Publically lamenting Paris events,quietly and privately celebrating

-      Robert McLean

C

limate doubters and fossil fuel company executives are undoubtedly publically lamenting recent events in Paris, but quietly and privately celebrating their luck.

The deadly terrorist attacks were sad, distressing and worthy of the world-wide response they generated, but a massive distraction on the eve of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) .

Should the real intent of the conference be emasculated and nothing happen to change the mind of the doubters or weaken the influence of the fossil fuel companies, then we face a life punctuated by events catastrophically worse that what we witnessed in Paris just a few days ago.

Yes, discussions in Paris are simply that important.

Risking alienation from friends and others, it must be noted that the satisfactory result from the Paris talks, in terms of lives at risk and lives saved, are vastly more important than the recent events in the “city of love” that claimed nearly 130 lives and caused massive disruption.

Climate change, by comparison to the relatively easily understood Paris terrorist attacks with a clearly identifiable enemy, is nebulous, difficult to understand and no enemy can be easily and clearly defined.

Unable to identify an enemy, many grope about, seeking refuge in denial and some get angry and then bargain that anger away or, as is often the case see climate change as something about which “others” should worry or invest their future wellbeing and that of humanity in technology, ignoring repeated warnings from the world’s climate scientists.

World leaders face an almost unprecedented challenge in mentally, and practically, extracting themselves from the “terrorist-Paris” and becoming a working and effective part of “climate-Paris”.

That is, however, something they must do for if they can’t, or won’t, what we saw in Paris will be little more than a curtain-raiser as people in every part of the world compete to survive in a world in serious disarray.