CLIMATE: A VERY MOUNTAIN

As the Copenhagen summit reaches its halfway point, the verdict is inevitably “so far, so predictable”. At the end of next week, we shall be saying “too little, too late”. Chivvied by Gordon Brown, Europe has promised funds it doesn’t have to nations it doesn’t care about in a gesture towards shoring up the barriers against the rising seas. But it isn’t enough and it doesn’t begin to tackle the problem’s source. In any case, we know that funding was promised before but didn’t materialise. When the credit banks drop Britain’s credit rating in nice time for the election, Brown will have to make much more savage cuts and clearly cutting overseas aid will be rather less painful to most voters than, say, closing schools and hospitals.

The melancholy anniversary of the Bhopal disaster has forcefully reminded us that Union Carbide literally got away with murder and that the toxic gases that did the damage are polluting the Bhopal area to this day. Neither the US nor the Indian government has seriously attempted either to mitigate definitively the effects of the spill or to reimburse its victims to any more than the most piffling extent. Why should anyone imagine that, when the seas engulf the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans, anybody in the powerful nations will raise a finger? Only when the waters have risen sufficiently to swamp Venice and Amsterdam, Essex and Kent, Manhattan Island and the cities along the Danube will any governments go into crisis mode. And don’t bet against them deciding to write off their own low-lying areas and build barriers to keep the newly dispossessed off higher ground.

Whatever mealy-mouthed declaration has been compromised to death by the end of the summit, the climate change deniers will merely scoff. Denying the Holocaust perplexes most people with even a little brainpower because there is so much historical evidence in the face of which such absurdity flies. Denying climate change is more comfortable because ignoring scientists and researchers is second nature to those for whom so-called intelligent design and even creationism are perfectly acceptable philosophies. In any case, when such eminent thinkers as Jeremy Clarkson, Clive James and Nick Griffin pooh-pooh the science, it is clear that the argument is all but lost.

For my own part, I pooh-pooh the great scandal of the University of East Anglia emails. One pocket of ill-judged behaviour does not negate the findings of climatologists the world over for the last fifty years. We have seen for ourselves – almost daily on the news bulletins – the collapse of the snowfields, ice floes and glaciers. Do Clarkson and co propose that this footage is faked?

Consider the case that the climate change deniers are right. What’s the worst-case scenario? Well, quite a lot of money will have been spent, as they would argue, unnecessarily; though as the expenditure will have made the planet a more habitable place, saved some rain forest and a few species and so on, you could say that the downside is not unduly ghastly. And what if the climate change Cassandras are right, what then is the worst-case scenario? Oh right – we all die. Anybody find the debate finely balanced?

In fact I am sure that it is anyway too late. The collapse of the planet cannot now be arrested. Partly it is because too much damage has already been done. Partly it is that politicians do not have the political will or indeed the practical power to take the long-term decisions that might reverse the process. International capital, now far more untouchable than any government, is only concerned with short-term profit, which is why the organisers of climate change denial are all big-money interests. Any senator, congressman or radio shock-jock in the States who dismisses climate change as a pinko conspiracy is rewarded with big bucks. How can mere liberal politicians fight that?

Perhaps in our lifetimes, some of the fabulous creatures that we took for granted in our childhood will fall extinct: the tiger, the orang-utan, the rhinoceros, the blue whale, the mountain gorilla, the polar bear. Perhaps in our children’s lifetimes, human habitation will begin to be seriously eroded. Will our grandchildren indeed survive at all? If the seas don’t get them, will there not, as a swifter alternative, be some virulently uncontrollable virus, immune to any known remedy but very happy to spread through polluted water? That’s always assuming that no terrorists get their hands on nuclear capability before then, a rash assumption.

The new Nobel laureate, Barack Obama, will swing into Copenhagen for the summit’s climax, no doubt to bless – indeed, to encourage – its conclusions. I still hope for the best from this president. He seems to comprehend what is at stake – did his predecessor even know what carbon emissions are? – and he still seems to experience an instinctive feel for the plight of the whole world’s peoples, not just that of the poor, benighted oil barons. But can he deliver?

Were I a graphic artist, I should be tempted to a three-box strip cartoon. In the first box, Barack Obama is depicted standing alone, beaming and waving a sheet of paper on which may be seen a deal of writing. This piece of paper would be The Copenhagen Accord. The resonances of Chamberlain after Munich would not be inappropriate. In the second box, Obama’s face would have clouded as his enemies attack him. Being pygmies, they have to stand on each other’s shoulders as they try to wrest from his grasp the sheet of paper, on which the writing is already smeared. Meanwhile, the waters have risen, up to the armpits of the lower level of opponents, up to the thighs of the president, but nobody is looking at the waters. In the third box, Obama is alone again, looking dejected. The waters have risen to his neck. The sheet of paper, now blank, floats. Here and there a few bubbles indicate where the opponents have gone under. The legend under this strip would be: Watered Down.