Politics of green unreality

Merv Bendle

The postmodern politics of climate change

In the realm of disinformation, the prize must go to Al Gore who appeared in front of video images of a collapsing glacier to declare that the South Pole will be ice-free within five years. Such deliberate misrepresentations are linked to a further feature of this type of postmodern politics: the assertion of a militant and intransigent stance and violent denunciation of all compromise. All of this is then cloaked with the trappings of high moralism and the attribution and acceptance of guilt and shame, especially by the leadership of Western countries, which specializes in self-laceration.

Whatever the ultimate effects of the Copenhagen Conference may be, it was an excellent example of the postmodern mode of politics that increasingly dominates contemporary societies.

Postmodernism has various characteristics, but the relevant one here is the assumption that there is no ‘real’ world and that what we take for ‘reality’ is a text, narrative, or stream of images which lack any underlying referent. Politically, this attitude manifests itself in a disconnection between the symbolism and substance of an issue accompanied by an obsessive concern with that symbolism and an ultimate disregard for the substance. Central to this literally unreal and increasingly sinister situation are the state’s efforts to deal with the omnipresent media. The latter operate on a 24 hour news cycle and myriad government agencies have been set up to manage the sort of politics this creates, in what is increasingly referred to as a ‘PR State’. Much of Australia’s extraordinarily large 114 person delegation to Copenhagen consisted of people associated with such tasks.


Cleaning out the climate science cesspool

Paul Driessen

As frigid Copenhagen holds its Climate Armageddon confab, a predictable barrage of hothouse horrors has been unleashed, to advance proposals to slash hydrocarbon use and carbon dioxide emissions, restrict agriculture and economic growth, and implement global governance and taxation.

CO2 has reached a new high (0.0385% of the atmosphere), we’re told, because of cars and “coal-fired factories of death.” Rising seas are forcing families to “flee their homes.” Oceans are becoming “toxic.” Climate change is driving Philippine women into prostitution. Higher temperatures will “increase the likelihood of civil war in Sub-Saharan Africa” and “bring human civilization to a screeching halt.” The Associated Press, BBC and other “mainstream” media dutifully regurgitate every press release.

However, the planet and science are not cooperating with the fear-mongering. There has been no statistically significant global warming for over a decade, despite steadily increasing CO2 levels – and for several years average annual global temperatures have actually declined.

Carbon dioxide plays only a minor role, many scientists say, and our climate is still controlled by periodic variations in the same natural forces that caused previous climate changes: ocean currents and jet streams, water vapor and cloud cover, evaporation and precipitation, planetary alignments and the shape of the Earth’s orbit, the tilt and wobble of Earth’s axis, cosmic ray levels and especially solar energy output.


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