Environmental Markets
Collapse of the Grand Narrative Since the farcical conclusion of the Copenhagen Climate Change
and development is still required. We are not even close to getting the needed technological revolution started. The Copenhagen accord attempts to deal with this
reality by offering a vague promise that developed nations will eventually contribute as much as US$100 bn a year to help poor countries cope with climate change. If this money were to be spent on helping developing countries adapt to climate change, the pledge might make sense, since it would be likely to make a real and immediate difference to people’s quality of life. But that is not where the money is supposed to go.
The text of the agreement specifies that most if not all of the funds are to be spent “in the context of meaningful mitigation.” In other words, the money would be used to subsidise carbon cuts, a pointless exercise that would do nothing to ameliorate current miseries – and at best might reduce temperatures slightly a century from now. What if we put these funds to better use? “What if,
instead of condemning billions of people around the world to continued poverty by trying to make carbon- emitting fuels more expensive, we devoted ourselves to making green energy cheaper?” Lomborg asks. As solutions go, it is quicker, more efficient and far less painful. Right now, solar panels cost so much that only well- heeled, well-meaning Westerners can afford to install them. If we could make them or other green energy technologies cheaper than fossil fuels over the next 20- 40 years – and there is no reason to think that we cannot – we would not have to force (or subsidise) anyone to stop burning carbon-emitting fuels. Everyone, including the Chinese and the Indians, would shift to the cheaper and cleaner alternatives – solving global warming. So how do we get to this happy place? Lomborg
suggests we need to increase spending on green energy R&D by a factor of 50. For 0.2% of global gross domestic product (around US$100 bn a year) we could bring about the technological breakthroughs it will take to make green energy cheaper and fuel our carbon-free future. For both developed and developing world governments, it would be a lot more politically palatable than carbon cuts. “The millions of concerned people around the
world who put their hopes in Copenhagen may have been bitterly disappointed by the paltry outcome. But the summit’s failure could be a blessing in disguise. Perhaps now our leaders will recognise the deep flaws in their current approach and chart a smarter course,” Lomborg insists.
worldPower 2010
Conference it has been fascinating to witness the classical collapse of a Grand Narrative, in which social and philosophical theories are being played out before our gaze.
The political & economic collapse has been quicker than any might
have predicted. The humiliating exclusion of the UK and the EU at the end of the Copenhagen débâcle was partially to be expected, but it was brutal in its final execution. The swing of power to the BASIC group of countries (Brazil, South Africa, India, China) had likewise been signified for some time, but, again, it came with precipitate ease. Even American President Barack Obama, was left with no doubt as to where the political agenda on climate change was now heading, namely to the developing world, but especially eastward and to the Pacific Rim. As ever, capitalism has read the runes, with carbon-trading posts
quietly being shed, ‘Green’ jobs sidelined, and even big insurance companies starting to hedge their own bets against the future of the Global Warming Grand Narrative. These rats are leaving the sinking ship far faster than any politician, many of whom are going to be abandoned, still clinging to the masts, as the Good Ship ‘Global Warming’ founders on titanic icebergs in the raging oceans of doubt and delusion. What can one say about ‘the science’? ‘The ‘science’ is already
paying dearly for its abuse of freedom of information, unacceptable cronyism, unwonted arrogance, and for the disgraceful misuse of data at every level, from temperature measurements to glaciers to the Amazon rainforest. What is worse, the usurping of the scientific method, and of justified scientific scepticism, by political policies and political propaganda could well damage science – never mind just climate science – in the public eye for decades. One could go on. But we may not need to do so for much longer.
Why? Because the biggest collapse is in the media, the very ‘mechanism’ through which the greedy Global Warming Grand Narrative has promulgated itself during the last ten to twenty years. In the past, uncritical and apocalyptic stories and programmes were given the highest prominence, with any sceptical comment confined to the briefest of quotations from some benighted, and often snidely- mentioned, sceptic squeezed in at the very end of the piece (“For balance, you know”). Today, the reverse is becoming true, with the ‘global warming’ faithful firmly forced on to the back foot. Yet, in our post-modern world, it is the journalistic language being employed that is the true indicator of a new media order. Even the language, the style, has altered radically. The collapse is now so precipitate that there will inevitably be some
serious losers caught out by it all. Sadly, many of our public and private organisations have allowed themselves to develop far too great a vested interest in global warming, as have too many politicians and activists. These are increasingly terrified, many having no idea how to react, or how to adjust, to the collapse. I have long predicted, and in public too, that the Copenhagen
Conference could prove to be the beginning of the end for the Global Warming Grand Narrative. It appears that I may well have been right, and, indeed, I may have considerably underestimated the speed, and the dramatic nature, of the demise. Where this all leaves our politicians and political parties; where it
leaves climate science, scientists more generally, and institutions like the Royal Society; where it leaves energy policy; where it leaves the ‘Green’ movement; and, where it leaves our media will have to be topics for later comments and analysis. For the moment, we must not underestimate the magnitude of the collapse. Academically, it is jaw-dropping to observe and the political, economic, and scientific consequences will be profound.3
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