Modern economics, whether informed by Marx or Keynes or Hayek, 
is premised on the notion that the planet has an infinite capacity to 
supply us with wealth and absorb our pollution. The cure to all ills is 
endless growth. Yet endless growth, in a finite world, is impossible. 
Pull this rug from under the economic theories, and the whole 
system of thought collapses.

And this, of course, is beyond contemplation. It mocks the dreams 
of both left and right, of every child and parent and worker. It 
destroys all notions of progress. If the engines of progress - 
technology and its amplification of human endeavor - have merely 
accelerated our rush to the brink, then everything we thought was 
true is false. Brought up to believe that it is better to light a candle 
than to curse the darkness, we are now discovering that it is better 
to curse the darkness than to burn your house down.

Our economists are exposed by climatologists as utopian fantasists, 
the leaders of a millenarian cult as mad as, and far more dangerous 
than, any religious fundamentalism. But their theories govern our 
lives, so those who insist that physics and biology still apply are 
ridiculed by a global consensus founded on wishful thinking.

And this leads us, I think, to a further reason for turning our eyes 
away. When terrorists threaten us, it shows that we must count for 
something, that we are important enough to kill. They confirm the 
grand narrative of our lives, in which we strive through thickets of 
good and evil towards an ultimate purpose. But there is no glory in 
the threat of climate change. The story it tells us is of yeast in a 
barrel, feeding and farting until it is poisoned by its own waste. It is 
too squalid an ending for our anthropocentric conceit to accept.

The challenge of climate change is not, primarily, a technical one. It 
is possible greatly to reduce our environmental impact by investing 
in energy efficiency, though as the Exeter conference concluded, 
"energy efficiency improvements under the present market system 
are not enough to offset increases in demand caused by economic 
growth". It is possible to generate far more of the energy we 
consume by benign means. But if our political leaders are to save 
the people rather than the people's fantasies, then the way we see 
ourselves must begin to shift. We will succeed in tackling climate 
change only when we accept that we belong to the material world.

George Monbiot's website is www.monbiot.com

© 2005 Guardian Newspapers, Ltd.

###

***************************************
BUSHGREENWATCH
Tracking the Bush Administration's Environmental Misdeeds
http://www.bushgreenwatch.org
***************************************

February 16, 2005

GORE CLAIMS BUSH HAS 'CRISIS' ANALYSIS ALL WRONG 

Today the Kyoto Protocol enters into effect for the 141 nations
that are signatories to the treaty. While most of the
industrialized world has signed on to this global effort to
combat climate change, the United States, the largest emitter of
greenhouse gases, has been noticeably absent from the process
since the Bush administration's withdrawal in 2001. Yesterday
former Vice President Al Gore spoke out on the Kyoto Protocol,
below are excerpts from his speech. 

"Unfortunately we have also seen over the last few years a
decision on the part of the Bush White House to withdraw from
the global process by which this crisis is being confronted.
President Bush has instead directed the nation's attention and
resources toward false crises while refusing to acknowledge a
real crisis that is unfolding right before our eyes..." 

"...Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq and the alleged need for
privatizing Social Security are examples of false crises. But
here's a real crisis staring him in the face that desperately
needs leadership from the President of the United States and his
financial supporters in the oil and coal industry don't want him
to acknowledge the reality of the crisis so he pretends that it
doesn't exist. And he relies on individuals who are pretty much
- their relation - the people he relies on relate to the
scientific community pretty much the way that phony reporter
related to the White House Press Corp..." 

"The Kyoto Treaty formally takes effect tomorrow and it marks
the beginning of the world's first legally binding effort to
deal with the climate crisis. It is an historic event. It will
be the first of many efforts that will follow Kyoto, all of
which will build on Kyoto. 

It is unfortunate that the United States has abdicated its
responsibility to join in leading this effort and I hope that
the Bush White House will rejoin the coalition of the willing
and confront this issue. 

During the seven years since Kyoto was first addressed, we have
learned a great deal. First, we have learned that the scientific
evidence for the climate crisis is even stronger than was known
seven years ago. A recent paper in Science, for example,
examined every single peer reviewed scientific journal article
from 1993 to 2003 that contained the phrase "global climate
change". Of the 928 articles that used that phrase, not a single
one disagreed with the consensus view that current climate
change is caused by human activity -- not a single one. There
have been faux controversies created by other articles but not
any peer reviewed scientific article..." 

"During the last seven years we have also learned that the
solutions to global warming will be cheaper and easier than was
thought when Kyoto was first drafted. A lot of major companies
including Intel, DuPont, BP, Alcoa, and others have reported
cost savings totaling billions of dollars as a result of
programs to reduce heat trapping gases. Technologies for
improving the efficiency of coal combustion have taken big
strides forward as have technologies for capturing and storing
heat-trapping gases offering some new hope for using plentiful
resources without worsening the climate crisis..." 

"Because the US has abdicated national leadership California and
states in the Northeast have filled the leadership vacuum and
have taken steps on their own. It is vitally important that our
federal system be allowed to operate in confronting this crisis.


It takes a moral courage to attack a real crisis and this
current administration has failed to demonstrate moral courage
and has failed to confront this real crisis. But the problem is
so vast that there is a great need for leadership from other
quarters such as from California and the Northeast compact
states and I applaud them and applaud the selected companies
that are providing leadership in confronting this crisis..." 

"Now can the protocol be effective without US participation?
Eventually the US must participate. All multi-national companies
located - based inside the United States will have to comply
with the Treaty that takes effect tomorrow with respect to their
operations in 141 different countries and 34 industrialized
countries. The United States and Australia are really the only
industrialized countries in the entire world that are not a
party to this treaty. 

Companies based in the US already have to face tougher
environmental restrictions in China than they do in the United
States and this process is going to accelerate and so the
dynamic created will eventually lead our country to join this
process. It will start to be effective even without US
participation but it will only become truly effective when the
provisions are toughened and when the US does join the
process..." 

"There is with the Bush Administration an unreality bubble that
will burst. The rest of the world is beginning as of tomorrow,
for the first time in a legally binding way, beginning to
confront the reality of the climate crisis. By choosing to stick
his head in the sand the Bush Administration not only
embarrasses the country when the world expects leadership from
the US but it also puts our economy at risk by encouraging
illusory decision making. 

The rest of the world is going to begin to constrain carbon
emissions and those businesses that are lulled into a false
sense that there is no problem and they don't have to take steps
to solve the problem are going to find themselves facing much
tougher competition in the global marketplace from competitors
who adapt to the emerging new reality that the rest of the world
begins to embrace tomorrow..." 

### 


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