Perfectly on form - in denial again

I suspect that if there are historians still around at the end of all this, they will look back to that story in the Independent on 23 September as an absolute watershed in human history. It marks a clear divide at the end of the long period just finished during which the population at large could regard the prospect of runaway climate change as just another hypothesis which, despite the odd disquieting signal (and later the slow but relentless stream of them), could be relegated to the realms of fantasy. Alongside so many others that emerged from odd quarters of the scientific community but turned out to be mumbo-jumbo at best, if not positively laughable with hindsight.

That option was never there for the scientist. But the lay person has a wonderful ability to disregard unpleasant uncertainties as if they were nothing but fictional, or even as if they had never been thought of at all. Somewhat akin to a gambler who, having placed bets on certain runners, is able to exclude all the others from his or her reality as if they did not exist, and maintain the focus of interest and attention exclusively on the progress of his or her chosen subjects.

Curiously, in practice it tends to work as long as they place safe bets on tried and trusted riders, and dark outsiders do not overturn the cosy predictability of normality too often. The occasional upset can be endured on the basis of the overall average. But it is at best no more than a coping strategy, and one that limits the practitioner to a restricted group of set responses - whilst completely preventing a more full and objective engagement. Or any at all in new developments that fall outside their self-defined safe boundaries.

Probably most people live their lives on a strategy more or less similar. But it is no more than a coping strategy, and one that is fundamentally flawed because should one of the possibilities that has been dismissed and is being ignored actually come to pass, not only are they completely unprepared for it, but it appears to come as a bolt out of nowhere and with the force of Thor's hammer. It wasn't really - its evolution and arrival were perfectly foreseeable to any who had been able to maintain objectivity, taken the trouble to look and observe. But to those who had blanked it out, that would be how events would appear. Nowhere is this more apparent than over climate change and the various other environmental threats pressing down on us from all sides.


Nor is it only the common person. When you look for it, this form of denial is manifest more or less universally. And most reprehensibly by those who hold power and would lead society.

On the one hand the world of business and economic interests seems unable to grasp the enormity of the threat that is upon us, and stumble on under the illusion that business as usual, or as close to it as can be approximated under the circumstances, will somehow get us through - and admirably. This stems from an extreme and irrational overvaluing of profit above, and more or less to the exclusion of, all else. Hence most of what are alleged to be imaginative business responses to climate change turn out to be little more than repackaging exercises designed to minimise real change to the fundamental model and the resulting bottom line, while putting a bright new and very saleable spin on what has always been offered. It ought by now be painfully apparent to all that economic activity has always been the main driver of environmental damage, so that very model is utterly bankrupt faced with something on the overwhelming scale of climate change, not least because it has been and remains the very cause.

Much the same goes for governments and the machinery that composes them. Politicians elected - laughably, as is apparent under the circumstances - for their vision, integrity and ability to lead, have proved over and over that they are afflicted by the very same symptoms as the person in the street, and seem incapable even to perceive the magnitude of the threat let alone respond to it, so prove completely inept at ordering a rational set of priorities, and intrinsically incapable of convincing, facilitating and inspiring society to restructure radically as is imperative in response.

Instead they downplay the priority and focus upon the tried and trusted, playing to - or more probably sharing - the anxiety of the mass over economic downturn. In part because they, like the folk in the street, have failed to manage their finances with prudence, left themselves exposed, so got caught hopping when the inevitable crunch happened along.

Far from being a greater disaster, recession is actually quite normal and not the huge threat it is made out to be. It is merely the other side of the economic cycle which follows growth as inevitably as low tide follows high, and can be charted just as visually. It should not, therefore, be such a big deal. Indeed it ought properly be an event anticipated and planned for in our lives, with as much certainly as we do for winter. If anything is currently remarkable, it is the length of the period of positive growth that has preceded the current downturn. So its end ought rightly to be cause for thanks and celebration for the boom we have enjoyed for so long and the wealth we have been able to accumulate as a result, rather than a churlish and mealy-mouthed angst that we don't have as much coming in today, and how can we possibly get buy/by? All that serves to reveal is the depths of our greed, together with our lack of prudence and economic management resultant from it.


Meanwhile those employed by the state for their expertise to guide governments along the process - the diplomats, civil servants, policy advisors and so on - seem almost equally lost in illusion. As a body they have failed to grasp that you cannot negotiate with Gaia (or with the environment, if you prefer). Nowhere is this more apparent than in the utterly narcissistic idea that the timing of the introduction of the replacement for Kyoto, which is absolutely critical for our survival, should be decided by diplomatic timetables fixed years ago for late next year to keep the diaries neat, and not by the real, physical urgency of what is happening on the ground, in the waters and in the atmosphere. Do they really think climate change is going to kick around outside the door waiting their decision because they and the politicians they serve are VIPs (Very Important Persons - there can be few titles more narcissistic) with hectic schedules to fulfil and too many calls on their time? And whatever defences they may throw up for this critical failure, is it not absolutely self-apparent that were it a war they were trying to avert, none of this timetable nonsense, this procedural protocol, would be allowed for one moment to impede attempts to broker peace. Yet no war yet fought has been as threatening to the future as climate change, and only an all-out nuclear Armageddon could be. It is but one more reflection of the critical failure of society to grasp even the bare essentials of the peril in which it lies, and of the denial that is rampant everywhere you look as a result.


Scientists never had this luxury. Once it became clear that methane was detectable in the Arctic waters in areas where it had never before been measurable, they could not simply disregard the prospect of runaway climate change as mere hypothesis. The methane was there, and methodology obliged them to ask from where was it coming, and why. Until those two questions have been answered, any hypothesis which postulates a plausible explanation has to be taken seriously. Unfortunately, in this case there are few if any, other than runaway climate change.

So scientists have been living with this possibility for a long time, watching intently for more evidence to understand better, and calling for caution and timely, proportionate action. May that the rest of society now come to its senses, and come and join them on the Arctic ice - in spirit at least.