Be informed

By Erik Charlton from Menlo Park, USA

When I am home alone, I usually eat with some video accompaniment. At the moment that is dominated by Trump’s impeachment hearings and the commentaries by Seth Meyers, Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel, Samantha Bee and Trevor Noah. Meyers has his near-daily, ten minute “Closer Look” monologue (search through Youtube). Funny, interesting, intelligent. And when it ends, the algorithm directs me to more of the show which is quite show-biz focused. Not my bag. Last night, however, it took me to clips of him interviewing Al Gore, the former US Vice President who almost became President in 2000. We got Bush instead. In light of my previous reading of Rob Hopkins’ book, What if? What if? But we are where we are.

OK, it seems that I’m now bingeing on Al Gore. Back in 2008 he did a TED talk. I watched it this morning over my lonely breakfast. Two observations to share with my readers. First, When Gore was VP, he had to deal with conflicts which he classified as local, regional and global/strategic. Each level requires different skills, organisational forms and resource allocation. This is the essence of decision, to reference the title of Graham T. Allison’s famous book. Environmental issues, argues Gore, fit into three categories, too. Climate change, however, is global/strategic. That means global organisational forms, global resource allocation and a pooling of skills and knowledge.

Second, investments in tar sands and shale oil are “sub-prime carbon assets”. Remember, this was just at the time of the financial crisis. On reflection, he is wrong. Sub-prime mortgages nearly brought down the the global economy; in the end it enriched those who had caused the crisis. No bankers went to prison, austerity was inflicted on the victims of the crimes not the perpetrators. The bankers were rewarded with positions in Government (Trump administration, for example). By contrast, climate change will bring down civilisation. Those investing in the extraction of carbon from the earth and burning it will not be rewarded this time around. Economics is within our control, it is a human construct. Climate change is physics. We’ve got 10 years. We’ve got the technology.

In the UK there is a general election next month. Let us start there. Let us make GE 2019 the climate election, not the Brexit election.

Post script: Gore says, I paraphrase, let us make it that in the future great orchestras, poets, playwrites are able to create their art with the knowledge that the current generation of leaders did indeed do the right thing.