The conveyor belt of storms pummelling Britain during the last few days has once again begged the question: is this evidence of climate change?
Advocates say yes. Deniers say no.
Advocates say that climate change was always forecast to bring more frequent, more severe weather, and these storms are just one such episode. Deniers say that we’ve always had extreme weather from time-to-time, and this is one of those statistically valid times. This polarisation is an apt illustration of Newton’s reconceptualised Third Law of Motion: for every force or action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.
When debating topics such as climate change, Brexit, Partygate, the water industry, the Royal Family (ok … ANY topic) one side tends to find a juicy ‘fact’ (an ONS statistic, for example) to support their stance, which is immediately countered by what appears to be an equally valid ‘fact’ to rebut that stance and support the opposing one.
There are indeed lies, damned lies and statistics, as attributed to Benjamin Disraeli or Mark Twain, depending on whether you’re a British Tory or an American literatus.
No one wins. Everyone gets frustrated.
I fall into the same trap. I aim to adhere to fact-based arguments and readily call-out those from the other side that aren’t based on ‘the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth’ (this principle having originated in the common law jurisdiction of medieval England, if you’re that bothered) but that rely heavily on uncritically regurgitating the Guardian or Daily Mail or Messianic luvvies.
What to do? WTF to do!
Sometimes the facts, or lack of, aren’t to blame for an impasse, but different world views. For example, I was ping-ponging with a mate about the water companies polluting our rivers and coastlines. We couldn’t agree. At all. And we never will, because whereas I’m comfortable with the denationalised industry model, my mate prefers ‘public-necessary’ industries to be state-owned. And whereas ‘corporate fat cats’ come in for a lot of criticism, I don’t object to the principle of hard-working, talented, in-short-supply buck-stoppees taking home a huge salary, bonuses and pensions, as long as they use their wealth to good effect, like propping up the local hospice or, as they did in days of yore, fund hospitals and education for their employees, and as long as the lowest paid aren’t too lowly paid.
Yes, there are issues with this stance and I could spend a few thousand words qualifying and ‘justifying’ it, but that’s not the point of this part of the blog. The point is that, all things being equal, winning an argument is impossible when the disputants support different fundamental principles as opposed to outcomes. So, while me and mate agree that pollution by the water companies is wrong, we disagree as to why it’s happening and how to solve the problem.
Back to Climate Change, which is where we started in case you’d lost the plot. Instead of me spouting stats and trends, I thought I’d try the qualitative, philosophical approach to argue my case that we do need to take climate change seriously and do something about it. I’ll set it out in a form of Q&A.
1) Is the climate changing? Yes. It’s continually changing – always has and always will. Homelands will be destroyed. Lives will be lost. Species will become extinct whenever and whatever. Cheery chappy, aren’t I.
2) Is the climate changing differently than it might be doing because of human activity, and to what extent? I think it’s pretty well universally accepted that greenhouse gases (carbon dioxide, methane etc.) influence the climate (and humans have increased their volume and decreased the ‘sinks’ like trees and meadows) but by how much is more difficult to argue without referring to scientific data, which the opposing side can bat-and-ball as I’ve already pointed out. So let’s leave that one hanging.
3) Should we focus on just protecting ourselves against the consequences of climate change or should we moderate our activity to reduce our impact on the climate? In the absence of definitive science or universal acceptance of the existence of the concept, we should be prudent and moderate our activity just in case because, if we were to wait 20-or-whatever years until the science is more definitive (either way), it might be too late to do much about it and we’d be kicking ourselves that we hadn’t acted sooner.
4) Should we moderate our activity anyway as being better for all aspects of the natural environment, and indeed for all humans? Like what? Here’s just a few examples:
a. Waste less, so we wouldn’t need to produce as much; this would result in less pollution including greenhouse gases, from start to finish.
b. Consume fewer non-essentials, so we’d produce less, transport less, warehouse less, build less, which would result in less pollution including greenhouse gases, and less destruction of greenfield sites that include productive farmland and biodiversity havens.
c. Make the most of our natural environment as sustainable defenders against currently unsustainable problems, e.g. create and restore floodplain meadows to reduce flood damage. Meadows are great carbon sinks and biodiversity havens as well.
d. Fly less (well I would say that, wouldn't I), to reduce (you guessed it) greenhouse gas emissions, other air pollutants, and noise impacts.
What these all have in common is that, regardless of where you stand on climate change, you can’t argue that these wouldn’t be good to do anyway, and the reduced impact on the climate would be a fortuitous consequence. I can hear some bleats about ‘economic growth’ and ‘consumerism and tourism supports poorer nations.” This leads into another argument for another blog for another day – is the world rich enough already and shouldn’t we just re-focus on a fairer distribution of that wealth?
Answers on a postcard please.
No comments:
Post a Comment