It's raining out there-- most of you are getting used to hearing
that. A steady hard rain whipping in silver streaks from the tin-gray
sky. We are so new to the climate here, could be just as usual ... but
we have been told that yes, although Wales is all about rain--that
it has changed. Normal is a steady, light, continous series of storms. These heavy deluges are new, and that is born out by the serious flooding and flash-floods
happening all over Wales, England, and Scotland in this past month.
And apparently it is snowing in the Los Angeles foothills ....
If I am writing for my audience then I really don't need to say
anything convincing about Global Warming, because I imagine you're all
on-board. We know its real, the science has been examined to the
point of the almost ridiculous (think, for comparison, of how little science
went into researching the effects of dropping a nuclear bomb before we
actually went and did it, and then did it again, and again....) There is data on climate for about 800,000 years that scientists have combed over. The big "scandal"
about a few emails that has been dutifully picked up by the media is a
big diversion orchestrated by the same groups who've been fighting
action on Global Warming for years (the ones, of course, who are
making so much money off of business as usual). The scandal isn't
those emails, but the lies and conspiracies of those groups ... But I
digress, sort of.
Yesterday was Day 1 of the climate change summit in Copenhagen and
it's a very big deal. I want to write about it but have been
wondering exactly what, in the scheme of things, I can offer. So
rather than writing on the science, or the possible litany of
disasters (desertification, entire countries drowned, millions
displaced, famines, cities underwater, hundreds of species dead,
genocide ultimately) I offer the view I can of an American abroad ....
About a week ago there was a programme on the BBC about climate change
and America. A British commentator traveled to America last February,
right after the innauguration, to survey the American public on
climate change--and then traveled back a few weeks ago to compare
where the country stood on the eve of the Copenhagen summit. It was
rather surreal to be an American in Britain watching a Brit in
America. While I have certainly moaned (okay, let's be honest,
railed) about the ignorance of American culture before when it comes
to things like public transportaion, global warming, war, knowledge of
current events, etc. there was something acutely mortifying about
watching this programme. The mood at the beginning was rather hopeful
for all that. Obama had presented some tough talk about making
climate a priority and while it was embarrassing to see the poor Brit
trying to travel low-carb (ie low carbon-footprint) in the Minnesota
suburbs (where, he explained, there was no efficient or viable bus
system) there was a heartening willingness in the small group of
Minnesotans who gathered to discuss climate change with him to accept
that there were some hard realities as work that would have to be
dealt with. Sadly the tale devolved from there. After a few buses,
some hitch-hiking, and one train ride, the man finally gave up trying
to travel any way except by rented car or plane.
[Here is a note of one major perspective issue. Brits (and I imagine
Europeans, too--and if what the young Chinese student I spoke to
yesterday was true, urban Chinese and Japanese as well) really can not
comprehend the serious economic and logisitcal issues surrounding any
attemp at low-carb travel in the U.S. They are baffled by Americans
seeming unwillingness to get out of the car--but most don't realize
not only the scope of the country but the giant hole that Americans
dug themselves over the past 50+ years of uban/suburban
"non"-planning. Everything is miles and miles away. Raillines were
dug up decades ago (often by oil, rubber, and gas companies looking to
make cars the ONLY option--which they succeeded in doing), and the bus
system is, well, pathetic. Most often public transportation turns out
to be more of a financial hardship, for the poor people who need it,
than a car would be anyway .... Now, all that said--and I admit to
being suprised at my own willingness to offer any kind of "excuse" for
American ambivalence--there is ultimately no excuse for not MAKING
this an issue. We are going to have to someday, if only on the day
when there is simply no more oil, or too little money to buy gas and
at that point it will be too late to create and re-create the massive
infrastructure needed for a real and meaningful public transportation
system to exist. To give you a presepctive from the Brit side, it is
being seriously considered here, in Parliament, to ban all national
air-travel--something I can't even imagine in the States but here
would be hardshipe for some, but not necessarily a change in the
fabric of the culture (which it would be in the U.S.)]
Perhaps the most harrowing moment of the programme was when he
ventured into the basement of a restaurant for a meeting of locals in
a town in Virginia, near D.C. Here the button-down, platinum blonde
crowd was discussing the all out war that was imminent if the liberal
administration didn't quit trying to push its "fascist" agenda onto
freedom-loving americans. The most hair-raising moment? When a woman
spoke earnestly about how she'd just read Orwell's 1984, and how
eerily like 1984 the world was becoming, thanks to Obama's
administration.
I've done some surfing of US papers vs. British ones and sadly I have
seen little coverage of the Climate talks in the US (you all will have
to tell me if I am wrong)--and most of what I've seen is posited amid
"continuing questions about the science of global warming". It's a
sad comparison, but I am not really that surprised by it. I've harped
on the "electronic curtain" behind which Americans continue in
ignorance, for a long time. And so there is part of me that thinks,
well, damn them if they want to bury their heads in the sand. Go
ahead world, leave American out of the loop on this one. Leave it
trailing behind in its own exhaust fumes.
But of course national boundaries are not geographical but imaginary
and pollution and climate devestation don't respect borders.
What is so ironic is that American opinions, ignorance, apathy, and
policy on Climate Change is headline news everywhere in the world
except the United States. They all want to know what the hell America
is thinking, what the Senate is stalling on, whether Obama will bother
to show up. Because the reality is without the U.S., who with 5% of
the population makes around 27% of the CO2, anything to come out of
Copenhagen will be meaningless.
This time right now is key, precious, a pivot--even if we may already
have tipped over the other side ... With carbon at 390 parts per
million in the atmosphere now, and scientists having agreed that for
life "as we know it" to continue on the planet it cannot excede 350
ppm, we need something (and by something I mean a lot of really
drastic things) to happen, well, yesterday. I wish there were some
way that change could happen without the U.S.-- but as an article in
the Guardian said, "7.4% of Americans can block humanity's efforts to
save itself".
Again with the irony ... but in the end the most revolutionary aspect
of this moment in time may not be the amazing science and technology
that are telling us what is happening, could happen, and what might
help save our asses, nor the economics that will and must change on a
drastic scale to make any climate policy mean anything, and not even
the politics and politcians that will have to get over the usual
squabbles and posing to be useful--the real revolution could be,
should be, must be one of perception. Americans have to wake up and
realize how important they are. More irony, because we as a nation
are notoriously self-congragulatory. But its not about imagining
ourselves as world police or white knights, as some fictional great
nation leading the charge for a new global era (clearly we are
not--dragging our feet while the poor nations in South America,
Africa, and Asia right now are on the cutting edge, bringing the most
radical and realistic ideas to the table) but to see ourselves for
what we truly are: reponsible. We have a heavy responsibility to the
world (to our children) for our way of life. Its one thing to sit
around patting ourselves on the back for being the "greatest nation on
earth" or for being "the global leader" -- it is quite another to
actually realize what that means.
And in the end what all of this comes down to is that the American people have to realize that inaction, ignorance, apathy, and fear are not valueless personality traits or unfortunate cultural quirks. They are choices that have
consequences.
