How much do I care about climate change?
By: Jonny Gibson
Tags: Public Speaking, Climate Change, Family

Show me where you spend your time, money and energy and I’ll tell you what you worship — John Wimber

I find it more and more difficult to prioritise what it is I care about, certainly in terms of local and national politics. It’s easy to complete a checklist of things — just tell the friendly pollster you care about everything! but it’s more of a challenge to make an ordered list.

The issues arising from anthropogenic climate change dominate the political agenda. The main parties in the UK trip over themselves to prove how important they think it is and this is driven, or at least supported by polling.

I care about it. I think we should try to avoid it. I think it will be a ‘bad’ thing, and if we can’t stop it we should alleviate as much as possible. But how much to do care? I don’t know. It seems hard to quantify.

We can take it to the extremes of course. Say someone told me that avoiding climate change was zero cost or effort, there’s just a big switch to press. I’d say — ok, fine, go for it. Conversely if Iwas told that we can avoid climate change but everyone you know and love will be brutally killed today. I’d say — no thanks, I’ll take the climate change please. I love my family and friends more than I hate the idea of climate change.

Perhaps let’s get back to some less crazy examples. Assuming that in your country, taxation and government is set up as fairly as you’d like it. You’re 100% happy with how much your government is borrowing and repaying, and you wouldn't adjust the tax code in anyway. Of course no one is, but just for the sake of argument. Let’s also make the reasonable assumption that tackling climate change has a cost in terms of time, money and energy. How much are you willing to cut from the health, education, welfare, pension budget to pay for it?

For me, i think it comes down to timescales. I think there’s something quite ridiculous, abstract and quite arrogant for us to worry about what will be happening on earth in hundreds of years. It’s quite likely we’ll have long since reached the point of Singularly between man and machine at which point all bets are off. It’s unlikely we’ll even need oxygen to breathe, and frankly, we’ll have more pressing problems than the climate. So let’s talk about our children’s children. Thats less abstract.

If I could be convinced that life would be a whole lot worse in 50–100 years based on our actions today ,then I’m on board. I’d be happy to have less money spent on education and health and welfare in order to transition the world to a carbon neutral economy. I’d like it to expressly put in those terms though, i’d like it to be clear that we are letting people die earlier or get sicker or have worse education to the benefit of our grandchildren. If it was put in those terms it might help to focus minds.

So on to my great grandchildren. 120–150 years time. For me, this is the point where it gets abstract. It’s the point where i think — “hey a massive asteroid could hit the earth in 2142, who knows?!” We shouldn't be denying people better cancer treatment in 2022 to alleviate the lives of people, who’s circumstances and wishes we know nothing about.

So i guess thats how much I care. Certainly not zero. But i require the debate to be put in terms I can connect with, and at the moment the discussion seems disappointingly naive.