The conversation has been moved to the post called ‘unthreaded’. We felt that it was a bit of a distraction.

Both those issues are things which can be thought about in terms of whom they potentially harm. The UK citizen, for example, can reason that nuclear waste will harm the UK, with expensive reprocessing and storage and government subsidies out of our pockets. On Iraq, the UK citizen can reason that invading Iraq will harm the UK, as we expend troops, damage our international standing, and invite terrorist attacks. Monbiot can step into the issues and reason that powerful commercial interests are driving the government into these things at the expense of the UK citizen. I’m sure there are many arguments, but at the end of the day, we the people of the UK can reason that we are being harmed, and so we read Monbiot with interest.

Who is being harmed by global warming? Suddenly the complexity of the issue explodes. The associated scientific issues, the ethical issues, the political issues, the business issues, the economic issues, and the global power issues, all arise as one massive problem space containing a multitude of conflicting and incompatible priorities.

Let me have a go at what it might entail: ultimately, greater population numbers are the cause of greater consumption and pollution, but large families are the result of poverty, so to rapidly decrease population growth we need to radically increase progress and standards of living which is to radically increase energy consumption using the cheapest, dirtiest and most readily available forms of energy… which in turn upset the geopolitical balance of the world… and also upset the world’s many fundamentalist religions who believe that the modern world of technology is godless and sinful and should be resisted, religions which have billions of members under their influence.

Now I’m not saying that’s the way it is, that’s just my limited intellect starting to explore things.

See, ordinary reasoning tends to be of the sort, A therefore B therefore C. And that is fine. Meanwhile another person with different data will reason, X therefore Y therefore Z. The problem arises when C and Z are incompatible, yet each arrived at through reasoning. So who is right? Well what tends to happen is that one side simply labels the other side wrong. Lines are drawn, camps form, positions become entrenched.

When Monbiot wants to criticise nuclear power, he can speak to the man in the street and be on his side. When he wants to criticise Iraq, again, he can speak to the man in the street. But what about man made global warming? Who’s side is he on now? In the new (awful) version of The Day The Earth Stood Still, aliens turn up to wipe us out. That’s who’s side you end up on–the aliens. But Monbiot can’t claim to be on the side of the aliens–instead he uses the old tactics of blaming big business. And yet, with oil and coal, we the people are the consumers of that product. We depend on it for dear life, and have done for generations. We all know this intimately, it is not like nuclear where it is new and so we can be persuaded that we don’t need it.

Consequently, environmentalists are left a bit confused about whether they should be trying to influence government directly or trying to influence the man in the street. Neither can particularly change old habits and dependencies on such an essential resource.

What is needed, according to a number of philosophers, is a new stage of rational thought, one which is able to deal with apparent contradictions, and able to synthesise multiple contradictions into a greater whole, a systematic unification of views. One example is Jean Gebsers, The Ever-Present Origin: Foundations Of The Aperspectival World. I don’t suppose it is as funky as it sounds, but these philosophers do outline certain key things that reason needs to be able to do to deal with the complexity of the world as it is today.

One of these things, I gather, is to go beyond simple adversarial thinking, where having arrived at one point of view, you necessarily have to make out that other points of view are wrong. Something which put me off the AGW theory early on was its proponents’ habit of simply labeling everyone else as shill, quack, irresponsible, criminal. That to me does not sound like the kind of thinking that can unite the world to deal with truly global world problems.

So Monbiot sits there aghast that a thousand people will vehemently disagree and post nasty comments in reply to his article. He can but label them all “idiots”. I suggest he go join the aliens, given that he has drawn a line between himself and humanity. But really, it is evidence that the old adversarial thinking just can’t cope with a truly global perspective. The globe is full of contradictions, competing factions, adversaries, divisions. If you try to unify the world by erasing those divisions, all you do is add yet one more faction and division. It is not unlike trying to unify Iraq by killing everyone who disagrees with democracy. Imposing a point of view by force didn’t work in one country, why do the Monbiots think it will work with the whole world?

Environmentalists, by thinking adversarially, whilst trying to act globally, end up in odd places, like the recent commentators out there who say that, really, a place like China is to be praised because they have the authority to MAKE things happen. The comments that democracy gets in the way of environmentalism. These are staggeringly dark places to let your reason take you. And they end up in those dark holes because they are trying to solve a problem at a level of thinking where it cannot be solved.

Sorry that’s such a long post, but it’s the first time I’ve had a go at putting this down.

But on nuclear weapons and the Iraq war there was a readily identifiable opposite point of view, held by governments and the establishment media. Discussion was vital, in order to persuade opponents, and Monbiot used his journalistic talents to argue the opposing point of view.

On global warming, government and media have espoused Monbiot’s position and ignored or supressed opposing opinions. Monbiot’s response to finding himself on the side of the establishment has been interesting. He has maintained his reputation for independent thinking by espousing nuclear power and by being one of the first to change his his mind on biofuels (before the ethanol hit the fan).

Then, strangely, he regularly and obsessively criticises his supporters in government for not agreeing with him enough. While on the denier flank he attacks particular journalistic sceptics ad hominem with a ferocious efficacity. He’s successfully seen off Alexander Cockburn, Christopher Monckton, and – in the article you analyse – David Bellamy, by nailing specific examples of fibs or shoddy journalism which have nothing to do with the subject in question – the existence or dangerosity of man-made global warming. It’s good political advocacy and entertaining journalism. It enhances Monbiot’s reputation as a tough, interesting thinker, and diverts attention from the question of whether or not AGW is actually happening. Monbiot defends the most absurd examples of the warmist creed, like Mann’s hockey stick, without ever once descending to sordid details. Denialists are insulted in general, but the names of Mcintyre or Spencer are never mentioned.

I feel from your treatment of Monbiot that you somehow feel he’s beneath your notice. Opinion polls show that the public isn’t convinced of AGW, so he and his kind can be gently ridiculed. To me he seems at least as important as his own self-importance (and that’s very important indeed). I think of the demise of McCarthyism. It wasn’t a straightforward, rational affair, with the American public suddenly deciding that they weren’t really threatened by communist infiltration. It was a messy mixture of action at the highest levels of the state (the Supreme Court) and a sea change in the opinion of ordinary voters and cinema goers. Monbiot is our two-bit McCarthy. Maybe he’s got enemies in the media establishment, even at the dear old Guardian, people who’d love to see him brought down a peg or two, maybe pushed into a media debate. Keep pushing.

The difference between George M. and you or I is that he doesn’t really believe in objective facts. As far as he is concerned, a thing is true if enough people believe it, and scientists make it up as they go along. By his own rights, he is right. The AGW paradigm is impervious to evidence, and will be true for those who want it to be true even when the glaciers start moving south of Carlisle.

Earlier generations were laughed at, and humoured while waiting for them to grow up. What’s changed in the last 40 years is now that the cynical manipulation by older groups jockeying for power and influence reinforces and exploits the silliness. I trace the decline in the UK from about the start of FoE and Greenpeace where we stopped our technology and engineering and started navel gazing. FoE and Greenpeace are now a business, having to continue to justify their own existence and ensure their income. Fortunately for them and the salaries of their executives there is a continual stream of new starry-eyed acolytes.

Look to the good side of the credit-crunch . . . its not quite so easy to be idealistic when there’s no food or money coming in.

I wonder if there is a generational trend at work here. The current brand of environmentalism has been gaining power for about 50 years, which seems to be a Baby Boomer thing. I’m typically a Generation X type, so that sort of thing doesn’t feel right to me. The Generation Y or Millennials probably have a very different take, being very tech-savvy, fast information gathering, brand conscious, ambitious and creative types.

If that is the case, then the current AGW bubble will burst as the old guard grow old and environmentalism is taken up by the Millenials in a smarter, lighter, faster, and more integrated way. I expect they won’t make it about anti-corporation and they won’t make it about anti-capitalism. It won’t be adversarial, and prosperity denying.

Also the Gen Y’s are so tuned to online life that they probably get all their information from blogs and tweets, so they’re getting access to a more balanced view anyway. I expect they are far more multicultural and multinational, and can understand issues of tribalism, development, progress, technology, far more intimately on a global scale than the current Mobiots who seem stuck obsessing over one idea.