I know this might seem like I’ve let advertisers into my blog. Well, I haven’t (and I doubt any airlines would be interested in advertising here anyway).
I reproduce the advert from the airline “Norwegian” as a starting point for my first blog since COP15 because the text translates into: “All climate scientists agree upon one thing. You’ll find Mediterranean climate on Malta. Malta, from 349,- (£39) one way.” Maybe it’s supposed to be funny, and if it was, I would easily just laugh and leave it. But as it stands, it seems more like an attempt at jumping on the bandwagon of unimpressive climate change denials.
One thing is that the overwhelming majority of serious climate scientists do also agree on that the climate is changing and that this change is at least partly man-made (and not just that Malta is in the Mediterranean). Another thing is that Malta is an island-state (dependent on tourism) and hence vulnerable to climate change. It is in this light that the advert is disrespectful. And that it comes from a company that cooperates with Unicef (according to the not very extensive social corporate responsibility section of its web pages) and claims to care about the future of children in developing countries that will be worst hit by climate change, makes it even worse.
To put it bluntly:
As CEO of a company that has earned all its money from offering flights at a price-level far below what it would be if the society calculated the long-term environmental consequences into it – shouldn’t you really step a bit more carefully Bjørn Kjos?
That being said, all are of course free to be skeptical about anything they want – even, or especially, an overwhelming consensus from a scientific board with a mandate from the United Nations (although that could seem to be the closest we get to “truth” and “neutral” today). Still, however much you want to deny that climate change is happening or that it is man-made, there is a chance that you are wrong, no? Interesting to note here is that most deniers are actually much more cemented in their positions than the scientists they’re suspicious of; Because all they have said is that there is more than a 90 percent chance for that climate change is man-made. A small digression here is that if there were a 90 percent, or even 10 percent chance, of my “Norwegian” plane crash-landing en route to destination, I would of course not board it (Now, the advert has made me doubt whether I will again anyway, but that’s a different matter).
Furthermore, climate change skeptics can’t deny that there is actually a chance that the consequences turn out even more severe than the often-careful science panel has predicted. Just recently, for example, it became clear that the frozen methane below the Arctic is getting increasingly unstable. This is the same methane that is 25 times more harming than carbon dioxide and that, even if feared, was not included in the panel’s predictions due to too little scientific certainty at that stage. Now it seems this uncertainty is about to diminish, and such potential additional damage as well as possible others (such as the Golf stream switching off) could add to the disasterous conditions already predicted.
And so back to “Norwegian” and Mr. Kjos, the man with the “Cheshire Cat smile” – what is he doing in this situation? Well, he is contributing some spare kroners to Unicef to ease his own conscience, while at the same time counteracting the work of those who try warn of potentially catastrophic climate change consequenses for these same Unicef children (and the rest of us, for that matter).
Political Sociology & Climate Change 