The New Generation Society’s Kennedy Lecture aimed to embrace the kind of challenge that its namesake laid before the world nearly half a century ago.

“Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.”

President John F. Kennedy, Inaugural Address, Washington DC, 20th January 1961

In short, by pursuing humanity’s common interests, the New Generation could transcend its differences.

Enter Sir Crispin, who brings to this lecture as many years experience of dealing with the World’s problems as have passed since Kennedy’s speech. He is someone we might like to turn to for sober reflection on the issues that the next generation faces. He is an authority on many subjects, from the scientific to the political. So how do the words of the two men compare?

In order to look forward, we have to look backwards, Sir Crispin tells us: past Kennedy and his vision of the world, and past history, to the birth of the universe. From this perspective, life on earth is “limited, ephemeral and precarious”, and humans necessarily more so. From this perspective, we can observe that subtle changes to the ‘fragile balance’ of interdependent relationships between organisms and geological processes have caused precipitous changes in both. And from this perspective, we are interfering with that natural order’s ability to achieve the balance on which the whole system depends. We are “tipping the system”, he says, and, quoting Al Gore, this is a “planetary emergency”. Therefore we must either alter the way we live our lives or expect a precipitous change in consequence. This scientific perspective creates the imperatives that New Generation must respond to.

But what a very different science this is to Kennedy’s. Where Kennedy talked about conquering deserts, Sir Crispin cautions against upsetting the fragile balance of nature. Where Kennedy urged the world to encourage the arts and commerce, Sir Crispin warns us that we have to entirely rethink economics, and that the ‘consumerist bonanza’ of the twentieth century is over. And where Kennedy hoped to inspire humanity with the idea of eradicating disease, Sir Crispin appears to regard disease as an inevitable consequence of our incautious meddling.

In order to respond to the crisis we face, Sir Crispin tells us there is a need for a new form of governance, and an entirely new philosophy. Humanity’s technological advances have generated such perilous unintended consequences that international legal frameworks to compel governments to ration consumption, and limit individual behaviour are necessary, he says. Leaving such important matters to conventional politics is not an option; politics is too easily influenced by the petty self-interests of human nature. This all seems to suggest that our moral, political and economic thinking should be integrated with, and mediated by, our scientific understanding of the planet. Already, the idea that moral actions are transmitted through the ‘biosphere’ has captured moral and political imaginations. Taking an ‘unnecessary’ journey is frequently depicted as an act of violence against future generations for the environmental impact it will cause. George Monbiot, for example, claims that flying across the Atlantic is the moral equivalent of child abuse.

This way of viewing humanity and its relationship with the natural world is legitimised by appeals to scientific truth. But the consequence is that arguments such as Sir Crispin’s desire to end consumerism are framed in terms of its effects on the planet, not because there exists the possibility of a more meaningful culture than one that celebrates material indulgence for its own sake. Right and wrong can no longer be discussed in human terms, but by appeals to natural science. And putting science at the centre of our moral and political understanding means that grand political visions which demand that we surrender material and political liberty go unchallenged on human terms. The language of politics is kept outside the realm of public discussion. It is instead issued by climate simulations running on computers, verified by select committees of qualified scientists.

Kennedy’s political vision – for better or worse – won him legitimacy and authority. Science was the means by which the New Generation could transcend their differences. Sir Crispin’s view of science limits the imagination and aspirations of the new New Generation. Kennedy asked us to contemplate exploring the stars, Sir Crispin says we must aspire to minimise our impact, lower our expectations, and mediate our aspirations.

During Kennedy’s short administration, the world saw how easily a conflict might escalate to atomic war. Since that time, the politics of the world have changed, and it no longer divides so easily into East and West. But, correspondingly, competing visions for the future have also collapsed, with the consequence that leaders and thinkers have struggled to find ways of making their roles legitimate. In response to this widespread disengagement from politics, the imagination unleashed during the Cuban Missile Crisis has been captured and exploited in order to elicit public sympathy for political campaigns in a variety of ways best summed up as ‘the politics of fear’. Climate change is our looming nuclear holocaust; our world war; the tyranny under which we labour. The Kyoto Protocol is our Cuban missile crisis. The very latest IPPC Assessment Report is our Little Red Book, our Das Kapital, our Bill of Rights.

We should not let claims to scientific truth put us off subjecting Sir Crispin’s call for a new form of governance and eco-centric philosophy to the scrutiny and challenge that all political ideas need. We need to establish whether his vision is a means to solving a problem that actually exists, or is an end in itself. Indeed, the science supporting Sir Crispin’s lecture is not uncontroversial, even amongst the climate science “consensus”. Professor Mike Hulme from the UK’s Tyndall Centre, for example, says of such politics: ‘The language of catastrophe is not the language of science … To state that climate change will be “catastrophic” hides a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science.’

Climate change is the defining issue of our time, but only because there are so few perspectives on offer to see through the world through. But the challenge facing the New Generation is not environmental catastrophe, but environmental catastrophism. We need to form a new way of looking at the world that isn’t so unremittingly negative about human achievements and to see ourselves as more than simply parasites, viruses, or a cancer infecting a dying planet. The New Generation should look forward to the future – not fear it – and look back through history, not to revise its horrors, but to reignite its passion and to create a history fit for the next New Generation.

On Gristmill, Andrew Dessler provides us with an excuse for a self-indulgent recap:

I was at a meeting earlier this week and was talking to one of the coordinating lead authors of the recent IPCC working group 1 report on the physical science of climate change. He remarked that he was quite surprised that how little substantive criticism the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report had received since its release just about one year ago. 

Reflecting on why this might be the case, he says:

the scientists writing the report knew that the denial machine would go over the report with a fine tooth comb looking for any “gotcha” mistakes to use to discredit the IPCC. Because of that, the IPCC report was extremely carefully worded so as to make virtually every statement in the report bulletproof. 

That may be so. But as we’ve reported before, the ‘denial machine’ is way behind the warmers – media, politicians and the IPCC itself – when it comes to misrepresenting what the IPCC reports have to say. Writing about AR4, for example, the BBC’s Richard Black claimed that ‘The IPCC states that climate change is “unequivocal” and may bring “abrupt and irreversible’ impacts”‘. When we looked at the report, however, it was clear that Black had simply taken words from the report and reassembled them to mean something entirely different. The report itself only used the word ‘abrupt’ once: ‘The MOC is very unlikely to undergo a large abrupt transition during the 21st century’. ‘Very unlikely’ becomes ‘may’.

The ‘irreversible impacts’ part is just as tenuous. According to the report:

Climate change is likely to lead to some irreversible impacts. There is medium confidence that approximately 20-30% of species assessed so far are likely to be at increased risk if increases in global average warming exceed 1.5-2.5oC (relative to 1980-1999). As global average temperature increase exceeds about 3.5oC, model projections suggest significant extinctions (40-70% of species assessed) around the globe. 

But as we said at the time:

likely… some… medium confidence… approximately… 20-30% of species assessed so far… likely… increased risk… if… Of how many ‘assessed species’, exactly? 

But such caveats and unknowns don’t stop the BBC hack using the word ‘irreversible’ to sex up an article that would have otherwise been “IPCC report marginally less alarmist than last time, yet doesn’t say anything all that new”.

Likewise, IPCC Chair Rajendra Pachauri can’t resist the temptation to extravagate the IPCC’s findings beyond recognition, for dramatic (comic?) effect.

We picked up on Andrew Dessler’s argument last year that the earth was like a sick child, which needed the attention of the equivalent of specialist pediatric doctors – the IPCC – rather than engage with any of the ideas put forward by sceptics. ‘So given the critical nature of the climate change problem, who should we listen to?’ he wondered.

My opinion, and the opinion of all the governments of the world, is that we should listen to people who specialize in climate science. That’s the IPCC. 

Following that, our survey of the contributing authors to the IPCC AR4 reports showed that most weren’t climate scientists, as he had argued. Many, in fact, were precisely the social scientists, computer scientists, and economists he believed should be excluded from the debate.

In his latest contribution, Dessler goes on to say:

In fact, it is quite amazing to me that essentially none of the IPCC documents produced over the last 18 years has been found to contain any substantive errors. 

He obviously has not been listening to climate catastrophist and IPPC author James Hansen, who said in New Scientist last year:

I find it almost inconceivable that “business as usual” climate change will not result in a rise in sea level measured in metres within a century. Am I the only scientist who thinks so? 

And has he forgotten the controversy caused by the use of the “Hockey Stick” graph, invented by Micheal Mann, who also happened to be lead author on the IPCC working group which made it famous? (Roughly equivalent to a researcher “peer-reviewing” his own work).

With all this in mind, Dessler goes on to say:

The trolls, of course, will come out with their litany of “errors” that the IPCC contains (I suspect a few will appear in the comments to this post), but when you look closely, the trolls are almost always misrepresenting the IPCC’s statements. 

In fact, that’s the most common attack on the IPCC: make the claim that the IPCC said something ridiculous (which it didn’t actually say), then disprove that ridiculous statement, and then use that as evidence that the IPCC’s reports cannot be trusted. “The IPCC says that 2 + 2 = 5, but that’s just hogwash. We know that 2 + 2 = 4. Thus, climate change is a hoax.” Yeah, right.

But Dessler is doing the trolls’ work for them. It’s just that he is only sensitive to the misrepresentation of the IPCC in one direction. It is even funnier that he himself misrepresents the IPCC. One of the people doing the best job of discrediting the IPCC in the world right now is Andrew Dessler himself. May he keep up the good work.