Movie Time: The Age of Stupid

[Penners]

Regarding the numbers to fill in DaveBrigg's letter, wasn't that the objective of the Kyoto Protocol? There doesn't seem to be a lack of talking, lobbying and conferencing but there's precious little actual progress in actively stabilising, never mind reducing, our global carbon emissions. For whatever reasons, people and governments are simply not engaging head-on with the issue. Perhaps things will change after the Copenhagen conference at the end of this year.

Just commenting rather belatedly on Flyfisher's observations above - it seems to me that this highlights one of the most important issues in the whole climate change problem.

That is, that in the end the decisions that the human race makes to deal with climate change will be made by politicians, not scientists. And politicians will be much more concerned about the voter's perception of their actions than they will be about actually doing what the scientists recommend.

 

[Flyfisher]

air travel is eminently affordable for billions of people.

Hmmmm....for just how many billions is that acually true? Not the billion that live on a dollar a day. And then the ticket price does not cover the cost of environmental destruction.

We can debate the exact number, but even without the billion that live on a dollar a day that still leaves about 5.5bn and I'd guess that at least 20% of those can afford to fly these days. Perhaps I should have written hundreds of millions. Whatever, I think it's fair to say people are more mobile than ever before. Ticket price and environmental destruction is another matter altogether.

(Actually I think rather more attention should be given to burning coal for electricity and cement making, things that are more destructive than air travel.)

I agree, but while burning coal is probably understood to be a bad thing I think there's a long way to go to demonise cement. I also suspect there's a lack of real joined-up thinking (to use that awful phrase). So, yes, coal-burning is bad but people won't be happy with power cuts. It's a similar principle that 'hides' the nasty side of meat rearing from the fluffy lambs in the field or battery chickens from eggs. People have a highly developed sense of 'out of sight out of mind' and breaking this trait won't be easy.

 

[Flyfisher]

in the end the decisions that the human race makes to deal with climate change will be made by politicians, not scientists.

Precisely, and scientists don't seem to understand the political issues, which is why statements such as "we must leave coal in the ground" might have sound scientific support but are politically meaningless. Fortunately, some 'climate insiders' are beginning to realise this: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7946476.stm

 

[biffvernon]

This morning tens of thousands of copies of a spoof edition of The Financial Times were distributed in London.

We can read it online at http://ft2020.com/

 

[Pford75]

The spoof is very well done, having seen some myself.

However, the young lady I spoke to was rather confused. She didn't seem to know whether she supported the idea of global equality and endorsed the idea of affordable air travel and cars for the population of India and China....or whether the issue of CO2 emissions was more important.

Global equality and the necessary reduction in CO2 in the short term and mutually exclusive as far as I can see.

 

[Lime]

Global equality and the necessary reduction in CO2 in the short term and mutually exclusive as far as I can see.

I agree.
However this only demonstrate more clearly (to me ) how confused most people are because I don't mind betting that the majority of people who wish to reduce carbon emissions also think everyone in the world should have the same standard of living.

Only this morning, sitting at the breakfast table looking out the windows at the rain and wondering what to do as we intended to be going to an outdoor carboot, I made comment about a similar dichotomy.

viz. The same people who were against nuclear power stations in the past are now most vocal about global warming.
If most countries in the world had nuclear power (and I know all the problems about nuclear waste perhaps better than most) then carbon emissions would be far less than they are now through burning less coal and gas.

 

[biffvernon]

The dichotomy is addressed by Contraction and Convergence. See http://www.gci.org.uk/contconv/cc.html and much else.

 

[Lime]

The dichotomy is addressed by Contraction and Convergence. See http://www.gci.org.uk/contconv/cc.html and much else.

What has that got to do with what goes on in many people's heads?
It is how people think that matters.
Joined-up thinking is important when attempting to "save the world".. the human variety that is.

 

[Penners]

It could, of course, be argued that the best way to save the world is to let the human race destroy itself. That would solve an awful lot of problems.

 

[Lime]

It could, of course, be argued that the best way to save the world is to let the human race destroy itself. That would solve an awful lot of problems.

That is what will happen unless mankind changes.

 

[countrycott]

That is what will happen unless mankind changes

Yep, Mankind is the only animal that destroys its own habitat..........

 

[biffvernon]

The dichotomy is addressed by Contraction and Convergence. See http://www.gci.org.uk/contconv/cc.html and much else.

What has that got to do with what goes on in many people's heads?

I don't know how far you got with reading the Contraction and Convergence materila, Lime, but it directly addresses the issue raised by pford's comment, "Global equality and the necessary reduction in CO2 in the short term and mutually exclusive as far as I can see". We do have answers. I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but we do have solutions. We can do it.

 

[Flyfisher]

It is how people think that matters.

That's possibly the best summary of the problems we face that I've ever read. Scientific facts pale into insignificance compared with what people actually think and, more importantly, do. Unfortunately, the issues just don't seem to be in the forefront of people's thinking, nevermind behaviour.

As for global equality, there's good progress being made on the personal transportation front.
[Not sure what emoticon is appropriate here]

 

[Lime]

As Tata rival Bajaj Auto chairman, Rahul Bajaj, says to environmentalists if you want a really clean environment "go back to the cave age".

 

[Lime]

The dichotomy is addressed by Contraction and Convergence. See http://www.gci.org.uk/contconv/cc.html and much else.

What has that got to do with what goes on in many people's heads?

I don't know how far you got with reading the Contraction and Convergence materila, Lime, but it directly addresses the issue raised by pford's comment, "Global equality and the necessary reduction in CO2 in the short term and mutually exclusive as far as I can see". We do have answers. I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but we do have solutions. We can do it.

Contraction and Convergence?
Or
Et = k+lt+mt2+nt3+pt4 and St = (St(Y-t) + SY(t-y))/(Y-y)

I couldn't think of a better way to confuse the public.

Say it will be ok and it will be?
I don't think so.

 

[biffvernon]

Did I ever claim understanding Contraction and Convergence was easy? No. But I do think it goes a long way to a solution. Does everyone have to understand it? I'm not so sure. There's actually a pretty neat and graphic description within the film The Age of Stupid, though they don't actually use the C and C words.

Most folk have little idea how mobile phones work. My son, whose job it is to know, tells me some understanding of quantum mechanics is required. I tend to believe what he says on such matters. The point is we all use stuff without knowing how it works. Maybe we can have political and economic policies that work but that only relatively few people know how and why they work.

Actually most people have little idea how the present political and economic systems work and fewer still have much say. Lime says "It is how people think that matters". Maybe. Maybe not. I'd say it is how the people in power think that matters. How they stay in power is another thing, but again, it may not depend on how most people think.

 

[Lime]

When a key requirement of Contraction is for the US to drop their carbon emmission to less than a fifth of what they produce now I think the idea fanciful.
A total fraud.

Sorry if you think my comment harsh.

 

[Penners]

Harsh it may be, but I'm afraid I agree. Except that I would replace the word "fanciful" with something much stronger. I can't see it happening in 100 years, let alone five or ten.

 

[biffvernon]

You're forgetting peak oil, peak gas and peak coal. We will all be reducing our carbon emmissions to less than a fifth. That's the energy problem. The climate problem is that even this drastic reduction is not enough. We are going to have to beet the depletion curve, particularly with respect to coal.

Harsh? Fanciful? That maybe your perception. We have to make it happen. We can do it.

Right, I'm off to the pub with the lights off. Have a dark evening.

 

[biffvernon]

Bonjour de Paris,


This week's most thrilling email: "I am a curator at the BFI [British Film Institute] National Film Archive and we are very keen to acquire a copy of The Age of Stupid for permanent preservation in the archive... The importance of the film's issues led to an instant selection decision."


- Pause for enormity to sink in -


We are now into our fourth consecutive week in the West End, which is causing Oli the distributor's desk to suffer from over-dancing. And the Prince Charles cinema has just confirmed four evening screenings this Friday, Sat, Sunday and Monday. So if you have any friends left in London who for some crazy reason still haven't seen it, this is probably their last chance. We've trying to swing some good speakers.


The not-complete-failure of our ludicrously ambitious People's Premiere has set our sights even higher for the rest of the World... Now we are planning: the Global Premiere. A Paris-based solar cinema tent - hopefully in July - linked by satellite to... wait for it... all of Western Europe, Eastern Europe, South Africa, India, Japan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, South America, Thailand and Russia. (USA/Canada and Australia/NZ are only missing as we have other plans for them.) Sounds absurd, I know, but we met up with the one-and-only company who could pull it off technically are they seem to think it's perfectly feasible (in fact, they're shortly doing a test-run with Iron Maiden). Hence me being in Paris wheeling and dealing. Ran the idea by our sales agents yesterday to much eyebrow raising. "It's impossible" was the immediate response, "you'd need twenty language versions for starters....". To which I of course replied: "We've already finished 32 languages, what's the next impossibility?".


Which is almost true. Ten languages are completely finished - Slovak, Vietnamese, Finnish, Italian, Russian, Greek, Icelandic, Farsi, Korean & Czech - and 22 are well on the way. But we've just lost our French and Portuguese (Brazilian variety) checkers, so if any of you happen to be native speakers of either language and are in London and were up for spending half a day at the studio checking the subtitles, please contact Katie on translators@ageofstupid.net. The Korean translator wrote a cute blog about her experience which gives a clear idea of what you'd be letting yourself in for.


- Heart-warming picture attached from Lizzie's recent trip to Norwich.
- Nice poem about green shopping VS political action: http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=62453444935&h=MtN3L&u=szQHh&ref=nf


John Prescott (who I ignorantly didn't know was the UK's lead negotiator at Kyoto) summoned me for a private meeting down the Commons the other day. Was very entertaining - "I'll ask Gordon this afternoon", "Let me check with the Chinese president" - and he is full of exciting ideas about how he can use the film to leverage the right deal at Copenhagen. "Would you let me screen it to 40 heads of state, 30 ambassadors and 400 delegates?". Er, yes.


A bientot,
Francoise