Scorcher: The dirty politics of climate change, by Clive Hamilton. Black Inc., Australia, 2007. ISBN 9780977594900. RRP $29.95.
Once I had a discussion about the future with a Minister in the Irish Government. He told me not to worry about it too much. "Posterity," he said, "has never done anything for us." Climate change is about the future; but a future which creeps up on us every day. It threatens living standards, lifestyles, quality of life, all the aspirational clichés of human existence. It’s not comfortable to think about.
No wonder people hope for arguments which suggest it will go away. The discussion about climate change has become increasingly feverish, polemical and downright dishonest. So, I should state my own position right at the beginning.
I’m a lay person who believes that the overwhelming consensus of international scientists is correct. Climate change is happening, it is substantially contributed to by human activity and particularly the burning of fossil fuels. If we can, we should do something about it. I think we owe something to posterity.
Clive Hamilton, the author of Scorcher, has been pretty consistent on environmental issues over the years and about climate change. In 1999 the Australia Institute, of which he is the Director, published a damning report which alleged that Australia had the highest level of Greenhouse gas emissions per person of any industrialised country in the world.
In Scorcher, he follows up the issues worldwide, from the international negotiations leading to the signing of the Kyoto agreement to the various strategies adopted by countries in response to growing awareness of the implications of global warming.
The big question is why Australia, an apparently enthusiastic signatory of the Kyoto agreement (subject to special conditions) not only failed to ratify Kyoto but actively sought to undermine its influence. In the Australian context, the sub-title of Hamilton’s book The dirty politics of climate change tells us something of the answers to this question.
In fact, this is very much a book about the pollution of Australian democratic processes by a combination of self-interested corporations, an ignorant and apathetic media (with some exceptions) and a spineless government manipulated by a prime minister who failed to comprehend important issues which fell outside the narrow confines of his political imagination.
If Clive Hamilton were only half right , and I believe this well documented book is a lot more than half right, then it is