Climate: Clive James is in Denial

We’re undoubtedly entering an eco-friendly age – not even the Tory Party denies man-made climate change nowadays. The days of people doubting “global warming” because there has been a cold snap in Surrey seem long gone, so it’s jarring to see one of our most popular cultural commentators, Clive James, leap into bed with climate change deniers.

Behind the Times

The veteran Guardian columnist, wry critic, poet and treasured broadcaster (left) has always been sceptical about human involvement in climate change. He declared in 2007 that in his family he was “the last man standing against the belief that global warming is caused by human beings.”

Such a view wasn’t quite as outdated then as it is now. Climate change denial was more common a decade ago but since then most have come round to science’s way of thinking. James meanwhile has gone in the opposite direction and become more stalwart in his stance, which would surprise many of his long-time fans in the Guardian.

The 77-year-old has published an article that’s been lapped up and reproduced by right-wing think tanks and climate change denial groups in his birthplace Australia and his home for many decades, the UK. That includes Britain’s best-funded sceptic group the Global Warming Policy Foundation, founded by Dr Benny Peiser (whose doctorate is in cultural studies) and Lord Nigel Lawson.

Climate change “a fad”

James is a polymath of famously broad reading and his 11-page essay “Climate alarmists were bound to run out of credibility” is truly something to behold. It covers everything from totalitarianism in science research to Nazis, werewolves, Marxism, Mary Poppins, Gulliver’s Travels and Baz Luhrmann, and likens the BBC to the Soviet Union.

“For as long as the climate change fad lasted, it always depended on poppycock,” he writes, “and it would surely be unwise to believe that mankind’s capacity to believe in fashionable nonsense can be cured by the disproportionately high cost of a temporary embarrassment.” So captivating is his extensive miscellany of metaphors that he conveniently forgot to include any rational explanation or scientific evidence for his views and denial.

Instead the article reads like an erratic takedown of anyone unfortunate enough to wander into James’s firing line. Scientists willing to publicise their climate change beliefs, people who have changed their opinion based on new evidence, comedy shows, TV producers, mass media, Barack Obama, the EU and journalist colleagues all took a hit from James’s aimless and unsubstantiated criticism.

His own newspaper wasn’t exempt either. James cited the Guardian as the ultimate example of how British newspapers have “forgotten what objective reporting is supposed to be”. The only explicit exception to this prejudiced journalism, he says, is The Daily Mail. Yep, the Daily Mail!

James went on to criticise his Guardian colleague George Monbiot and bizarrely called him “a wheelbarrow full of freshly cut grass” for daring to disagree. Monbiot told Felix that the article was “a sad reminder of just how stupid intelligent people can sometimes be”.

The Poppycock Pros

Just two journalists emerged unscathed: The Telegraph’s Christopher Booker and The Times’s Matt Ridley. Viscount Ridley is a prominent businessman and climate change sceptic. He studied zoology – in particular the mating system of the common pheasant – and somehow segued to chairing Northern Rock bank, which all ended in tears and a massive bailout at at considerable cost to the taxpayer.

Unbowed by failure at his day job, Ridley has written extensively about how most of the world’s climate scientists are getting their job wrong. He writes often of his dislike of renewable energy policies, rarely mentioning the fact he owns land that operates a coal mine. Booker on the other hand is a history graduate whose climate change denial follows his earlier campaigns insisting that there’s no link between smoking and cancer and that asbestos is harmless. These are the “scientific” writers that Clive James invokes as “rational”.

James claims to have “plenty of great scientific names to point to for exemplars”, which is hard to deny. His article is littered with names – from Einstein to Cate Blanchett – but nobody of authority is quoted actually debunking climate science. Even his allusion to Richard Feynman only references the beloved scientist’s belief that theories can change.

A lasting impact

The pinnacle of the Clive James article was his announcement that he was “ashamed of [his] profession”. Luckily his shame isn’t so bad that he can’t open his laptop and write a weekly column for the allegedly biased, green-loving Guardian. Perhaps those “grant-hungry” climatologists aren’t the only ones who know the side upon which their bread is buttered.

Though James’s reactionary views will sadden many of his fans, his essay will ultimately be consigned to the “wrong side of history” books as the unfounded rantings of a misguided old Aussie bloke. That’s a real pity because the man has devoted an enormous amount of time and effort over more than a decade building an incredibly deep collection of his own work on an eponymous website, which he hopes will serve as a pyramid to himself. He clearly cares passionately about his own legacy and trying to discourage meaningful action on climate change will not reflect well on him with future generations.

by Jo Davey

The post Climate: Clive James is in Denial appeared first on Felix Magazine.