You know that
irritating feeling you get when the brilliant, witty you kicks in –
just a few moments too late.
You’ve just left the
party, or the meeting, or the pub when you suddenly think of the
thing you should have said. The snappy one-liner, the perfect
put-down, the elegant solution to the problem no one could solve.
For some reason, rather
like déjà vu, that feeling has a name in French – esprit de
l’escalier – but not in English. “Spirit of the staircase”
doesn’t quite work, though you can probably see where that’s
coming from.
As a journalist, you
might be driving away after the interview when you think of the one
key question you didn’t ask. Or you think of the perfect headline
just after the press has started rolling.
The feeling is
especially common – and especially frustrating – after arguments.
But the Australian comedian Tim Minchin has a theory about that. He
thinks it’s a good thing.
“A lot of the time
your instinct is right,” he says. By which he means the “instinct”
not to blurt out what’s really on your mind.
He explains: “It’s
usually better not to confront because most people are unable to
change their minds. And if there’s any possibility of anyone
changing their mind about anything, direct aggressive confrontation
is not going to change it.”
Sadly, I think he’s
right. And it’s not only aggressive confrontation that misses the
mark, either. Few minds are really open to reasoned argument.
People who read this
column probably like it if they generally agree with the way I see
things, and don’t like it if they don’t. And either way they
probably get to the end still believing what they believed before
they started.
Which is rather
depressing for someone like me – or Tim Minchin – who has a clear
world view that they strongly believe in.
I think Minchin’s
brilliant. But that’s partly because I tend to agree with him on
things like rational thinking, science, tolerance (he’s in favour),
religion, quackery and racism (he isn’).
I wonder whether people
who don’t share his targets – or who are his targets – find him
as clever, or as funny, as I do. Probably not.
Which leads me to the
problem with the Green Party, whose outlook Minchin and I broadly
share.
The party’s leader,
Natalie Bennett, says she is happy to be seen as “a watermelon” –
green on the outside, red in the middle. I’m probably the other way
round, red on the surface but green all the way through (I’m not
sure what fruit that could be).
The trouble is – and
it’s a huge trouble, not just in Britain but almost worldwide –
that the green movement has tended to become associated with leftist
politics.
Which enables those on
the right to pretend it’s a political issue, a matter of attitude
or opinion.
To pretend that climate
change is just a point of view, not what it really is, a
scientifically tested and proven fact.
Of course, scientists
change their minds. What is condemned in politicians – stupidly –
is essential to science. If it wasn’t, we’d all still believe the
sun was a god that went round the world making rivers flow and crops
grow and occasionally coming down to get people pregnant or turn them
into salt.
Science is about
investigating things, sharing ideas, testing hypotheses, and by these
means gradually getting closer to the truth.
And the more scientists
put each others’ ideas about climate change to the test, the more
scary – not the less – it all becomes.
A new book, Don’t
Even Think About It, by George Marshall, makes this alarmingly
plain.
Marshall writes:
“Scientists, who are extremely wary of exaggerating, keep using the
same word: catastrophe.”
He predicts a rise of
four degrees in global temperature, possibly within the next 60
years. Which might not sound much, but it’s double the estimate of
a few years ago.
And, as climate
scientist John Schellnhuber puts it: “The difference between two
and four degrees is human civilisation.”
As Marshall’s title
suggests, the details are too scary to think about. Which, as he also
argues, is precisely why people choose not to believe it.
In an ideal world,
preserving life on the planet (including, but not exclusively, human
life) would be everyone’s priority. Not just the priority of those
who also believe in social justice.
But this is not an
ideal world.
If it was, the rich
wouldn’t go on getting richer while persuading nearly everyone else
that this is inevitable and right.
And big corporations
(rich people) wouldn’t go on raping the planet while persuading
themselves that the catastrophe they are causing won’t come down on
their heads and their children’s heads as well as everyone else’s.
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A poll last week from
Ipsos MORI made very interesting reading. It seems 56 per cent of us
support Britain staying in the European Union, against 39pc who want
out.
This is the highest
level of support for EU membership for 23 years.
And, with a narrow
majority even of Conservative supporters in favour of remaining in
Europe, it sends a clear message to David Cameron.
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