Don’t Look Back in Anger
In 2018 three things happened in the Climate Change movement. Firstly, the PR battle over climate science was won. As of 2019 it is impossible for a climate sceptic to operate publicly with any credibility and those who deny are left to lurk in dark corners of social media. Even troll overlord President Trump had to leave Paris under the crude facade of striking a better deal rather than questioning the science itself. This victory corresponded to mass divesting from fossil fuels - the big four banks refusing to fund Adani, for example. Big money showed up to a climate conference for the first time at Katowice, Poland. It felt like things were beginning to tip.
Thanks to the breathing room offered by this momentary victory, in 2018 the climate movement also had time to take a glance in the review mirror and deliberate on its own history. To much fanfare The New York Times released “Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change” a look at 1979 - 1989 how close we came to establishing a comprehensive carbon emissions scheme, and fell short by a few signatures. This was a time before
industrial interests had become entrenched and organised to resist action. For my radio program at 3CR last year was the first time we began to talk about “the historical record,” so that in the future we could assess what action was done. The grim subtext was that the historical record is most important in the aftermath of a catastrophe.
The final thing that 2018 brought was a general realisation that we had arrived at the future. It was as if a light had suddenly been switched on in the dim recesses of the Australian mind. At last the blazing heat outside, the bush fires, the Great Barrier Reef and floods up North were all linked to climate change. Putting aside the gargantuan failure of the Australia imagination that we need to see before we believe, the climate movement can take a win where it finds it. Almost immediately after this realisation came a question - was it too late?
Last week in the blazing Victorian sun I drove in my girlfriend’s black Mercedes to Gippsland to report on the the final part of www.afterthesmokeclears.com.au. On the way, I listened to the audiobook Elizabeth Kolbert excellent book from 2006 Field Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, And Climate Change. It is relentless - it covers the reality of climate change - from scientists falling through what was supposed to be solid ice, relocation of innuit tribes, shifting patterns of wildlife. The conclusion was that back in 2006 climate change was happening - you just need to know where to look.
There is an emotional cost from reading it, especially when driving a big black car without air-conditioning on a freakishly sweltering day. All three major aspects of 2018 had all converged on that listen. That the purpose of the book - to convince an unwilling public on the realities of climate change - had finally been achieved. It now formed part of the historical record of Climate Change and the consequences of global warming that it spoke of had moved from the fringes and were now happening everywhere - ie we had arrived in the future.
I had found out about the book from an interview with the author on the Longform Podcast https://longform.org/posts/longform-podcast-315-elizabeth-kolbert. The interviewer ends up asking if we have any hope. She sidesteps with a betraying note of despair - no matter what happens it’s going to get hotter. That was the only way Elizabeth could navigate the official narrative “we have act NOW” and her evident personal opinion “it’s too late”.
Recently, I have been especially sensitive to this dichotomy. Reading an article on the conversation I followed through the writer’s bio - Marc Hudson https://theconversation.com/profiles/marc-hudson-180939 - the final sentence: “For what it is worth, I think we’re not going to get out of this mess, to the extent that I had a vasectomy back in 2004. True story.” I have emailed Marc and he indeed confirmed this is true. What do you do with the politically untenable information that it is in fact too late? You despair has to be private because people will never want to hear about it. I am going to investigate this very bleak topic this year. How unsexy.
I used to have a mantra that I will now have to disobey - “Never predict the end of the world - if you’re wrong you look like an idiot and if you’re right nobody cares.”