It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Source: Cinema a Go-Go

We live in the strangest of times. It feels like the 1963 movie's title that heads this article is more true of our world today than it was of the crazy comedy for which it was the title. Here are my contenders for why this is so.

1. The World Leader Lies Club

The USA has only just gotten rid of Donald Trump, but it was close - nearly half of the population of voters supported him. Yet without doubt Trump is a bare-faced liar. I won't bother to cite much of the evidence as there is just so much of it - just search for "Trump lies" and you'll see what I mean (with articles from the likes of New York Times, Washington Post and CNN!). And here in the UK we're still stuck with his look-alike "kid brother" Boris Johnson whose grasp on veracity is equally greasy (e.g. The Guardian, New Statesman and BBC).

What is it about politicians of this kind that allows them not only to take power, but to continue in the popular mindset? Maybe we're in the throes of national and international mind-control? Or did the world experience a "Day of the Triffids"- like wave of blindness from which only a minority survived to see the truth?

Whatever the explanation, the "The World Leader Lies Club" is alive and doing very well, thank you!

2. Steering for the Iceberg

Yes, sorry for the Titanic metaphor, which I'm not alone in using - but it's so appropriate! The current Climate Emergency that keeps cropping up in the news is not a new phenomenon, and we have known for a few decades now that things have been going wrong. Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth" is already 15 years old, but his wasn't the first documentary on the subject - look back at "Warming Warning" from 1981 for instance! So back to that Titanic metaphor - if you are steering a very large ship and you get information that there is a major hazard ahead (let's say an iceberg) - you need to take early and major action to avoid it. Just ignoring it and hoping it will float away certainly won't work (which is basically what we've done for most of the time). Or you could pretend you're taking it seriously - for example hold some life boat stations rehearsals and put up posters saying that the ship is unsinkable anyway. Maybe even make a minor course change. Well this may induce a misguided feeling that enough is being done, but the reality is very different.

In 2008 I wrote an article on this blog summarising a 2004 book, "A Short History of Progress" by Ronald Wright - he used the same metaphor. I quoted his opening remarks back then and I think they are worth repeating:

Our civilization, which subsumes most of its predecessors, is a great ship steaming at speed into the future. It travels faster, further, and more laden than any before. We may not be able to foresee every reef and hazard, but by reading her compass bearing and headway, by understanding her design, her safety record, and the abilities of her crew, we can, I think, plot a wise course between the narrows and the bergs looming ahead.

And I believe we must do this without delay, because there are too many shipwrecks behind us. The vessel we are now aboard is not merely the biggest of all time; it is also the only one left. The future of everything we have accomplished since our intelligence evolved will depend on the wisdom of our actions over the next few years. Like all creatures, humans have made their way in the world so far by trial and error; unlike other creatures, we have a presence so colossal that error is a luxury we can no longer afford. The world has grown too small to forgive us any big mistakes.

It's unimaginable to me that we are still doing so little to avoid this "big mistake" that we have made regarding our use of the world's resources. And the problem is that while the vast majority of people in the developed world continue to ignore it, so will the politicians!

3. You Too Can Be President!

Back in 2001 George Bush (another world leader in the no. 1 category above) told C-Grade students at Harvard "You too can be President".  This is part of that "great American dream" whereby anybody can become rich, famous and successful so long as they work hard enough. Which is another lie, because in order to be at the top of the pyramid, the vast majority have to be at the bottom. Only a very small percentage can become millionaires, etc.. But the problem is that so many people are duped into believing that not only is this goal possible, but it's also worthwhile and leads to happiness and fulfilment. (The theme of the movie that this article's title is taken from is the pursuit of a $350,000 cache, worth around $2.5 million today). 

In the UK it is epitomised by Thatcherism. Thatcherism rejected the idea of social prosperity through the welfare state, nationalised industry and regulation of the British economy, opting for free market forces, privatisation and neoliberalism (she famously said that if Gladstone were alive, he'd feel happy in the Conservative Party (page 4 of her speech)). What this led to was a doubling in the relative poverty rate: Britain's childhood-poverty rate in 1997 was the highest in Europe. 

In other words, if you focus on making people rich, what happens is that the very few who succeed do so on the back of the many who (have to) become poor.

4. There is such a thing as Perpetual Motion

According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, Perpetual Motion is where "the action of a device that, once set in motion, would continue in motion forever, with no additional energy required to maintain it." However we know that this is in fact impossible - at least on earth - because of  the first and second laws of thermodynamics. Yet our industries and economics, in the developed world, has been based on the idea that perpetual motion is possible (in the sense that economic development can continually improve forever). And this is the lie that is sold to people so that they vote for the likes of Thatcher, Trump and Johnson; and so that they continue to live a life of consumerism as if there is no end to what it promises. 

But all our development is based on the use of resources, be it fossil fuels, minerals, agriculture or human labour. All of these are finite resources, so a model that says you can continue to develop and exploit forever is fatally flawed! Initially the resource base upon which we were drawing was so vast that it appeared to be infinite, like the so-called perpetual motion machine you can see in the Royal Society - an endlessly spinning bicycle wheel called DREADCO, but which is really just an illusion. However, over time we have both eaten into this resource in a cumulative fashion, and also with increasing avidity. And now we can see the resources are running out. Yet even knowing this, companies still invest in finding more fossil fuels (for example) even if it means doing so by increasingly environmentally devastating means (e.g. fracking).

5. And they all lived Happily Ever After

So ends the traditional fairy tale. The Prince has met and freed his Princess. The dragon has been slain (oops, now extinct, never mind). But we are not living in a fairy tale, so why do we act as if we are? If we continue in our current way of life (in the developed world) there will be no happily ever after. Maybe we won't experience it in this generation, but our children might and our grandchildren definitely will. Do we even care?

I often write to my MP on environmental matters. He's a Tory who votes on party lines on almost everything - so even though I keep trying, he keeps coming back with party line platitudes about how the UK is leading the world in terms of climate emergency responses, etc., and often votes against climate action proposals (Robert Largan, MP). But even if the UK were in first place (though it most definitely isn't), it's irrelevant if everyone is running much too slowly! No one is going to make it past the finish line unless we speed up by a very large amount, and do it now! 

The G7 meeting was disappointing: more platitudes and little action. Will COP26 be any better? 

If you've read this far, all I ask is that you take what action you can - write to your MP, join an environmental group (Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, WWF, etc.), make personal sacrifices. We all have  our part to play and we have to start right now.