Wow.
Tony Blair has called for the UK to face the reality of human-caused climate change.
This is a huge deal. Governments have traditionally said ‘we can’t know for sure’ – the same magic thinking I ranted about a few posts below, only writ large – out of motivation to avoid doing anything and make hard choices or cross big business. For the British PM to stand up and make such a claim as this will change the rhetoric a great deal.
Cal mentioned that Tony sounds like he is, personally, scared. And I think she’s right. That speech came out of his own realisation that his children are screwed if nothing is done.
He’s going to be under massive pressure to moderate his position. I hope he stands strong – he’s been bloody-minded enough over Iraq, after all. And I don’t think he’s going to achieve terribly much in concrete terms. He can kiss any Washington influence he actually has goodbye if he tries to make this an issue over there.
But it shifts the balance of power in the public debate, and that is a wonderful thing.
8 thoughts on “Blair on Environment: a welcome surprise”
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We are.
Doomed that is. There is simply no-one with an overall global view who has the power to do anything. People are inherently selfish and big business simply takes that and magnifies it through the focus of money.
No government can stop them. It’s that simple.
I really don’t think there is much hope and I don’t think Blairs comments will change much. Sure the enviro pundits will run out this quote for years to coem but it isn’t going to make a jot of difference in the long run.
I think Britian is confused about it’s role in international affairs and, to quote an editorial in the Hindu (the main national newspaper in India) it is ‘punching above it’s weight’. Just because England had a ‘exalted’ colonial empire deosn’t mean they are well placed to deal with stuff now. Maybe in some ways they are, but in other ways they aren’t.
In reality few people listen to them. The Commenwealth League of Nations is a ‘House divided against itself’ over key issues like Mugabes government and the coup in Fiji and human rights abuses in COGM nations.
I don’t neccesarily agree with the Thindu’s editorial, but he makes some points that are hard to ignore. The point is that England isn’t the world power it once was and that is shouldn’t assume that it’s previous power qualifies it to work as it is in today’s environment.
Anyway I am rambling. I am glad Blair said what he said, I just don’t think it’ll make a jot of difference in England or elsewhere. I hope it does, but I strongly doubt it will.
I disagree – I think it will certainly make a difference in Britain, and should help on the global scale.
In Britian they seem to have a relatively good climate change policy. Unfortunately it was focused on reaching the UK’s Kyoto target, which isn’t really enough. What Blair will provide is a bit of political wil to make them go further (their policy framework doesn’t seem too bad either; it’s been quite good at promoting renewable energy and targetting industrial emissions). And his means – a “new green industrial revolution” is a good way of carrying the business community with him. It’s something we’re going to have to do eventually anyway (the oil won’t last forever), and there’s a lot of money to be made by getting in on the ground floor.
As for the global scale, I don’t think he has a snowball’s chance in hell of convincing Bush. But what he will do is encourage the EU and other nations to keep going even if Kyoto doesn’t make its ratification threshhold. And that _will_ help bring about global change; it will just happen slower.
As for Blair being scared, I presume he’s read the IPCC Synthesis report or some version thereof. It’s pretty scary reading…
… and remember the old Comalco ads… Save the kakapo and f**k the forests!!
This is a good example of a government held to ransom… the aluminium smelter uses the output from an entire hydro plant, but the jobs are politically important enough to keep the thing running… The point is I’m really not sure governments have enough power over corporations… I think the lines of control go the other way. Look at the Bush family and the oil companies! I think maybe Tony will be out of there before very long, may realise that and may be saying this while he has some chance of being heard.
Making a real difference to the environment will take massive changes in attitude at the personal and corporate level, and by the time that happens things may have already gone too far. Most of these processes, global warming, pollution of water and attendent extinctions/changes in species distribution etc will continue for sometime once the causes are addressed. Many will be irreversible. The wave of extinctions and environmental changes is certainly unavoidable although I think we can still affect the magnitude…
But unlike Matt, I don’t believe we are necessarily fucked. There have been previous extinction events (though for different reasons), and the remaining species will doubtless radiate to fill the newly created niches. Life on Earth may look different in 10000 years, but I reckon it’ll still be here. And I expect many humans will adapt to the changes in conditions and survive, though they may end up looking kind of different too.
Hey Matt, I just re-read your comment…are people necessarily inherently selfish? You’re not, Morgue’s not, I don’t think I am… I can think of loads of other people who aren’t. Altruism is also part of human nature… and love, kindness, friendship…
I dunno, there’s something about the current paradigm that brings out the worst in people, but I think a lot of that is down to education, upbringing etc… at least I hope so… I don’t want to be incubating a monster!
I don’t think people are inherently selfish but bureaucracies sure as hell are. Their only aims are profit and self-preservation, and as there is no individual responsibility, morality and humanism are subsumed by these overarching goals. A company of altruistic individuals can happily and obliviously continue destroying our environment.
Well, personally I think that people _are_ inherently selfish. Even the altruistic ones are only doing it because it makes them feel good. But I disagree that this means we’re doomed.
Individual selfishness is actually why we have achieved what we have, and it is what will get us, as a species, through whatever is thrown at us or whatever we do to ourselves.
It may mean that “Western Civilization as we know it” is fucked, but while I enjoy the benefits of it, I don’t believe Western Civilization is the last great hope of the human race, that it deserves to, or even that it should, survive.
I frankly don’t care whether our civilization goes down the tubes in the long run, it;s happened before and it will happen again. Civilizations go in cycles just like anything else.
But humans are just too damn inventive and ornery for climate change to kill them off as a _species_ just by changing the temperatures by even tens of degrees (and, yes I _do_ know what that sort of change means).
We _might_ have been wiped out by something like that a couple of centuries back, we just didn’t have the numbers or neccessary tech, but it’d take something stellar that makes the planet completely uninhabitable by _any_ life-form to wipe us out now, and even that will only get us if we don’t have enough warning to get off planet in time.
Basically, if all else fails we just start genetically engineering ourselves, i.e: speed up the evolutionary process. Right now no-one is likely to do this sort of thing as it’s too risky and questionable ethically, even with willing test subjects.
But if it looks like the planet will become uninhabitable, risks will be taken, and ethics are something people only have time for when they’re not in a survival situation.
From a species development viewpoint, civilization collapse, a time of trial, a winnowing, would be better for our long term development than a time of peace and plenty.
We grow fat and lazy, and too far from the tooth and claw. The feral Nietzschean in me says about massive climate change – “Bring it on!!”
The hedonist in me disagrees, of course!
I’d also like to point out that the report in question does not show that it is neccessarily human action that is causing the climate change. Everyone (well, almost everyone) agrees the data show change, not everyone agrees as to the cause.
In fact, there is little evidence to support the “greenhouse gas” theory, as while the chemistry involved is beyond doubt, there is currently no feasible mechanism for those gasses to reach the altitude at which they would work as described.
Experimental evidence shows that these gasses do _not_ rise through the atmosphere as postulated. Basically, it doesn’t matter how much is released at ground level, it gets trapped and absorbed at ground level and doesn’t rise into the stratosphere as required by the theory.
Those pushing the theory have come up with increasingly wild ideas to keep the theory going, such as that it’s all the fault of intercontinental aircraft, and that is these alone that spill enough of these greenhouse gases to cause the effect.
This is at the expense of other, more feasible, mechanisms to account for climate change.
One such is now described :
Geological, biological, and even historical, records show that the planet’s climate was far more changeable for most of recorded history, the last 100 years or so seem to have been a calm spot in an otherwoise turbulent weather record.
Orbital mechanics shows that this calm period has coincided with either an aphelion or a perehelion (I forget which) in a Malenkov cycle. As we move away from this point the climate is _expected_ to grow more changeable regardless of what we do.
Thus the actual cause of the percieved change may not be something we can affect without some truly massive planetary engineering, and even then, there would be the question as to whether we _should_ modify our orbit just to make people more comfortable.
Having said that, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t push for emission controls, because such pollution has noticeable affects at ground level anyway, even it is not actually responsible for climate change. After all, it _might_ be a factor, thoriugh some as yet untheorized mechanism.
I do believe it is stupid to try to tax people for the emissions of cows, however. It would be better to tax politicians and corporate mouthpieces for speaking and breathing.
What I’m trying to point out is that humans are miniscule things, even as a species we are only a miniscule part of the biomass, and we shouldn’t just assume (because of our own inflated sense of self-importance) that even all of us put together have more affect on the planet than the power beamed at it by the sun, or the way we orbit that sun.
This has always been a human failing, from the presumption that any truly omnipotent god would care at all what a bunch of parasites on one small planet, at the end of a spiral arm in an insignificant galaxy, are doing, through the ridiculous conceit prevalent since the seventies that we have enough nuclear weaponry to destroy the planet, to this, that we are puissant enough to have more effect on a planet through our waste gasses alone than the gigantic unsheilded nuclear furnace sitting next to it and irradiating it daily!
Humans need some perspective!
Can you tell I haven’t had much to do at work today?
Did I say people are inherently selfish?
Oh, yes I did. I guess I should qualify my position. What I meant was that people at the level of society are inherently selfish. Basically people groups look out for themselves first and others second. Within any group there will be people whoi are more of less selfish.
But, once you get groups togeather they tend to promote and enforce their ideas at the expense of others. This includes the post modernists who impose their ideas of truth on others in numerous ways.
I should say that I don’t think selfishness = badness as many people seem to take it to be. I guess I am using the term very loosly in the sense of look out for myself and people/things I identify with. Obviously what people identify with will change from person to person and group to group.
Also I don’t really think it’s all that neccessary to mu point because I do think that corportations *are* inherently selfish. The care about one thing, their profitability.
So yeah, I would plae a lot of emphasis on whether people are inherently selfish or not. It’s not a big deal for me, I think I was just ranting more than anything else.
Incidentally I beleive this for theological reasons, but they aren’t relevant here.