Many aspects of Flatland show up in We must reclaim the climate change debate from the political extremes, an article by Mark Lynas published in The Guardian's environment section. In so far as I am a hopeless pedant, I saw fit to reprint it here on DOTE with some short but very enlightening commentary. This was fun to do, so I hope you find it as entertaining to read as I did to write.
First, we note that Lynas starts off with a common fallacy, more formally called the argument to moderation (Latin, argumentum ad temperantiam).
Climate change is real, caused almost entirely by humans, and presents a potentially existential threat to human civilization. Solving climate change does not mean rolling back capitalism, suspending the free market or stopping economic growth.
That is the fallacious mean (middle ground) Lynas will defend.
Anthropogenic climate change is real, so there's no disputing that. However, solving climate change does indeed mean rolling back capitalism, stopping economic growth, etc. The fact that there is a snowball's chance in hell that this will happen does not make it any less true. Therefore, from a human nature point of view, Lynas is asserting a tautology disguised as a reasonable plea for political moderation.
In short, what must happen will happen, which is fine with Lynas.
With those two rather innocuous statements, I have just alienated most people on either side of the climate debate. Today, climate change is no longer just a scientific or an energy problem. Instead, one’s position on global warming has become a badge of political identity in a debate riven by ideological and tribal conflicts. This bodes ill for humanity’s chances of addressing the threat before it is too late.
The nature of the scientific consensus, which on the face of it should be pretty straightforward, has become one of the most bitterly contested issues. Each storm, heatwave and temperature rise – or fall – is fought over, not for what it is but for what it represents. An east coast blizzard apparently represents a victory for the naysayers, as exemplified by climate denier Jim Inhofe’s absurd brandishing of a snowball on the floor of the US Senate. Arctic ice melting is a success for the “alarmists”, while Antarctic ice growing is a boon for the “deniers”.
This isn’t science; it is politics. The science – as articulated by the IPPC – says the warming of the climate system is “unequivocal”, that the last 30 years were probably the warmest for the last 1,500 years, and that it is “extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century”.
Well, yes, politics does indeed make you stupid, but then again so does the argument to moderation when we consider that Alaska is becoming the new Florida, and further consider that it is very likely that the human population will be greatly reduced (if Homo sapiens doesn't go extinct) in the very near future as measured on the geological time scale.
Regarding our possible extinction, Lynas thinks he knows what we should all agree on.
Moreover, if current emissions trends continue, warming of 4C or even 6C becomes a possibility this century. No exaggeration is needed to illustrate the gravity of the threat – warming of this magnitude would destabilize major ice sheets, lead to catastrophic shifts in weather patterns, and cause havoc with ecosystems and human societies. The planet’s temperature, along with CO2 levels, would be higher than for tens of millions of years.
We should all be able to agree on this. But we can’t, because this scientific narrative seems to have been captured by one, rather extreme, end of the political spectrum.
Now, this is really interesting because commonsense and a little knowledge of paleontology dictates that a 4C (or 6C!) world is a world in which the human population will be greatly reduced or Homo sapiens will go extinct. If that's not an emergency, I don't know what is!
So, Lynas is basically saying "we should all be able to agree on" our own possible near-term extinction on the geological time scale. And believe you me, if you read and understood the first Flatland essay, that is the very last thing humans will ever be able to agree on
I told you this would be entertaining. And there's more, for Lynas now goes after Naomi Klein, which is something I'm also fond of doing.
For Klein, whose career has always focused on fighting capitalism, climate change merely means we must renew that fight. It doesn’t seem to strike her as odd or fortuitous that this new “crisis”, which she admits she’s only lately discovered, should “change everything” for everyone else but merely reinforce her own decades-old ideological position. Her analysis of the problem is the same as for all the rest of today’s challenges – that it is the fault of multinational corporations, “market fundamentalism” and the “elites”, who in her view control the media and democratic politics.
Next, Lynas hits the nail on the head. Unfortunately, he does not know that he did so.
Depressingly, all this confirms what social psychologists have long insisted: that most people accept only scientific “facts” that are compatible with or which reinforce their political identities and worldviews. The environmental left leapt on climate science because it seemed to confirm deeply held notions of the planet being fragile, and modern civilisation being in essence destructive. Moreover, climate science at last seemed to herald the global doom that the eco-Malthusian left had always hoped for.
Yes, it is depressing that all this confirms the common observation in social psychology (discussed in all three Flatland essays) that "people accept only scientific 'facts' that are compatible with or which reinforce their own political identities and worldviews." Here is the question whose answer Lynas and virtually all other humans can not understand—
If people only accept scientific "facts" in the ways just described, how would it ever be possible to "reclaim the climate debate from political extremes"?
If people are simply incapable of changing their minds (and thus their behavior) in the face of existential threats like a 4C world, regardless of what the science is telling them, then it will never be possible to "reclaim the climate debate" because there is no real debate. There is only humans doing what humans do.
Lynas "argues" that capitalism and growth are not going away. No kidding! And why not? Because stopping growth is incompatible with most everybody's worldview! So there you go, that's a large suite of human behaviors that aren't going to change anytime soon, the very same behaviors that got us into this mess. This does not seem to have occurred to Lynas
Lynas now takes a predictable turn.
This is also a debate conducted in a western bubble.
Yes, there's no doubt about that (see below). Of course it hasn't occurred to Lynas that his own thinking is taking place within the human bubble (which I call "Flatland").
No one in India doubts that the emergence from poverty of hundreds of millions of people in south Asia will require the production of prodigious amounts more energy – far more than could ever be compensated for by any remotely plausible “energy austerity” path taken by the west. Don’t forget: rich OECD countries have already peaked their CO2 emissions, so pretty much all the future growth will come from Asia, Africa and South America.
[Lynas is referring here to the stuff I discussed in my second Twilight Zone essay. You might review it if you're having a slow day.]
Anyway, there is no way in hell south Asians (or anybody else in the "developing" world) are going to shun opportunities to achieve Western lifestyles. That fact alone seems to contradict the idea that a "climate debate" is actually taking place. But, again, this does not seem to have occurred to Lynas.
Another interesting sentence in that world-shattering paragraph above was this one—
Don’t forget: rich OECD countries have already peaked their CO2 emissions...
Speaking from an OECD point of view—I am of course proud to be an American!—the rich countries have "already peaked" their carbon emissions only because it appears that OECD economic growth (taken as a whole) has more or less peaked, too. I just thought that was worth pointing out
And now we get predictable ending. This is first-rate, top-of-the-class bullshit.
Forget the political myths: here’s the hard reality.
Savor the irony here. Mark Lynas is going to tell us the "hard reality."
The emergence from poverty of the developing world is non-negotiable. Humanity will therefore double or triple energy consumption overall by 2050. Our challenge is to...
Here's a rule of thumb: whenever the writer says "our challenge is to" do whatever, your bullshit detection meter should be pegged at the top of the scale.
Anyway, our "challenge" is to...
develop and deploy the technology to deliver this energy in as low-carbon a way as possible, probably using some combination of efficiency, renewables, next-generation nuclear and carbon capture. We need to pour vastly more resources into R&D, and put a significant international price on carbon.
But to make any of this happen we will need to recapture the climate debate from the political extremes. We must then work to come up with inclusive proposals that can form the basis of a social consensus that must last decades if it is to have any meaningful effect on the climate change crisis that faces us.
Thanks kindly, Dave, for taking the time to put this down. I did quite enjoy your perspective, as always.
Posted by: rumor | 03/12/2015 at 04:26 PM