Ten years or so after Al Gore began a countdown to irreversible climate disaster, David French penned a noxious little squib in National Review, drawing attention to Gore's earlier pronouncement. What was French's point? That a decade had passed, and the planet was still here. So much for Gore's doomsday clock, he crowed.
The rest of the piece was devoted to a nonsensical ad hominem. Didn't you know: Al Gore flies around the country in planes! So much for his carbon-free bona fides! Like all argumentative appeals to hypocrisy -- the famous tu quoque -- this is a decidedly self-defeating move. Are we admitting, David French, that carbon emissions are bad? That we shouldn't fly around in planes? Therefore climate change is a serious problem?
But let us return for a moment to that ten-year countdown. I was reminded of it recently - in fact, googling it is what led me to the French piece I now wish I'd never seen.
I, like many people, am seriously alarmed by the UN Intergovernmental Panel's assessment that we have about twelve to fifteen years or fewer to avert irretrievable environmental damage linked to climate change. Who wouldn't be?
After a colleague forcibly reminded me of this twelve to fifteen number, it occurred to me that I ought to spend more of my waking hours thinking about it. I thought it might be smart to buy myself an enormous countdown clock, perhaps, set it for fifteen years, and leave it running on my desk at work -- telling me through blinking red lights (each one consuming tiny bits of carbon-emitting energy, it must be admitted) that time is precious and very far from infinite.
The French piece made me think better of it. Not because the article makes a remotely good point. But because I know what would happen if I had that clock. It would slowly wind down (unless I forgot about it and moved on). Twelve to fifteen years would pass. The number displayed on the screen would hit zero. And nothing would "happen." The planet would still be here.
This is the fundamental reason why apocalyptic rhetoric is not helpful. The David French's of the world can always say: See! Doomsday didn't come!
Because it won't come. Not for all of us. Not all at once. Just for some of us. And just at certain times.
David French could still claim in 2016 that Gore's ten-year countdown had passed, and nothing had really changed. Because it hadn't. Not for him.
For many, of course, the world has changed quite a lot since Gore started his timer. The Arctic has started having nearly ice-free summers. Coastal lands are receding. Wildfires and massive tropical cyclones are increasing in frequency and severity.
But there's no particular reason why David French should have noticed any of these things. And because the water's not lapping at his door, he can dismiss the reality of these problems as fear-mongering. His position is precisely that of the bureaucrat narrator of Auden's "The Unknown Citizen": Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
Much of the rhetoric among environmentalists therefore misses the point. The reason to care about climate change is not because "this issue affects all of us." Or because "I want my children to have a planet to grow up in."
This issue doesn't affect all of us equally. And your children will still have a planet. Depending on who you are, they might even get to enjoy some great new vacation spots, once Alaska becomes a temperate playground.
The reason to care about climate change is not because every person will suffer material loss. Some might even benefit from it. The reason to care is the same reason to engage in any moral action - because the suffering of others has a just claim upon our concern. There's no easy way to work this around to a simple matter of self-interest, because not every person's self-interest will be harmed.
I'm reminded of a conversation I once had with a conservative friend. He too, despite his Republican credentials, was disturbed by the 2016 election. "But," he said, "every time one of these rolls around, people get all worked up. And then the election goes one way or the other, and nothing ever really changes."
But of course, things have changed. For a lot of people, things have changed in a drastically horrifying direction. Muslim families struggle to obtain visas for family members abroad. The refugee program has been cut in half twice over in the last two years. Asylum seekers are blocked by a series of invisible walls erected up and down the continent. And the president is pressuring foreign leaders to undertake politically-motivated investigations of his political opponents.
Most of us treat "authoritarianism" as a term something like "apocalypse." All we know about it is that it is a bad thing. So if we haven't noticed a change in our own lives for the worse, if we haven't yet suffered directly, then we assume it cannot have happened. We are the unnamed bureaucrat again. Had anything been wrong, we should certainly have heard.
But authoritarianism doesn't arise in societies because it is terrible for everyone. It arises because it benefits some specific groups of people. It grants them unfair privileges and access to power. It enables specific people to tighten their hold on the state.
When we look around the world, the rise of authoritarianism, the erosion of the rule of law, is always an incremental process. And it is a process from which some people benefit. It is not a doomsday, in other words. It does not come like a thief in the night. So we can't all assume we would perceive it if it came, that it would be unmistakable.
This is why we must resist the complacent attitude of the bureaucrat that Auden was satirizing. We have to continue to entertain the possibility that there are things wrong in this world of which we have not yet heard. And that "the worst" can come without all of us noticing at first. Indeed, that it may already be here.
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