This morning I had the strange privilege of reading two
unusual headlines. The first was a feed on my social media about how Michael
Bloomberg, New York’s former mayor, had spoken about climate change and condemned
the occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue for denying the science. As with all
social media posts, the most amusing (or frightening things) about social media
feeds was to be found in the comments section. Mr. Bloomberg was condemned
left, right and centre for “turning pseudo-science” into his political agenda.
The other article that I was intrigued by was found in Arab
News, Saudi Arabia’s leading English daily (and a paper I used to string for) which
ran a story with the headline, “Saudi Arabia joins nations in Katowice as talks
adopt ‘Rulebook’ to curb climate change.” An edition of the story can be found
at:
What struck me about these contrasting stories was the fact
that the story about Mr. Bloomberg was the fact that it came from America, the
country that has been the home to the greatest scientist in this half of the
twentieth and twenty-fist centuries. American universities stand out of their
world-leading research into just about every aspect of science and America has
produced more Nobel Prize winners than just about anyone else. America stands
out as the place that attracts the world’s best minds.
By contrast, the other story was coming out of Saudi Arabia,
a country whose entire economy depends on the production of hydrocarbons. I
remember a senior vice-president from the Saudi National Oil Company (Saudi ARAMCO)
saying, “ARAMCO is only part of the kingdom – we only produce 70 percent of the
Kingdom’s GDP.” You would imagine that it would be in the interest of Saudi
Arabia and the other oil producing nations to fight off any attempt to do
anything that would limit the use of fossil fuels. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia
doesn’t have a reputation for being “open to new ideas,” and yet here is the
world’s leading hydro-carbon producer announcing that it was joining a global
conference on curbing the use of fossil fuels and carbon production.
So, how did we reach a stage where this contradiction would
take place? Well, for a start, I guess you could say that Saudi Arabia isn’t as
inward looking as its international reputation would suggests. When I was working
for the Saudi Embassy in 2006, one of the directors of the Prince Sultan City for
Humanity, made the point that Saudi Arabia is in the position to buy the world’s
best technology and the Middle East, as they say is more tech-savvy than the wider
world imagines. Furthermore, the readers of Arab News tend to be quite
international in their outlook.
However, the question at stake here is not so much whether
Saudi Arabia is more technologically advanced and outward looking than it is
given credit for. The more important question here is whether America is as advanced
as it lets on.
America has always been home to the unusual. The less
charitable would say that this was the land where religious nut jobs went to
when they were being persecuted elsewhere. While America may have more than its
fair share of scientific genius’s coming out of her universities, America also
has her share of people who believe in unusual things based on nothing more than
a few blind prejudices.
However, its only in recent years where the “unusual
thinkers” have found themselves with an ally in a position of power – I am of
course, talking about Donald Trump, who managed to ride into power by promising
people displaced by shifts in technology and economics that he would care for
them.
One of Donald Trump’s biggest achievements was to paint a
picture of how America had lost out in the world because a group of “Leftist Granola
Munching Greedy Corporatist” had sold them out to the Chinese, Muslims and
anyone else who wasn’t sufficiently pink and blotchy. The Donald famously made
fun of the disabled and labeled an ethnic group that does the work in America
as “rapist.”
However, the most disturbing part about The Donald was his ability
to turn science into a political issue. One of his signature themes was to
attack climate change as a “Chinese Hoax.” Apparently, China, a third-world country
(admittedly a very big one) had the means to invented the concept of climate
change to rob America of its basic industries like coal mining and oil
production.
Mr. Trump has been so successful at creating this image of
global warming, that anytime anyone of any prominence in America tries to talk
about it, they are inevitably labeled as being part of the “corrupt, leftist,
corporatist, greedy elite” bent of screwing the common man.
The Trump has given a new impetus to “climate change denial.”
When his own government produced a thick document detailing the damage that
climate change would do to America, his response was simple – he told the world,
“I don’t believe it.” An account of his story can be found at:
Why is Mr. Trump taking this stance? One could say that Mr.
Trump’s base is from the likes of coal miners and oil patch workers who got displaced.
His “pro-fossil-fuel” agenda is supposedly to keep his base happy and to be
fair, an outwork 40 plus year-old coal miner isn’t going to worry about global
warming when the only thing he knows how to do was shut down because of a corporate
restructuring.
However, I don’t think economics is the only reason for
climate change denial or not really worrying about the environment. I come from
Singapore. There was a time when we took the view that concern for the
environment was a luxury of the developed world. We, in developing Asia, were
more concerned with feeding our people and getting rich, so the adage went.
Then, something very fundamental changed – our entire region
became smog infested on a year-on-year basis. Whilst Singapore did everything
in its power to stay clean and green, smog season aka “the haze” meant that at
certain times of the year our air was downright dangerous to breath. The reason
was simple, in neighboring Indonesia, forest were burnt to make way for
plantations and the result was that the entire Southeast Asian region got covered
in “The Haze.”
Environmental issues hit home. ASEAN, which prides itself in
“non-interference” between member states, suddenly questioned the Indonesians
about stopping the seasonal haze.
Caring about the environment isn’t a “lefty” conspiracy when
you have to breath smog. It becomes a very real and pressing issue that you
need to stop so that you can breathe properly. In terms of economics, we still use
current energy sources like oil (While Singapore is not an oil producing
nation, we have the seventh largest oil refinery in the world.). However, we
continue to invest in other sources of energy and in looking after the
environment.
You could also ask the Maldives, an island nation in the Indian
Ocean, on what they think of the reality of climate change. Nobody in the Maldives
is worried about that “Chinese Hoax.” Instead, they’re worried that they will
drown as sea levels rise.
As for the Chinese, they’ve suddenly discovered their “green”
touch. While Trump and his supporters are busy producing hot air over the
politics of climate change, the Chinese are rising their investment in
alternative and cleaner fuels. While, China’s energy sources remain in fossil
fuels, the share of renewable sources is rising. China currently produces 63%
of the world's solar photovoltaic
and the world’s third largest producer of ethanol, bio-mass fuels after Brazil
and the USA.
The sudden rush for the Chinese to invest in renewable
technologies was founded on a simple premise – air in China was becoming lethal
and Chinese citizens were not going to stand for it (even communist governments
have to have pulse on the popular mood). The results of environmental degradation
had hit home in China and people learnt that increased material prosperity is
pointless if you live in a place where the environment kills you.
The science of climate change is not as absolute as its
supporters might want to believe. However, there must be something there as the
majority of scientist believe that this is a pressing issue. You know something
is happening when those with the biggest stake in preserving the dominance of fossil-fuels
look at invest in a green future.
I was in Dubai recently and I managed to pay a visit to a
prominent Emirati businesswoman, whose “heritage “business in oil and gas. On
her website, she makes this point:
This has to be a very clear signal of the way the world is
heading and should head. There may be a few holes in climate change science but
these are very small holes on the scale of things. People do not wish to live
in lousy environments and even the oil companies and the oil producing nations
see that they have to preserve natural resources to have wealth for the future
Donald Trump and his supporters are lucky that the effects
of environmental degradation have yet to hit home. What a pity it would be if “climate
change denial” or “scientific denial” became a luxury of the developing world.
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