Many years ago a close friend, a highly qualified surgeon who delighted in letting me in on the latest developments in his field, confided that he expected the future to look back our most advanced practices as little more than butchery. As a scientist he has an expectation of constant progress, eternal refinement and greater precision.
He must know what he’s talking about even though what he does on a day to day basis reconstructing limbs and digits leaves me in gaping awe of him. This faith in a future age of elegance came to mind as I considered what is happening in Copenhagen.
Whether or not the commitments made are sufficient, whether or not the sceptics continue to denounce the process as a global conspiracy, we have entered the low carbon age.
My friend the surgeon, drives a stylish sports coupé, which must excite the envy of most who watch him drive by. It happens to have a radiator designed to cool his engine because much of the fuel he consumes produces heat rather than energy in his internal combustion engine. The best of them do likewise.
As we admire and covet them, we stand in the position of the uninitiated watching the performance of a highly skilled surgeon giving life quality or function to a badly mauled body. We are led to believe that current technology is the best and the finest when in fact it is rude and crude when compared to what it could be.
Our cleanest burning car will seem like a coal burning traction engine to the next generation. We will be asked how we could have been so careless about our health and the environment. We will inevitably plead ignorance.
Besides, what choice did we have? The low carbon revolution had not happened yet. The products were not yet available, the technologies were still in their infancy the rewards and penalties aimed at reducing human induced impacts on the environment were nowhere near what they will be in the very near future.
If we choose to look at the positive side of the possible outcomes there is much to encourage us. We stand on the threshold of a new era that is likely to transform not only the way we obtain the energy we need but also the way we view all other impacts we produce on the natural environment. Sensitivity will not seem the narrow enclave of despised tree-huggers but become a major value, a qualifier for every enterprise. We can if we so choose envisage a brighter, cleaner future.
However the change will not come overnight and will certainly not be painless. New scarcities will be created, new greed, new coveting. If the balance of power based on possession of energy resources changes we can expect periods of instability until a new equilibrium is found.
Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union we should have learned that such adjustments are not made quickly or easily. Many unexpected outcomes can be less than pleasant. That change is not yet over and we are embarking on another much greater change at a time when we are still in the throes of a global financial crisis.
There is no reason for us to be complacent and much less starry eyed. The economic changes implicit in the low carbon revolution are at least as great as those experienced in major wars. Nobody can seriously guess what the outcomes will be for the balance of power on the planet even if the emergence of China and India as major players are taken for granted.
If the threat of the collapse of civilization as we know it through climate change was the driving force at Copenhagen, it is also true that in managing the response such matters as a shift in the balance of power must have weighed significantly in the considerations of the major players. At the end of it all, Copenhagen was somehow a Yalta or a Malta all dressed up in lab coats instead of battledress.
In the horse trading that went on politicians were caught between the need to act together in the face of the gravest danger to everyone and the electoral need not to take on a disproportionate burden in addressing the issue. We simply do not have the political tools to address global issues when the accountability of leaders is to their separate constituencies and not to the world community as such.
Poor countries and small countries struggle to be heard. Their plight has been used to bolster the arguments in favour of change but it is not clear that their voices will carry significant weight in the final decisions. The low carbon era with its eco-sensitivity and greater elegance in the use of resources may improve North South justice in allowing some countries to leapfrog into the new age without passing through the high impact industrialisation phases the developed world has experienced. For some others the new era may never dawn if their countries disappear beneath the waves because the world was unable to do enough and in time.
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.
