In The Revenge Of Gaia, the new book by the climate scientist James Lovelock, he "predicts that by 2020 extreme weather will be the norm, causing global devastation; that by 2040 much of Europe will be Saharan; and parts of London will be underwater." (from an article in today's Guardian.) Given that some kind of catastrophe is inevitable, Lovelock's solution is to "Enjoy life while you can. Because if you're lucky it's going to be 20 years till it hits the fan." A lot of people I know have been saying this kind of thing for a while; often they're the same ones who refused to believe in the ecological crisis when it first burst, well, crept, into the newspapers in the late 1980s. Funny, that. Of course it's nice to live with the weight of the world lifted from your shoulders... but there's a more intelligent solution.
We've been here before, in the face of another great defining moment, the retreat of religion. At the time when there was still uncertainty about God's existence, French philosopher Pascal came up with his famous "wager', namely that in the face of this uncertainty, it was a better bet to believe in God because of the size of the prize i.e. eternal bliss. Presumably, the pleasure we might lose in terms of reining in the worst of our Earthly desires would be made up for in the sense of serenity we'd experience by doing the right thing? Anyway, this is how I understand it.
Something similar applies now. It is simply a better bet to act as if we can ameliorate the climate catastrophe. Until we're sure we can't. This time it's the size of the possible loss that counts.
On a related topic, given that we expect climate catastrophe, and that we have daily exposure to the latest evidence (if such were needed) that capitalism isn't working very well at the moment, why isn't there more of a fuss about veteran campaigner Ralph Nader's presidential bid?
Take a minute to look at what Nader stands for. Click the link, go on. He wants to cut the bloated military budget, adopt a carbon tax, lead an "aggressive" clampdown on corporate crime and - if this doesn't sell him, nothing will - impeach Bush & Cheney! None of the other candidates would dare to confront corporate power. But isn't this precisely what needs to be done in 2008? It's hard to believe that so many millions of voters can't see this. (Ignorant? Stupid? Androids? A combination of all of these?)
The mainstream politicians wallow in the public's ignorance/stupidity/roboticness, of course. Even though it's clear we are locked into a kind of danse macabre with global corporations, none of them have the imagination to disengage from this, or even talk about how this might be done. We can have "change", Mr Obama, but it needs to be radical and visionary.
I would like to see the current generation of politicians swept away - by the ballot box if possible, but by any means necessary - to be replaced by more courageous people, like Nader, who are not afraid to say what they believe, and whom we can therefore trust to respond effectively to the current crisis in capitalism, and to the threat of global catastrophe.
