His first sentence was: “You don’t believe in that, do you?”
Pointing accusingly at my poster.
“Dude.” I gave him a prolonged look. “I am really tired and
I have no interest in being in an argument with you right now. Come back some
other day.”
“But you carry that poster, DON'T YOU? And you don’t believe
in that, DO YOU?”
The brawliness was still somewhat tempered for about 2-3
minutes in which I tested his claim that the planet has gone through
temperature changes before by asking him if he knew ‘why’ the planet had gone
through these changes in the past, which he, naturally, didn’t … there was a
point during the brawl when he started citing my poster loudly: ‘You’re a
SCAREMONGERER!’ Now, at THIS glorious point, I was the
LAST-PERSON-EVER-to-stop-him, because he was literally making every single
person on the platform want to know what was on my poster …
You may recall my only encounter with a climate-change
sceptic was more polite and centred on his bizarre assertion that carbon dioxide
isn’t a greenhouse gas, a position which I suppose might be true but, if so,
would demand the overturning of quite a lot of science; however, the
conversation finished with the same assertion of irresponsibility on my part. I
wonder whether all such meetings follow the same trajectory.
Of course we had the same thing from POTUS at the Davos
summit a few days ago. It would be a waste of time to pick apart Mr Trump’s
assault on ‘prophets of doom … alarmists’ and ‘fortune tellers’; but I have
heard similar sorts of sentiments even from people who say they accept the
scientific consensus, let alone those who don’t want to think about it. The
conclusion you have to draw is that the motivation for this comes from somewhere
other than the evidence; its source is, I suspect, not even primarily
self-interest, but a facet of individual psychology which no amount of argument
is going to shift. I mean, as a Christian priest I am used to dealing with
apocalyptic and am very much aware of all the sorry souls who down the
centuries have concluded that the End is Nigh based on the interpretation of
ancient texts and current political events; but what we are facing presently is
not that, it’s the result of decades of measurement across a variety of
scientific sub-disciplines which all appear to point in exactly the same
direction. For the record, I don’t yet think this is The End, as there are
elements of the picture in the Book of Revelation which don’t seem present. It might
not be the preliminary to Judgement Day, but merely to an unprecedentedly
disruptive and damaging episode in human history involving the deaths of untold
millions of people and the breakdown of our current civilisation, no worse than
that. No biggie.
Given there is a persistent human constituency inclining
towards ‘irrational scepticism’, perhaps we ought to be grateful that Mr Trump
is there to articulate it so thoroughly: it shows it vividly for what it is,
and as a result might dislodge some of the waverers and float them in the direction
of reason. Others will find their attitudes confirmed. I suspect they will not
number many in this country, but any at all challenge the belief most of us
dreadful liberals have most of the time, that reason counts for a great deal in human
affairs.
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