Nature’s lesson may be too expensive
events always take priority over IMMEDIATE long term problems in politics. Long term problems may in fact be more important for humankind than the daily challenges, but they receive much less attention until they develop into an immediate problem. People expect their political leaders to devote their energies to addressing the problems they are experiencing. That current developments may lead to major future problems may find a place in the minds of leaders and even societies, but they rarely receive sufficient attention even under circumstances when, so to speak, the writing is one the wall. For example, these days our attention is focused on what Israel is doing in Gaza. Even Ukraine that captured our attention for a long time has moved to a secondary place. Yet, for the Western world, what happens in Ukraine will probably be more important in the long run than what happens in Israel.
There are growing indications that human derived changes in the environment, mostly emanating from the use of fossil fuels is producing global warming that leads to changes in climatic conditions. These will eventually render the globe much less habitable than it is now.
Political establishments are all aware of the pending problem. In fact, as early as three decades ago, the United Nations led the way in drafting a Framework Convention on Climate Change at a meeting in Rio which depicted, among others, an annual meeting to which those who signed the convention would attend to assess changes in the climate and identify what was happening and what to do. In fact, the COP28 meeting that began on 30 November and will continue until 12 December is an instrument of that Convention. I must reluctantly admit that I did not know what COP meant and learned that it read as “Conference of Parties to the Convention.” There is no question that as a newsworthy event, COP28 has received attention. But whether it is likely to produce major commitments on the part of participants to fight climate change is another matter. Indications so far suggest that no major decisions that will alter the behavior of those that bear much of the responsibility for climate change will likely be adopted.
Why do major global problems not receive priority as an arena of concrete action in international politics? We have already made a reference to one reason. Problems that are evolving but do not possess immediacy occupy a lower place in the list of priorities that political leaders address. As already noted, political leaders may well be aware that major problems may await their societies in the future, but they are under pressure to deal with more contemporary concerns. Some constituencies that will keep the problem alive evolve and ask the government to pay attention such that the problem remains on the agenda, but it rarely becomes a high priority item.
One of the difficulties with problems that evolve over a long time is that they are difficult to perceive as a problem by the mass publics. The fact that there are often debates about the nature of the problem and its effects in the scientific community, help plant confusion among the publics that face little difficulty in understanding concrete problems but experience difficulty in grasping those in the making, i.e. problems that they do not see but are told about. The difficulty of perceiving problems that are still in the process of evolving opens the field to populist politicians that argue that scientists and some busybody types are creating problems that neither exist nor likely to emerge in the future. They discredit scientists as fearmongers and their followers as rabblerousers. Their aim is often simple: to spare voters from adopting unpopular measures. Trump in the US and Bolsonaro in Brazil constitute good examples of this phenomenon.
A second difficulty is a familiar one. A great part of the deterioration of the world’s air quality leading to climate change derives from the consumption of fossil fuels. It is difficult to change the consumption patterns that have evolved around the availability of energy from this source. The change from fossil fuels or at least substantial reductions in their use, will necessitate adjustments that will impose inconveniences on the average man. He may have to purchase an electric car, change how he heats his home and pay more for energy. These constitute grounds for resisting change. But even stronger resistance may come from countries and corporations that mine, use extensively and/or export fossil fuels. It is not an accident that Russia, China, India and Gulf States are on the side of the skeptical on climate change.
Politics and economics make it difficult to leave fossil fuels. I suspect COP28 will not produce sufficiently effective measures against them. My fear is that nature will assume the burden of teaching us that we are causing climate change by polluting the atmosphere. Unfortunately, nature’s lesson may prove to be too expensive.