As long as there has been climate change (and it's been observed for a couple of decades now) there have been climate change deniers. Some people, and some institutions, simply make too much money out of pollution to bear the thought of it being brought under control. Unsurprisingly, oil companies are among the worst, represented by the pseudo-scientific advocacy bodies who once made a living from saying tobacco was good for you, but a worryingly broad (if, thankfully, ever-shrinking) selection of politicians and journalists buy into this conspiracy.
As the evidence for global warming becomes more and more compelling, the deniers strategically fall back to weaker positions. They revise their statements to suit the zeitgeist, finding contradictory and increasingly poor excuses not to act on climate change, desperate to find a line in the sand that they can defend. A few battle-hardened mercenaries still stand on the first lines, but for the most part they retreat along the following sort of route:
Position 1:
> We won't lift a finger to stop climate change because
> Climate change isn't happening.
Some people still passionately argue that climate change is the figment of a paranoid imagination - a paranoid imagination that's incredibly skilled at fiddling graphs. This "paranoia" seems to have an especially strong grip on scientists, who have formed an overwhelmingly strong consensus that climate change is happening. The Royal Society have been particularly vocal about the fact that disagreement among scientists on climate change is a myth.
Position 2: OK,
> climate change is happening,
> but we won't lift a finger to stop it because
> climate change has nothing to do with human activity.
Who's emitting all the gases then? What's that you say? Volcanoes? Trees? Oh, grow up!
Basically the criticisms of position 1 can be applied equally to position 2, and once one falls, the other inevitably follows soon after.
Position 3: OK, OK,
> climate change is happening,
> it's happening as a direct result as human activity,
> but we won't lift a finger to stop it because
> climate change is a good thing
Right. Fair enough, I guess. We can grow olives in Scotland or, for that matter, make decent wine in England. And there'll be no need to go to Spain for your holidays when it's that sunny up here.
On the other hand, there will more frequent and severe floods and droughts, heatstroke will stalk us at every corner, plants and wildlife will be confused sometimes into extinction transforming our beloved countryside - and that's without mentioning the other problems that come with climate change, like resource depletion and poisons in the air.
Position 4: OK, OK,
> climate change is happening,
> it's happening as a direct result of human activity,
> it's a bad thing,
> but we won't lift a finger to stop it because
> the markets will sort it all out on their own.
Ah, there's a tricky one. Not because it's true, but because most of us good capitalists are completely ignorant of how capitalism works. When we're told that the market always finds the best, most efficient solution to a problem we don't really have an answer for it.
The idea is that the competing selfish interests of the various participates of the market drive all processes to be as efficient as possible and guarantees that all our demands are met. The existence of these market forces, this "invisible hand", is not in doubt. It's relevance to the issue of climate change is.
Firstly, I should point out that all the many hands of Capitalist Vishnu are imperfect. Market forces only function perfectly under certain incredibly narrow conditions, linked to the perfect flow of information and the ability of all market participants to make and act upon rational decisions. These conditions have never been fully realised, and quite possibly never can be fulfilled, so the invisible hand is a clumsy hand.
Secondly, market forces only act on what's in the market. Obviously. And that means what market participants pay for with money. Anything that affects other people is externalised - ignored - as is anything that can't be measured in monetary terms. For the moment, almost all of the environmental (and social) costs incurred by our businesses are externalised, and internalising them is at the very heart of the movement for global justice. Add to this selective blindness the shortsightedness that our debt-based currencies create, and the markets work more to worsen climate change than to fix it.
That's a pretty good argument to redesign capitalism. It can be done, and if and when it is done then we will have harnessed the mighty markets to help save us from disaster. That would make an enormous difference. But mighty as the markets are, they can only ever solve the problem as it is posed in the algebra of prices. Whenever there is an imbalance between the supply and demand of a commidity, prices will change until the twain shall meet. In the case of climate change, we can see that there is an imbalance between the high demand of human consumers for a stable, comfortable and safe environment which is in increasingly short supply. Either the supply must increase through reducing the effect of climate change, or the demand must drop, with fewer consumers able to afford stability, comfort and safety. As far as the markets are concerned, defeating climate change on the one hand and drastically lowering our expectations on the other are two equally viable solutions. As far as humanity's concerned, there's a pretty big difference.
Position 5: OK, OK,
> climate change is happening,
> it's happening as a direct result of human activity,
> it's a bad thing,
> the markets won't be able to sort it out on their own,
> but we won't lift a finger to stop it because
> it will cost more to stop it than it would just to live with it.
So climate change isn't exactly a good thing, but surely it can't be worse than the effect that trying to stop it could have on the economy? Yes it can. This argument was thoroughly rubbished by the Stern Report, which most governments are at least pretending to take seriously. Next!
Position 6 OK, OK, OK,
> climate change is happening,
> it's happening as a direct result of human activity,
> it's a bad thing,
> the markets won't be able to sort it out on their own,
> it will cost more to live with it than it would to stop it,
> but we won't lift a finger to stop it because
> it's not us, it's those bloody Chinese!
We, the citizens of a small group of countries, developed arguably to the point of decadence, have got used to being quite an exclusive Polluters' Club. That China (and India and Brasil and Africa and, indeed, all the rest) are now starting to build factories and cars and supermarkets too brings us to new heights of hypocrisy in our indignation. China will, in a couple of years, become the biggest polluter in the world. China has had the biggest population in the world for decades, so proportionally it's still under-performing.
Per head, EU citizens emit nine times as much atmospheric carbon as their Chinese counterparts. In fact, this statistic grossly underestimates the imbalance. Gather all the consumer junk you've bought in the last few years together (or at least, all the junk of a certain type, to make the comparison easier. The example I saw was with children's books) and sort it into piles. How many come from the EU (or your country/trading bloc of origin), and how many come from China? If you buy crap that generates carbon but was made in a factory on China's soil, that carbon will be counted towards China's total, not towards your country's. When you allocate consumer-crap-carbon to the consumer, you see Europeans emitting far more carbon than Chinese people.
So we definitely still have some pretty massive changes to make in the developed world in combatting climate change. Then again, assuming nothing is done then most of the increases in greenhouse emissions will come from the developing world, so isn't it still mostly up to China and that? Not really, if you think about the graphs for a moment, but that's entirely beside the point.
Squabbling over which countries should sort out what's by it's very nature a global problem is a great way of seeing that it never gets sorted. Everytime someone in Europe says "I don't have to do anything until those Chinese get their act together", it provides the perfect excuse for someone in China to say "I don't have to do anything until those Europeans get their act together". Global warming is global. It affects us all, and we all have to work to prevent it. United we stand up to climate change, divided we fall.
If it's not enough that this kind of squabbling could doom us all, just think about how unfair it is. No matter how much pollution the poorer half of the world manages to emit now, it's us in the rich world who've brought this catastrophe on us all and it's them that suffer from it. Droughts in Africa, fires in Amazonia, floods in Bangladesh - global warming is already killing, displacing and dispossessing the innocents of the Third World by their millions, while the polluters in the First World are still debting whether they're even doing anything wrong.
This sixth position, this terror of the Yellow Peril, this dirtiest of dirty rotten tricks, this is where the current battle must be fought. We must fight for global cooperation, way above and beyond the petty rivalries of nation-states. Position six is out there, getting into our heads. It's on the tip of some people's tongues and in the back of others' minds, but it's there. When we start to worry that we might have to face up to the scary reality and change the way we live, it's often easier just to blame China.
It's a divisive, destructive and defeatist falsehood, and it must be brought down. We can't let up yet. Because the battle for the sixth position may well decide the timing and the outcome of the final showdown, the final dirty lie.
Position 7 OK, OK, OK!
> climate change is happening,
> it's happening as a direct result of human activity,
> it's a bad thing,
> the markets won't be able to sort it out on their own,
> it will cost more to live with it than it would to stop it,
> it's our responsibility as much as anyone else's
> but we won't lift a finger to stop it because
> it's already too late.