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Don’t bother breathing out
by William Bowles
“We imagine that we live in an age of reason. And the global warming alarm is dressed up as science. But it’s not science; it’s propaganda.” — ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’, Channel 4 TV
 Perhaps the greatest contribution socialism has given us is the idea that we could, at last, take charge of our own destinies. Prior to this, we assumed that ‘our betters’ knew best and that such ideas as freedom and justice, especially economic justice were utopian dreams, simply not realisable. People were too selfish (or ‘stupid’) to strive for the good of all. And indeed the capitalist creed is founded in part on the false notion that ‘human nature’ is an immutable force, self-interest will always win out, it’s built into our ‘genes’, no matter how hard we try, greed will triumph.
It’s a powerful argument reinforced by the simple fact that the
powerful and ‘successful’ for the most part, are indeed greedy. But
most importantly, the powerful dictate the nature of the society we
live in and the rules they make are the ones we are forced to live by
and which determine what we think is realisable.
Science is one
of the most formidable weapons at the state’s disposal, it is we are
told, ‘neutral’ and ‘objective’, guided only by ‘natural laws’ (at
least the ones we are aware of) and by the scientific method;
deduction, experimentation, peer review and so forth.
Meanwhile,
we are being promised zero carbon capitalism if only we’d stop eating,
breathing and moving. You do realize that every time you exhale your
‘carbon footprint’ gets bigger and every time you eat a burger, a cow
somewhere has farted its last methane-loaded fart and every time you
visit your favourite consumption cathedral, it means we’re a few miles
nearer to Armageddon. If we are to believe the profits of doom, we are
trapped somewhere between starvation and gluttony.
‘Green
capitalism’ promises all things to all men and women (unless of course,
you live in the Third World, in which case, you can look forward to a
life of less than you have already), and it is a wonder to behold. We
can go to bed at night, wrapped up nice and snug in our green
(recycled) duvet (cotton from the Third World), heated with green heat
(supplied by our roof-mounted wind turbine, made in China), get up in
the morning, take a green shit in our bio-degradable karsy (also no
doubt, made in China), take a solar shower (ditto China), eat a green
breakfast (cereals from Africa) and go to work in our environmentally
green office (heated with the all hot air generated in corporate PR
meetings trying to figure out how to keep capitalism going). The entire
issue is framed in the context of consumption or lack of it. In other
words, how to keep the capitalist system a going concern and rectify
the mess its made of the planet. No mean feat and one the spin doctors
are working overtime on selling to us.
Every facet of society is
conditioned by these ‘rules’, especially education, the law, science
and the media, all conspire as it were to rule out any alternative as
either unworkable or just plain ‘against nature’.
These ‘rules’
are reinforced endlessly even down to the tiniest detail in the
language of daily discourse, an aspect brought home by the reams of
analysis of the role of the media in shaping our interpretation of
reality.
The current debate on climate change is a perfect
example of the process in action. The changes being wrought on our
finely balanced climate first came to public notice with the
destruction of the ozone layer and as the debate unfolded, it became
clear that our climate is the result of an infinitely complex
interaction of forces which for millions of years has been shaped by
Nature.
But before getting into an analysis of the debate it is
important for us to understand how the sciences have evolved and how
they shape our perceptions of the world.
It is a common
misunderstanding that the sciences are somehow neutral, ‘just the facts
ma’am, just the facts’ is the mantra rolled out on a daily basis, you
can’t argue with the facts. But which facts, who choses to examine what
and why and finally, how to interpret them?
The first problem is
that what we choose to examine in the natural world is socially
determined and most importantly, determined by those who pay and those
who do the examining. So for example, for the last 500 or so years, our
understanding of the natural world has been undertaken largely by men
with all that this entails, a process that is far from neutral for we
live in a patriarchal society and interpretations of the ‘facts’ will
always favour the dominant culture, those who pay the bills and the
conclusions drawn will always favour the powerful.
Advances in
the accurate measurement of time which although ultimately of benefit
to all, were funded initially by the British Admiralty, anxious to be
able to keep track of its navy and thus control the seas and access to
its colonies. In turn, accurate measurement of time required ever
greater precision of manufacture (for gears, springs and so forth),
leading to advances in engineering and materials science. Thus advanced
the industrial revolution, if not by plan then through ‘positive
feedback’, with one invention or technical advancement leading
inexorably to another.
Second, our explorations of the natural
world are always socially determined as ultimately it comes down to the
resources we have at our disposal and what these resources will used
for. An obvious example of this is to found in the study of evolution.
When Darwin and his contemporaries first advanced the idea of evolution
of the species it was vehemently resisted by organised religion as it
not only challenged the prevailing ideas that maintained the status
quo, it revealed the intimate, indeed incestuous relationship that
existed between the state and religion.
And it’s not merely the
fact that the science of evolution challenged the Bible’s view of the
world, it’s the fact that Christianity was an integral part of a
capitalist world view which asserted a hierarchal society, for example,
between the state and the people. Indirectly, in challenging the
Church’s view, evolution also challenged the prevailing and allegedly
fixed social relationships of master and servant, of ruler and the
ruled. This relationship is not at all obvious until one starts
‘connecting the dots’ and for this to happen, discrete explorations had
to link up, for example, the study of history and economics.
Ultimately
of course, the evolutionary interpretation of natural history
(creationism notwithstanding) triumphed but not before undergoing some
fundamental rewriting as it entered the public discourse.
In
fact, far from threatening the rule of capital, evolutionary theory
underwent a transformation and became the basis for what is called
‘social Darwinism’, a theory which attempts to justify the rule of
capital as if it were a natural law, ‘survival of the fittest’ and so
forth, thus reducing human actions to not much more than genetic
programming in which the ‘law of the jungle’ prevails. Very convenient
for a society predicated on the domination of the strongest and the
subjugation of the weak and defenceless (those ‘less fit to compete’).
And
in fact, we saw the development of the ‘sciences’ of anthropology and
eugenics utilise a bastardised version of evolution to justify slavery
and colonialism and its handmaiden, Christianity by branding the
‘African’ as pagan and thus not covered by the writings of the Bible,
as only Christians were truly human. Here, religion and science (or
pseudo-science) worked as one in order to justify economic
exploitation, the effects of which still underpin racism today.
So
too, we see a comparable process at work in the decades during which
our understanding of capitalism’s effect on the climate has gone
through a transformation, first denial then a grudging acceptance and
finally an attempt to bend the science to maintain the status quo.
The
mendacious and misleading documentary ‘The Great Global Warming
Swindle’, aired on Channel 4 TV and dealt with most effectively in the
Medialens article ‘Pure propaganda – the great global warming swindle’,
contains excellent examples of how science plays an avowedly political
role in the debate about economic policies and indeed, the role of
science in society.
“It’s very rare that a film changes history,
but I think this is a turning point and in five years the idea that the
greenhouse effect is the main reason behind global warming will be seen
as total bollocks.” (’”Global Warming Is Lies” Claims Documentary,’
Life Style Extra, March 4, 2007
So writes Mark Durkin, writer
and director of the documentary that asserts that global warming is not
man-made. But scientists are people too with their own prejudices and
self-interests as the Medialens piece reveals. But does this mean that
we cannot trust science or scientists, an especially important question
given the centrality of science to the issue of climate change?
And
even more so because ‘climate science’ actually involves a multitude of
formerly separate disciplines, each one no more nor less important than
the rest. In fact, the issue of the climate highlights a fundamental
transformation that has taken place in humanity’s relationship to the
world, to Nature. Our impact on the planet is no longer local but
planet-wide, even extra-planetary in scope.
Thus not only is it
vitally important that we understand the role of science to our future
but to recognise that science is a social process largely determined by
forces that have absolutely nothing to do with science.
But
given the complexity of the climate debate, how is the ‘lay-person’ to
get a handle on the debate? Who are we to believe? The ‘Climate
Swindle’ documentary referred to above is a perfect example of the
problem we confront as even well-informed individuals have been misled
by the claims made in the programme, which in turn emphasises the fact
that the climate debate is not just about the climate or even
industrialisation but about who makes decisions and why? Yet this is
almost entirely absent from the ‘debate’. Instead, we are relegated to
the role of passive onlooker as the ‘experts’ battle it out and
politicians hide behind the skirts of the ‘experts’.
Which
brings me back to my observations about controlling our own destinies,
destinies which should no more be decided by scientists than by
politicians and big business.
Unless the issue of climate change
is made part of a broader debate about the kind of society we want,
decision-making will remain the exclusive domain of the ruling elites,
who will set the agenda and determine the limits of the debate, which
is exactly what is happening.
There is no questioning the nature
of capitalism as the sole cause of the current situation. It is assumed
that by merely ‘rejigging’ some elements we can maintain business as
usual, when it is surely obvious that capitalism’s impact is now global
in scope and unless steps are taken now to challenge its domination,
the future looks even bleaker than it already is.
This essay is archived at http://williambowles.info/ini/2007/0307/ini-0476.html
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