There is meant to be a political consensus in this country. Global warming is taking place, and humans contribute to that. There is also a scientific consensus that this is the case as well, so since we are all agreed, it is surely the case that the BBC can go ahead to what is now the important next step; try to encourage the population of this country to do something about it?
In the same way the BBC encourages us not to commit crime, it is important for our future safety and wellbeing, indeed our survival, that we do not destroy the environment in which we live.
It appears we are not there yet. There is still a powerful anti-green movement in this country. When the BBC announced it was dropping an awareness-raising programme on climate change, only Chris Huhne had the courage to speak out against the decision:
“The consensus about global warming in the science community is now overwhelming, so accusing the BBC of campaigning on such an undisputed threat is like suggesting it should be even-handed between criminals and their victims.”
Why was that? What do Brown and Cameron think? If they both publicly agreed with Huhne, then surely the BBC would have to change its mind?
The anti-Green movement includes the bestselling newspapers, the car lobby, the Taxpayers Alliance (see Chris Huhne), extreme modernists such as the Institute of Ideas, Free Market think tanks (ASI, IEA) and libertarians (notably Jeremy Clarkson), the CBI who want a massive road building program, and the airlines in particular (see Ryanair’s aggressive campaign against airline taxes), and the NFU.
They still have a powerful reach, and thankfully we stand up to them.
It could be argued that because there is an anti-green movement then there is not a consensus and the BBC is right to be ‘impartial’. I wonder if the same argument would hold over the debate between those who believe in the theory of evolution and those who believe in creationism? Should the BBC invite astrologers to talk about the future of the economy? Generally I believe the BBC should be impartial, but how far can you realistically go with this, particularly considering what is at stake?
I recommend that the Liberal Democrats go on the attack. We should attack the BBC and the other two parties for their cowardice, and we should attack the anti-green movement for being reckless and irresponsible.
This is an opportunity for Ming Campbell to say something interesting and controversial at our conference next week. Will he take the opportunity during his leader’s speech at the end of conference? I hope so.
* Geoffrey Payne is the secretary of Hackney Liberal Democrats.
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8 Comments
Something the climate change sceptics have done very successfully is target (manipulate) anti-elite conspiracy theorists – many of whom will tell you that climax change is a hoax concocted by elites to impoverish and enslave us.
Yes, you heard that right. Those who go to such lengths to proclaim their loathing of Cheney, Bush and the US military-industrial-petro-chemical complex are actually acting as advocates for said forces.
A topsy-turvy world, isn’t it?
(I had a falling out the other day with a guy who runs a conspiracy website, because he was telling parents not to vaccinate their children. Measles, mumps and rubella are “harmless”, he informs us.)
To the list of media climate change sceptics you can add Peter Hitchens and Melanie Phillips, both authoritarian conservatives. Need one say more?
I totally and utterly disagree with this article, and indeed with Chris Huhne on this occasion. It is emphatically not the job of the BBC to campaign on climate change or indeed anything else, regardless of the degree of consensus. The job of the current affairs wing of the BBC is simply to report the news.
Denialism is something worth watching in right wing politics and climate change is going to be their main area of attack. It threatens many things they hold dear – freedom to do what they want – and is very easy to attack with short slogans, selective use of evidence, quote mining, elevating the few dissenting scientific voices to the level of (persecuted) expert and accusing it of having a political agenda.
Hardly suprising they chose to have a pop at the BBC’s (another whipping boy of the right) Climate Change Aid: easy target, easy case to make to a timid, bruised organisation currently very risk averse in news reporting and commissioning. I’m pleased only on the level that Ricky Gervaise and Jonathan Ross emoting in front of endless pics of malnourished panda bears marooned on melting icebergs would have probably made me throw up what I’d never ate.
The same tactics are used by the ID/creationists in America: right wingers too. Both climate change and evolution have in common that the science and proofs are difficult and the immediate effects hard to precisely quantify and assign to causes. The science says that the models only work with our trillions of tonnes of CO2 in the equations, someone shouts it’s sunspots! Atmospheric fluid dynamics is among the most complex of sciences, but sunsports ‘stand to reason!’
There’s an interesting political pathology incubating on the right. It’s stronger in America with lots more bonkersness going on, but in five years time it’ll have crawled its way over here.
This is a scientific affair, so I would think it is important to get the science right first, then we can make sure the language we use is also correct (contrast with the divisive, but essentially correct use of ‘sexed-up’ which got the BBC into hot water over WMD) – in order not incite prejudicial sentiment.
There are lots of premature and speculative conclusions that have already been drawn by those who recognise an opportunity to support their pet political agenda, but winning an audience isn’t the same thing as having won an argument.
But I also refuse, however, be pasted into the anti-environmental camp.
It should be noted that the climate is a dynamic system which is constantly changing, so direct correllations with simplistic predictions of globalised warming should be avoided – that is not to say the dynamic isn’t being affected by our behaviour.
There remains an amount of openness on the way weather will be affected, but there is a wide consensus on the ways in which we can sensibly moderate the wastefulness of our damaging behaviour to limit the potentially harmful impact of those changes.
Using serious issues to score points is a cheap tactic, we should avoid it and stand instead for the principles of the matter.
And so should the BBC.
Good piece.
It is not the job of the BBC to push a political consensus.
If there were a political consensus on something you disagreed with would you call for the BBC to campaign for it? (I am trying to avoid Godwin’s law here – but I think you may be able to see how I’d invoke it)
The science of greenhouse gas fueled climate change is well understood (although some scientists whose evidence is used refuse to give their methodology – which is unscientific in the extreme).
What is not well understood is the other 75% of factors affecting the climate, and what is even more poorly understood is the actual effects of climate change and what should be done about it.
On the latter, scientists are poorly placed to decide what should be done – their speciality is to say what is happening and why and what effect different solutions will have on the changes in climate.
They are not well placed to say what we should do. Perhaps it would best for humans to just roll with the changes. Or perhaps we should opt for the extreme solutions of extreme environmentalists. That sort of decision is best left to social scientists – notably economists who study human behaviour and how we react to incentives.
Liberal and libertarian opposition to the environmental brigade is not out of lack of concern for the environment, or because they somehow hate the environment or hate other people, it is because the environment is being used as an excuse for illiberal and authoritarian policies. The more thoughtful also realise that many of the solutions proposed by the green lobby and politicians are based upon anti-capitalist and anti-liberal totalitarian thinking which will actually make the environmental problems worse and cause untold suffering to much of the world’s population.
What we need is rational environmentalism. We need to look at the evidence of what’s happening (an increase in global temperatures it appears), what is causing it (in part increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere caused by humans), what the effects will be (unclear, estimates range from the extreme (Al Gore’s alarmism) to the relatively small (IPCC)) and what can be done whilst preserving and enhancing liberty and increasing standards of living globally (nothing according to much of the green and anti-capitalist lobby, a lot according to the liberal and libertarian environmentalist).
Whatever we do however, it is not the place of the BBC to fuel alarmism and to pursue political agendas. Its role is to provide facts and entertainment not political polemics. If it wishes to do that then it should campaign to be privatised.
I must say I was not going to watch this programme anyway. People are not that interested in being lectured to. This is the official reason the programme was dropped, and it could easily be true.
There is another consensus that this sort of programme advances – that the solution to global warming lies in individual sacrifices, not political action. I am against that consensus.
It was not a programme. It was a Planet in Need style jamboree. And while there is a near consensus on underlying facts e.g. it is getting warmer, man has some part in that, there is no consensus AT ALL on the headline threat. How bad are things?
Scientists who express a preference mostly don’t buy the full nine yards, if any of the official “consensus”. And the question of “what to do about it?” is of course far more important.
There are excellent reasons for carbon reduction and sustainable power whatever the level of threat. And it ought to be axiomatic to all clear thinkers that VFM and option appraisal exercises would be sensible before embarking on dozens, nay hundreds of initiatives (not to mention business opportunities).