Knowledge and Opinion
As evidence for the eco-catastrophe to come accumulates, we are thinking less about the environment and doing less to avert calamity. As scientists produce research which firms up their previous warnings of climate crisis, the British Social Attitudes Survey reports that public anxiety about the environment has actually lessened. The latest scientific evidence reports that the threat of eco-catastrophe is growing, yet some 37% of the population think that environmental threats are exaggerated, up from 24% in 2000. Whilst scientists have made it all the more clear that the burning of fossil fuels is the key factor behind global warming, the proportion of people that believe fossil fuels contribute to climate change has fallen from 35% to 20%. In other words, there is a remarkable dissonance between knowledge and opinion, a growing gap between what scientific research reports to be true and what people believe to be true.
That gap between knowledge and opinion is ominous. Civilisations falter and perish by the distance that grows between knowledge and opinion. In such circumstances, societies lose the ability to act effectively, to respond rationally to crises. Knowledge becomes isolated, the preserve of elites, and comes to be ignored by the people. When people no longer seek knowledge, no longer trust knowledge, they revert to believing in what they want to believe in. There is no way out of crisis once this acquiescence in ignorance becomes prevalent. The politicians who have let this situation fester, the journalists who have fed this turn from reason, the advertisers who have manipulated emotions to sell their wares, the individuals who consumed this ignorance, should all be proud of themselves.
We can certainly point the finger at the business world, where billions are spent on stimulating wants, spreading disinformation, greenwashing and buying political influence. Abandoning the capital economy is unthinkable, even as the house burns down, the atmosphere is polluted and we gasp for air. Given the systemic and structural dependence of government upon the private economy, it comes as no surprise to learn that politicians also subscribe to the same view that the capital economy is the only game in town. Like PR men and advertisers, politicians appeal to the emotions and not to the reason, flatter the consumer’s self-image, talk a lot about the aspiring classes and sell visions of a future that cannot be delivered, but serve to keep the drones on the treadmill.
We can certainly blame a certain kind of "journalist", who taps into the rag bag of the popular Id and feeds people their own prejudices back in semi-literate form. The punk poet John Cooper Clark wrote a great poem about the Daily Express which includes these lines: ‘This paper is mindless, boring and mean; full of pornography, the kind that’s clean’. That pretty much sums the Daily Mail up too, the paper in which Richard Littlejohn describes the Met Office as ‘little more than a full-time government-funded global warming pressure group’. Littlejohn points to snow in winter and exclaims: ‘Yet the 'climate change' fanatics still insist that, despite all evidence to the contrary, the planet is getting hotter.’ All evidence? What evidence? Can Littlejohn et al cite any evidence - other than snow in winter – that falsifies the case for global heating? He denigrates scientists as ‘fanatics’ and yet offers nothing but abuse and ridicule against their reason, evidence and explanation.
There are plenty of people who will point to the rain and the cold and think they have falsified scientific theories for global warming. Peter Sissons, supposedly a journalist of quality, did precisely this to the Green MP Caroline Lucas, and speaks with a phoney outrage in his autobiography about the way she treated him (with well deserved contempt, it seems.) Meteorology deals with the weather, climatology with the climate. It is a simple enough distinction. And it’s an obvious enough trick. They all do it. ‘Whatever they agreed at Copenhagen to tackle 'global warming' has obviously worked. It hasn't stopped snowing since.’ (Richard Littlejohn It's brass monkeys time as hell freezes over Daily Mail 8 Jan 2010). Hilariously, Littlejohn thinks that the distinction between meteorology and climatology is mere semantics. ‘Ah, say the 'experts', there's a difference between 'weather' and 'climate'. They are forced to resort to semantics to sustain their insistence that the science Is settled, even though they are all sitting there shivering like brass monkeys. They'd still cling to their belief in man-made warming if Hell froze over.’ (Richard Littlejohn, It's brass monkeys time as hell freezes over Daily Mail 8 Jan 2010). Note how Littlejohn puts the word ‘experts’ in inverted commas, implying they don’t really know anything and are making it all up. That question of expertise is easily settled – let Littlejohn and other such journalists do some serious work for once, research the subject and offer the evidence and explanation that can withstand proper scientific examination. We don’t need to make any predictions about Littlejohn and his beliefs. Seven of the hottest temperature in recorded history have come in the ten years after 1998. Yet Littlejohn still clings to his belief in global cooling. I may be doing him a disservice, but I have read his article and the only evidence he has for cooling is snow in winter. It’s like pointing to the heat in summer and claiming that as evidence of global heating.
It bears repetition, but there is a distinction between ‘weather’ and ‘climate’ and anyone who doesn’t understand that is hardly qualified to speak on climate change and global heating. I first came across the distinction in the Grolier children’s encyclopaedia, book 2 has a section entitled ‘Weather and Climate’. It’s the kind of elementary science that a six year old is expected to know. Unfortunately, we are living in an age of infantilism.
I doubt that Littlejohn is bothered either way about the science. Suffice to say more fool anyone who gives this kind of journalism any credence. I don’t know who is most deserving of contempt, the journalists who write this nonsense, or the people who read it. A record melt has just been reported in the Arctic. The news must have reached even those who live in caves. Time to move on to real science and address people at the level of reason rather than prejudice.
The scales dropped from the eyes at the Earth summit in Rio. The masks were removed and politicians were revealed to be standing naked. Popular sovereignty is a mirage, a floor show, and political debate and argument is no more than shadow boxing. The fundamentals are in place and the die has been cast. The manifest impotence of governments and politicians was laid bare. This is a dangerous moment. The patience of the scientists has been tested to breaking point. There comes a point at which, ignored and even abused for the umpteenth time, watching politicians fail to act on painstaking scientific research that took years to complete, that scientists will just stop bothering.
Actress Lucy Lawless was in Rio to launch Greenpeace’s Save the Arctic campaign. She speaks eloquently about the debacle of the Rio Earth summit: ‘It was interesting to see so many educated people so universally dejected, they were obviously completely bummed out and I’ve never really seen that. Only the politicians were saying, “It’s pretty good that we came to any kind of consensus”, and everybody else was saying, “No, that’s BS and you guys once again have let us down. You know what, the overwhelming message that came out of this was that we’re on our own, and governments are rubbish’.
Yes, and the same goes individuals who keep voting expecting political parties to make a difference. It’s time for people to rise to the challenge and show some nous and nerve and reclaim the public realm.
Instead, too many people are prone to fall for collective illusion, politically organised myth making and ersatz communality along the lines of the Olympics. All spectacle and no substance, it appeals to powerless individuals, gathered together in mass illusion and induced to cheer empty slogans and ideals. Whilst millions clapped and cheered their way through the Olympics, and politicians discovered a community spirit and common good that has been extinguished in the capital economy, no-one noticed that time has been called on the planet. Politics continues as triumph through metaphor. The reality is this, Rio was not another wake up call, it was a wake.