While Barry Goldwater might have decried the great American tradition of compromise, I still tend to think that if people on both sides are howling, you must be doing something right. In the current firefight surrounding the cap-and-trade legislation going through Congress, not only are the suits predicting the end of innovation, the hippies are evidencing their disgust at a massive sell-out. It’s all true, which of course means none of it is true either. This article on AlterNet summarizes the view of English smart dude James Hansen, who goes beyond criticizing the current legislation as inadequate to say that it is irrelevant. The truth, he tells us, is that we are already fucked.
According to Hansen, society as we know it is going to fail under the weight of its current resource consumption as Gaia throws a smackdown on our impudent unordering of her balance. Stasis will be maintained, and humanity will be contained. Interestingly contained, but not destroyed. A much smaller, smarter (maybe fitter and better looking) group will remain, eating proteins cultured from animal biopsies on smaller land masses (i.e. islands) in latitudes further from the equator (i.e. the north Atlantic).
Hmm. Small island. Shitty food. Currently crappy climate. Decent intellectual property. Is he talking about Rockall?
I get that our climatic situation is, at least in part, a result of our failure to restrain ourselves, and that this is a moral failure. I get that, as corrective measures go, this proposed cap and trade deal is limited at best in its ability to effect change. I’m also willing to believe that we are worse off than most people, let alone most scientists, are able to come to grips with. But England? Really. Still hung up on Richard II are we Dr. Hansen?
If we are going to make it out of this thing alive as a species, what we need is a greater appreciation for our common humanity, not greater exceptionalism and pessimism. By just about every account, the roof is not caving in. It’s sagging awfully low though. The new house we build may not have as many rooms, but it can’t be walled off, surrounded by a moat, a fortress against nature herself. If we are truly going to live, there has to be a way in and a way out. Plus, there needs to be an iPod with some Mingus on it.