A professor’s modest assessment of Copenhagen
Professor Colin Blakemore discusses Copenhagen in the Guardian and modestly suggests that the conference “marks a turning point in human nature”. Yikes!
Copenhagen may mark a turning point in human nature, when the global village acquired a global mind. What we have just witnessed is delegates from 192 countries talking about making sacrifices, slowing their development, constraining their industry, taxing their citizens, in a collective bid to stifle climate change. Those nations included virtually every race, every religion, every style of government -– from monarchy to dictatorship, from constitutional democracy to communism.
For the past 5,000 years, agreements between nations have been determined by military or economic power, by political ideology or religious dogma. What Copenhagen has established, even if the final agreement fudges and procrastinates, is that a new force is at work in international diplomacy. A force that does not speak in terms of faith and conviction, that is not even absolutely certain about what it has to say. That force is science.
Science, eh? Assume just for a moment that the pro-AGW crowd is wrong and that some of the scientists cooked the books for their personal and professional gain. Blakemore’s “science” could easily be replaced by “religion” or “superstition.”
We once observed that “any compulsory irrational belief is incompatible with the modern Western world” and implicitly assumed that in any such contest of paradigms, a modern Western world of logic, reason and skepticism would prevail. We’re not so sure anymore.