There’s been no update about this from Susan Watts or Peter Rippon on the Newsnight science blog, since Peter’s “montage” explanation back in January.

“naturally seek some ideology which distinguishes them from the great unwashed. Higher education enables them to combine left-wing sentiments (internationalism, solidarity with the oppressed) with a sense of superiority (not in terms of race or power or ideological domination -perish the thought!) – but in terms of access to knowledge denied to the common mortal. Such knowledge must be scientific, at least in appearance, and must satisfy their activist desire to assume responsibility for the world’s ills (the B.A. Honours man’s burden).
The Green Ideal has a strong (and I believe) legitimate aesthetic and moral appeal, and the CO2 mumbo jumbo provides the graphs and statistics which give it the semblance of scientific objectivity.”

I find this interesting and I’ll have to try to read up on Todd.

The features you mention:
- solidarity with the oppressed
- responsibility for world
- anti-racism, anti-power

are also described with some overlap in that theory of psychosocial development, Spiral Dynamics. In SD there are 6 or 7 main core codes or social values systems/intelligences, which have arisen progressively over thousands of years. Each new one brought something new which went beyond what the previous value code was capable of. So for example, for thousands of years, the tribal way of life and tribal values were the most advanced form of social grouping available for humans. Later in our history these disparate bands formed into larger social groupings, usually bound together by mythic religions, and eventually came to form nation states. The values that an individual has in a tribal society are quite different to the values of a modern citizen in a democratic industrialised nation. Even the very notion of individuality is quite different in a tribal society, and doesn’t bear a lot of resemblance to our modern individualistic egos.

OK, so at least 6 or 7 major codes or values intelligences are identified in the model. The most recent two, code Orange and code Green, arose roughly with the Enlightenment and with the 60s, respectively.

The Green core value is the one which most resembles your description of environmentalists. I’m not saying they all are, just that perhaps a fair number of scientists from a certain generation all awoke or developed to the Green sociocultural values stage at the same time, and came to interpret their scientific data from the perspective of Green values/intelligence global responsibility.

There are a whole host of implications of SD theory, and other theories like it, but let me just mention a couple here. Anyone interested can read the book which is quite accessible, written more for business managers.

The Enlightenment was more or less the dawn of the Orange code or stage of culture. The theory says that each new code or values stage arises in response to problems that the previous intelligence values stage can’t resolve. Now the Enlightenment gave us the principles and values of science, freedom from dogma, citizenship, one man one vote, technological progress, and the individual “pursuit of happiness”. It also gave us the atomic bomb, global pollution, oil spills, and multinationals stomping over Third World economies.

Much of what Green values, has to do with a reaction against Orange. It is interesting that AGW theory supporters usually frown upon geoengineering projects. They sound too much like Orange technical fixes (something Orange is usually very good at). It is also telling that in a debate with AGW supporters, the skeptics are often accused of being in the pay of oil companies, ie. they are being accused of being Orange.

This similar pattern of breaking free from and denying, can repeat itself though the other codes or values intelligences as well. Orange free thinking hates Blue mythic dogma. Blue order and justice hates Red’s impulsive violent power drives. Red freedom hates Purple’s tribal sleepy submission to tribal customs and spirits. The literature fleshes these out, I’m just trying to provide a very quick taste.

Basically, the more we try to champion rationality, individual freedom, the economy, the industrial machine, the innovations of new technology–the more we will come across sounding Orange to a Green values intelligence which is trying to free us from the abuses and problems of Orange in the first place. We are all in the pay of the oil industry, in the felt sense that we are all promoting a values intelligence that Green feels is already outdated anyway. I think this is why debates against AGW always hit a brick wall; they already know your values, and that is the very thing that they are trying to fight against (although they may never have heard of developmental theories of psychosocial growth, so they mey never have the words or labels to be able to identify just what it is about your whole point of view that they so detest–they just know you are wrong, even if you’ve logically handled point by point everything they said).

The other implication of SD is that we cannot change a person’s values intelligence. That is a process that seems to take decades, so if you disagree with someone over a values conflict, go away, wait ten years, and then try again. What can be done, however, is realise that the core values can be expressed in any number of ways. Having a Green core value doesn’t necessarily make you an environmentalist, and it doesn’t necessarily make you a supporter of the UN or the IPCC. Rather, we need to be able to find a healthier way for Green intelligence to express itself so that it really does help society. We need to speak to Green core values, and address them in their essence. AGW is just one surface issue, and as we know it has changed from one issue to another over the years. It is as if Green values are trying to find a place in the world, as the demographics indicate that an ever greater percentage of the population in the West is awakening and shifting to Green core values.

Sorry that’s a bit long, I’m just trying to get the balance between suggesting why it is relevant and encourage people to grab some of the basic material and the research into these cultural core values.

Now I’ve grown up a bit (or just become middle-aged and cynical, some might say) and the idea of a world government has lost its shine; in my more Eeyorish moments I can’t help thinking it would be an amazing opportunity, surely, for bureaucracy, corruption and incompetence at the current regional and national levels to metastatise into bureaucracy, corruption and incompetence on a truly global scale.

But I can see that for many, this idea might still be fresh and shiny. After all, who hasn’t, at some point, wished that all of humanity would unite against a common enemy? If all nations forgot their differences and their quarrels with one another and joined forces, what could we not achieve? Americans, Chinese and Russians all on the same side, Israelis and Iranians working together in a common cause. In SF this common enemy has often been aliens – H.G.Wells’s Martians perhaps, or the baddies in Independence Day. But it could equally be climate change. Remember the finale of The Day After Tomorrow, when the survivors were airlifted out of New York, and the Dick Cheney-like new President apologised to the world for causing the disaster (or was that in an episode of South Park? I can’t remember exactly.) The mighty U.S. and humble Mexico on an equal footing, working hand in hand to help humanity against climate chaos.

I wonder if this kind of sentiment underpins much of the middle-class drive towards decarbonising the world, penalising and demonising all those selfish industrial nations, sending payouts to the people of nations deemed under threat from rising seas, etc., and also the opinion of some that “even if climate change were not real” (I won’t attempt to analyse that phrase), stringent world-wide measures and controls would be a good thing anyway. A United Earth Federation, committed to equality and fairness between rich and poor countries, arbitrating conflicts, regulating trade – and, of course, tightly controlling the entire world’s carbon emissions.

Something to be excited about! (In certain circles, anyway.)

http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/bl…com/blog/? p=153

It looks as though we are going to take the pretty route to a proper response, but we will get there!

http://ccgi.newbery1.plus.com/bl…com/blog/? p=153

It looks as though we are going to take the pretty route to a proper response. but we will get there!