Bali Hype

David Shenk, in his perceptive book Data Smog, put it neatly: “One of the most vivid consequences of the information glut is a culture awash in histrionics.” PR people beware, particularly those heading back from Bali amid their vapour-trails of greenhouse gases.

The world’s climate change evangelists have communicated so badly that global warming is now moving from being a problem (about climatology) to a meta-problem (about the politics of climatology). They have succumbed to the In-Crowd Effect.

In-Crowds get on our nerves and take many ugly forms, all united in their preening self-importance and their demand that we admire them as a matter of principle. They include the people who won the 2012 Olympics bid for London, eco-warriors, animal rights campaigners, death cults, creationists, riders of the EU gravy train, New Labour policy wonks, MPs, terrorists and Princess Diana fans.

They have booked their place in heaven with a cause more important than anything else, and this sense of disproportion produces tunnel vision about a photon wide, along with a belief that standard rules of proof don’t apply. Distortion and hysteria are OK as long as they help to Wake Us All Up, and Al Gore’s histrionics have, disgracefully, won him a Nobel Prize for precisely this.

But for the rest of us – while we may accept the reality of climate change but admit we don’t understand its dynamics and potential – we know when we’re the Out-Crowd, and we react to this as only human beings can (ie badly).

As a species, we didn’t get where we are today without taking note of what people do rather than what they say, preach, scream or spend our taxes on. In the UK we observe that while our government tells us we’re all doomed to drown, starve and fry, they’re putting in an extra runway at Heathrow, building thousands of houses on flood plains and commissioning new coal-fired power stations.

We see that instead of switching off the lights in their offices when they go home, they have announced the world’s largest windfarms – onshore (south of Glasgow) and offshore (Kent coast). This reversion to centuries-old and cost-inefficient technology is being wildly hyped as showing their commitment, but to what? To grandstanding, sanctimony and cynicism.

These are not “big decisions”, they are big projects, and we know the difference. A big decision might involve targeting a deep cut in our energy consumption, but where’s the fun in that?

As long as members of the climate change lobby pursue their In-Crowd strategy they will fail to get anything useful done and, casting around for an alternative energy source, we will burn their endless reports.

Welcome to the sustainable bonfire of the vanities.