I wasn't sure what to call this piece. My first thought was The Curse of Cassandra, closely followed by What's the F*****g Point. I settled on a derivation of the phrase The Elephant in the Room. That seemed most appropriate because it's dealing with a subject that is so big and scary and bound to change our lives fundamentally that most people prefer to ignore it, or claim that it doesn't exist.
I must admit that I have a tendency towards depression. Some people will use that last sentence to dismiss all that I say, but no, there's a lot of factors behind my occasional mood disorders, one of them being a tendency to face and try to work my way through problems rather than shy away from them. Despair and depression come from an inability to find a solution. Kitten videos just don't work for me.
I woke up this morning full of things that I was going to do today, perhaps too many things, but my mind was also working away at apparently unsolvable problems. Strangely the last straw was to find that we'd run out of toilet paper, a very unusual problem as Em usually stocks up for about 6 months ahead. I could simply have gone to the corner shop to get some, but instead I lay down in the spare room and wrapped a duvet over my head.
Back in 1973 I had a job driving a little van for TV hire company Multibroadcast. My friend Geoff Monaghan also drove for them. I'd already pretty much rejected the usual path through life, career, mortgage, marriage, 2.4 kids etc and had my concerns about what our species was doing to our planet. I came across 2 things that underlined my concerns. One was the Club of Rome. Limits to Growth report, one of the first major computer modelling exercises that concluded that, unless our species controlled growth in population, pollution, energy use, etc etc, sooner or later everything would screw up and we would suffer a population crash. The other was that our species was churning out carbon dioxide into the atmosphere faster than the plants and oceans were absorbing it.
I told Geoff about this. He didn't believe me. I didn't know what the consequences would be but I could see that they wouldn't be good.
The Limits to Growth report was a warning. It should have been mailed to every person on the planet. Instead it was hardly mentioned in the media, dismissed, ridiculed and ignored. In the 50+ years since its publication the actual graphs of uncontrolled growth have closely followed the doompath projected by those old computers if we were to change nothing.
Being aware of this, I've tried to live my life with a pretty low impact on our planet. Now, people may think this would make me miserable. I have admitted to a tendency to depression, but I believe that I would have that I would have that same tendency even if I lived in a mansion and travelled in a private jet. So many rich people I have met who live sad lives of tension and conflict in spite of, perhaps partly because of, their wealth. Happiness and contentment come from within, provided that you have the basic needs of life.
Some people may say that my efforts to live simply, so that others may simply live (Gandhi) were futile. Perhaps so, but at least I don't have being a big part of the problem on my conscience.
Humans are good at solving problems. Remember the problem about fridges causing a depletion of the ozone layer that would cause us all to get skin cancer? All the countries of the world got together to ban the offending refrigerants and replace them with something less harmful. The ozone hole is still there, but it's shrinking.
Remember acid rain killing Europe's forests? I recall being at a talk about acid rain. The lecturer pointed out that the first sign of acid rain damage was "a sudden outbreak of blindness among foresters", ie, they just didn't want to see it. That's an important observation. By international agreement coal fired power stations now have scrubbers to remove the offending chemicals from their chimneys. In Britain we no longer use coal for power generation anyway.
So, what's the big problem about tackling the climate crisis? For most people it seems too big and its consequences too dire for them to dare to take their heads out of the sand. It also threatens their ambitions. Rich people want to get richer, poor people want to get rich and the destitute want, quite rightly, to stop being destitute. They're all in competition with each other and the fear is that, by stepping aside from that competition they'll slide back down to destitution again. This is particularly so in countries, even rich ones like the USA, with no viable support system for "losers" in the fight for wealth.
Everyone is locked into a struggle for resources. As John Lennon put it, "There's room at the top they're telling you still, as long as you learn how to smile as you kill". Of course, for most people it's not as stark as that, but everyone knows that the people who 'get on in life' are often the ones who are good at networking and buttering up the boss. Yes, I know, working hard (or getting your staff to work hard) to get results helps too. The result of this is people wearing themselves out, mentally and/or physically to be cast aside when they can no longer perform.
The same thing happens between nations, trapping their citizens into a rat race and often fostering distrust and hatred of those living in other lands. I grew up during the Cold War. The Americans and the Russians were competing to build more nuclear warheads than the other, even though they could each end life on Earth several times over. During the Cuban missile crisis I was 8, and terrified of what was likely to happen. Happily, they pulled back from the brink and I've lived to be a septuagenarian.
Some limited sanity in this area came along when Ronald Reagan watched a film called The Day After. This shows how getting out the true information rather than the propaganda can change things. Reagan's military top brass had been telling him that they could win a nuclear war, because their careers were boosted by him believing that.
https://collider.com/the-day-after-ronald-reagan/
This conversion of Reagan led eventually to the SALT talks etc, scaling down each country's nuclear arsenal. However, a major factor in the Soviet Union agreeing to reductions was that it did not have the economic capacity to carry on competing militarily with the USA. Capitalism had shown itself to be capable of superior economic growth to the USSR's command economy (masquerading as socialism).
Here's the big problem, which I don't have a solution for. Economic growth is bound to make our planet uninhabitable, but, our planet is divided into nations. If any nation eschews economic growth it will become less able to manufacture or purchase the latest weapons. Without the latest weapons that nation will become unable to deter and defend against aggressor nations. This is currently being demonstrated in Ukraine, where the greater resources of Russia has allowed it to gradually take over large parts of Ukraine, in spite of fierce and brave resistance. To many politicians, aware of the dog eat dog nature of international affairs, stopping economic growth would be suicidal, but so is carrying on with economic growth.
Strangely enough, Margaret Thatcher (who I despise) was one of the first major politicians to raise the issue.
Of course, then there's business. The rich want to keep on getting richer. They own the media and so control what information is shared with the rest of us. In the short term they can make more and more profits by selling us more and more stuff. They've got most people convinced that if they buy things that are bigger and better, if they fly away on holidays and cruises that are further and further away then they will become happy. Of course, to afford these things we'll have to work harder and harder (for them). In order to prevent change that may threaten their short term profits they pour vast amounts of funds into lobbying governments and promote online memes spreading disinformation about what David Cameron famously referred to as "green crap". This has led to politicians consciously moving away from the very solutions that could save our collective bacon even though they clearly understand how vital a transition away from fossil fuels is.
I don't get it. Oil company bosses are not stupid, though they may be a bit crazy. They understand the science. They have children and grandchildren. Perhaps they think that somehow their wealth will protect them from mass extinction. Certainly it is rumoured that the world's richest person has a bunker in Alaska. Talking about crazy, he seems to live in a sort of Dan Dare version of reality where escape to Mars while the Earth boils is a possibility.
The climate crisis seems to have become the issue that dare not speak its name. Frustratingly it's become a political issue between left and right, with the right currently gaining traction. I don't understand how atmospheric physics can possibly be a matter of political debate, any more than gravity or electrical conductivity can be. These are things established by scientific research and mathematical equations. I am clearly of the left, but like to maintain friendships among people of all political persuasions, as long as they're not actually promoting hatred. You may note that the two politicians that I have cited are right wing, but they accepted the evidence.
The most powerful person in the world claims to believe that climate change is a Chinese hoax, despite his own scientists having done much of the work on understanding it. It's a very personal thing. I have a friend who apparently understands the problem and lives a low impact life. He sometimes gets work on dairy farms and does not believe that bovine emissions are part of the problem, and yet the evidence is solid on this. Belief is a problem. I don't believe in belief. When someone says you just have to believe they mean that you should suspend all rational thought. I have friends who regularly fly, who drive everywhere, who go on cruises ( the absolute most polluting form of holiday) and yet I say nothing. Many of them understand the science but clearly think that somebody else should deal with the problem. How can I constantly be criticising my friends lifestyles.
If I talk about climate change, particularly if I mention the need for immediate action, I'm seen as a Jeremiah, a spoilsport, a party pooper etc, and yet, how can I not talk about it when it hangs above us like a tidal wave about to break and wash away our secure and comfortable lives. The dinosaurs didn't know the meteorite was coming. We know what's happening, but choose to pretend otherwise.
I plant trees, partly to replace the ones I use, partly to absorb a bit of carbon. I wonder what the point is. Probably they'll die in a catastrophic drought or get burned in a forest fire, but I have to hope that my little bit will help.
