Climate Change: Facts, Fictions and Greenwashing

Many years ago, I went for a job interview in a Renewable Energy Agency. Interviewees were strongly advised to travel in the most sustainable way to show their commitment to the environment. The best I could do was travel by train and walk the rest of the distance. During the interview, I was asked how I had arrived, and to my great surprise, my response triggered an uncontrolled hysterical laughter from my interviewers.  They had not expected people to take that instruction seriously, and they did it just to boost their corporate image. The impression was that those kind of climate mitigation measure is a laughing matter and for people commonly referred to as tree huggers. That sounds like what is referred to as green-washing.

The problem with the whole debate on Climate Change is that it has become a religion whereby people are now being classed as either believers or deniers.
You could well find a third group of the undecided or agnostics in religious terms. Just like with religion, there seem to be an ongoing emphasis on solemnity, visual conformity, guilt and unquestioned acceptance. On the one hand, according the interesting book, it might sound like a good idea to use the same techniques used in religion that make people devout and dedicated. One problem with this is that religion has the tendency to become cults that include and exclude people who just can't fit it.

One thing that often gets forgotten is that Climate Change is based on rigorous science in which the world's best scientists have betted their careers on. This is exactly why I would strongly recommend this ongoing  Coursera online tutorial titled "Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4* Warmer World Must Be Avoided". This course exposes one to the scientific thinking behind the issue, and uses statistics to shows the degrees of uncertainty. It also shows the various scenarios which depend very much on how we act. For someone of my intellectual level, this makes the whole concept easily digestible.

I appreciate that there are different target audiences and we might want to use different approaches to reach them. However, I believe it is vital that we get the facts right and remind people that Climate Change is science rather than a belief system. People should be taught to speak in statistical terms and also be aware of some uncertainties that exist.