Our inaction in the face of global warming is far stranger than fiction

ASSUME you’re a publisher, and that this column is a proposal: a pitch made to you in the hope that you’ll publish a novel set in a small, fantastically verdant planet. Awash in diversity, this planet. One species of animal is by far the most intelligent. So intelligent that it finds ways to extract the carbon locked into the crust of the planet since primeval times and stick it into the sky overhead.

This intelligent species achieves the shift of carbon from earth to sky inside two centuries. The effect is more or less what happens in a parked car on a roasting summer day. The sunshine gets magnified as it goes in through the glass and the hot air can’t get out. The locked-in heat melts the ice and snow, right? And that means the sea level rises, making islands disappear, forcing evacuation of seaside resorts and cities and sending millions of refugees on the road, bringing disease and disorder wherever they go.

Now, that’s the background to the novel. The key drama, believe it or not, lies in the way this intelligent species insist on embracing disaster. It’s a fascinating sequence. Trust me.

It starts with the ruler of the biggest, most powerful kingdom on this planet deciding he won’t believe in the danger until more investigation is done. Because he’s so powerful, there’s no choice but to do the extra research. Which gives the rich pals of the ruler the chance to send out guys with bags of money to bribe other scientists to say the new research is nonsense. That’s so they won’t have to change their ways at all.

What’s that you say? Not credible, this line in the plot? You know something? You’re right. I’ll leave out that bit. Instead, we’ll cut directly from the ruler saying new research is needed to the day when leading scientists announce that the little planet is cooking itself much faster than had been realised. I’ll put in a scene where they explain that the ice melted by the trapped heat will make the sea levels rise perhaps five feet. That scene might be followed by one where someone like the head of the United Nations says only immediate collective action by all the tribes on the planet will save it.

Now, I know, you’re going to say that at this point in the story, the novel is over, but you’re wrong. It’s at this point the conflict emerges, as groups and individuals line up to prevent corrective action.

One group, for example, lives on an island shaped like a stubby teddy-bear. The island, I mean, not the inhabitants. Some of the clever people on that island announce that there’s no point in them doing anything, because one of the bigger countries is doing so much damage that it would outweigh anything the little island could achieve.

Here’s where one of the most powerful chapters in the book happens. Because other characters fight back on this point of the small island having no role to play.

“We have a moral responsibility,” they say. “We have to show moral leadership.”

“Oh, Puh-lease,” the no-action people respond. “Don’t give us that tree-hugging holistic Gaia crap. Bad enough to have taxes on SUVs without having to listen to bilge about moral leadership. Our little island is about celebs and spend, limos and lattes, share options and chauffeuring kids.”

“But if the planet keeps heating up the way it’s currently heating up, our little island is very quickly going to be about mosquitoes and malaria, sandbags right around the coast at high tides, abandonment of expensive holiday homes,” someone points out, adding that this is on the positive end of the spectrum. If things go really badly, the islanders, like the rest of their species, may begin to die out. Bit like a fish kill, only involving people. (I’ll build into the plot that this island had a big human die-off a century or so earlier and has learned nothing from it. I’ll think of something that would have caused the earlier people-kill. Some form of crop disease, maybe.) What would you think about including a spindoctor character? They’re such hate figures, I thought it would be fun to include one. Maybe one qualified as a psychologist, who could give a lecture about how frightening people is no use when it comes to getting them to make life-changes, that the way to go is to make them laugh. So — in the book — you’d have a group of people on one side of a conference hall with their mouths open, listening to this “make em’ laugh” stuff and saying “but we’re all going to DIE — how the hell can you make that an issue of comfort and comedy?”.

THEN I was thinking of having an intervention by a businessman who says that the save-the-world group are missing great opportunities this heating up of the planet offers good entrepreneurs. He could talk about this island becoming a world centre of the wine industry, for example, since grapes will grow in the higher temperatures it’s now experiencing. Not to mention the wine bars will flourish, with customers able to sit out of doors at night, even in the wintertime.

This man would be faced down by the central character, a charismatic leader, a “let my people go” figure who stands up to the liars and the delayers and saves the island — and maybe, by example, some people not living on the island.

My problem is that this character would have to ask people to use less, to reduce their consumption, and leaders are always promising MORE for the people they lead, not less. Liebensraum, you know? More space. More wealth. More opportunity. More freedom.

Except in wartime, no real-life leader has ever persuaded people to reduce their expectations and sense of entitlement. Well, maybe some Church leaders like Francis of Assisi, but I don’t think the book would sell if I made the central figure a saint, do you? No. Saints are bad for sales unless you’re exposing them as frauds.

But that’s my big problem. The leading character in this book would have to persuade people to abandon their most cherished habits (like driving cars everywhere) and reduce, rather than expand, their consumption of goodies. Like Lent used to be. Only permanent. I haven’t yet figured out how to make that work.

Overall, though, the book would be about this intelligent life-form that knows extinction is around the corner, yet employs its creativity to think up bigger and better ways to do nothing to prevent it.

So what do you think? You’d prefer a funny, fast-moving account of sexually active twenty-somethings with Jimmy Choo shoes who work in glamour jobs like event-management and PR.

Oh.

All right. I’ll come back to you with a sample chapter and an outline.

No, I understand perfectly. The market dictates, right?