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It’s hard to explain, Tom, why we did so little to stop global warming
Madeleine Bunting, Guardian
Looking back, 40 years on, we were intoxicated with an idea of individual freedom that was little more than greedy egotism
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Poor you – they’ve set you a difficult question for your school essay. I’ll try to help, although I still find it difficult to understand myself, let alone explain to a grandson, why we were so slow in tackling climate change. I would love to be with you to talk about it all because I think about very little else now, but I don’t have any carbon allocation to travel to the new settlements in Scotland, so here I sit in the library by the window overlooking a London I don’t recognise these days. I’ve taken a day off our senior citizens’ vegetable plot to walk here and queue for my internet slot.
Looking back, Tom, I remember that 2006 was the time when climate change really became a mainstream issue. There was a film by a US politician and a report by the Treasury – and, of course, David Cameron first began to take up the issue that was to define his political career. The mistake at that point was obvious even at the time: the politicians were still pretending that tackling climate change wouldn’t require a big change in lifestyle.
…But none of us can claim to be guilt-free. The generational truth and reconciliation inquiry made that clear. You found details of a rally on November 4 2006 of 14,000 and asked if I was there? Well no, I wasn’t, and I don’t have much excuse – “too busy” seems pretty pathetic now. How can I explain to you why I drove thousands of miles every year, and lived in a draughty old house that pumped central heating on to the pavement? Why weren’t we all clamouring on the streets for the politicians to do more, demanding that our government impose sanctions and launch boycotts of the countries refusing to collaborate in cutting emissions: all of this eventually happened, but by then it was too late.
…A debate developed between those who believed it was possible to change our lifestyle without pain – that we could be seduced into changing our ways – and those who disagreed, arguing that this was a moral issue and that it would involve concepts such as self-denial and self-sacrifice.
The latter were deeply unpopular – even alien – to a consumer culture built on entitlement. “Because you’re worth it” ran an ad slogan, and we really believed we “needed” the foreign holidays and the repeated buzz of consumer novelty. No matter that such entitlement required an endemic cultural blindness to inequality (no one could ever explain why one-fifth of the world’s population was entitled to such a gigantic share of its natural resources).
The problem was that we were intoxicated with an idea of individual freedom. With hindsight, that understanding of freedom was so impoverished that it amounted to little more than a greedy egotism of doing whatever you wanted whenever. We understood freedom largely in terms of shopping and mobility (we were restless, and liked travel of all kinds). The idea that the most precious freedom of all was freedom from fear gained force much later. I don’t blame the politicians as much as all of our collective madness.
(6 Nov 2006)
Scientific news grim for UN talks on global warming
Anne Chaon, AFP
PARIS – An upcoming UN conference on climate change is taking place against a darkening background of scientific news, for barely a week goes by without a major study adding to a tall pile of distressing evidence.
Doubts about the reality of global warming that were significant half a dozen years ago have today shrunk to zero, leaving only denialists and fossil-industry lobbyists in opposition.
…Such is the backdrop to the November 6-17 meeting of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the parent of the Kyoto Protocol on curbing dangerous greenhouse gases.
(4 Nov 2006)
Green Power on the march: Thousands unite to rally against global warming
Ian Herbert, Colin Brown and Michael McCarthy; The Independent
People power comes to the fight against climate change today as Britain witnesses its biggest march and rally demanding the Government acts against the threat of global warming.
From the rock band Razorlight to members of the Women’s Institute, from the singer K T Tunstall to the Bishop of Liverpool, the expected crowd of 20,000 in Trafalgar Square will be as wide a cross-section of society as can be assembled anywhere.
…Two polls show that public concern over the climate is rising steadily, with more than half of Britons now saying that they would accept green taxes to cut pollution, and 40 per cent saying a party’s climate change policies would influence the way they vote.
(4 Nov 2006)
At 2 TV Stations in Maine, What Al Gore’s Movie Says Isn’t News
Joseph B. Treaster, NY Times
How important is global warming in Maine? Not important enough for local television.
Michael Palmer, the general manager of television stations WVII and WFVX, ABC and Fox affiliates in Bangor, has told his joint staff of nine men and women that when “Bar Harbor is underwater, then we can do global warming stories.”
“Until then,” he added. “No more.”
Mr. Palmer laid out his policy in an e-mail message sent out during the summer. A copy was sent to The New York Times. Mr. Palmer did not respond to a phone message left with an employee of the stations nor to an e-mail message. But a former staff member confirmed the e-mail message that went out during the summer after the stations broadcast a live report from a movie theater in Maine where Al Gore’s movie on global warming, “An Inconvenient Truth,” was opening.
Mr. Palmer began his e-mail message: “I was wondering where we should send the bill for the live shot Friday at the theater for the Al Gore commercial we aired.”
Mr. Palmer said he wanted no more stories broadcast on global warming because: “a) we do local news, b) the issue evolved from hard science into hard politics and c) despite what you may have heard from the mainstream media, this science is far from conclusive.” Mr. Palmer said in his e-mail message to his operations manager and two women who served as a news anchor and a reporter that he placed “global warming stories in the same category as ‘the killer African bee scare’ from the 1970s or, more recently, the Y2K scare when everyone’s computer was going to self-destruct.”
(30 Oct 2006)
No comment necessary.
A climate change on climate change
Might Bush shift course and move forward on the Kyoto Protocol?
Daniel Schorr, Christian Science Monitor
WASHINGTON – Around here, when they talk of climate change, they usually mean change in the political climate.
Now the change in the climate on global warming presents President Bush with the opportunity for the kind of legacy-building reversal of policy that led President Reagan in his second term to embrace Mikhail Gorbachev and the former “evil empire” in Red Square.
Until now, the Bush administration has turned its back on the Kyoto Proto- col requiring some three dozen industrialized countries to meet specific deadlines for reducing their greenhouse-gas emissions. He called the treaty “unrealistic” and not based on science.
…The president’s opportunity for a shift in policy comes next week. Even while America is voting, the signatories to the Kyoto Protocol will be meeting in a two-week session in Nairobi, Kenya.
As of now, the Bush administration will participate in the sessions dealing with voluntary action to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, to which the United States is a signatory. But the US is not scheduled to participate in the phase of the conference dealing with mandatory action.
At stake is whether Mr. Bush, in the twilight of his tenure, will join other advanced countries in creating the infrastructure necessary to start moving away from fossil fuels and perhaps save the melting icebergs.
No one should expect the president to reverse himself and submit the treaty to the Senate for ratification. But, then, no one expected Mr. Reagan to show up glad-handing Mr. Gorbachev in Red Square, either.
Daniel Schorr is a senior news analyst at National Public Radio.
(3 Nov 2006)
A U-turn on climate change by President Bush may not be as unlikely as it seems. In an under-reported speech, Bush reportedly regrets global warming, energy policy decisions. -BA
