This is by Martin Wolf in the FT this morning:
Last week the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was reported to have passed 400 parts per million for the first time in 4.5m years. It is also continuing to rise at a rate of about 2 parts per million every year. On the present course, it could be 800 parts per million by the end of the century. Thus, all the discussions of mitigating the risks of catastrophic climate change have turned out to be empty words.
Collectively, humanity has yawned and decided to let the dangers mount. Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, director of the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College in London, notes that when the concentrations were last this high, “the world was warmer on average by three or four degrees Celsius than it is today. There was no permanent ice sheet on Greenland, sea levels were much higher, and the world was a very different place, although not all of these differences may be directly related to CO2 levels.”
This is an economic reality. We tackle climate change or we imperil life, if not in our own lifetimes then at the very least in those of our children and grandchildren.
The problem, as he notes though, is that this is a distant horror. And the reality of present over-consumption appeals more. So we go on, blindly. His analysis is to why that is the case is compelling.
As he suggests:
Most people believe today that a low-carbon economy would be one of universal privation. They will never accept such a situation. This is true both of the people of high-income countries, who want to retain what they have, and the people of the rest of the world, who want to enjoy what the people of high-income countries now have. A necessary, albeit not sufficient condition, then, is a politically sellable vision of a prosperous low-carbon economy. That is not what people now see. Substantial resources must be invested in the technologies that would credibly deliver such a future.
Yet that is not all. If such an opportunity does appear more credible, institutions must also be developed that can deliver it.
Neither the technological nor the institutional conditions exist at present. In their absence, there is no political will to do anything real about the process driving our experiment with the climate. Yes, there is talk and wringing of hands. But there is, predictably, no effective action. If that is to change, we must start by offering humanity a far better future. Fear of distant horror is not enough.
And yet that horror is already a wholly foreseeable, and nigh on certain, economic reality.
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ironically we are missing a great chance to give life a deeper meaning and function in a healthier way. Wolf is right to say there is great fear of change – the attitude of keeping one’s corner going at all costs is very powerful as well as less ‘developed’ countries wanting what we have. Unfortunately, most people don’t change unless the problem is coming through their front room window. The macro-psychology seems similar to the micro. The last 30 years of a ‘who dies with the most toys wins’ attitude has hardly helped.
You mentioned Tony Judt’s ‘Ill fares the Land’, in a blog yesterday, Richard. In the context of this blog I cannot do other than reprint the quotation that opens that book:
“I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they absolutely refuse to move at all.”
Alexis de Tocquelille.
It seems to me that this captures both the reaction to climate change and the economic and political context in which it is taking place. There is no movement whatever on the former and any theory or innovation suggested for the latter (and thus something that may take us out of this spiral to destruction) is dismissed unless it is part and parcel of the neo-liberal orthodoxy.
Personally I’m in no doubt whatsoever that the greatest crime against humanity that the neo-liberal project will be seen to have delivered will be the destruction of a climate able to support life almost anywhere on the planet and its replacement with a world where large areas are uninhabitable due to flooding, drought, and so on. This will have little or no impact on the 1% or global corporations who will simply relocate – as they already do – consequently the chance that any political or economic action will be taken to address climate change is and will remain zilch.
I fear you’re right
I fear you’re right, but I very much hope you’re not! There is a growing awareness of these issues, but currently a lack of understanding of the solution – and there is a solution. The problem is the political will.
I still think it’s possible that within the next three to five years we could see a groundswell big enough to bring about change – on the basis that all the issues are connected – inequality, climate change, poverty, wellbeing, happiness, etc, and because the consequences are felt by people from all backgrounds and all over the world.
The greed of neo-liberalism is starting to over-play its hand (as it always must) and we will see substantial changes.