Views on Climate Change

For a time when I was growing up, a dehumidifier was placed outside the door of my bedroom. Before long this low level mechanic whoosh of circulating air became intermingled with the tides of my sleep and whenever it was turned off I found my fatigued mind wrestling with the silence that then seemed to drench the house.

You may consider it a tenuous association, but I see this as being analogous to the psychological conditioning of humanity to the background hum of impending global disaster. Predominantly, this is a 20th century phenomenon, as the industrialisation of war modernised the historic threat of land invasion to bring about death from the skies above from often unseen forces. This developed into the 'mutually assured destruction' of the Cold War when, in one giant leap for mankind, we finally mustered the firepower to bring about the death of the planet, or at least human existence on it.

This imminent threat of catastrophe sought to stoke the fires of the ingrained millennial Christian conviction that the physical world was proceeding on borrowed time before the arrival of the apocalypse and God's reckoning. Contrary to logical reasoning, I would argue that the background drone of possible global annihilation is the pessimistically comforting foundation blocks on which civilised societies construct obedience and maintain subordination to systems of power.

The potent concerns surrounding global warming and the major implications of climate change on human existence appear to fulfil this pathological criteria. It is interesting to consider, that the cultural stock of environmentalism has risen in parallel with the end of the Cold War, the pronounced 'end of history', and the relative decline in large-scale international conflict over the last two or three decades; almost as though it has sought to exploit this widening gap in the market.

Whilst fractious global politics ensure that the nuclear threat is still omnipresent, and fundamentalist terror has adopted the role of the 'unseen' spectre of death, climate change is now the single greatest threat to our survival. An IPCC report earlier this year stated that 'human influence on the climate system is clear. It is extremely likely (95-100% probability) that human influence was the dominant cause of global warming between 1951-2010.'

It has also been predicted that by 2100, a 4oC rise in average global surface temperature is increasingly likely; a scenario that would have profound consequences for large regions of the planet and untold numbers of wildlife species.

Of course, there are the deniers, the dissenting faction who persist in waving aside the evidence with deranged ambivalence that claims the world has constantly undergone natural fluctuations and man is powerless both the exacerbate the current cycle of warming and prevent its taking place. They point to the apparent hiatus in temperature rises since the end of the 20th century as evidence of global warming slowing and stabilising (although recent reports have discredited this as being illusory).

These nay-sayers may well be right, but it does seem bizarre that in their stubbornness they can be wilfully blind to the wealth of evidence as presented; akin almost to denying the affair of one's partner despite the sounds of their sexual activity penetrating through the wall. Before long they will be there in the same room and by then any attempt at denial will blatantly be futile.

And yet what is most alarming is that the clever pigs we elect to office appear content to obfuscate around real debate and meander around solid action until the whole farmyard inevitably immolates.

The latest Conservative-led coalition was promoted by an Arctic-striding Cameron as being 'the greenest government ever', and yet now he allegedly passes secret instructions to "ditch this green crap" when situations no longer suit him to keep to his promise.

Meanwhile Australia elect Tony Abbott, a climate-sceptic in all but name, who has rolled back many of the state's green initiatives, cutting funds for renewable energy industries, and frustrating G20 nations by omitting any mention of energy policies from the on-going summit discussions this year.

China, the world's largest-superpower-in-waiting, have built more coal-fired power stations than any other in the last couple of decades and, along with India, still plan for several hundred more in the next few years.

In America, in place of (or alongside), aims at securing the natural resources of foreign regions, Obama has initiated a policy of energy isolationism, locking down the resource security of the country, and declaring that they will strive to achieve a "century of energy independence". This is a statement of such myopic stupidity that it barely justifies extrapolating into reasons.

As well as this, there is the fact that the 2001 Kyoto Protocol was undermined by Clinton signing the treaty but never ratifying it, before Bush withdrew the US signature altogether claiming it to be contrary to American economic interests.

Such a policy directly justifies Noam Chomsky's view that 'it is beyond irony that the richest, most powerful countries in the world are racing towards disaster while the so-called primitive societies are the ones at the forefront of trying to avert it'.

For instance, Ecuador has sought aid from richer nations to encourage them to leave their fossil fuel supplies in the ground instead of exploiting them, thereby escalating emissions. Venezuela, whose nationalised oil industry amounts to around one-third of the country's GDP, under Chavez started to strictly adhere to production quotas set by the OPEC.

In many way though, western civilisation has caught itself in a double-bind, whereby the prevailing thrust of industrialisation and post-war consumerism has seriously hobbled our ability, or our desire, to alter ingrained attitudes and expectations. The fundamental changes to human thought processes and actions that are demanded by environmental science represent an abrupt tack to a new direction that stands as a harsh contrast to the way we live now in the 21st century.

Two centuries of rapid industrialisation, as well as an unprecedented expansion in wealth and opportunity has been predicted on the mantra of 'more more more!' More of everything is good for progress; there is little sense in holding back, is the underlying principle that has fuelled the rapid explosion in human productivity and the simultaneous depletion of the earth's resources.

It is my view that, by our very nature, humankind is likely doomed to ineffective and reluctant inaction over climate change. The relatively fractional span of our lives renders it a natural humanism to be psychologically anchored in the short-term. The primary concerns that people consistently have are on circumstantial, economic and employment fields that are fertilised with policies and choices made with the immediate short-term in mind, whilst anything on a bigger or longer-term scale is left psychologically fallow.

The human sense of time is simply not engineered to effectively fathom centuries or millennia; the enormity of the scale only serves to emphasise the reality of our own insignificance which appals and demoralises us, and so instinctively we turn away and occupy ourselves with concerns on which we are more significant. Collectively, we prioritise our immediate needs over the needs of the generations to come.

This psychological cleaving to the short term can be seen, more effectively I think, by examining our relationship to our own self.

Humans have an age-old proclivity for intoxication through substance abuse. As we work longer hours and for diminishing returns, precious leisure time is often overwhelmed by the ritualistic vices of drinking, smoking and drug use; and adult obesity rates in the UK now stand at around 25% and rising. All stands as evidence of our prioritising short term pursuits of pleasure over concerns for future health. This ingrained complacency and a natural bias towards meeting ephemeral needs, represents the ozone layer through which the long term rays of decisive action are diminished to little more than a begrudging and fickle concern.

Governments, often themselves terminally short-termist, are more inclined to promote small scale policy initiatives that serve as little more than the guilt assuagement of the individual, who is lead to believe that by putting their recycling in the correct coloured bin and turning lights off on leaving rooms, they are 'doing their bit' to apply the brakes to civilisation's high speed train running swiftly out of track.

By focusing effort on this 'cult of the individual' (i.e. the latest 'Green Deal' initiative), governments are able to avoid tackling the big players - the major companies with their factories, infrastructure systems, and power stations.

In terms of the future, I think it's important to consider two areas - human and political.

It's already very easy to detect the amnesiac tendencies at play as soon as any environmental event is dropped from the news agenda. The public uproar at the winter floods are a prime British example of how such fevered concerns are quickly abandoned amidst the constant tidal surge of distraction and information in this digital age.

I think it's possible that this could signify a future whereby ever more frequent ecological catastrophes are dealt with by a stoicism and an acceptance that is only ever reactive rather than preventative. However, I think a society enlivened by youthful demographics may experience a profound surge in activism, a spate of eco-terrorism perhaps, and a strong desire for change to which governments - as they have with every momentous movement from Civil Rights to Women's Liberation - may eventually find themselves having to acquiesce.

Perhaps we might enter a new 'eco-Enlightenment', in which the social conventions, behaviours and belief systems of the masses are shaken into flux like an ideological snowglobe, before resettling into forms from which meaningful resolutions might be affected.

I believe that generations to come will look back on the Industrial Revolution and the environmentally-destructive epoch of globalisation with justified anger at their forefathers' short-sighted folly, and lambast their moral decrepitude as we do to ours for the slave trade and other archaic social prejudices.

Politically, energy resources have already become the major driver for any and all diplomatic international relations. Whereas in recent decades such motivations have been camouflaged by other issues as a pretext for war; in the future, wars will be waged explicitly as a means of securing or appropriating further shares of the world's natural resources, in what will for the planet as a whole be a zero-sum game. This is evident in the on-going Ukraine/Russia conflict as well as the broiling tension between the Chinese and Vietnamese over an deep-water mining rig the former have planted in the latter's sovereign waters.

It seems to me, that some kind of overarching global autocracy will necessarily need to be established. Perhaps adopting the guise of an Eco-United Nations, in which equal nation's delegates may sit in governance, above their respective national powers, to negotiate and cooperate on tackling climate change.

As such an imperative issue that ultimately threatens the entire world, it strikes me that remaining embedded in the often-intractable international rivalries and short-term obfuscations that gestate naturally from democratic systems, imperils the chance of real progress and dilutes it down into an inactive sludge that does nothing but generate further apathy.

With that in mind, the idea of less democracy and instead a form of benign despotism on the subject of global environmental policy might be the preferable option. Instead of governments formulating policies aimed at galvanising the individual, or that adhere solely to self-interested aims; a transnational body would have the executive power to enforce policy and emissions targets with punitive economic sanctions aimed at countries that fail to comply, as well as the strength of authority to resist powerful nations such as America from riding roughshod over any proposals.

On a micro level, perhaps an attitudinal shift away from consumerism towards environmentalism might result in more provincial eco-economies, with small communities banding together to produce and meet their own energy needs. On a macro level, maybe China, India or even Africa, as the 21st century's fastest developing continent, will launch game-changing space-based solar power capability, in which case the geopolitical structure of power could shift dramatically.

Or maybe, thinking of a utopian ideal, future generations might bastardise the utilitarian principle to proceed based upon seeking 'the maximum eco-efficiency (happiness) for the greatest number', whilst reducing emissions (pain and suffering) as far as possible.

Either way, for global warming to be decisively tackled so that human life on earth manages to sustain itself long into the future, drastic changes to personal and political attitudes need to take place, particularly if we hope to ever be able to sleep peacefully without the comforting hum of impending doom rolling on ad infinitum in the background.