Climate Change – It’s an Inside Job

The climate change angle can wait; as I want to tackle the ongoing financial crisis first… I have just gotten round to watching a DVD of the award-winning 2010 documentary, Inside Job, brilliantly narrated by Matt Damon, which tells the story of how a de-regulated financial sector has led to 30 years of instability and 4 financial crises (so far)… It’s like a real-world version of the Bourne Identity – only without a happy ending. Therefore, although I am naturally conservative (rather than liberal) – and despite my agreement with John Gray over the Delusions of Global Capitalism – I may still have been far too generous to laissez-faire global Capitalism in general; and Alan Greenspan in particular. It would appear that, almost single-handedly, Greenspan engineered, perpetuated and, whenever possible, extended the de-regulation of the financial services industry and, thereby, facilitated all of the financial crises we have seen in the last 30 years. This is because, in the 1980s, he oversaw the deregulation that brought a swift end to 40 years of post-WWII well-regulated financial stability; purely because he worshipped at the temple of free market economics. And what have we to show for it? The USA today is a more inequitable society than it has ever been – maybe even more so than Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela. Capitalism may be more successful at innovation, profit-generation and re-investment but, when money became an end in itself (i.e. the money fetishism exemplified by the film Wall Street), I think the rot really did set in. Never have the words of St Paul ever proven more true: “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil…” (I Tim 6:10). Derivatives, Collateralized Debt Obligations, Credit Default Swaps, banks recommending investments to their customers and then betting money on those investments failing, credit rating agencies giving AAA ratings to organisations they knew to be in trouble, Professors of Economics being paid to write good references for such failing banks, etc., etc… The people involved were quite clearly consumed by a love of money (oh and prostitutes too). Of course, there were plenty of warnings, such as Raghuram Rajan’s Has Financial Development Made The World Riskier? (2005); but nobody wanted to listen… By the way, if any of you have not seen this street-level interview on the recent Wall Street protest, recorded by FOX News (but not aired for some reason?), you should… Did the Inside Job give rise to this protest? It sure should have done. Has it led to calls for limited re-regulation, I hope so. Will it lead to anyone being put in prison? I doubt it. However, as George Santayana, once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”… So, what has this to do with climate change (this blog is meant to be about the Environment after all)? Well, in my humble opinion, climate change is the result of human greed, arrogance, selfishness and pride: — Greed – because it is the consequence of the single-minded pursuit at profit at all cost. — Arrogance – because it is the consequence of the false belief that we could, as Herman Daly once put it, treat the Earth as if “it were a business in liquidation”. — Selfishness – because in failing to even attempt to follow a path of sustainable development, we have failed to recognise the need for both intra-generational and inter-generational equality and environmental justice. — Pride – because, even when presented with very clear evidence of the looming consequences of all our bad decisions, we have still failed to act accordingly and sufficiently promptly. Instead, there seems to be no end in sight to the misinformation campaign being waged by the vested interests of the Fossil Fuel Lobby and the misguided libertarian ideologues within Conservative Think Tanks. And, even within the UNFCCC process, we continue to argue about who is more to blame and who should be first to act… Is it really any surprise that we cannot solve the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East? We can’t even agree on a sensible course of action when the well-being (if not life-chances) of billions of people are clearly at stake. And to those of you who think that maybe God will help us, I am inclined to say that, he tried that 2000 years ago and many of us have ignored him; so why should he bother again? Or maybe you are one of those who think that we can and should have dominion over the Earth? Well, I prefer the idea of our being good stewards of it; rather than raping and pillaging it. Is that really so bad an idea? Even though I am not left-wing, nor seeking the establishment of a supra-national, one-world, socialist government (as people like John R. Bolton seem to want to claim), must I be labelled a “watermelon” for espousing such an appeal to reason? It all reminds me of the tagline from one of Bob Dylan’s classic songs from his Gospel years: “When you gonna wake up [and] strengthen the things that remain?”