Sun Tzu's 6th Century maxim relevant today

Sun Tzu lived in the 6^th century BCE knew nothing of climate change, but had advice pertinent to advocates of action to ease the dilemma.

The Chinese general, military strategist and author of “The Art of War” urged us to “Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.”

Sun Tzu’s maxim crossed my mind as I read The Guardian story “2015: the beginning of the end for climate sceptics”.

John Sauven’s story said we could now be optimistic about the year ahead following an agreement being struck between China and the US on carbon emissions.

“As we head into 2015 things are finally starting to move forward. The contribution made by ongoing advances in solar photovoltaics and other clean technologies, heavily backed by China and Germany, should not be overlooked. At the time of writing, 2014 was the hottest year on record. Though this is of only minor significance to climate science, it provides the right sort of backdrop to give politicians a little extra confidence to act,” Sauven said.

However, with profit still the driver of those behind the business as usual paradigm, the fossil fuel industry will not simply lie down and let this much needed revolution in human behaviour, which will pretty much empty their coffers, roll over them and subsequently remove them from the world’s power structures.

With their undoubted resistance to climate change advocates and what it is they argue for, it is one of those times when we need to keep our enemies close, very close.

We need to understand their motivations, their intentions, their values and what it is that causes them to adhere to ideas that science has shown, repeatedly and unequivocally, to clearly be incorrect.

An error of judgement

Having said all that, I realised, upon reflection, that clearly my judgement had been in error.

To declare anyone an “enemy” is naïve, wrong and short-sighted for it does nought but create a “them and us” situation and when it comes to climate change there is no them and us, rather simply “us”.

Yes, we are all in this together and the sooner we understand and accept that, the sooner we will move toward a position from which we can act in unison to mitigate those aspects of our behaviour that are causing serious disruptions to our climate system.

-      Robert McLean.