Climate Change Part 2: It's personal

I have this memory from when I was a kid of asking my mother why people used to smoke in the olden days when smoking is bad for you. Her answer was simple. "They didn't understand that smoking was bad for them. That's why people used to smoke in the olden days". I accepted it, at the time. But years later it occured to me; people did understand. As early as the 1960s everyone knew that smoking wasn't doing them any favours, health wise. But they were addicted.

Just ask these guys.

Anyway, I saw these ads from the Copenhagen Summit in 2009 which made me wonder. Will I, one day, have to explain to my kids why we didn't do something about climate change when we had the chance? Will I have to explain that people drove cars everywhere and threw out food? That we scorned politicians who tried to introduce legislation to tax carbon and that we demanded cheap electricity over renewable energy?

 And most importanly, will I be able to look them in the eye and say 'we didn't understand'? Because I'm just not sure that'll be a good enough excuse. We do understand. And if we don't, we really should.

The information is out there. It has been for a long time.

But just like smokers, we're addicted to our decadent lifestyles. We don't want to quit, and we don't want to believe that we have to. And there are some pretty powerful corporations who have a strong financial interest in keeping us hooked.

The world is going to change. It's inevitable. It always is.
The real question is, are we going to take a measure of control in the direction things go, or will we just be swept along in the consequences?

Climate Change Part 1: It's political

I'm doing a subject on environmental politics at the moment. It's fairly chilling. The inevitability of the massive changes to our current way of life that are going to occur over the next 50 years of human history ... well, it's nothing short of daunting. I have no intention of making a case for the truth of man made climate change here - it's been done so many times in so many different ways I honestly don't know what I could say to change the  mind of someone set on denial. But the biggest thing I've learnt from the course is that, like everything in the world, the environment is not above politics.

One of the reasons there are so many climate sceptics in Australia is because its severity (and indeed, its very existence) is debated daily at the political level. 

Most of the nations that are in a position (both economically and developmentally) to best tackle climate change have leaders who are democratically elected, and election cycles of 4 years or less. This creates an incentive toward short term policy, which is woefully inadequate when it comes to the environment.

The reason European countries like the UK and Germany have far more extensive climate change policies than Australia is that in the 1980s when climate change first became an issue they had conservative governments, lead by politicians with a scientific background.* This meant that they understood the science and took it seriously, and when a change to a non-conservative government occurred the environmental policies already in place were improved upon, rather than scaled back.**

The 'ClimateGate' scandal highlighted that even the world's most respected climate scientists have felt the pull of politics, going so far as to manipulate their scientific findings to make them more politically persuasive and/or palatable.

There are more examples, but for the sake of brevity I'll leave it there. The point is, though, that the political debates surrounding climate change debate can explain a lot about it.

Believe it or not, Europeans aren't all climate change believing, sustainability achieving, bike riders. (Until I read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo I thought Sweden was full of philanthropists who lived in sustainable apartments, ate organic food, and loved paying taxes. Turns out they have corporate tycoons just like anywhere.)




*Margaret Thatcher studied Chemistry at Oxford before going into politics; West Germany (and later united Germany) was led by conservative Chancellor Helmut Kohl, with environmental expert Klaus Töpfer as Minister for the Environment, Conservation, and Nuclear Safety.
**I unashamedly stole the idea for this dot point from Peter Christoff, lecturer at Uni Melb and actual Climate Policy expert.

If life gives you salt lamps ...

 I bought a salt lamp at one of those Ishka warehouse sales a while back. I've always wanted one - they make such pretty light! - and this one plugs into my computer, which is handy. Plus it was half price.

ooh, salty!

  Sadly, though when I turned it on for the first time I discovered that instead of a plain coloured light bulb which would shine naturally through the salt and make my room into a new age wonderland, the lamp was electric blue. I tried pulling it apart to see if there was a coloured filter I could remove, but no luck.


 

This photo actually does it too much justice -

in real life the colour is far more offensively bright.

Initially I was disappointed, but I've decided to embrace the weirdness of it. I mean, it's a salt lamp designed to correct the imbalance of ions in the air caused by evil technology. But it's the colour of a disco light. New age hippy meets dancing queen.

Anyway, this whole experience has led me to a point where I'm trying to be more positive about things. Rather than despairing when life gives me the proverbial electric blue salt lamp, I intend to dance to techno versions of Bob Dylan songs while wearing a sequined kaftan.

Proverbial sequined kaftan, that is.