Climate Change Denial

I was at a conference for members of the Scientific and Medical network last weekend and very good it was too. But one session really had me worried. Professor Chris Clarke, author of Weaving the Cosmos, was talking to us about the need to connect science and spirituality in our living planet, the different ways of knowing the world, and the need for bringing back a harmony between our rational and emotional selves. In the one and a half hours of talk and dialogue he covered much of enormous interest and significance for the future of humanity, that I may come back to in more detail another time. But what was the cause of my concern?
Well apparently something like 50% of Americans are in total denial about climate change. And what is more, the percentage seems to be increasing as the science produces even better and more indisputable evidence. It seems that there are psychological dynamics at work here. We rely so much on technology and when we are told it has to change, we find this uncomfortable, unendurable, intolerable even, and think there has to be a way out, that science has it wrong, and we go into denial.
We in Britain are nearly as skeptical. A Times poll in 2009 found that only two in five Britons believed that this current and visible problem was largely man made. We really should take more notice of the evidence, including for example the report to world leaders by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) following its meeting in Paris at the start of 2007. This report concludes that it is very likely (and that means a 90% chance!) that the activities of man are responsible for the increased greenhouse gases and the resultant problems of climate change now being seen and predicted for the foreseeable future. As a consequence average temperatures are likely to rise by 4°C by the end of the century. This is the consensus of opinion from the combined efforts of more than 800 contributing authors and more than 450 lead authors, with more than 2500 scientific expert reviewers involved in the two-stage scientific and technical review process.
For the continuing cynics why not use an adaptation of Pascal’s Wager? Pascal reasoned that whether or not one believed in the existence of God, it was a safer bet and one had nothing to lose by supposing that He existed. So it is with the global warming debate. If we allow ourselves to become more spiritually aware, more sensitive to our finely balanced place in the world, more compassionate towards the plight of our brethren across the globe, more simple in our needs, more at peace with ourselves, more in tune with our own souls and the soil beneath our feet, then surely we are all enriched? We will certainly be happier, and we will be leaving a better world for those who come after us. What do we have to lose, climate change or not?
Of course there are bound to be some controversies and debates surrounding the details of the IPCC report and the scale of its significance. But much of our best scientific research effort continues to be directed towards gaining a fuller understanding of all the issues involved, and what actions we can take.
Please let's not ignore the evidence any longer.
And let's find a dialogue between the scientists and spirituality, between the rational and the emotional, combine the analytical with wisdom.
E F Schumacher said something along the lines of: "Man is now far too clever to survive without wisdom."
(The photo is of white hydrangeas at Loseley Park, Surrey, England)