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    Climate Emergency and cognitive dissonance. Archived Message

    Posted by John Monro on February 25, 2019, 8:00 pm

    Three of our daughters have travelled to New Zealand for a family re-union / holiday with us here in Martinborough. We had a lovely time, with really hot dry weather, courtesy of the heat washing over from Australia. We enjoyed a five day tramp in the Able Tasman national park, along a beautiful unspoilt coastline. But many people were unable to - the camping sites along the track all were closed because of the severe heat and dire fire risk. Rangers told us that trees were dying from lack of rain and heat, they'd never seen anything like this previously. (We were staying in huts or lodges)

    Two have just returned home to a country in the grip of a severe spring. Daffodils in their millions, birds tweeting in the trees, bees buzzing in the flowers, people stretching out on the grass in the sunshine to read, talk, maybe in some secluded dell, to make love. And somewhere near where Rhisiart lives the mercury climbed to 20.6 deg C, smashing a record in London of about 20 years ago, and the first time ever a temperature of over 20 degC is recorded in the UK.

    This is not normal, as humanity living in the UK has understood it for the last 10,000 years. But this level of extremity of weather is the new normal, how quickly as a species we come to accept change, whether political, social or ecological and fail to notice it.

    We fail to notice the lack of insects on the windscreen because only those over 50 years old would notice, or where have all the butterflies and caterpillars gone? We fail to notice when we take the dinghy out to fish how much longer it takes to catch anything worthwhile, because you'd need to be 70 to remember catching mackerel as soon as the feather nears the bottom. We fail to notice that we haven't seen a hedgehog in the garden for a long time.

    And the Government continues to fail to notice anything about the climate, in comparison to which Brexit is a totally irrelevant distraction. Carolin Lucas takes the government to task - she says this is a climate emergency. All the sane scientists on the Earth say this is a planetary emergency.

    And yet in my posting there's a serious case of cognitive dissonance, as you will all have noted. In coming to NZ and returning home, my three daughters would have discharged into the atmosphere the equivalent of 18 tonnes of CO2. see https://calculator.carbonfootprint.com/calculator.aspx?lang=en-GB&tab=3 (this calculation also takes account of the increased radiative forcing of CO2 emissions in the stratosphere - the calculation is about 1.8 times the actual amount of CO2 discharged) In their, and our defence, it helps a bit that none of them own or drive a car and take public transport in London, and walks and cycle too. Still they heat the house with gas, and have other holidays flying to places in Europe.

    Yet despite my serious concern about global warming, not once did I discuss with our daughters global warming and their relationship to it. We are all guilty are we not of sweeping difficult problems under the carpet of convenience when it suits us or when discussion of such matters seems mean or critical or is designed to cause guilt.

    Some people would say this is hypocrisy. But this is not the true meaning of the word. True hypocrisy is when you believe one thing, but publicly state another. For instance, the minister who no longer believes in God yet is persuaded to continue his occupation in convincing others of God's reality. Of the politician who claims concern about global warming but in reality doesn't give a toss, but it's politically convenient to allow others to think he does.

    What our family is guilty of is just ordinary human failure to behave in the way that our conscience tells us we should. The joy of seeing our family, who we don't very often, far outweighs the concern of what our behaviour might ultimately cause, as in the the cliché "one drop of rain doesn't feel responsible for the flood".

    The CO2 calculation comes from a site that offers carbon offsets - I am pretty dubious as to how effective or meaningful any carbon offset is. So I don't know yet whether I will contribute to one plan or not, there are some options available.

    In the meantime all of you in the UK you will enjoy the spring like February, who wouldn't, but it is coming at an increasingly dire cost and even parted families will have to come to terms with it.

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