THE HEAT OF THE MATTER
The current media wisdom seems to be that we inhabit a determinedly post-ideological world. With the verities of class-bound Socialism & traditional Conservatism no longer defining the terms of conflict at home & abroad, battle lines are constantly drawn up, deleted & re-drawn across the scuffed & featureless territory of the Middle Ground. When collective dissent does manifest itself in the West, it tends to take largely amorphous & non-aligned forms. For example, political energy & active large scale protest notwithstanding, no dominant ideology underpins either the turbulent anti-globalism movement or the drop-the-debt/make-poverty-history campaign.
However, it has been entirely clear for a decade or two now on what battleground the next ideological conflict will be staged. Only one issue transcends all other concerns, parochial or universal: the survival of life on Earth in the face of our apparent determination to extinguish it. Evidence of fundamental environmental change has long been apparent to scientists & articulate & admirably coherent accounts have been provided by them, both to the governments of the most powerful nations &, via global media resources, to the rest of the world. But with the exception of the formation of various green parties, some of which have enjoyed a degree of localised success, there has been little in the way of the coming about of a coalescence, a polarisation of ideas & concepts around a dynamic central ideology.
Well, if all that is needed for such a universal synthesis to come about is confrontation with specific crisis – nothing having more power than an idea whose time has come - then the emergence of that ideology must surely be close at hand. George W. Bush is virtually alone amongst world leaders in maintaining a state of personal & presidential denial concerning the intensifying emergency of global warming. But evidence of dramatic climate change is now so prevalent that states of denial must be seen now not simply as foolish & ill-advised but wilfully blind & catastrophically irresponsible.
Today’s Observer catalogued with a kind of weary detachment an entire series of freak weather conditions experienced recently across the world. Whilst all of them indicate meteorological phenomena that are aberrant either because of locale or time of year, a number of them have broken records. Here is a digest of the data contained in the excellent article by Robin McKie, Barbara McMahon & Giles Tremblettt.
- A serious drought threatens the south of England. Since November 2004 there has been a major reduction in rainfall with levels only 68% of the national average. There is talk of water restrictions being introduced.
- Italy is currently experiencing an unusually intense heat wave. Level 3 alerts – the highest warning relating to the general population – have been issued. Milan recently baked under temperatures of 43C, while Turin experienced 37, Bologna 80 & Rome 42. Bottled eater has been distributed free of charge in Perugia. Hospitals have reported an increased number of cardiac & respiratory problems.
- Major fires have broken out across acres of forest land in Sardinia
- Spain is experiencing its worse drought since 1947 when records began. In some areas reservoirs are down to 14% of their capacity.
- In France a similar situation exists with water levels reaching their lowest level since 1976.
- In Portugal the drought situation is so bad that 22 towns are having their water cut off for several hours a day.
The thin cosmopolitan veneer that coats the Bush administration cannot conceal the traditional isolationism that has infected the American world view throughout two centuries. Where others will see the clear global pattern in droughts in Europe (&, of course, across the world) & parallel phenomena in the United States, Bush will note only local difficulties for which comforting precedents can be found. The fact remains, however, that across the States high temperature records were set in no less than 200 cities last week.
· In Arizona temperatures in Phoenix have not dropped below the mid-30s, even at night.
· Las Vegas matched its previous high of 1942, 47C (117F).
· Temperatures in Big Bear Lake in California reached a record of 34C (93F).
· Reno managed a record 38C (100F) for 10 consecutive days
· Tucson matched its previous record of 38C for 39 days in a row.
· Most of Illinois was declared a drought disaster zone last week, as were parts of Wisconsin & Missouri.
· Even in Washington state reservoir levels have dropped alarmingly.
In the wake of the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union & the emergence of free enterprise strategies in the People’s Republic of China, &, less dramatically, the withering away of Socialism as a potent force within Western politics, there seems little potential for the emergence of a new ideology that sets its face implacably against capitalism. What is now abundantly clear 15 years on from that extraordinary implosion is that it was brought about by seduction, not by force. Now the whole of Europe has experienced (albeit in varying degrees) the power of shopping & individual materialism as the informing element in the processes of personal fulfilment, rather than collective responsibility, seems firmly entrenched.
What accumulation of environmental crises will it take to awaken this seduced world to the need for a new & dynamic ideology, one that will enshrine the principle of collective responsibility as its credo? Clearly the nation state is not going to be the agent of change when its engine is driven by the heat of the cycle of constant manufacture & consumption. With the dogged optimism of the race, we have to assume that necessity will, once again, prove to be the mother of invention & that there will emerge a synthesis of the selflessness of Socialism & the harsh but practical vision of environmentalism.
Apologia. The data above was drawn entirely from a single article in The Observer & my American friends may well have a very different perspective on its representation of an America beleaguered by unprecedented meteorological conditions.
11:24:11 PM 
|
