Philip Stephens is the senior political editor of the Financial Times, the main European business paper. He appears to be extremely well connected to the current British government, and I usually see him as the "voice of the establishment" in the paper. He writes about British and European politics, as well as about big topics in the news.
In today's paper, he has an absolutely must-read column about global warming. As the column is behind the subscriber wall, I'll just quote the most important parts with my comments below. One quick quote to tempt you/
Save for the flat-earthers in George W. Bush's White House and their friends in the Exxon Mobil oil corporation, the science of the greenhouse effect is incontrovertible.
Inconvenient truth that can change everything
They still do not get it. Tune in to the politicians and you could be forgiven for thinking they are finally grasping the significance of climate change. Sustainable growth is the political cliche of our times. Smart politicians have learned there are votes to be had from planting trees. Listen carefully and the rhetoric is mostly empty.
(...)
The trouble is, global warming is different. It should change everything.
Politicians have understood that appearing to be at least greenish is good for their election prospects, but to them it's just one issue among others. The message of the column is there: that "tick the box" approach is wrong, and the issue of global warming requires their full, total and undivided attention*.
And it comes from one of the most influential voices of the London "beltway". Not a green wacko. Not a single-issue activist. A respectable, moderate member of the establishment.
He then has several paragraphs about an interview with Eric Schmidt, the CEO of Google, and he discusses how the internet is transforming our lives and the way politics happen.
Politicians have been slower than their citizens to understand the connections.
Much the same can be said of the baleful response of political leaders to climate change, a potentially existential threat that dwarfs the dangers posed by international terrorism or rogue states.
It's interesting that Philip Stephens appreciates the myriad ways that the internet is revolutionizing politics - and that should appeal to kossacks - and that he uses that example to link it to global warming. But I think he hits a deep point: both are about our greater environment, and the infrastructures we live in; both are outside the reach or influence of individuals, but are being shaped by the interactions of millions of individuals, and in turn are changing the world we live in.
Save for the flat-earthers in George W. Bush's White House and their friends in the Exxon Mobil oil corporation, the science of the greenhouse effect is incontrovertible. The facts are spelt out in Al Gore's film, An Inconvenient Truth. I can claim no special knowledge as to whether Mr Gore intends to run again for the Democratic nomination for the US presidency. But it hard to imagine a more compelling manifesto.
After that endorsement, he goes on to briefly describe the state of the scientific consensus on global warming, making it clear, point after point, that there is little doubt about what's happening and that it is having a very real impact on us already.
To continue to deny the link between global warming and carbon emissions is akin to arguing that we have still to prove conclusively that smoking tobacco causes cancer.
The effects - rising sea levels, unpredictable and violent weather patterns, increasing desertification - are equally visible and predictable. If there is an outstanding scientific question, it is just how close are we to the tipping point when the damage to the planet becomes irreversible?
The only question is: do we still have time to do anything?
The politicians' response has been to fiddle as the planet begins to burn. Most display the timidity that comes with a failure to understand that climate change is more than just another policy headache. The rest are fearful of spelling out the consequences to voters.
Sure, plenty of politicians can talk the talk about carbon emissions, combined heat and power plants, wind farms, reforestation and the rest. Some will also tiptoe on to more dangerous ground by venturing that cheap air travel may not be an inviolable birthright.
I'll say it frankly. Many kossacks are in the same state of denial. Beyond the (not wholly unreasonable) arguments that a gas tax is political suicide and an unfair burden on poor Americans, I'm accused regularly of being a full time Cassandra, a doom-and-gloomer who gets his kicks from needlessly scaring the shit out of naive readers with catastrophist scenarios.
That's just because there are still too few of us, because the message hurts: that our lifestyle is unsustainable and that we we have to change - either thanks to a conscious decision and a voluntary process, or in a chaotic and painful way forced upon us by reality.
Politicians are not making us aware of that choice, and are certainly not leading the (apparently painful) way.
If western governments, let alone China and India, are to forestall catastrophe, global harming has to become the political issue: generating a response that embraces and infuses every area of government and politics from economics to housing, scientific research to trade, foreign policy to human development.
Again, a moderate member of the establishment is saying this very directly: all our policies should be organised around the issue of global warming. It should be the overriding goal.
When will we listen, and cause our politicians to listen -and take action?
Update [2006-10-6 8:46:9 by Jerome a Paris]:: "global harming" is a typo present on the FT website, but not in the print version of the article. It's quite revealing, and possibly an expression that we should use more ourselves...
It is not all gloom. An as yet unpublished report commissioned by the British government shows that the costs of action now are relatively modest - far smaller than those that would flow from delay.
So Mr Stephens thinks that there is still time, which is the sane choice for policy makers to make: we have to think that we can still solve the problem, because otherwise what's the point?
But we need to acknowledge the problem, and focus on it. Urgently.
The choice, in any event, is a simple one. We can leave our children to face the frightening consequences of global warming; or we can act to forestall it by rethinking radically the way we live and work. Either way, climate change, like the internet, changes everything.
This is a message that kossacks should carry loud and far. After all, we embody the revolution of the internet in politics. Time to do the same on the most essential policy issue of our times - especially as the community has already thought long and hard about the closely-linked theme of energy, and come up with an actual policy plan, Energize America, which would be an excellent start towards a comprehensive plan to tackle global warming.