Still feeling my way on teh bloggingsphere. Who cares what I think? I think. Am opinionated, but never believed I needed an opinion on everything. Perhaps that is lazy. It is supposed to be an information age, with every who what where when and why known to humankind at my fingertips, waiting for an opinion to form.
But now "the climate change debate plays out amid a chorus of populism and self-interest", a senior retired politician said. And "I don't understand it at all", one of my neighbours remarked today.
It made me think, or remember, or tingle of deja-vu though, as if I had heard it all before. What it might be is the feeling that the climate change thing is going the same way as the bomb thing did a few decades ago.
The bomb thing was a perception that one or all nations that had nuclear weapons would use them, blowing the world up along the way. What to do about the bomb preoccupied politics it seemed for ever. And it was really divisive politics, with some taking -ist and -wing positions, and vehemently demanding the rest of us do the same, crying foul treason if we did not.
Numbers were big news then as well, I recall. The number of nuclear missiles that were somewhere caused violence, and television spectacles of banners condemning war used as clubs to beat people with banners wanting peace. And numbers were apparently the answer, because there were so many of them being hawked, or doved, around. And it all dragged on for years.
The climate thing seems as big and divisive now as the bomb thing was, in the day, oozing from media, everywhere, all the time. Pretty much impossible to ignore. Or understand in any detail.
Trying to make sense of all this the usual way, by listening to all sides of the debate, seems as futile as it was when people were arguing about the bomb. Global warming, say some. The Earth is cooling, argue others. No it isn't at all, others affirm. Look at the science, all sides urge. The facts. We have proof, evidence, numbers, and the other guys are making it up for sinister reasons of their own.
Everyone seems to be arguing over computer simulations (they call them climate models, but aren't they weather forecasts?) as if they were real.
I don't know how true, but there is an old story that Emperor Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, called Caligula, (12-41 CE) made war upon the Sea-God Neptune, in the waters of the English Channel, capturing a booty of sea-shells and kelp that were paraded around Rome in triumph. He was assassinated, because people thought him weird. The legend of King Canute, who said "Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings" also comes to mind, a cautionary tale. Former Australian Prime Minister John Howard got involved in the drought. Controversy over his big thing, rivers in the Murray-Darling Basin, rages still, with books of numbers set ablaze in public demonstrations of loathing and fear. The next Prime Minister didn't do so well either, after making the weather a great moral issue of his time.
I guess there is a moral in there somewhere, but I'm not quite sure what. Other than people who take credit for the weather are really brave. Or something.
Well Steve, I've already been down the climate change thing on Face book this week, engaging in an argument/discussion of sorts with a young friend of mine who was outraged that the government was thinking of paying shooters to get rid of camels because they created too much polluting methane. I suggested that perhaps the underlying agenda was the plague of camels that pastoralists want to eradicate because they drink too much water, and I think that this is closer to the truth.
ReplyDeleteBut as I said to Erin a couple of days ago, I remember when butter and burnt toast was said to cause cancer and so everyone started eating margarine. Then there was the 'feed the man meat' campaign to get the dairy industry back on its feet and so margarine got a bad name. But as you said, nuclear warfare has been a fave for a while now and it was only usurped by the possibility that Skylab would fall on Australia (and it did in 1979). Then, the depletion of the ozone layer was something 'we' all obsessed about, and that's healed. Apart from ongoing fear of terrorism, we now have the carbon emissions debate, which is as confusing as all hell.
I'm with you. As far as I'm concerned we've always had climate change and regardless of carbon reduction, we are still going to have climate change.
Do you remember all the talk about the ten year drought as evidence that the earth was warming, now the recent floods and rain are dragged out as evidence that the sea is rising.
Do any of these people actually know what they are talking about?
I think governments and other individuals like to generate fear - fear that we will get cancer or have a stoke if we - drink too much, smoke too much. Fear that we will get diabetes if we eat too much sugar and don't exercise enough. Contract sexually transmitted diseases if we are too promiscuous. Become obese if we eat to excess and then die of heart disease. Oh! got to stop there because the list goes on. But basically the carbon debate is yet another strategy to generate fear. Where you have fear you have the people controlled!
Don't you just tire of it all!
I've been called 'transgressive' in the past week or so, well, maybe our generation is. Maybe the younger generation are just too caught up in trying to control every little thing. But it won't work. They can shove their conservatism up their tiny, clean little green orifices and in the end they will probably suffer from anal retentiveness cancer! (HA!) Well, I'm glad I got all of that out, but they will probably regard this as 'word pollution'.
Astute observation about the camel farts. Tax on carbon solves problems for the national electricity grid that someone needed to pay for. My private conspiracy theory is we always knew there would be tax on air we breathe, and taxing air we breathe out is genius, the tax appears as superfluous to us as our exhalations ;)
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ReplyDeleteTrashed previous comment because there were too many spelling errors. Anyway here is new comment:
ReplyDeleteI should add that when I wrote that comment yesterday I was still in the throws of being part upset, part angry after nearly being hit by a car as I stepped off the tram in Bourke Road. If I had hesitated at all in stepping quickly back on the steps of the tram I would have surely been hit! I get really angry with hearing all this talk about 'saving the earth' when people won't take the time to look out for each other on this planet. I think the emphasis is in the wrong place. Bah Humbug! Tired of the debate, which drags on endlessly!!!