When discussions of climate change dominate the news, the question of how to minimise its dangers takes centre stage. There is widespread consensus that because the scale of the problem is so great, the remedies have to be likewise: production of greenhouse gases by industry, agriculture and transport, and the destruction of forests, have to be tackled on a world-wide scale. At least – there is widespread consensus among those who accept that climate change is being caused by human activity. By far the majority of responsible scientists are among their number. But their warnings and advice are being undermined by climate change sceptics.
The sceptics’ main concern is that if there is no global warming, or if global warming is not ‘anthropogenic’, then the efforts made to mitigate its supposed effects would not just be a waste of time but – worse from their point of view – a waste of money. Their chief aim is to avoid the inconvenience and expense of taking climate change seriously.
Some quite influential and respectable people are climate sceptics; but their stance is questionable for two reasons. First, the overwhelming weight of scientific opinion is against them, and second, even if the dangers are overstated, it is still prudent to do everything sensible to mitigate possible effects. Sometimes the sceptics seem to be trying to will the problem away, sometimes they seem unconscious that they might merely be offloading the problem onto future generations to save themselves bother. If the latter, it would be a moral scandal of the first water.
Only concerted international action by governments can really deal with the problem. But what about individuals? Can changes in habits at the individual level make a difference? It is argued that individual efforts to be ‘green’ would contribute no more than a tiny bit to any solution. That is probably true; but they would not be nugatory. At very least they would embody a collective will to make a difference – and expressions of collective will can be effective in persuading governments to do better.
The practicalities of individual green awareness come down to one thing: restraint. That is not a comfortable term for those used to the high-octane (in all senses) lifestyle that consumes at a fast rate and measures success by that rating – the size of house, the number of cars and foreign holidays, the wattage of the lifestyle. Part of the deficit represented by such a manner of living – living to consume lots rather than consuming enough to live well – is said by the philosophers of restraint to be that people lose touch with valuable simplicities. This is a teaching (a preaching?) that sits especially badly with the bling-encrusted high-roller flashing his wad in the back of a limo. All that Thoreau and Emerson high-mindedness, all that loincloth piety – so they say – is the solace that have-nots give themselves because they have not.
Yet the sad truth is that if the big consumers refuse to rein back a little, everyone who survives the coming climate crunch will have to accept the teaching of restraint willy-nilly. And no one likes having to learn forced lessons.