[R-G] [BillTottenWeblog] The Self-Justifying Myth

[Bill Totten]

People love films like The Great Global Warming Swindle, because they
tell us what we want to believe.

by George Monbiot

Published in the Guardian (July 22 2008)


There is just one party which doesn't seem to care about the controversy
created by The Great Global Warming Swindle. That is the company which
broadcast it: Channel 4. In fact it seems rather proud of the fuss, and
I suspect that Ofcom's damning verdict won't cause its executives a
moment's lost sleep. The channel boasts that the programme generated a
huge response, and that favourable comments outweighed hostile remarks
by six to one {1}.

Though the programme was ninety minutes of nonsense {2}, I find this
quite easy to believe. Faced with the overwhelming realities of climate
change, people clutch at any reassurance. We want someone to tell us
that everything will be alright, that we can carry on enjoying this
marvellous feast of fossil fuels without adverse effects.

On almost every other weighty issue, the professional classes appear to
be better informed than the rest of the population. On global warming
the reverse seems to be true. The only people I have met over the past
few years who haven't the faintest idea what manmade climate change is
or how it is caused are university graduates. Not long ago, for example,
I had to explain to the press officer at the government's Department for
Transport what carbon dioxide is. A few weeks ago the writer Mark Lynas
found a counter-intuitive revelation buried in the small print of an ICM
survey. The number of people in social classes D and E who thought the
government should prioritise the environment over the economy was higher
(56%) than the proportion in classes A and B (47%) {3}. It is
counter-intuitive only because a vast and well-funded denial industry
has spent years persuading us that environmentalism is a middle-class
caprice. Classes A and B are Channel 4's core audience.