The Wiki Man | 31 July 2010

At first glance the climate change debate is simple: you either believe the doom-mongers or you don’t. Soon, however, other questions arise. Is the world warming up or not? If so, is this warming anthropogenic or the result of a natural cycle? If greenhouse gases are indeed to blame, do we reduce emissions now or leave our children to deal with the consequences? Do we trust more to legislation or technological progress? And is the whole thing a whopping great lie?

The Delingpolian view that the whole thing is one great big con might still be right. There are plenty of people who have an ulterior motive in spreading fear. Governments love citing market failures as an excuse to intervene. Print journalists like to disparage the free markets which caused their own earnings to plummet while thicker contemporaries became rich from dubious banking practices. Academics and students get to pretend they are riding bicycles through choice rather than necessity. It is, in short, a wonderful opportunity to attack capitalism for anyone who feels ill-served by it. Within business, too, the sustainability movement is sometimes self-interested, giving people new reasons to justify their employment, with new conferences to attend. There are even billionaires eager to adopt a more austere existence to distinguish themselves from the arriviste oligarch next door. It’s a rare kind of person who looks at the modern world and wants to leave it alone.

So to the questions at the top, I now add one more. If this is a big lie, is it a good one? In other words, might we be better off believing the warnings, even if they are false? Plenty of people since Plato have believed society needs a good myth to sustain it.