Deniers, delayers, debate and democracy

When it comes to climate change, debating climate deniers is seldom worth the effort. They will stick to their talking points, won’t listen to arguments and are not interested in understanding climate science. And you can count on that sooner or later they will turn to invectives and name calling. Still, when a self proclaimed expert on tennis bookmaking makes aggressive statements on the “fake climate science” it’s a bit too much to swallow, even if responding to him is more taking a stand than for a moment believing that I can influence his views. 

Delayers on the other hand are more complicated to handle and they tend to come in many varieties. One of these persons claimed to be a “climate realists” but immediately resorted to calling Greta Thunberg a tool of the "communist elites". He must be a very scared person. 

But it is clear that Greta Thunberg has caused a lot of anxiety among the people with vested interest in fossil fuels and status quo. As this article on “What we need to do the next 18 months" by Matt McGrath points out: 

And it is not only Greta, she has many fellow activists and followers all over the globe, especially among other young girls and women. These activists have found their voice, are demanding real actions and are taking on a heavy burden to ensure that they will have a liveable future. We should do everything we can to support them!

This brings me to another example of the kind of climate delay that comes from people who claim to know better. In a recent Op-Ed in NY Times, Christopher Caldwell was ranting about Greta Thunberg as a threat to democracy, while he proposed more wait and see as a climate “strategy”. 

His piece has been thoroughly taken apart and debunked by many of the worlds climate scientists and activists: 

 

 

A huge number of scientist have already thoroughly sided with the young protesters, as shown by this article in Science and the 52 pages of signatories… 

Haven Coleman, one of these young climate activists called Caldwell a “Rita Skeeter” person (if you haven’t read Harry Potter you need to look this up). Dr. Genevieve Guenther made a thorough dissection of Caldwells “points” which is well worth reading (much better spending your time there than on Caldwell). 

There is certainly a right for everyones to have an opinion, but there is no right for anyone to have his or hers own facts. Nor is there a ‘right' for anyone to have plattform such as NY Times for attacks and spreading confusion. The fossil fuel industry has been allowed to do this for decades; what we need now is debate over which action to take, not if we should act at some later time. Predatory delay is the term Alex Steffen has coined for this behaviour.  

But the debate about Caldwells Op-Ed has made it clear that there are still other kind of delayers, who do accept the climate science - but still don’t want to press ahead with straight talk and strong actions. Instead they wave the banner of free speech and “both sides” must be able to have their say. But there is no both sides to the climate crisis and we don’t give talking space to flat earth proponents. 

What these persons also might have missed is that climate change is itself a profound threat to both society and democracy. This is already evident in the energy area: 

But worse is to come if we continue to delay climate action.  We all now how badly the European Union handled a million refugees from war torn Syria. Climate change will increase that number with one and maybe two factors of ten in the coming decades - can our societies handle that and still be working democracies? The scariest thing about climate change is what it will make us do to each other says Kate Marvel, climate climate scientist at Columbia University and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.

Real sustainability only comes in one variety, now: Disruptive. That is scary and will cause a great deal of discomfort for those presently in power. But the alternative, to allow climate disruption to descend us into chaos, is much worse. For all of these reasons, the time for "opinionated ignorance” by people such as Caldwell is over.   

PS

Maybe the supporters of Caldwell right to publish should have looked more into his background. Some examples:  

Here's Christopher Caldwell's glowing defense of Germany's far-right, climate denying AfD, which lost big to the Greens in the European Parliament elections after using its campaign to attack Greta Thunberg. Maybe he's bitter? 

The Spectator has somehow managed to outdo the Telegraph for ignorance on Ireland. American journalist Christopher Caldwell says that a “British unification” under the “moral tutelage” of London would make more sense for Ireland than EU membership.

Is it likely that this person has something worthwhile to contribute with when it comes to discussing climate change and democracy?

Reflections on Aniara: Everything will not be OK and we can live with that

Earth is in trouble. Or rather, we as beings living on the surface of planet Earth have gotten ourselves into real trouble, a slow disaster we might not be able to rectify. 

This past weekend I was experiencing doom and the tragic fate of humanity during Gothenburg International Film Festival. I visited the Swedish premiere of Aniara, a film based on a poem from the 1950’s by the Nobel laureate Harry Martinsson. It was written at a time when human annihilation through nuclear war was a persistent scare in peoples mind. In Martinssons story the spaceship Aniara is loaded with people fleeing the dying Earth, but an accident sets Aniara adrift on an endless voyage in space, a bubble in the vast nothingness. 

The film depicts the spaceship as a modern day cruise ship, where the passengers initially try to hang on to normality but gradually become more desperate and succumbs to sects or suicide. There is no Hollywood hopeful ending, when the spaceship finally reaches a habitable planet, the passengers have been dead for many millennia. 

While nuclear extinction was the backdrop for the poem, Harry Martinsson was already in the early 1960’s pointing to environmental destruction as a rising threat to humanity. For Roy Scranton, author of two books with the uplifting titels “Learning to die in the Anthropocene” and “We’re doomed - now what” the impending climate catastrophe is a reality we can not avoid. There are many things that I take to my heart from Roy's texts and the talk he gave during the film festival. I am deeply impressed by the journey that Roy Scranton has traveled moving out from the war in Iraq to writing about the fate of humanity in the Anthropocene. There’s a deep sorrow in his description of what we are inevitably going to loose. And I agree with his notion that we need to slow down, reflect and meditate on what’s really happening with our climate and our societies; do less instead of keep on running. Humans have the ability to make meaning under the worst of circumstances, says Scranton, what we need to do is to organise locally because the cavalry will not be coming to save us. 

But the road that his total acceptance of this situation leads him to is not mine. Roy Scranton is disavowing those who like our most recent climate activist in Sweden, Greta Thunberg choses to fight for a liveable climate. We are lost and resistance to our fate is futile says Scranton. But his reactions rings with both bitterness and even envy towards those who continue to struggle despite the odds of real success being infinitesimally small. Some of the reactions in Swedish press to Roy Scrantons visit encourage this perception, maybe as a token gift to those who fear action more than the future. 

Perhaps we should not view Scranton as a truth sayer, but as the poet he is and wants to be. We can read him as a Baudelaire or Rimbaud of our time, writing about the beauty of death and decay in times of war and conflict. Like in the final verse of Rimbauds poem “Le Dormeur du Val”:

He sleeps in the sun, his hands on his breastAt peace. There are two red holes in his right side

So what to do if we abandon hope? Maybe it is no hope but courage that may save our humanity if not our world and nature as we have come to know it. To cite from a recent article in Washington Post by Dan Zak: 

To grasp the problem, we have to slow down. To respond to it, we have to act fast. We have both no time and more time.“We want there to be a really simple story: You do this, and then everything will be okay,” says Kate Marvel, who works for NASA in New York. “And everything is not going to be okay.”There is opportunity in this acceptance. Marvel thinks we need courage, not hope. We must know what’s coming, we must realize it will hurt, and we must be very strong together.

So we need to accept that the times are a-changing and there are no easy paths forward. We need to strive not for control but to find a way to flow like the waves and grass. 

Hold the problem in your mind. Freak out, but don’t put it down. Give it a quarter-turn. See it like a scientist, and as a poet. As a descendant. As an ancestor.

Finally, what seems to be lacking in Scrantons narrative is the willingness to speak truth to power. "We" are not equally complicit for the climate crisis. Therefore, the light on the super rich gathering in Davos that Greta Thunberg was shining is important. If the super rich, half a percent of the worlds population are responsible for 13% of the worlds consumption related emissions, then solving the climate crisis is a question of both moral and equity. It is not a done deal and we can alter our fate.