Post by Wayne Hall on Nov 5, 2006 1:03:29 GMT -5
Last night there was a meeting in one of the big banks in central Athens organized by a prestigious and rather conservative environmental society that had invited the European Environment Commissioner Stavros Dimas to address them on “Winning the Battle against Climate Change”. This was a prelude to today’s international Climate Change demonstrations in which these particular conservative conservationists were going to be participating also for the first time.
Mr. Dimas, though not as impressive a speaker last night as he sometimes can be, gave a competent address, in which among other European Union policies he mentioned the campaign to bring air transport into the Kyoto emissions trading scheme.
This was a point that I was going to raise anyway, so when I acknowledged his role in this campaign I was able to give my intervention a flattering start. I then pointed out that many scientists working at climate change institutes had a stance on aircraft emissions that appeared to be in contradiction with the policies the EU has begun to adopt. While the EU represents aircraft as responsible for greenhouse gas emissions and net contributors to global warming, there are theoreticians of geoengineering who say that aircraft emissions can be used to increase the albedo of the atmosphere, reduce levels of incoming sunlight and mitigate global warming. These two viewpoints are never counterposed in public debate. They just coexist. The geoengineering ideas make their appearance from time to time in a science fiction mode of presentation that never seems to interlink with the rest of the debate.
Take for example the well-publicised proposals last summer of the Nobel-prize winning scientist Paul Crutzen. Crutzen has won great prestige for his contribution to addressing the problem of ozone depletion. Last summer he proposed spraying the stratosphere with sulphur to mitigate global warming.
I then mentioned a prestigious institution in Athens that has agreed to host a teleconference including Paul Crutzen (I did not mention that the other two proposed speakers were George Monbiot and Rosalind Peterson). Did not Mr. Dimas think that the attempts of Mr. Crutzen to gain public acceptance for, or at least initiate public debate of, his proposals, should be receiving more support from the European Commission, so that the existing lack of coherence and comprehensibility in the climate change debate can be overcome? After all, there are many who claim that mitigation programmes such as those proposed by Crutzen are not just ideas but are already under implementation, implying that Climate Change is an even graver problem than is being admitted. Is it not important that ideas such as those proposed by Crutzen should be discussed not just among scientists but with the public also, as indeed Crutzen says he wants to see.
In his reply Mr. Dimas said that technical approaches of various kinds were under discussion, but that it seemed to him that approaches such as that of the scientist I had mentioned involved a number of serious disadvantages that should not be overlooked.
One of my collaborators buttonholed him at the reception that followed and asked him to his face if he had heard about programmes of aerosol spraying for climate mitigation. Mr. Dimas said that he had not of heard of any such programmes but that if my collaborator had information about them he should send it to Dimas’s office.
Dimas’s office, needless to say, never responds to any such information when sent.
The scenario on which Mr. Dimas’ politics is predicated is that of the US as the great spoilers, needing the intervention of the good Europeans to put them on the Kyoto road. In return for covering up for what is really going on in the name of “geoengineering” they are presented with the gift of the public image of being moderate, responsible statesmen.
I do not hate all this. On the contrary, I appreciate the relatively relaxed environment, the absence of intrusive security, the friendliness. I am glad to be living here rather than in the United States.
But it is a cop out. Why should we do the Americans the favour of allowing them to be the baddies so that we can live out this charade?
It is significant, I think, that the institution in Athens that is willing to give a platform to Rosalind Peterson is not European-oriented. They have specified that they are prepared to host a round-table discussion if we have the consent of all proposed participants. So far the consent of Crutzen and Monbiot has not been secured.
Monbiot in particular has a personal investment in the “Americans as baddies|” scenario. This does not necessarily mean he will remain resolutely unavailable. Perhaps he really doesn’t like the present situation and would be pleased to be presented with the solution to a political problem he himself cannot solve.
Mr. Dimas, though not as impressive a speaker last night as he sometimes can be, gave a competent address, in which among other European Union policies he mentioned the campaign to bring air transport into the Kyoto emissions trading scheme.
This was a point that I was going to raise anyway, so when I acknowledged his role in this campaign I was able to give my intervention a flattering start. I then pointed out that many scientists working at climate change institutes had a stance on aircraft emissions that appeared to be in contradiction with the policies the EU has begun to adopt. While the EU represents aircraft as responsible for greenhouse gas emissions and net contributors to global warming, there are theoreticians of geoengineering who say that aircraft emissions can be used to increase the albedo of the atmosphere, reduce levels of incoming sunlight and mitigate global warming. These two viewpoints are never counterposed in public debate. They just coexist. The geoengineering ideas make their appearance from time to time in a science fiction mode of presentation that never seems to interlink with the rest of the debate.
Take for example the well-publicised proposals last summer of the Nobel-prize winning scientist Paul Crutzen. Crutzen has won great prestige for his contribution to addressing the problem of ozone depletion. Last summer he proposed spraying the stratosphere with sulphur to mitigate global warming.
I then mentioned a prestigious institution in Athens that has agreed to host a teleconference including Paul Crutzen (I did not mention that the other two proposed speakers were George Monbiot and Rosalind Peterson). Did not Mr. Dimas think that the attempts of Mr. Crutzen to gain public acceptance for, or at least initiate public debate of, his proposals, should be receiving more support from the European Commission, so that the existing lack of coherence and comprehensibility in the climate change debate can be overcome? After all, there are many who claim that mitigation programmes such as those proposed by Crutzen are not just ideas but are already under implementation, implying that Climate Change is an even graver problem than is being admitted. Is it not important that ideas such as those proposed by Crutzen should be discussed not just among scientists but with the public also, as indeed Crutzen says he wants to see.
In his reply Mr. Dimas said that technical approaches of various kinds were under discussion, but that it seemed to him that approaches such as that of the scientist I had mentioned involved a number of serious disadvantages that should not be overlooked.
One of my collaborators buttonholed him at the reception that followed and asked him to his face if he had heard about programmes of aerosol spraying for climate mitigation. Mr. Dimas said that he had not of heard of any such programmes but that if my collaborator had information about them he should send it to Dimas’s office.
Dimas’s office, needless to say, never responds to any such information when sent.
The scenario on which Mr. Dimas’ politics is predicated is that of the US as the great spoilers, needing the intervention of the good Europeans to put them on the Kyoto road. In return for covering up for what is really going on in the name of “geoengineering” they are presented with the gift of the public image of being moderate, responsible statesmen.
I do not hate all this. On the contrary, I appreciate the relatively relaxed environment, the absence of intrusive security, the friendliness. I am glad to be living here rather than in the United States.
But it is a cop out. Why should we do the Americans the favour of allowing them to be the baddies so that we can live out this charade?
It is significant, I think, that the institution in Athens that is willing to give a platform to Rosalind Peterson is not European-oriented. They have specified that they are prepared to host a round-table discussion if we have the consent of all proposed participants. So far the consent of Crutzen and Monbiot has not been secured.
Monbiot in particular has a personal investment in the “Americans as baddies|” scenario. This does not necessarily mean he will remain resolutely unavailable. Perhaps he really doesn’t like the present situation and would be pleased to be presented with the solution to a political problem he himself cannot solve.