Hot air

(Copenhagen, Denmark)
This week world leaders enjoy another junket at the expense of the taxpayers as they gather in the Danish capital to achieve nothing and then issue the usual self-congratulatory statements. The subject apparently under scrutiny this time is the thorny question of climate change, upheld as a crusade by some and dismissed as hot air by others. However, the money the politicians waste is symbolic of the money we worship, and the arrogance of the politicians is nothing more than a reflection of our own.

The issue of climate change is apparently based on empirical facts, and those who attack the critics use this as a weapon of immutability and finality – you cannot dispute a fact. However, scientists can be wrong, they can be paid to be wrong, they can lie, they can be paid to lie and they always, without fail, contradict each other. If the statistics and models of climate change were facts, everyone would agree about them, in the same way that everyone agrees that the moon orbits the Earth and not the other way round.

But nobody agrees, principally because of the different vested interests – the same vested interests that pay for the tests that provide the “facts”. Why should I believe a “green” scientist any more than I believe a scientist who works for a tobacco company or a car manufacturer? This is not to say that there is no climate change or that the world is not about to come to an end – it is simply a belief in questioning everything, especially what we are told by governments and journalists.

We are told that we can say goodbye to our way of life – which in simple terms means that we will have to find another way to pay the rent. This means that those who are heeding the warnings and are manoeuvring themselves into a position of advantage are doing so in order to be able to continue making money – it’s not ecology it’s economy. It’s not about survival in a post-global warming world it’s about survival in the new, revised capitalist system.

The whole issue is not even about the world per se, it’s about the world as a place in which humans can continue existing. The whole thing is fuelled by the same human arrogance that has put us in this position, and that is reprehensible.

We are also told that our children and grandchildren will lead damaged lives – perhaps they will by today’s criteria, but this is simply an extension of the way we, with an equal mix of stupidity and vanity, judge all things past and future by present criteria as if this was a perfect moment in time and that that perfection came from our superior intelligence and morality. We believe our children and grandchildren to be incapable of finding a solution, to be as ignorant in their treatment of the planet as we have been and to be too blind to see that they simply have to deal with the problems they inherit from their parents like every generation has done since the dawn of time.

I recently heard the climate change situation likened to a man’s daughter getting on a plane. The man asks the pilot about the probability of an accident, and on hearing the pilot’s reply that the probability would be around one in a hundred the man takes his daughter off the plane because the “potential loss is so great that the odds are unacceptable”. Quite apart from the obvious chauvinist slant, this story is indicative of the arrogance of the present-day West with regard to all future generations, but more importantly of the West towards the developing world. I’m worried about my affluent future, so you have to stop trying to drag yourselves out of poverty.

Whatever the politicians decide this week it will be irrelevant. We will continue to go out to work in order to make more money while the vast majority of the population that lives in poverty will slide further into misery. We will continue to claim higher moral ground at dinner parties based on an over-reliance on what we are told are facts and we will continue to believe that the world should be saved in order to provide a safe haven for us, and only us, because it’s everyone else that is wrong. And unfortunately we will continue to vote in the same suits and ties so they can burn more oil to attend a conference where they will spout hot air and do nothing.

And so on until the end of the world.