A climate war????

The rhetoric of the global warming nuts is becoming war-like...

There are those, however, who think a bit of impoverishment is absolutely necessary - and they justify their argument by invoking the spirit and images of war. Madeleine Bunting, writing in Monday’s Guardian, declared that we need to move to ‘a low-consumption economy oriented towards facilitating the real sources of human fulfilment’. She continues:

‘Hearteningly, we know it can be done - our parents and grandparents managed it in the Second World War. This useful analogy, explored by Andrew Simms in his book Ecological Debt, demonstrates the critical role of government. In the early 1940s, a dramatic drop in household consumption was achieved… by the government orchestrating a massive propaganda exercise combined with a rationing system and a luxury tax. This will be the stuff of twenty-first century politics - something that, right now, all the main political parties are much too scared to admit.’

Just in case we didn’t get the message, Bunting’s Guardian colleague George Monbiot banged the drum for a Climate War Economy the following day: ‘We must confront a challenge that is as great and as pressing as the rise of the Axis powers. Had we thrown up our hands then, as many people are tempted to do today, you would be reading this paper in German. Though the war often seemed impossible to win, when the political will was mobilised strange and implausible things began to happen. The US economy was spun round on a dime in 1942 as civilian manufacturing was switched to military production. The state took on greater powers than it had exercised before. Impossible policies suddenly became achievable.’

If you thought it was just a few overwrought Guardian columnists calling for wartime-style rationing, think again: this outlook is catching on in the corridors of power, too, with the likes of Prince Charles and former UK environment secretary Margaret Beckett calling for a ‘war’ on greenhouse gases. Only yesterday, the head of the UK Environment Agency, Lady Young, told the Daily Telegraph: ‘This is World War Three - this is the biggest challenge to face the globe for many, many years. We need the sorts of concerted, fast, integrated and above all huge efforts that went into many actions in times of war. We’re dealing with this as if it is peacetime, but the time for peace on climate change is gone - we need to be seeing this as a crisis and emergency.’

Such shrill sabre-rattling isn’t a new phenomenon. As we noted on spiked in February this year, talk of the Blitz spirit, rationing, avoiding waste and tightening our belts is becoming increasingly common in climate change circles (see ‘Your planet needs you!’, by Rob Lyons). This may, in part, reflect the fact that the last time Britain did anything that we still feel positive about, it was defeating The Nazi Threat - even if our role in Hitler’s downfall is more of a Great National Myth than a historical fact.

The war talk over global warming also reflects an increasing desperation on the part of eco-activists, commentators and official environment departments. For them, governments and voters are simply not responding with sufficient panic to this apparent planetary emergency. So they are adopting an hysterical tone to try to get people’s attention. But the bottom line is that most people - quite rightly - do not wish to live under austerity measures. We’re actually rather keen on our material wealth, thank you very much, and we’d rather not live in a society where all sorts of punitive state action can be undertaken in the name of saving the planet.