The novelist Ian McEwan penned a timely and elegant feature which fronted yesterday’s G2, and which coincidentally explores the themes of the post below in far more depth.
McEwan’s piece is entitled The World’s Last Chance and basically argues that the fate of the world now rests on Obama’s shoulders.
McEwan, who wrote Saturday, Enduring Love, Atonement and most recently On Chesil Beach, believes climate change is “our most pressing problem, underpinning all others, requiring degrees of cooperation and rationality we might not even be capable of”.
He goes on to explain why with his signature elegance and charm, winding the science and politics up in simple evocative phrases that slide across the page and into your brain.
As Barack Obama steps forward, the smoke machines and mirrors are packed away – or perhaps we can never, or should never, let them go.
The burning forests, the dissolving coral reefs, the extinction of species – we have numbed ourselves with these familiar litanies.
We are still dreaming, still murmuring in our sleep as we grope for the levers that connect thoughts to actions.”
Earth egg, courtesy azrainman on creative commons
Not everyone will approve; it’s more of an essay than a newspaper article, and his word-play (“on the all-too-kickable stone we call the Earth”) and references to Samuel Johnson might seem too academic for the harried reader scouring for news.
But I found the novelistic style deeply refreshing. And he makes some very good points:
Within the climate science community there is a faction darkly murmuring that it is already too late. The more widely held view is hardly more reassuring: we have less than eight years to start making a significant impact on CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions…
Thereafter, as tipping points are reached, as feedback loops strengthen, the emissions curve will rise too quickly for us to restrain it.
In the words of John Schellnhuber, one of Europe’s leading climate scientists: “what is required is an industrial revolution for sustainability, starting now“.
