I've often discussed how biased we are due to our physical size, especially when compared to other species we share the planet with. However, I've never really considered that other fundamental dimension, time. Another Carl Sagan quote echoes many a poet's rumination on our comparatively brief lifespan: "We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever."
There's more to this than just fairly familiar poetic conceit. Earlier this month I was given a brief taste of what it might be like to live on Mars, thanks to high-altitude dust and ash transported across the Tasman Sea from the Australian bush fires. By three o'clock in the afternoon a New Zealand summer's day was turned into an eerie orange twilight, with birds and nocturnal insects starting their evening routine some five hours early. There was even a faint powdery, acrid taste in the air, adding to the sense of other-worldliness.
Apart from the obvious fact that this an example of how climate change in one nation can affect another, there is a more disturbing element to all this. Why is it that despite the reports and general consensus of the global climate science community Australians have shown a woeful lack of interest, or indeed, negativity, towards climate change?
Could it be that our society is now centred upon such short increments of time (competing businesses trying to out-do each other, which comes down to working at the ever-increasing speed our technology dictates) that we have replaced analysis with unthinking acceptance of the simplest and most aggressive opinions? Research shows that compared to even twenty years' ago, children read far less non-school literature and rely on the almost useless 'celebrity' shouters of social media for much of their information; there's not much chance of learning about informed, considered arguments via these sources!
After all, it's difficult for most of us to remember exact details of the weather a year ago, but understanding climate change relies on acceptance of directional trends over at least decades. How much easier is it to accept the opinions of those who preserve the status quo and claim we can maintain our current lifestyle with impunity? When combined with the Western capitalist notion of continuous growth and self-regulation, we see a not-so-subtle indoctrination that describes action to prevent climate change as disruptive to the fundamental aspects of the society that has arisen since the Industrial Revolution.
There is an old French saying that we get the government we deserve, which in Australia's case, implies a widespread desire to ignore or even deny global warming. Yet the irony is that of all developed nations, Australia has been at the receiving end of some of its worst effects, thanks to an average increase in daily temperature of several degrees over past century. It takes little cognition to understand how this can lead to the drier conditions that have caused the horrific bush fires; even though some have been deliberately started, their scale has been exacerbated by the change of climate. So what until now has prevented Australians from tying the cause to the effects?
It's not as if there isn't plenty of real-world evidence. However, with computer technology able to generate 'deep fakes', which implies a level of sophistication that only experts can detect, is the public becoming mistrustful of the multitude of videos and photographs of melting polar caps and shrinking glaciers? When combined with the decreased trust in authority figures, scientists and their technical graphs and diagrams don't stand much of a chance of acceptance without a fair amount of suspicion. As mentioned, it's difficult to understand the subtleties inherent in much of science when you are running at breakneck speed just to stand still; slogans and comforting platitudes are much more acceptable - unless of course people become caught up in the outcome themselves.
However, this doesn't explain why it is the key phrases such as 'climate change' and 'global warming' generate such negative sentiment, even from those Australian farmers who admit to hotter, drier conditions than those experienced by their parents' and grandparents' generations. Somehow, these sober terms have become tainted as political slogans rather than scientifically-derived representations of reality. That this negativity has been achieved by deniers seems incredible, when you consider that not only does it run counter to the vast majority of report data but that it comes from many with vested interests in maintaining current industrial practices and levels of fossil fuel usage.
Could it simply be a question of semantics, with much-used labels deemed unacceptable at the same time as the causes of directly-experienced effects accepted as valid? If so, it would suggest that our contemporary technological society differs little from the mindset of pre-industrial civilisation, in which leaders were believed to have at very least a divine right to rule, or even a divine bloodline. In which case, is it appalling to suggest that the terrible bush fires have occurred not a minute too soon?
If it is only by becoming victims at the tip of the impending (melted) iceberg that global warming is deemed genuine, then so be it. When scientists are mistrusted and activists labelled as everything from misguided to corrupt and scheming manipulators, this might only leaves a taste of what lies ahead to convince a majority who would otherwise rather keep doing as they always have done and trust politicians to do the thinking for them. I can think of nothing more apt to end on than another Carl Sagan quote: "For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
