Climate mudslinging stops debate
21 Dec 2009
An increasingly unpleasant feature of the global environmental debate is that anyone questioning official policies for addressing climate change, or worse, doubting the scientific and economic reasoning behind them, gets slapped down and denounced as some sort of new age heretic.
Current name-calling ranges from the (dubious) use of emotive words such as ‘denier’, to climate change secretary Ed Miliband’s labelling of Lord Nigel Lawson and other rival politicians as ‘climate saboteurs’ for drawing attention to the fact that leading boffin Prof Phil Jones was sitting on research that didn’t quite tally with the Government line on climate change.
The problem with this name-calling etc is that it diverts attention from the need for a much broader debate on the best ways to tackle the threats posed by climate change. It also discourages input from many engineers, scientists and industrial experts, who offer real solutions to the environmental issues faced.
The debate has long been dominated by environmental lobby groups, who continue to set the agenda at the top political tables in the European Union, United Nations and Washington DC. There they have the too often unquestioning support of politicians, who are at least part-guided by research from scientists, like Prof Jones, with one or both feet firmly in the green camp.
Not surprising so that there is little effort going in to engaging the general public in this debate. Indeed, it seems that the views of the ‘man on the street’ come a very poor second to those of the protestors breaking into power stations or shouting down slogans from the rooftops at the Houses of Parliament.
