Climate change is affecting us now so why aren’t we more concerned?
We experience the effects of climate change as weather and, since April 2007, we have witnessed exceptional annual floods in India, Bangladesh and China that have killed thousands and affected millions more. Closer to home, tens of thousands of people had to live without water and electricity during unprecedented summer flooding in Yorkshire and Gloucestershire. While forest fires rage around the globe destroying lives, property and habitat and turning vast areas of natural beauty into moonscapes.
But, perversely, it seems that these continuing reminders of the damaging consequences of climate change fuel the sceptics’ campaigns as much as they reinforce the need for all of us to act decisively. After all, sceptics can always find examples of freak flooding and droughts in previous decades and centuries.
For ample evidence of our collective ambivalence about climate change see the 2007 HSBC Climate Confidence Index.
This shows “a world of polarised attitudes to climate change and to our response to the issue.” Perhaps not surprisingly, concern about climate change is greatest amongst developing nations, who are already suffering its most damaging consequences.
In the developed world though, the threat of terrorism continues to be our number one concern and explains why politicians believe they have our support for drastic measures to tackle terrorism, but not for climate change. Tony Juniper - Executive Director, Friends of the Earth – summed up the situation recently when he explained: “We still haven’t got public opinion to the point where the politicians feel as though they can do this stuff [ie pass tough legislation to reduce emissions drastically] and still be elected back into power.”
But why is this? And just when it seemed at the start of 2007 that the argument over the reality of climate change was over and the debate was shifting to how best to tackle the problem? In the UK at least, the Channel 4 programme, The Great Global Warming Swindle has done more than anything, or anyone, to let us all off the hook. Incidentally, Channel 4 have now accepted that this programme distorted the views of many of the people featured and have agreed to screen a correction. But the damage is done. (The Royal Society have refuted every single claim made by the programme)
In their recent internal investigation into reporting bias, the BBC cited climate change as an example of where they were “guilty” of presenting information in a biased way. And opinion formers, such as Daily Mail journalist Anne Leslie and Ruth Lea, the Director of the conservative think tank The Centre for Policy Studies, continue to use their influential positions to both dispute the science and point the finger of blame at China.
The reasons for our continuing propensity to sleepwalk into the nightmare of a warming world are many and various and have much to with the protection of the self interest of the few at the expense of the many. But it is also perhaps because we mostly can’t see the catastrophic threat. When Britain stood on the brink of disaster in 1940, experiencing first the humiliation of Dunkirk and then the devastating effect of Hitler’s bombing campaign, it was easy for politicians to take the difficult decisions necessary to ensure our survival as an independent race.
Only time will tell whether we will be able to give our politicians the mandate they need to make us do the right thing.
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“People will retrench and they’ll still push ahead on this message that the science isn’t certain. And you’ll also see the debate shifting. So previously where it was…oh climate change itself is in doubt, is CO2 really causing the problem, now it’s moved to …well there’s always been natural cycles and although there will be some man-made climate change; the natural background climate change is so big that we shouldn’t worry about it.”
Steve Howard - Founder and CEO of the Climate Group
“Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal.”
John F Kennedy
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