Block’s Indicator of Sustainable Growth

By Ray Block

 Is the failure of the Copenhagen water for life concert last Monday, on the eve of the climate change conference, a sign of difficulties to come?  Around 2,000 people are estimated to have attended the concert in a football stadium, which can seat 40,000. Tickets with an initial asking price of US$ 80 to $140 ended up being given away for free.

The endless series of climate change conferences keeps me thinking  of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, where the hero spends his time tilting at wind mills.  In the hands of Man of La Mancha, the 1972 musical, who can forget the song, The Impossible Dream. Let me quote a few lines.   

“To dream the impossible  dream,    To fight the unbeatable foe,  To bear with unbearable sorrow  To run where the brave dare not go.”                                         .                                                                                                                

The six misguided Republicans on the US Senate Commerce Committee, who have called for a Climategate Inquiry to “provide confirmation that American taxpayer dollars are not being misused.”

 The six Senators, along with the rest of their party colleagues are over excited by the emails and documents stolen by paid Russian hackers from a website of the University of East Anglia. They have a new quest, like the character Don Quixote, constantly attacking imaginary enemies.

They say “the American people deserve to know that federal scientific funding is not being used to distort science to reach a political end.”

 The fact that over the last decade, according to the most recent meteorology records, turns out to be a period of rising temperatures not of cooling, as the climate deniers have been prone to say, can now be forgotten. They have  a new eureka moment, in the mass of climate emails now circulating around the globe.

 What I find unforgivable is that the climate deniers have so muddied the waters, that large numbers of people are becoming either cynical or indifferent to climate change.

 The national telephone survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press conducted  Sept 30-Oct 4 2009, among 1,500 adults, reported a “sharp decline in the percentage of Americans, who say there is solid evidence that global temperatures are rising, and fewer also see global warming as a very serious problem- 35 per cent say that today, down from 44 per cent in April 2008.”

 A global omni online survey by Nielsen involving 53 countries, which was reported by the Wall Street Journal, covering the period Oct 2007 to Oct 2009, says the concern about climate change/global warming now averages only 37 per cent.

 A rival poll by GlobeScan/BBC World Service conducted in 23 countries, and involving 24,071 adults, between 19 June and 13 October 2009 says that “public concern about climate change is at its highest level since GlobeScan/BBC World Service began international tracking in 1998.

 Majorities in major European countries support their government playing a strong leadership role in Copenhagen- 62 per cent in UK, 57 per cent in France, and 55 per cent in Germany. Outside Europe, the need for governments to show leadership was supported by citizens in Canada 61 per cent, Australia 57 per cent, Japan 57 per cent, and Brazil 53 per cent.

 The two biggest polluting countries, China and United States are less concerned than in the other countries. The Chinese favoured only a “moderate approach” involving “only gradual action” 49 per cent, over a “leadership approach” 37 per cent.  In the US, 36 per cent favour a “moderate approach” and 14 per cent oppose any agreement, outweighing the 46 per cent of Americans, who want their government to show leadership.

 Without an agreement on carbon pricing, set high enough to induce technology change, which doesn’t suit the climate deniers, who want “business as usual” conditions, a low carbon economy hangs in the balance.

The low carbon economy,  as in Don Quixote, is just that, an Impossible Dream.