Climate Change

Martin Durkin described the public reaction to his television programme which challenged the concept of Climate Change as a "middle-class fatwa": a piquant observation of the discomfort of the Chattering Classes I suspect.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,22105154-7583,00.html

It's so cool (is "cool" still a hip word - is "hip" still... never mind :) to support Climate Change and feel morally superior as we do our bit to save the planet by not using plastic bags and recycling milk cartons. Trouble is I'm quite sure almost none of us has the remotest idea whether climate change is happening or not. Over the past couple of years I have listened to experts from both sides of the debate present convincing arguments that climate change is real... and that it is not real! How the hell am I supposed to know? I am but a humble electronics engineer. The reality is that virtually no one in the general public has the specialist knowledge to make any sort of objective assessment and I question a science which whilst it cannot accurately predict the weather two weeks hence maintains confidence concerning the vagaries of the whole planetary climate across millions of years.

Nevertheless it's a fair bet that pumping all the crap associated with industrial development for the past 150 years or so into the atmosphere, oceans and soil hasn't done much to improve our environment and we really should seek to minimise our impact and take stock of what damage (if any) we have caused.

Let's get back to the Middle Classes - Marx was wrong, they are still with us and appear to be gaining in strength, God help us! Still, look on the bright side, at least my appallingly middle class ex-mother-in-law has moved on, although I do miss Bill, her long suffering husband.

The middle-class love climate change because it gives them a sense of purpose and an opportunity to feel superior. No longer may the "Joneses" pontificate upon the virtues of their new [insert consumer item of choice] because the Smiths can now trump them with; "Of course we've downsized in order to use less energy". Brilliant! Joneses left deflated and Smiths gain the moral high ground - despite the fact they couldn't have afforded the damn thing anyway!

It's the hypocrisy of this which angers me: neither the Jones nor the Smiths _really_ give a Dingo's kidneys (Australian expression = "don't care" for the benefit of you foreigners :) about the planet or distribution of energy/wealth upon it. So they recycle their milk cartons and use "Green" shopping bags (which won't break down for ten thousand years!) but they live in houses which required millions of joules of energy to construct and cut their lawns with machines which, again, consumed more energy in their manufacture and use than an Ethiopian will see in ten lifetimes!

I can't quote a source for this but I understand that; "The people of New York use more energy in one week simply commuting to and from work than the whole of Africa uses in one year" - I've always felt that one statistic alone encapsulated the selfishness of the Western World and it's also the one which makes me feel sick when the Smiths tell me they've switched to a Toyota Prius in order to help save the planet. Perhaps part of the problem is that you non-engineers don’t actually understand “energy”, its measurement and consumption?

What's the reality if we really are going to change things?

I guess we huge energy users in The West will need to trim our consumption quite a bit. Cut our energy use by 50% perhaps? The impact of such a change on our day-to-day lives would be dramatic. Private car ownership mostly gone, electronic toys mostly gone, air conditioning definitely gone, heating in all but the really cold climes... gone! Smaller houses utilising very basic construction, simple furniture. What might be the consequences of this? Perhaps we discover we don't actually need huge, air conditioned, expensive shopping malls. Parades of shops and markets come back into vogue, communities flourish around these local hubs, factory farming reduces, people begin to talk to their neighbours again (do you know the first names of all your neighbours?). Without the X box and parents having to work all hours to fund all this consumer junk family relationships improve and there is a very clear link between good relationships and good health.

Trouble is... hardly any of it will happen because we're far too selfish and concerned with our own affluence.

Climate Change? "Oh yes, of course, we're doing our bit we have solar panels feeding back into the grid - we got in just before they cut off the government rebate"

The solar panel rebate, in Australia, was abruptly cut a couple of days ago because the Middle Class were milking the system dry.