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talkback Photo by @Kezia Tan, www.keziatan.com
Climate change
and the five stages of grief
by Gregory Norminton
tweet of February 20th that there
Spring may be in full swing, but few of us will forget the angriest winter in living memory. is “no respectable evidence” that Violent weather, whipped up by a dysfunctional jet stream, flooded huge swathes of England, the “wild winter” was caused by buckled train lines, washed topsoil into the sea and reduced coastal cliffs to briny rubble. manmade climate change “in spite Even for those of us fortunate enough to live at home without requiring waders, it was a trying season. Yet while we suffered with those f looded out of their homes, which of us spared a thought for the mental angst endured by the few who bravely resist the science of climate change? Until the winter storms, life had been easy for contrarians with public profiles. Peter Lilley (MP for Hitchin, Harpenden and Tethys Petroleum) had been elected to the Commons Select Committee on Climate Change; Matt Ridley, the man who understands risk
so well he used to be chairman of Northern Rock, was writing for The Times and The Spectator about the ‘overall positive effects’ of climate change; and Ridley had the ear of his brother-in-law, environment secretary Owen Paterson, who was so unconcerned about the issue at the top of his agenda that he refused to read any briefing that put the words ‘climate’ and ‘change’ in close proximity. Opinion polls showed that environmental anxiety had receded year-on-year since the start of the Great Recession; politicians of all major parties shunned the
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issue; and scarcely a day passed in tabloid land without an article dismissing climate science as the preserve of alarmists, hoaxers and
“All it took for a shift in the cultural weather was a shift in the physical weather” watermelons (green on the outside, red on the inside – geddit?). Alas, public opinion is a fickle beast. All it took for a shift in the cultural weather was a shift in the physical weather unprecedented in recorded history and suddenly Paterson’s obscurantism was a political embarrassment, opinion polls showed an uptick in environmental awareness and farmers on The Archers were muttering darkly about global warming. David Cameron, the huskie pelt long ago hung up in his metaphorical wardrobe, felt compelled at Prime Minister’s Questions to restate his long dormant conviction that “manmade climate change is one of the most serious threats that this country and the world faces.” This weakening of the national backbone was too much for the contrarians, who denounced it with all the indignation they can muster. In his infamous BBC ‘debate’ with climatologist Sir Brian Hoskins, Lord Lawson did not limit himself to the customary attack on predictive models: actual data on actual weather patterns was “extreme speculation”. Lawson badmouthed the Met Office chief scientist as “just this Julia Slingo woman” (that’s Dame to you, Nige), but did at least acknowledge that the floods were a “wake-up call” to abandon investment in “useless wind turbines”. Similar discomposure lay behind Rupert Murdoch’s angry
of blindly ignorant politicians.” Elsewhere in the echo chamber, Christopher Booker took to the Mail, Telegraph and Spectator to blame the Somerset f loods on “green ideology” that prevented dredging, and Melanie Phillips, valiantly denouncing the “magical theory” of the “AGW (anthropocentric global warming) scam”, explained the deluge as “Galileo, Newton and Einstein weeping uncontrollably from above”. Perhaps these outbursts represent business as usual from the usual suspects, but I detect in them a new kind of anger. To put it simply, the contrarians know that their work is going to get harder with every warped season, every toppled record and broken precedent. They know it because, as Gary Oldman’s George Smiley says of his Soviet counterpart, “the fanatic is always concealing a secret doubt”. Nor is it the prospect of public ridicule that most frightens our media cranks. It is, rather, the fear that they will have to feel, at last, the grief that comes with the shedding of illusions. There is evidence, in the less sociopathic regions of contrarianism, of a shift from outright denial to the second and third stages on the Kübler-Ross model of grief: anger and bargaining. We have seen plenty of the former, and the latter will come in the form of ‘go-slow’ rhetoric, blaming of other parties for the problem, and the tactic already taken by Conservative peer, Matt Ridley of cherry-picking data to secure best-case scenarios. One thing is certain: laissez faire ideologues will find it impossible to maintain outright denial. The process of adaptation will be slow, dishonest and grudging, but at least, a therapist might say, it has begun. Env ironmenta lists, watching these contortions, will imagine that they are infinitely more
rational than their bêtes noires in the Tory press. But I wonder: could it be that we are undergoing the five stages of grief in reverse? We began with acceptance – of the science, and of what the science means for us. Then came depression, since the future is a place we would not wish to bequeath to our worst enemies let alone our children. In defence against depression, we entered the bargaining stage: surely with enough treaties, tax incentives and political will we can avoid the worst. Yet the political will is lacking and every week the evidence mounts that we are hurtling towards the abyss. This makes us angry with ourselves and our elites for failing the greatest test our species has ever faced. And where do we go from anger if not
“The process of adaptation will be slow, dishonest and grudging, but at least, a therapist might say, it has begun.” into denial – a soft-focused, openhearted denial without which we would have to abandon all efforts to forestall the apocalypse? Now this conceit may be nothing more than a provocation. Yet which of us, awake in the early hours, has not had similar misgivings? Recently I heard Jonathan Porritt wonder aloud if there was intellectual integrity in his resistance to the ‘too-late brigade’. He thinks so – just about. We can only wonder how much better our chances would be, had we not wasted so many years resisting the merchants of doubt. Gregory Norminton has published four novels and several other books. He is the editor of Beacons – stories for our not so distant future, a collection of original fiction by British authors for the benefit of Stop Climate Chaos.