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Until today, I believed that there are two main types of people on the “other side” of the climate debate. First, there are the innocents. And we cannot blame them, because it would be nice, wouldn’t it, if we could just trust the government, the press, and scientists to act in our interests. Generally, they don’t get involved in debate, they just tend to believe what they are told, and do as they beleive. Let’s call them simply “naive”. Then there are the others: The believers. They proselytise, harass, whinge, and generally cause a nuisance. At the top there are Ed Milibands and David Camerons and high-profile scientists like those caught out in the recent Climategate scandal. Then there are the irritating Monbiots and Harrbins in the media, and the activists at Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. At the bottom are the grubby activists who populate things like Climate Camp, who’ve never seen a shower, barber, or tucked into a nice roast beef and Yorkshire puddings. These things, they will whine, are ‘unsustainable’.
Yesterday I went to a discussion organised by Climate Sense. where David Gress, a Danish American Historian and author of From Plato to NATO:The Idea of the West and Its Opponents gave a very interesting talk. He offers the following categories of greens and their arguments.
- Homo Virili Pseudoscientificus - "The science is settled"
- Homo Virili Technologicus - "Green technology is the future"
- Homo Virili Idealisticus - "I want to help save the world"
- Homo Virili Pseudo Christinanus - "We must save God`s creation"
- Homo Virili Oppportuniticus - "There is big money in this"
- Homo Virili Politicus - "Not to act now is irresponsible"
- Homo Virili Oecophobicus - "The west is evil and must die"
Back tommorow. Meanwhile, I'm off to do a bit of Green-spotting around Copenhagen.
