E. May and Monbiot to debate Lomborg on the eve of Copenhagen summit

Edited (Whoops...wrong forum!)

I haven't read any of these books but from the summaries I've seen on the net, they appear to be more of the same crap he was arguing tonight.  That we should spend our money on x instead of y (y being climate change) to get the biggest effect.

What I'm trying to ascertain is does he really care about fixing the problems or is this just a misdirection?

RM, you ignore the degree to which the "audiences" everywhere want (need) to believe that all will be well. The LomMunk folks are of the vaiety that will use this psychological fact, play it to the limit, to gain their ends.  Anyone not a water walker would have gotten damned cold and wet this summer in attempting to walk large areas of what a year ago was thick old ice in the polar regions. If you can find respect for a position in which corporate defenders argue in favour of a crap shoot, there's not point in arguing against your position. Faith is...well, faith. But a great many in the "audiences" have taken hope from Lomborg, because he is, well, an authority.   

Speaking of holocaust, I'm sure you've read accounts of the "Eichmann experiment", aimed at determining the degree of faith attached to the wearing of white lab coats in a laboratory, the prevalence of the authoritarian personality?  ANd the number of people ready to turn up the voltage? 

Copenhagen was a bust long before the Munk debate, and regardless of my esteem for May and Monbiot, I cannot hold them personally responsible for its failure. I think it unlikely that people will move along and continue to ignore global warming for much longer; it isn't going away, quite the opposite, and the deniers must inevitably wither and die, like old nazis, anti-women's suffrage and pro-slavery types in the face of reality.

More interesting for me are the lengths to which Canadians are willing to go to deny this reality and the debate provides a peerless illustration of the power of this collective fantasy. With each passing year reality grows ever more clamorous and it seems the general public responds by rejecting it ever more strenuously. Witness the increasingly psychotic narratives being floated to provide alternatives to that reality, with arguments about communist world governments and global conspiracies of climate scientists - these evidence the increasing desperation of a population riven by internal contradiction. On the one hand, an established, habituated, high consumption culture that assures some material comfort - for the time being at least - on the other, a looming reality which threatens to replace this known quantity with possible hardship, at the very least a change from established ways, possibly involving lower consumption levels. I think it is entirely human that this latter engenders deep, psychologically rooted resistance, particularly in a culture that in global terms has little conception of real hardship. When was the last time famine or crop failure stalked this mighty land of ours? The entire western industrial concept is rotting from the material base up and the public perception of this is expressed in the embrace of increasingly authoritarian regimes, an orgy of last-minute easy consumption - the credit crisis - brazen, last kick at the can profit-taking from the economic elite and a growing generalized FEAR.

At this point I am personally at a loss as to how to proceed and incline to the view that only further, harder shocks to the system will eventually push the masses past the denial stage into constructive engagement with these terrifying issues. For me the debate illustrates that providing people with the necessary information is insufficient. Looking for a metaphor I consider the case of the boatload of Jewish refugees denied safe harbour in Canada at the outset of the second world war. There MUST have been sufficient information available, even then, for Canadians to intuit the nature of the Nazi regime, Krystalnacht etc yet STILL we responded in a sociopathic fashion.

But I cannot see how continuing to stress the importance of reality as the final arbiter of our course can ever be a false option.   Perhaps we just have to write off the majority and direct our efforts to the next generation in the hope that they are less contaminated by the death trip the rest of our culture is on.

But as I say, I really don't know. As far as I'm concerned the debate that I watched hit all the right buttons, and the response just deepens my low opinion of our so-called educated public. Perhaps M and M committed the unforgivable sin of sailing a little too close to the truth, and were punished accordingly. An almost worthless culture, I am tempted to conclude; petulant, increasingly selfish and stupefied by material abundance. I was just in Toronto for a visit and had forgotten how harshly it impacts the senses, the anarchic urban planning, near total subservience to the automobile, the brutal ugliness of most public space; and all floated on honeyed corporate feel-good messages, plastered all over the physical and media environment. My educated middle class friends bought local organic produce, collecting it in freshly acquired SUVs, made donations to Oxfam while their tax dollars build a rash of superjails and the new security state. Confusion abounds.

It seems clear that because of our current privileged position we are doomed to bring up the rear, dragged kicking and screaming back into the real world long after the rest of the planet has caught the wind. Look at the holdouts in Copenhagen, an Anglo-American axis of reaction: Australia, Canada, the United States and England. For me, this must be determined by the material circumstances of these cultures, and the ingrained sense of entitlement that attends them.

I see little cause for optomism. Actually, none. But I applaud Monbiot and May for fighting the good fight, to the best of their abilities and think it bad form to stand their efforts on their head and accuse them of feeding the forces of reaction they so strenuously resist.

I belong to no party but think a red green coalition might be the way forward.

George, this comes down to principles.  I think that the better educated people are, the better the quality of democracy.  You can't improve the world by suppressing dissenting opinion.  I think that public airing of dissenting views is the best way to the truth.

It's interesting that FM brought up the case of the holocaust deniers.  Here's a case where some countries have criminalized the practise of arguing with the accepted version of history.  I like what Noam Chomsky said about that: It would be a poor tribute to the victims of the holocaust to adopt the practises of their persecutors (loosely quoted).

I am familiar with the Eichmann experiment but I'd say you and I learned different lessons from it.  I think the solution is to educate the people and get them to think for themselves.  You seem to think the solution is to have people you agree with wearing the white coats.

Finally, I'd like to address the issue of faith.  We all like to think we work from knowledge and logic but the fact is if people tried to work only from first-hand knowledge, they would never cross the street.  So, faith is a necessary part of life.  I have faith that if people are treated as citizens and are given information, most of them will do the right thing.  That is the foundation of democracy.

What's the basis of your faith?

Good post, Merowe.

George, I never accused you of being an authoritarian.  I was merely attempting to point out what I see as a flaw in your logic.  On the one hand, you bring up an experiment that illustrates the dangers of uncritically deferring to authority.  And you speak of Lomborg as being the authority in this case (although he is a statistician, not a climate scientist).  On the other hand, you appear to want people to uncritically defer to the scientific authorities who endorse AGW.  You can't have it both ways.

How are people to know which scientific authorities are not to be questioned?  Are you going to tell them?

When I'm unsure of a position, I try to get different perspectives before I come to a personal conclusion.   Which is why I find these debates interesting and helpful.  What are you suggesting?  That I make up my mind first and only listen to those viewpoints that reinforce my first intuition?

autoworker, when people start to make fun of my handle, I can tell they've run out of intelligent things to say.  In your case, it seems to have happened sooner than most.

Apparently a few Green Party people...

No  it doesn't, nor does the ignoring of the rammifications on the part of some.

Could not agree more....as well as with this below...

Not only is there no rewared, Elizabeth  May has made things much much worse....as per usual, and now the ground lost has to be regained