Perhaps it's no surprise that I find Climate Change Denialists somewhat ill-informed, conspiracy theorists. I'm equally unsurprised to see Tony Abbott, a man who has trouble making it past the contents page of a Grade 10 science textbook, whipping up opposition to action on Climate change in between fighting bushfires in NSW one week, and sandbagging houses in Brisbane the next.
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I'm willing to accept that people like Abbott, Lord Munckton, Andrew Bolt, and Piers Akerman are reasonably intelligent human beings (despite plenty of evidence to the contrary). I'm also happy to acknowledge that there must be a logical reason why non-experts such as themselves employ so much effort and energy in rebutting acknowledged experts from the international scientific community.
Thanks to the work of Naomi Klein, their vigorous denial now makes sense to me.
Klein uses extreme right wing Republicans to illustrate her theory, but the reference applies equally to the individuals mentioned above. These people are passionate and loud deniers of anthropogenic climate change, and they use their denial to hide their discomfort at holding conflicting ideas and opinions on the issue. They understand that accepting the scientific opinion is at odds with their world view about the importance of low taxes, laissez-faire capitalism, deregulation/self-regulation, small government, and reducing 'green tape'.
Klein points out that the right understands that climate change makes some kind of left wing revolution inevitable. They have looked at what it would take to reduce global emissions at the rate recommended by scientists and have seen that it can be only be done by re-ordering our economic and political systems in ways which are opposed to their free market belief system.
The usual argument is that it is unaffordable. That it will destroy our economy. But this again ignores the lessons of history.
Conservative governments took us to war in 1914 and 1939 without hesitating to argue that it was unaffordable. The cost of Australia's involvement in the Great War peaked at 12% of GDP, and in WWII at 34% of GDP. The cost of shifting our economy in the direction of reduced greenhouse emissions will start at 2% of GDP and will peak at 4%, between three and nine times less than the war efforts without the destruction and catastrophic loss of life. In fact acting on Climate change will save lives, and reduce the kind of damage and destruction we have seen in recent natural disasters.
There seems to be little we can do to shift the cognitive dissonance of climate change deniers. A better approach seems to be to leave them to their delusions, and let them thrash away in the vacuum they have created around themselves. The rest of us can keep up with the discussion and the science, we can be confident that we can take action to stabilise emissions and then start to reduce them, and we can be a part of the movement towards finding ways to ensure a brighter future for this and future generations.
The right has succeeded in throwing climate change science in doubt, placed major obstacles in the path of environmental legislation and continue to rake in their mercenary fees from energy and business lobbyists. All these signs of a broken system, point to the fact that dealing with the crisis facing our planet will require nothing less than a complete restructuring of our economic system.
An actual remedy to the crisis would mean upending the whole free trade agenda and globalization, localize our economies, pay for the damages our pollution has caused, regulate the greed of corporations, subsidize renewable energy and strengthen the United Nations.
The right choose to not believe in climate change "because it’s easier to deny the science than to say ‘OK, I accept that my whole worldview is about to fall apart,'” she says. “If we aren’t careful… then this crisis will be exploited to militarize our societies and to create fortress continents. We are really facing a choice.”