King Canute, Don Quixote and climate change

“We need system change to stop climate change” according to OLO blogger En Passant (OLO September 17).

No wonder people call me a denier. Certainly one of us is.

Here’s a fact: If there were no people on earth, none at all, the climate would keep on changing. So why lead an article with such a silly statement?

When King Canute set up his throne on the beach and commanded the tide not to rise he was acting in the certain knowledge that he would get his feet wet. He was demonstrating to his subjects that certain things are inevitable, that to believe otherwise is hubris, demanding powers not available even to kings.

This is a lesson lost on our leaders, who seem to be suggesting that we can stop climate change. We can’t.

Perhaps it’s true that anthropogenic activities contribute, but even so the forces that have been at work since the world was formed just keep rolling along.

Of course when they say ‘climate change’they actually mean ‘catastrophic anthropogenic global warming’(CAGW), but its handy to reduce that to a term that really has little meaning.

CAGW is the ideal political issue. It presumes a catastrophe from which the masses need to be rescued, and it’s caused by human activities that can be regulated and controlled.

It has the advantage of being long term, and the politicians who win election now will not be held to account. If temperatures continue to rise, it will be because we didn’t take the actions they proposed. If it stops rising, or in fact falls,  it will prove the efficacy of those actions.

No wonder Ban Ki-moon, Al Gore, Barack Obama, the CPA (Combined Politicians of Australia) and the political class generally embrace the concept. If you told me that there was a consensus supported by 97% of politicians I’d be inclined to suggest that you were erring on the conservative side.

What of the 300,000 people who turned out on the streets of New York? There was no obvious consensus demonstrated by the crowd.

The march has been compared to the demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, or Martin Luther King’s Freedom march in the 60s. There is, however, an important distinction that needs to be made.

The Vietnam protests had a single focus - they were protesting the war in Vietnam.

The freedom march on Washington had a single focus - the rights of a large part of the population.

The march against climate change?

‘Climate change’allows a multitude of opinions, many of them conflicting, to parade under the one banner. Very attractive to the average politician.

EP’s blog demonstrates this. A group of protestors are pictured, their banners read ‘Don’t frack with our water’. The relationship between fracking and climate change is not explained. Many would say that there is a good chance that natural gas would actually act to reduce carbon ‘pollution’.

This was an obvious feature of the march. It seems that every feel-good cause had its supporters, regardless of the relevance of the cause to the supposed issue.

Perhaps the dominant theme was anti-capitalist, which of course is the theme of EP’s blog. It’s a political issue. We can’t stop climate change unless we change the system.

And so on. Pick a position, google the evidence that supports your opinion, sign a petition, take to the streets, avoid the real issues. Tilt at windmills.

Fact: We cannot stop climate change.

There seems to be a moderate consensus among ‘climate scientists’ that the outcome is now inevitable, the tipping points have been passed, the climate will change, with all the dire predictions now certain. Even those who think we still have time agree that time is of the essence, and is fast running out.

Under the circumstances changing the system is no answer. Easy to say, difficult and time consuming to implement. By the time we overthrow the system we’ll be in a better position to evaluate the predictions of the climate scientists.

As a climate ‘sceptic’I now find myself in agreement with many who call me a denier - climate change is not the issue, what we do about it is. Ironically, what we should do about it is what we should be doing anyway, regardless of climate change.

What we should be doing about it has been acknowledged by the UN. Here are their 8 Millennium Goals, the objective is to achieve them by 2015:

1.        Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger

2.        Achieve universal primary education

3.        Promote gender equality and empower women

4.        Reduce child mortality

5.        Improve maternal health

6.        Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria and other diseases

7.        Ensure environmental sustainability

8.        Global partnership for development

Every item on this list requires political will and genuine leadership, commodities in rather short supply. All are achievable. Better to encourage division and debate about the reality of climate change. Divert attention by setting up other windmills to keep the electors amused, rather than grapple with issues that require thinking outside our political predilections.

Despite the many faults of the capitalist system, it’s still the world’s best hope for achieving these goals. I’d prefer to try to fix the problems in the system than rely on some socialist vision. Exchanging commissars for capitalists, history tells me, will benefit nobody except the commissars. Easier to get rid of the criminals in our existing system.

Big business is the dominant player in the renewable energy business. BP and Shell are major players in solar and natural gas. AGL is a major investor in wind farms in Australia. The profit motive that drives them can have positive results. It’s hard to see it happening at all without huge amounts of capital.

The opinions of pessimists who find their natural home in the various ‘green’organisations I find repulsive. I enjoyed Don Aitkin’s OLO posting (September 9). He quotes the author of many IPCC reports, Stephen Schneider: “We need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination…So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements and make little mention of any doubts…Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest.”That statement speaks for itself.

Nor do I support the solution proposed by many - the reduction of the world’s population from billions to millions by allowing, even encouraging people to die. Fewer people would indeed reduce our demands on the planet, but might better be achieved by education and the improvement of living standards.

As Aitkin concludes: “…there is very little about climate science, global warming or saving the environment. Climate change appears to be an instrument to other ends.”

Protest marches to stop climate change contribute little. Environmental sustainability is not about stopping climate change. It’s about learning to live sensibly, and if that’s our goal problems might be seen in a different light. Sources of energy might be evaluated on their appropriateness - wind farms, for example, so expensive and ineffective in a country like Australia, may be just the shot for many island economies where electricity is usually supplied by diesel generators.

One rarely perceives any solutions on offer in protest marches. It’s a lot harder to come up with solutions than it is to find fault with the way things are. Gandhi’s exhortation to ‘be the change’meets with no acceptance. Hit the streets, sign petitions, post on social media, insist that other people be the change.

“Everything is changing,”to quote Will Rogers. “People are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke.”To update Will, we should group ‘pop stars’with the comedians.

Leonardo DiCaprio has no credible qualifications on climate change, nor do others in his profession to my knowledge. Their job is to help us escape reality, not deal with it.

Teenagers flock to concerts and listen to Sir Bob and Bono, as do our leaders. They may have good intentions, but the money they raise and the actions they recommend are, in the opinion of many, doing more harm than good. Read “Dead Aid”by Dambisa Moyo, an economist who has the advantage of being a native of one of the countries they seeks to rescue. Perhaps it’s time to listen to the locals, and stop imposing our own cultural preconceptions on them!

Attending such concerts allows us to have a good time while pretending  we’re doing some good, as does joining other like-minded individuals on a protest march.

We can reasonably assert:

1. We can not stop climate change.
2. Changing the system is no short-term, even mid term solution. History suggests that it would be a retrograde step. However, we’re certainly stuck with the system we have for the foreseeable future. Live with it.
3. There are better people to trust in these situations than politicians, their hangers-on and the stars of stage, screen and radio.
4. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Take Gandhi’s advice.
5. The least the marchers should do to make a difference is to clean up after themselves.