Harry Vassallo | Sunday, 05 April 2009

PRINT THIS ARTICLE

Choosing between the impossible and the unthinkable

“Stern, Lord Nicholas Stern”
“He’s a politician …. a sportsman….”
“No, formerly Chief Economist at the World Bank and author of the Stern Review on climate change, 2006 and of Blueprint for a Safer Planet 2009.”
“Aah... that Lord Stern.”

This depressing exchange with a friend and colleague was a measure of the ignorance of the intelligent in a matter of the greatest importance for anyone alive today. We’re just too busy or we just don’t want to know. The print and broadcast media have that impression and feel that it is not their business to provide us with information about matters which are unlikely to entertain us. The ignorance deepens.
The BBC coverage of the G20 summit seemed exhaustive. Much of it was dedicated to Michelle Obama, a cool lady, fashionably dressed and a sure winner with any crowd. Then there was coverage of the side events: the protests, some violence… always a spectacle. There was a clip of President Sarkozy making a spectacular U-turn: from threatening in the run-up to the summit not to sign the final joint communiqué unless stringent new regulations were agreed, he was heard to express surprise at having achieved more than he expected.
The clip with Presidents Obama and Lula said everything about Obama’s charm offensive. He described Lula as the world’s most popular political figure and ascribed it to his personal good looks. The body language was great and Obama won over Lula in charm factor. Lula’s overwhelming of Sarkozy in a previous press conference had given him the title and Obama knocked out the champion with a smile.
The BBC showed us the broken window at the offices of the Royal Bank of Scotland, the protesters’ scuffles with the police and spoke of the street carnival atmosphere at the climate change protesters’ enclave. We were not told what the protests were about, no spokesperson was asked to comment.
Did the BBC deliberately suppress the news or did they guess that the audience would enjoy spectacle more than content?
I searched in vain for coverage of Lord Nicholas Stern’s recommendations to the G20 summit. He had held a press conference to launch his and Ottmar Edenhoffer’s report entitled Towards a Global Green Recovery. Even in summary it demands significant focus and some technical background from its readers. Who has the time? Which television reporter could think of flicking through the whole 49 pages?
Details of security arrangements and Michelle Obama’s outfits sold better with the viewing public.
Still the coverage on the economic recovery plan itself was excellent condensing the barest facts into a 3 minute video clip mentioning monetary policy and fiscal policy as the tools available to world governments to dig us out of a hole big enough to hold us all.
What the Stern-Edenhoffer report made clear was that the current great depression is small potatoes when compared to the economic challenge posed by looming climate change. The change is proceeding faster than expected and something has to be done about it now. As we celebrate that the leaders of the world’s 20 leading economies have agreed on a $1.1 trillion economic recovery package, Stern and Edenhoffer point out that much of this can be used very profitably to speed up all initiatives for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.
The world is not listening. The world’s press was busy spinning around the spectacle of the G20 summit selling something it guessed its audiences wanted to buy: a hope, a glimmer of optimism. Something technical, combining the environment and economics, however authoritatively stated, just was not sexy enough to compete with the brilliant event.
President Obama himself seemed to think so. His concluding remarks to the press were a message of quiet optimism with just barely a mention of climate change as though it was just another item somewhere on the agenda and not a challenge capable of dwarfing the present unprecedented global economic slowdown. It would not have been good television.
And what has all this to do with Malta? Why should any of this take up space in this newspaper? The simple answer is that we too are on this planet and it is the only one we have. Everybody in the world should be interested to know where we are heading together. The Maltese as much as anyone should know what it will mean to their country if the world misses its target of a 2 C rise in global temperature. Much of our country including crucial infrastructure such as the power stations and reverse osmosis plants will be under water, tourism will be a distant memory and we will face far more violent storms combined with a chronic lack of rainfall.
Such a catastrophe is not a matter which we can afford to ponder sometime in the future. If we miss CO2 reduction target of 20% by 2015, in just 6 years time, the face of the earth will change, billions will become displaced persons, starving and thirsty. Malta will become an archipelago of several smaller islands. Hundreds if not thousands of existing animal species will perish because they will not have time to adapt to a climate change induced by human activity and taking place much faster than any previous climate change in the Earth’s history.
The current climate change discussion focuses on the situation in 2050 but missing the reduction targets means that tipping off points are reached earlier with unforeseeable consequences. Our political inability to face the unpalatable makes it all the more likely and happening far sooner than 40 years hence.
The Stern-Edenhoffer report to the G20 warns and recommends. We just don’t want to know. The media know that we don’t want to know and they don’t bother. We are challenged to do the impossible because the alternatives are unthinkable and we choose not to think at all.
If any reader wants a copy of the Stern-Edenhoffer report and cannot lay hands on it, I would be glad to e-mail a copy.

hvassallo@mediatoday.com.mt

Any comments?
If you wish your comments to be published in our Letters pages please click button below.
Please write a contact number and a postal address where you may be contacted.