Today I read a piece that touted the objectivity and disinterest of science as an enterprise when it comes to global warming. This completely ignores the fact that most of the people involved in the political promotion of anti-global warming policies are not scientists, and are motivated by many different agendas. Even when scientists enter into the political arena their activities in that arena are no longer governed by scientific review.
I’ve heard some people say that the real test in the difference between those who support the idea of anthropogenic global warming and those who deny it, is that no one who supports the idea really wants it to exist -they’d rather be wrong than right, and their acceptance of the rightness of it is reluctant. Well I’m here to say that’s bullshit. Of course there are people who want humanly caused global warming to be real, and I’m one of them.
First let me make a distinction between the scientists, who has a professional interest in not having his/her career go up in smoke because some one comes up with contrary findings, and some one like me who actively is rooting for a warmer earth. Most of those scientists may have career investments to protect, but they’d really rather be wrong than right, because the enterprise of science is highly dependent upon a stable, high tech, wealth industrialized society, and that’s precisely what global warming threatens. Folks like me on the other hand, and there are quite a few of us, actively detest highly centralized, large scale, global, industrial capitalism and would really like to see a very different kind of social system in its place. We’re opportunists who see global warming as a chance to either convince people to make changes we think are necessary anyway, or force them by circumstances to change.
Now I don’t agree with the “mother earth” lovers, who whine about the earth dying and view humanity as a form of locust that should be exterminated. I think humans are a fine species. I like being human. I like most other humans. I just think we’ve gone a very long way in the wrong direction, and need a course correction to a simpler, more localized, more decentralized, more humane way of life.
I’m not talking about reverting to foraging, or even becoming true agricultural societies. There’s not a thing wrong with computers or the Internet, or with electricity. However, I have overcome a prejudice of my youth that held flush toilets to be the epitome of civilization, and can now see that composting toilets, with the compost recycled back into local farms would be far more sustainable.
I’m a big fan of the writings of Murray Bookchin (Remaking Society: Pathways to a Green Future, South End Press, 1990), who envisions “decentralized communities, united in free confederations or networks for coordinating the communities of a region, …[reflecting] the traditional ideals of a participatory democracy…” (page 181). Bookchin sees the “need to rescale communities to fit the natural carrying capacity of the regions in which they are located and to create a new balance between town and country” as an “ecological imperative” (page 185).
As I see it, if the climate scientists are right, and I suspect that they probably are, environmental circumstances will force upon us changes that will disrupt global capitalism, and combined with the loss of fossil fuels will result in greater localism whether we want it to or not. However, if we wait to be forced into this chances are the changes will come about due to more oppressive governments to deal with the extremes of dislocation and social unrest almost certain to appear.
So I’d rather use the fear of global warming as a tool to get people to willingly, gradually restructure society. Even if it turns out that the world doesn’t get warmer and the environmental catastrophe’s don’t happen, the end result of a restructured, more localized, slower, less energy intensive, more democratic society is more than worth it. But all in all, I think humanity — a least what’s left of it — might be better off in a warmer world.
Lian's Limb 
July 26, 2008 at 9:44 pm
I congratulate you on your refreshing honesty that you actually want AGW to happen.
A second congratulations on one of your reasons for this: “I’d rather use the fear of global warming as a tool to get people to willingly, gradually restructure society.” The key word that got my attention was “willingly”.
Most of your “warmer” friends don’t think in such a refreshing manner. Most, like Gore, are “rooting for global warming” to – let’s just say remove your phrase “people to willing and gradually” from the above with “the government to forcefully and radically restructure society.”
I’d rather not restructure society too quickly, but I’m willing to accept any change as long as it happens spontaneously, i.e. willingly, rather than through governmental intervention.
July 27, 2008 at 7:55 am
Since many of the changes I’m interested in seeing happen are changes in the nature and form of government, then there will have to be “government intervention” as you call it, in some way. I want to see the majority of voters convinced enough for the need for change to pressure their elected representatives to vote for changes. I think that’s what groups like Gore’s “WE” are trying to accomplish — although I think their vision of the future isn’t radical enough for me — they’re trying to find a way to save the existing economic/political order by messing around a bit with how we get our power supplies to run things.
Of course many of the changes I think need to happen can occur more spontaneously — people can simply change their buying habits, their entertainment habits, where they chose their housing in relationship to their work, etc.