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The fake morality of Al Gore's convenient lie

By Scott Stephens - posted Tuesday, 20 February 2007


After years of ignored warnings and predictions of imminent ecological cataclysms, environmentalism is now all the rage.

Spurred on by the immense success and world-wide appeal of Al Gore’s documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, environmental issues have dominated airwaves and print media over the past eight months, tapping into the public’s latent green sympathies, and sending corporations scrambling to acquire “green friendly” endorsements and logos for their products.

Sensing a shift in the popular mood, many politicians who formerly claimed that the “jury is still out” on a direct link between climate change and the concentration of anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHG) now seem only too happy to assert their green credentials.

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The deeper question - leaving aside the still-contentious issue of the actual science of climate change - is this: Why now? Why are these environmental concerns suddenly centre stage?

After all, the predicted consequences of a “business as usual” approach to development and energy consumption are far from new, and little additional hard data has been presented to warrant so radical a shift in public opinion and Federal policy.

In a time such as ours, remarkably devoid of any altruistic impulses, it would not be surprising to discover another, more self-absorbed motive behind this sudden environmental concern.

The Federal Government’s refusal to ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol is an example of this “enlightened” self-interest. The refusal was extraordinary, especially given concessions granted to the Australian delegation (including permission actually to increase its GHG emissions by 8 per cent until 2012).

The reason for the refusal was not the failure of climatologists to demonstrate a direct correspondence between global warming and carbon emissions, but rather an unwillingness to act against “our unique national interests”. In other words, environmental sustainability would not be allowed to take precedence over robust economic growth.

But now that a political and economic climate exists that makes heightened environmental awareness expedient, even profitable - fuelled, in part, by the immense economic potential of a broadened nuclear industry - the Federal Government seems willing to acknowledge the need actively to explore alternate energy models.

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The philosopher Immanuel Kant once said that the greatest ethical travesty is to do the right thing, but to do it in the interests of personal reward. If this is true, then what often passes for public morality in our time, being a responsible global citizen, is in fact little more than a thinly disguised, particularly vile form of self-interest.

This kind of fake morality was displayed prominently in a document that marked the turning of the political tide late last year: The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change.

Its approach - both to highlight the economic consequences of failure to curb GHG emissions, and to outline co-operative strategies for climate stabilisation that will not adversely effect economic growth - is a troubling indication of our unquestioned assumption that everything must, ultimately, be weighed up against the dominant economic realities of our time.

Further, while stressing the need for “international collective action”, The Stern Review effectively condones national self-interest by offering the reassurance that, through technological innovation and a complex series of financial incentives, “stabilisation of greenhouse-gas concentration in the atmosphere is feasible and consistent with continued growth”.

Despite all this dialogue and debate, carried out under the constant scrutiny of the public eye, the one possibility that must be considered - altering the seemingly immutable laws of economics themselves, which means curtailing the very excesses we call “freedom” - is never considered. We have no choice, it seems, but to place everything in the service of the ebbs and flows of the global economy.

But before hurling invective at the Federal Government, and accusing it of lacking sincerity in its commitment to environmental issues, one might ask if it is just mirroring our own insincerity.

For many people, it is fine to indulge moderate green sympathies, but only once the effects of climate change touch us directly, and only up to the point that we have to pay some personal cost. George Megalogenis has made a particularly chilling observation regarding such self-serving environmentalism in his book, The Longest Decade:

Even support for the environment, the ultimate expression of altruism, can be traced back to house prices. Labor pollsters Hawker Britton found in early 2004 that concerns for green issues were greater in those suburbs where property was more expensive. In other words, the ordinary Australian who favours protecting the environment can source his or her green values to the selfish calculation that more development in their neighbourhood equals less trees equals poorer views equals lower house prices.

Perhaps even the slick advocacy of Al Gore’s pop environmentalism is, in the end, the convenient lie of our time: a way of baptising lives that are already excessive, self-seeking and idolatrous with a sickly green tinge; of not changing our consumption habits, but feeling much better about them (rather like drinking Diet Coke).

Given the similar function of religion in our culture, maybe Michael Crichton wasn’t too far off the mark when he called environmentalism "the religion of choice for urban atheists".

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First published in Eureka Street on January 23, 2007.



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About the Author

Scott Stephens is an author, theologian and minister with the Uniting Church of Australia. He has been a researcher with the Centre for Theology and Politics, Brisbane, Queensland.

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