The Guardian - Editorial
Ira Glass the radio show host says global warming may not be amusing or
surprising but it is still the most important thing that's happening
The
documentary broadcaster Ira Glass, the man behind the hit radio
programme This American Life, is in Britain this week with his theatre
show, Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host.
The production, a
collaboration with the experimental dancers of Monica Bill Barnes &
Company, puts storytelling and dance together in an improbable but, the
reviews say, endearing and entertaining
combination.
The dancers like to bring dance into places were no one
expects it. Mr Glass does the same with documentary. The collaborators
are united in wanting to tell serious stories in an engaging manner.
Not many subjects defeat Mr Glass's creativity.
But climate change,
he admits, is beyond even his midas touch with a tale. "Any minute I'm
not talking about climate change it's like I'm turning my back on the
most important thing that's happening to us," he said recently.
The trouble with it is that it is "neither amusing nor surprising". It is "resistant to journalism".
He might have added that the news about climate change is rarely good, either. As most of the UK enjoys a brief August heatwave, Nasa has confirmed
that July was the hottest month the world has experienced since records
began.
Even in Britain, where most of the month was wet and cool and
felt not very summery at all, it was by a narrow margin the warmest month in the past 130 years of record-keeping – and it was the 10th month in a row that a new high was set. Siberian permafrost is melting, releasing lethal anthrax bacteria from thawing reindeer carcasses into the environment. There are floods in southern Louisiana which have killed 11 people and in California thousands are fleeing from forest fires.
The link between short-term weather events and long-term changes in the
climate may be tenuous, but it's just what the scientists warned about.
Ever since the general election 15 months ago, too, the political
climate has seemed as bleak as the weather has been warm; subsidies for
renewables have been cut and incentives intended to encourage landowners
to give permission for fracking expanded. Theresa May's restructuring
of Whitehall closed down the Department of Energy and Climate Change.
Yet there are glimmers of optimism, too. Decc's critics argued that it
was too small and too narrowly focused to be effective in the kind of
territorial battles it needed to win in government. With the right
political leadership, the new Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
could be capable of the kind of policies that people mean when they
talk about joined-up government (although the Treasury will have views
about that).
The Paris climate summit commitment to cut carbon emissions
far enough and fast enough to hold the rise in global temperatures
below a maximum of 2C is helping to expand the market in renewables, not
least by collapsing the appetite for investment in fossil fuels.
Europe has doubled its power generation from green sources; in the UK
it has almost quadrupled. Last year, it accounted for more than a
quarter of power. But George Osborne's attack on "green crap", along
with the eurozone crisis, hit investment hard.
China and the US are the
big new forces in green energy production. So this is the challenge: we
need nuclear to keep the lights on. But not from Hinkley C. Instead,
redirect the £30bn of subsidies into making the UK a good place for
green investment again.
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