Giddens’ Paradox and Munch’s Scream at the Edinburgh Book Festival

Speaking at the Edinburgh Book Festival on 18th. August, Anthony Giddens explained he firmly believed in the ability of grass-root community action to tackle climate change. In his view, the most powerful change will bubble up from the bottom of society.  Giddens takes an optimistic view of human creativity and resilience to face the challenges ahead.

In his new book ‘The Politics of Climate Change’, Giddens lays out an upbeat but scary vision of the future. He is a strong advocate of the view that ‘fear is not necessarily the best motivator to get people to respond to climate change’ so it came as a surprise to the Edinburgh audience to see him brandishing Munch’s famous painting ‘the scream’,  a painting of a terrified figure set against a blood red Oslofjord skyline!

Giddens, who sees the painting as an appropriate image of the dangers that await us as the world warms, explained that it was inspired by the vivid sunsets produced across Europe by the gigantic volcanic eruption in Krakatoa in 1883. Munch remarked that at sunset "the sky turned blood red ... and I sensed an infinite scream passing through nature".  An interesting metaphor, particularly when we read that the volcanic dust produced by the eruption blew across the world and into the upper atmosphere, affecting incoming solar radiations and cooling the earth by one degree for several years!

Bill Clinton describes Giddens’ book as a landmark study in the struggle to contain climate change, the greatest challenge of our era, He urges everyone to read it and I agree with him, even if I don’t agree with all of Giddens’ views.

One of the main question asked in the book is why does anyone at all, for even a single day longer, continues to drive a SUV? a SUV is another of Giddens’ metaphors.  For most people, he says, there is gulf between the familiar preoccupations of everyday life and an abstract, even if apocalyptic, future of climate chaos.  Almost everyone across the world must have heard the phrase ‘climate change’ and know at least a bit about what it means.  Yet the vast majority are doing very little, if anything at all to alter their daily habits, even though those habits are the sources of the dangers that climate change has in store for us.

‘No matter how much we are told about the threats, it is hard to face up to them, because they feel somehow unreal – and, in the meantime, there is a life to be lived, with all its pleasures and pressures.  The politics of climate change has to cope with what I call Giddens’ paradox.  It states that, since the dangers posed by global warming aren’t tangible, immediate or visible, in the course of day-to-day life, however awesome they appear, many will sit on their hands and do nothing of a concrete nature about them.  Yet waiting until they become visible and acute before being stirred to serious action will, by definition, be too late…'

People drive SUV for other reasons says Giddens.  There is a high level of agreement among scientists that climate change is real and dangerous, and that it is caused by human activity (at the talk, Giddens quoted that only 3% of scientists disagree that the current change in the climate is mostly the result of human action) but he said, a small minority of scientists ‘the climate change sceptics’ dispute these claims, and they get a good deal of attention in the media. 

Our driver can always say ‘it’s not proven, is it? If anyone were to suggest that he should change his profligate ways. Another response might be ‘I am not going to change unless others do’ and he could point out that some drive even bigger gas-guzzlers, like Bentleys or Ferraris.  Yet another reaction would be ‘Nothing that I do, as a single individual, will make any difference’ or else he could say ‘I’ll get round to it sometimes’ because one shouldn’t underestimate the sheer force of habit. Giddens suggests that even the most sophisticated and determined environmentalist – who owns no car at all – struggles with the fact that, under the shadow of future cataclysm, there is a life to be lived without the constraints of the here-and-now….

 

 

Comment by 18saughtonmains on 20 August 2009 - 8:14am.

It's not that people sit on their hands and do nothing, it's just that immediate needs win when people make compromise decisions. In the case of the SUV-buyer, I think the rationale is that they're safer and provide more visibility (as well as status) and, as you rightly point out, these are weighed up against longer term effects.

I think we (collectively) are pretty bad at balancing short term and long term risk, and I wish there was a simple demonstration or game that illustrates it.