ALS: thoughts on freedom

Warbal Gloaming

Hinting at a link between the bushfires we have at the moment and global warming, Ariel of Jabberwocky Online writes:

I’m afraid that it’s not just one hot summer, or the worst fire season on record. And I’m well aware that what we’re seeing in Melbourne is nothing compared to what’s happening in the bush.My feeling is something akin to when I woke up in the middle of the night to find my flatmate transfixed by a crappy disaster movie about terrorists flying into the World Trade Centre. Or so I thought.

The world is changing.

Now where have I heard that before?

Where haven’t I heard that before might be a better question. “It’s a hot day,” complains my mother on the phone. “It’s all this global warming.” Going out into a sweltering Melbourne morning my flatmate remarks, “Soon every day will be like this, Tim.” “Bullshit,” I reply. Neither of us are climate scientists, or even scientists; but for whatever reason, he fatalistically accepts the grand media narrative about global warming and I don’t. On another occasion, I’ve said to him, “Just because we’re having hot weather at the moment doesn’t mean we have to accept global warming,”. “That’s not true at all!” he replies. Neither of us know what we’re talking about, but then, most of the activists, politicians and press people who make increasingly gloomy prognostications about the climate do either. One wonders, in the event of a sudden cold snap, whether the ‘debate’, as it is, about global warming will still be popularly accepted.

Go back ten thousand years or so, and you’ll find people still agonising about the weather. Zeus, the king of the Greek pantheon, is a thunder God. Odin, who sits at the head of the Norse Gods, isn’t, but the more popular Thor is. Jehova of the Bible is something of a composite, but he is associated with wind, fire, thunder, and the sun (think of all those dramatic scenes involving Moses and burning bushes and lightning on the mountaintop). The Voluspa – a poetic masterpiece of the Norse people, dealing with the beginning, middle, and end of the world – begins thusly:

Burning ice and biting flame: that is how life began.

And here’s how it ends:

Brother shall strike brother and both fall,
Sisters’ sons defiled with incest;
Evil be on earth, an age of. whoredom,
Of sharp sword-play and shields clashing,
A wind-age, a wolf-age till the world ruins:
No man to another shall mercy show.

It goes on to describe how the world will be swallowed by the rising waters of the ocean. Other Norse myths had this rising of waters preceded by Fimbulvetr, “the winter of winters.”

Concern about imminent climatic castrophe is a common element in what is termed the global warming debate. Another common element is a tendency to moralise. Back to Jabberwocky Online:

“By the time that we accept that we need to drastically change our lifestyles it will very probably be too late. It’s probably too late already.”

Unsurprisingly, people have moralised about the climate, the weather, and global catastrophe ever since they’ve first been able to talk. Jehova of the Bible is notoriously fond of smiting people with thunderbolts for their individual sins, or for their crimes against Hebraic Law. In Exodus, the Plagues of Egypt (including famine and the turning of rivers into blood*) are sent as a political punishment to the Pharaoh for not freeing the Hebrews from bondage. Practically every traditional society on earth has a story about a great flood, although in the Bible the Great Flood story is specifically associated with punishment and redemption. Norse mythology – (see the quotes above) – doesn’t directly associate tales of catastrophe and apocalypse with guilt and suffering, but tales about the physical end of the world are invariably associated with stories about the decline of society. And the Biblical account of the end of the world found in Revelations goes to some trouble in describing how the evil will be separated from the good, with the evil being associated with “a lake of fire and brimstone”, and the good being given a golden city and “a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal.”
I don’t think it’s a coincidence, either, that the moralistic tendency in talk about global warming also shadows the moralising tone of other political and religious movements. Both fascists and communists agitate for drastic changes to our way of life; Christianity advocates change, both of a personal (‘change your heart’) and social nature (public avowals of belief); and the same is true of Islam. For an interesting account in literature that ties up almost all of these concerns – the weather, religion, politics, morals, and imminent catastrophe – you could do much worse than read H. G. Wells’ excellent ‘In The Days of the Comet’ .

***

All of this, of course, is neither evidence for or against global warming. But it does suggest to me that current fears about global climate, and the moralising tone that is associated with those fears, aren’t necessarily rational; they’re linked less to the scientific impulse of the Enlightenment, and are tied up with deeply-held atavistic human fears and desires.
“Ah, but,” you might argue, “how can you ignore the constant reports in the press about the effects of global warming? The evidence is gathering; you can’t deny it.” Of course, I wouldn’t deny the individual reports in the press; it is eminently reasonable to discuss the melting polar ice caps and say this is possibly linked to global warming. Where it becomes unreasonable is in the cumulative effect of news report followed by news report. It’s the repetition of constant phrases and themes – according to the whim of the editor and the journalists – that consistently works upon us to instill an idea in us where reasoned argument won’t work. A paper publishes a story about how something may be linked to global warming; we say to ourselves, ‘yes, that may be the case’; inwardly, we probably already feel that heart-stopping fear, that thrill of excitement and terror that all the best (that is, the most effective) political propaganda aims at. The fact that the fist of propaganda is cushioned behind a glove of soft words doesn’t change the fact that it is propaganda; and the punditocracy will keep on hitting us until we’re worn down. **

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None of which is to say that we shouldn’t try to avoid global warming, ‘just in case’. Why not? We can’t live off coal and oil forever; it’s sensible to look for longer lasting power sources; and for different, cheaper, and more reliable power sources. But the trouble is, none of the ‘solutions’ being advocated at the moment are solutions. Under Kyoto, emissions go up. The Stern report warns about a possible economic depression because of climate change; many advocated solutions for climate change (using wind and solar power as a base-load energy) would lead to a definite economic depression, and probably harming the environment, too. No, the global warming debate isn’t logical; it never has been.

Scary and intimidating, yes; logical, no.

***

Several days ago, it was hot and hazy and a red sun glared angrily at Melbournians through the smoke. Now, it’s a lovely cool Melbourne weekend. Hopefully we’ll get many more summer days just like this!

*My favourite plague of Egypt has to be the smiting with frogs. Being overrun by thousands of the hoppy ones sounds rather entertaining, if you ask me. Anyone else have a favoured method of smiting?

**One of the puzzling aspects of the global warming debate is how it has been so enthusiastically championed by the intellectual left – a group who, normally, display a great deal of cynicism about the role of the mainstream media and the effect of mainstream media propaganda. Puzzling, too, is how the adoption of global warming rhetoric by the Howard Government is not instantly seen by the intellectual left as yet more evidence of right-wing ‘fearmongering’.

December 17, 2006 - Posted by timt | Uncategorized