“Generals are always prepared to fight the last war” is a cliché, and as with most clichés, that is because it is true.
In reading this post on WorldChanging about a site that summarizes the evidence in favor of anthropogenic (i.e., human-caused) global warming, it struck me how the argument, at least in the US, has broken along traditional political lines. The left, by and large, accepts the existence of anthropogenic global warming and wants to make finding answers to it a priority; the right, by and large, argues against it, usually in the alternative (it isn’t happening; if it is happening, humans aren’t causing it; if humans are causing it there is nothing we can do; if there is something we can, it’s too expensive; and if there is something affordable that we can do, what’s wrong with the climate getting warmer, anyway?).
Why is that? Why the resistance to something that is as categorically true as the earth going around the sun?
And then it struck me: The right is not fighting the current war, they’re fighting the last one. From the right’s perspective, this whole thing is a continuation of the (largely-mythological) “technology vs. the Luddite left” war, where the only answer to global warming is to return to the Iron Age (setting aside for a moment that Iron Age-style living with the world’s current population might not be a really great idea, either).
Certainly elements of that exist on the left, but the strange, like the poor, will always be with us, bless ’em.
The reality is that this is a technological problem that will have technological fixes. Unless we are willing to consider things that border on the unthinkable (“what would it take to get the world’s population back to 2 billion?”), we will need to apply every ounce of brain matter to finding very clever fixes for this problem. It’s going to be complicated, and it may well be a bit inconvenient for the first world.
We’ll cope, we always do. This is not about smashing the automated looms; this is about finding a way to continue enjoying the current standard of living. Yes, we will have to find replacements for hydrocarbon power; we found replacements for horse power in cities, and I am not among the few who miss foot-deep horse shit on city streets.
And, a special note to my friends on the right: Some group of people, who may not even know who they are right now, is going to make shitloads of money off of this.
posted 20:31 | trackbackI am amazed at how this is hard for people to understand.
or am I missing something?
Posted by: Simon at July 29, 2004 06:32 AMAs a conservative I must point of one posibility you may have not thought of.
Maybe they want it to happen. A growing number of people particularly religious types feel the only way this world is gona be "fixed" is if god smites us mightily. Now while many may openly say they dont belive in global warming it may be they belive its gods will that we basicaly flay ourselves. They also being as they tend to be would tend to feel good people of strong moral fiber will be able to survive the comming calamity and the slime of the earth would be washed away.
Or they could be like me and just expect it to happen anyway because its about that time in history. In which case they dont want people pipe dreaming about stopping it they want people plotting on surviving it and dealing with it WHEN it happens.
Persoanly I feel its like when people tried to prevent the world wars.. its obvious from history they couldnt be stopped no matter what. I feel 100 years from now our descendants will look back at today and wonder why we thought we could stop the tide.
Posted by: wintermane at July 30, 2004 03:58 AMI'm really not qualified to comment on the eschatological aspects of global warming, except to note that the end of the world is coming, and always has been. The same argument could be used against vaccination, since the Black Plague must clearly be God's Will, and who are we to thwart it?
As far as it being "that time in history," it is certainly possible that some of the warming that we are experiencing is due to natural climate shifts, and would be happening anyway even if we didn't use carbon-based fuels. Some of it, though, is clearly anthropogenic, and thus working to reduce our carbon dependency is important because:
1. It buys us time. Even if there is ultimately nothing we can do to stop the temperature from going up, the longer we have, the more we can do. Given that we are talking about whole cities (and potentially whole countries) disappearing, even a few months is helpful.
2. Carbon fuels are going away no matter what. We will run out of them. Even if carbon had no environmental effect whatsoever, we need to find a way of running a modern economy without depending on them.
"Pipe dreaming about stopping it" vs. "dealing with the consequences" is a false dichotomy. The reality, now, is "dealing with stopping it, or the consequences if we can't" vs. "pipe dreaming about how there is nothing we can do, so we don't have to do anything."
Posted by: Christophe at August 12, 2004 04:31 PM