The Reality of Climate Change

'The Reality of Climate Change: An Inconvenient Truth or A Convenient Lie?'
11.05.08
London Aware, Barbican, London

In August of last year a 15 year old girl in Portland, Maine—in the US—became an overnight celebrity—not like Paris Hilton, with a sex video, but because she set up a global warming sceptic website. It wasn’t until she posted a critique of Al Gore—the former vice president—and Jim Henson, one of NASA’s top climate scientists—that her site really took off. Every sceptic was promoting it. For the people who don’t believe in man-made global warming this was a terrific public relations coup.

Here was a school student debunking the mainstream scientific view on global warming, rubbishing their views. It was a terrific story and the teenager, Kirsten Byrnes was immediately feted and flattered by the large number global warming deniers—from senators to the general public. In fact so good was this story for getting space that—since then—there have been a plethora of essay competitions run in schools to encourage other young scientists to follow the same line. I understand that since then she’s formed a science foundation for supporters to donate funds towards her further education—and I’m sure that was welcome news to her parents as it would be to any facing the cost of expensive college schooling in the States or anywhere for that matter.

Apparently many of the points that she raised have been dealt with before, but that wasn’t the point of my story. It turned out that her stepfather—a global warming sceptic—had encouraged her. This is a story about proving you beliefs. How you can swing or turn or read data differently. However what this story highlighted—and why I believe it’s important to what we’re discussing today–The Reality of Climate Change: An inconvenient Truth or Convenient Lie—is this.When you have to decide—like in any debate—which side you favour—for example, global warming and you don’t have the time, or the experience or access to view the facts for yourself, how do you decid?. Who do you believe? In the case of Kristen Byrnes—it’s likely you’re swayed by the opinions of those nearest and dearest to you. Anybody in PR, market research, even scientific research will confirm that obviously we’re more inclined towards that which supports our beliefs—promotes our products—which is why surveys, statistics, figures can often be manipulated.

So global warming. Is it happening at all? And if so, is it our fault? Can we do anything about it? Or is just a fantastic hoax?

For those of you who are relatively new to the subject— as some here are today—I’ll just sum up what I know. There are on one hand the global warming sceptics. What do they believe? Basically that climate change is just part of a natural climate cycle; that the greenhouse effect is natural, in fact that CO2 is good for the planet because it enriches vegetation. This is generalised obviously. Sceptics tend to believe man’s contribution is insignificant and that basically global warming is driven by solar activity. Some believe the whole affair is an anti-rich conspiracy, bringing on an economic collapse—they don’t believe the planet is warming at all. Maybe they’re working in that sector, selling oil, or gas, large cars—not all, but some—not all sceptics are funded by oil companies! Some people just don’t like the look of wind turbines. Some think that ‘their scientists’ have been pressured into ‘believing global warming’. For example there’s been substantially more investment into research (and I personally believe for good reason) to prove man-made global warming than otherwise—many other reasons for the sceptical lobby but those are just some of them.

The other side—the activists—believe we are influencing climate change—and we need to act very quickly indeed to reverse our damage. They believe so passionately. However, this group of people are divided amongst themselves as to how to do that. There are groups who are for and against say nuclear technology, bio-fuels, solar panels, wind, population control et cetera. Some think there should be no planes or cars on the planet at all. We should all live in caves again. It’s a great mix of opinions. That’s the other side.

However, what is for sure is that these two sides are pretty angry with one another. One says ‘you’re trying to destroy the planet’ physically, the other says ‘you’re trying to destroy the planet’ economically. Scientists on both sides have been harassed—intimidated into keeping quiet about their views. So that’s pretty even Steven. Both sides push their points. And campaigners like myself know that both sides have become pretty aggressive towards opposing views.

But just for the record the last survey—last month in fact— before this speech—and again I’m not sure who actually funded this particularly research—apparently 97% of scientists believe global temperatures have increased and 84 % of those personally believe that it is human-induced.

Just a bit on the Hot Women Campaign which I know has been the subject of great interest! This campaign began really because of that very question ‘An Inconvenient Truth or a Convenient Lie.’ And I will explain. Firstly, why women? It occurred to me that if CO2 emissions were the problem and needed controlling not only were we over 50 per cent of the population, but also we were the nesters, the home lovers—we were the ones responsible for much of the creature comforts that emit this CO2. Apparenlty modern women—women in the western world—now make up or influence something like 80 per cent of all decisions on consumer goods, even cars, holidays. They buy the food, cook it, run the washing machines. They also influence the majority of fast fashion that ends up in land fill every week, every month. But I’d also noticed for myself that a tide of scepticism had crept back amongst the public. So I decided to conduct my own little survey.

I knew that women were concerned—they had to be—about global warming, and yet so many of them were suddenly not doing anything and even ‘turning sceptic’. Why were they not changing their life styles, cutting back etc? The reasons I found: (amongst many)—they were suddenly frightened by the financial implications—big time—fighting global warming was costing a lot of extra financial worry: they didn’t like being patronised as they saw it by ‘greenies’; they didn’t like the guilt, the alarmist techniques. Alarming works inititally but can backfire.

Also many of them – what we call light greens if not very, very light greens—didn’t identify with earth mothers at all, found them rather too aggressive, didn’t agree with their politics, didn’t want tot turn vegan, things like that, but mostly and overwhelming what I established was that there was another reason why many women who were concerned and would like to be more involved with ‘saving the planet’ were avoiding the issue was this——Unlike celebrities, politicians, campaigners—who are used to being criticised publicly, could not survive professionally if they did, the average person does not enjoy—in fact is terrified of being labelled—called—particularly in public, in the street, at school —a fraud, a liar, a hypocrite. If you admit you’re concerned about man-made global warming that can happen.

If for example they did run a four by four, or wanted to take their family to Thailand or their husband had a job in a ‘bad’ industry—working as a pilot like mine for example, they couldn’t join that side as I saw it. Someone would turn around and say, ‘you’re a hypocrite, you’re driving a big car, you’re using a hair dryer, you’re going on a flight?’ Most people are terrified of attack like that. They would rather avoid it at all costs. Therefore it was far easier for them to absorb the sceptical lobb – it’s not man made–or blame China— than make changes in their own lives. And this is what we need. We need public cooperation.

I completely sympathised with these women because I know there are enough daily pressures on women as it is–to look good, to be good mothers, nurturers, good business women, great politicians. The last thing they wanted to do was to invite more trouble into their lives. And therefore I thought if I could set up a campaign which would take that concern off them it might work. And it would be a campaign that would allow women–—light greens as we call them today—to be able to take advantage of a time in history when they could get off the bandwagon of the commercial, the social pressures—to reassess the way they want to live their life.

The basis of it to me was beauty books magazines telling women ‘you have to drink 8 litres of water a day to keep your skin beautiful’—that’s sort of thing. How can it be that make a woman beautiful when somewhere in the world a child doesn’t get 8 litres a month to drink. It didn’t make sense. I wanted women to think these things out for themselves. Leadership models are changing in tune with our need to conserve—what’s been hot, the thinking behind it over the last twenty odd years is not longer hot. Hot Women was designed for exactly that—to get the message out into the mainstream, the women who weren’t environmentally aware normally, the women who shop—about global warming. And before the sceptical lobby got to them with their more seductive message of 'it's ok. Nothing's happening.

We need your support in reducing carbon emissions and supporting sustainable technology. As I said earlier in the year about Hot Women, ‘more than a billion women around the world want to emulate western women’s lifestyles and are rapidly acquiring the material ability to do so. It is therefore vital that in our leadership we display some reserve and responsibility in our spending so that the world’s finite resources will be available for our children, their children and their children’s children .And that really sums up the campaign for me.

Right now it seems unlikely to imagine, but global warming causing climate change may be the ultimate issue that unites us all. Let’s turn an inconvenient truth into a convenient truth and make the very best of what we have to do ahead of us.