One of the problems involved in getting people fired up
about global warming is the enormous gap between realization of the severity,
size and complexity of the problem, on the one hand, and the small efforts of
the individual to do something about it, on the other. One feels overwhelmed by
the former and useless in the case of the latter. The social and governmental
involvement with this subject is the definition of complex.
Another problem is the earnestness with which the subject is
approached. To be sure, climate change is hardly a state of affairs to be taken
lightly, but it is my contention that it is in just such situations that humor
and imagination can bring the issue to life in a meaningful way.
Right up my alley, therefore, was an article by Marcel
Hänggi in the Tages Anzeiger, one of the Zurich newspapers; a fable considering
a scenario in which the slavery of 150 years ago was treated the way we are now
treating climate change. There are
parallels in the two subjects: tackling climate change effectively means
finding a way out of our chief energy providers, fossil fuels, while abolishing
slavery also meant losing a major energy source. A realistic climate policy
must overcome powerful industrial interests; it was necessary for the prohibition
of slavery to do the same.
Here then, Marcel Hänggi’s fable:
The watchword nowadays is “sustainability”; the watchword in
our slavery fable is “people-friendly.” One can buy people-friendly cotton,
“libero-cotton” perhaps, and people-friendly sugar endorsed by the Slave
Stewardship Council. Scientists develop high-tech materials to make whiplashes
more people-friendly. Just as we now have LOHAS, lifestyles of health and
sustainability, our fable would have Lopaf, “lifestyle of philanthropy and
feelgoodness”.
A few unrealistic people want to abolish slavery altogether,
but most recognize the impracticality of such a move. No one wants to pay more
for cotton and sugar, and abolition would have unforeseen consequences on the
economy. One’s lifestyle must not be threatened.
International policy thus takes gradual practical steps,
like an
agreement among the richer countries to reduce the number of whiplashes
by a definite future date. Rather than reducing one’s own whiplash quota, one
can compensate with the reduction of whiplashes in poorer countries. New
plantations would be founded on which the whiplash count would be somewhat
lower.
Industry does not lag when it comes to new inventions:
better cotton-pickers, GMO sugar cane that cuts less deeply into the hands,
clever whiplash-management systems, whips with built-in whiplash control for
precision slaving.
These measures would not, however, function too well. The
international whiplash agreement would not be ratified by the richer countries.
To be sure, these efforts would bring the subject to public attention,
particularly after a fighter for people-friendliness wins the world’s major peace
prize. Small-minded critics complain that he himself owns slaves; he counters
with the argument that he needs them so that he is free to spread the word
against slavery. Politicians rail against slavery out of one side of the mouth
while endorsing new – presumably people-friendlier – sources of slaves with the
other.
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