Marxist Moments

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FEAR AND TREMBLING….

Comics, movies, TV, internet and Moral Panics….

 

SNEAKY TORIES?
(corrected)

          I’ve written critically of Stephen Glover, the Daily Mail columnist, in the past. His views, say, on Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour Left, are fairly blood-curdling, as one might expect from this quarter. Strangely, however, Mr Glover becomes the voice of reason and balance where the topic is – as it was on October 11, 2018 - climate change. (‘Here’s my prediction on climate change: wild warnings that prove false only make us more sceptical’.) Forget Mr Glover’s own ‘wild warnings’ of the past, for over the subject of climate change we must be above all moderate and balanced. It isn’t as if the world is coming to an end, is it? But unlike Nigel Lawson (say) or Mr Glover’s Mail colleague Christopher Booker, Stephen Glover is not a climate-change denier. Perish the thought. ‘Let us agree,’ he writes, ‘that man-made climate change presents a serious challenge to humanity which should be urgently addressed by every government.’ I’d have preferred it if he’d written ‘must’ instead of ‘should’, but let that pass.

          His target is the IPCC – Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change – a United Nations body. Its latest prediction is that carbon dioxide emissions ‘must virtually halve within twelve years to avoid a calamitous loss of coral reefs and Arctic ice, as well as intense floods and droughts.’ Pointing out, by the way, ‘though Britain has cut its own by 43 per cent since 1990’, Glover says that not only will such a halving in such a short time be virtually impossible, but bodies like the IPCC have got it wrong in the past. The World Wildlife Fund stated in 2005 ‘that all Arctic ice might melt within five years. It’s still there.’ He cites the International Energy Agency ‘informing us in 2011 that we had five years to start slashing carbon emissions, or give up the game. They weren’t cut, and now the IPCC says we have another 12 years.’

          These warnings may have been (partially) mistaken but they are not ‘wild’, as in: ‘Repent! The end of the world is nigh!’ I am assuming that they resulted from computer projections based on the available data. But have methodologies and detailed information been improving over the years? Are the predictions becoming more accurate as experts learn more and improve their means of assessing the data? Mr Glover should know that scientific study is always provisional and never ultimate truth, which makes scientists the bane of politicians and those who believe truth should always come wrapped in a box with pink ribbons. Science questions: politics demands answers. Mr Glover has become himself sufficiently impressed by the scientific advances in climatology thus far to accept that climate change ‘should be urgently addressed by every government’. So he must believe that the basic science is right even if the various predictions can be a bit wonky. Something is very wrong and something else needs to be done about it – and soon. Meanwhile scientists do not see themselves as prophets, which is unscientific. Of course if they are forced into the role of prophets, with perhaps a glass of champagne or two pressed into their hands, they might very well rise to the prophetic occasion. But this would not be done ex cathedra, so to speak.

          What causes scepticism more – being alarmist or being sanguine? Does apathy result because we become too afraid to face the implications of the known data or because we really don’t believe all this nonsense? Mr Glover thinks the alarmists are effectively making us sceptical whereas it would appear that this is the intended effect of his article.

          But Mr Glover does accept the implications, in broad outline. He does believe urgent governments’ responses should follow (whenever). Personally I would act on the best knowledge available to be on the safe or safer side. And I don’t think casting doubt on the efforts of the best people we have in this field is likely to help in galvanising public opinion and politicians to get something done, whether what’s coming happens in 12 years or 20 or 50.  We have ample evidence for global warming and are already witnessing (with millions suffering) some of its early climatic effects. I doubt if Mr Glover wrote his piece in Indonesia, or in Florida, the Carolinas or near the raging forest fires in northern California. Or even at Klosters, which is starting to run out of snow.

          Nevertheless, thinking of my own skin I really do wish Stephen Glover’s approach was the right one. And he aims a good blow at a pontificating IPCC scientist who ‘had just flown to the IPCC conference in South Korea with hundreds of colleagues, generating a sizeable amount of carbon dioxide.’ He mentions Al Gore, a former US Vice President, whose ‘powerful film [‘An Inconvenient Truth’] warned of the terrible dangers of global warming’ but who is accused of living in a mansion consuming more electricity in a month ‘than the average US household uses in a year’. Not to speak of all the Royal Flights of Prince Charles, also preaching at us, at least once, ‘that we had 50 days to save the world’. Mr Glover is quite right to castigate the astounding hypocrisy of some of our more privileged doomsayers. Though perhaps Mr Gore’s mansion houses rather more people than ‘the average US household’.

          But this may present an ‘inconvenient truth’ to Mr Glover. In another context I am sure he believes that the rich have a perfect right to enjoy the fruits of all their ‘wealth creation’. If, as a CEO, I earn £10 million a year plus stock options, what am I supposed to do with it? Keep a rowing boat on the Medway? Live on a council estate? Only about 15% of the British public are extensive, regular users of long-distance jet aircraft because that’s the way you get about if you are high-powered, rich and run things. The rich as individuals throw out more carbon dioxide than the average partly because they have to, or else live like Ebenezer Scrooge.  And where does Mr Glover stand on a third Heathrow runway for them?

          What Stephen Glover is in danger of hinting at is that the rich will have to be forcibly expropriated as at least one measure in saving the planet. Meanwhile, it seems, it is only the wealthy exponents of our facing up to climate change who should be giving up their CO2-creating lifestyles. And of course the Chinese, who are communist capitalists! But leave our rich alone! The IPCC’s air miles are one thing, but those for the Davos World Economic Forum are quite something else.

          Perhaps, being wary of expressing such an argument too openly, Mr Glover prefers a more gradualist and ‘reasonable’ approach to the death of the planet, for at least in that event, capitalism might still be in business right to the very end.