By comparison, getting people to believe the dangers of leaded gasoline, ozone depletion and second-hand smoke must have been a walk in the park compared to global warming. This seems odd because all three of these blights were just as abstract as the present one. You couldn’t really see or touch them, and their consequences were not immediate. With the exception of second-hand smoke – which ended up being a long, protracted legal battle – the steps taken to remedy these problems were made systematically and with an almost global effort. There was none of the strife we are witnessing today, between believers and non-believers, on television and newspapers. A photo on the front page of today’s Globe and Mail shows a large group of environmentalists at the UN talks in Bali, holding flags from various countries. Also in the same photo are members of a smaller group, each holding letter in the word PLEASE.
Why such a tumultuous dispute over something that we’ve known about for decades? In my Grade 8 class, roughly about 20 years ago, we were made to watch a video on the topic of the “greenhouse effect”, as it was called back then. I remember the rather ominous words of a scientist in the video as he remarked how as a scientist, the future of the planet would be very interesting for him, but as a human being, he wasn’t looking forward to it. As doom-and-gloom goes, this was a perfect example what the today’s contrarians use to take the wind out of the effort to fight global warming, but it also shows that no one can say that this is a new science. Was there even any doubt that the black stuff coming out of our exhaust pipes was bad for us and the environment?
And now what was an ignorable collection of scientists making their case to class of 14-year-olds has become an international movement, the summits of which presidents, prime ministers, dignitaries and renowned experts make an appearance. The movement has a tremendous worldwide following, is backed by thousands of today’s top scientists, and even now a winner of the Nobel Prize. But still, even with more than half the world enthusiastically behind it and the changes that would ensue, the remaining half can only look on with a mixture of cynicism, disbelief and lethargy.
Internet forums are full of such people, post links to sites reporting a decrease in the Earth’s temperature or evidence showing that the ice-caps are in fact growing, not shrinking (which would beg the question of why our own government is taking initiatives to secure Canada’s sovereignty over the ever-widening waterways of the far north). Often the comments evoke a general feeling of “who cares?”, a sentiment that former Saturday Night Live personality Dennis Miller expressed when he remarked that a 2-degree change in temperature is something he’d barely notice in his own living room. Such a change in the temperature of his own body, I believe, is something that wouldn’t escape his attention.
Firstly, this crisis has been around for decades, and scientists who would normally be commended on their astuteness have been cast in the light of Chicken Littles. The consequences of this crisis have been slow in coming, especially to those of us in developed countries. As for what is happening in the developing world, I can posit that a good number of us have already been over-saturated by the likes of Sally Struthers and her pleas for more money. Turning the channel or putting down the newspaper, it comes down to a matter of out of sight, out of mind. And this apathy easily turns to disbelief.
The second factor is the consequences of global warming. Second-hand smoke causes cancer. Ozone depletion causes cancer. Lead poisoning results in a whole host of nasty symptoms including memory loss and tooth decay. As for the consequences of global warming, they are vast and world-altering, but they have so far escaped the notice of the average citizen of New York, London and Tokyo. As for the consequences that people are aware about: hotter summers and rising water levels, though significant they affect us indirectly. They are not personal. Our basement might get flooded, but we’re not going to get cancer or dementia. Our bodies will remain unscathed. At least that’s what we think. So those that even might believe in global warming grow disinterested in the whole matter. For them, this crisis isn’t worth the sacrifices needed to solve it.
These factors are what global interests are using to thwart the fight against global warming. Keep it impersonal and beyond the horizon. As Norm, the character on the television Cheers, once asked when a problem was brought to him from outside the bar: “How does this affect me?” But the warning bells are ringing. If this crisis is purely imaginary or hardly worth worrying about, why then is our very own Prime Minister following this series of conferences around the world, albeit attempting to undermine its objectives? Why bother?
What we will get from these first talks is a compromise. Countries willing to fight global warning won’t be entirely happy about it, but at least it will be something to get the big polluters on board. In the end, what we’ll be left with is the hope that those of us who are willing will bring an end to this crisis, and those who aren’t will learn to see past their own backyards.