There are times when we just don't believe what people try to tell us

We agree that we might be wrong to do so but still:

Johan Rockström, the director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and one of the world’s foremost climate scientists, warned that the 1.5C target was not like other political negotiations, which can be haggled over or compromised on.

“A rise of 1.5C is not an arbitrary number, it is not a political number. It is a planetary boundary,” he told the Guardian in an interview. “Every fraction of a degree more is dangerous.”

We get the very definite impression that some people are using climate change as an excuse rather than a reason. It used to be, for example, that we were all told that 2 degrees was the limit. Only when it became obvious that a capitalist, globalised, free market system could meet that 2 degree target did we start to get the shouting that actually, 1.5 was necessary. For there are those who want to insist that it is the overthrow of capitalism - and markets, globalisation - that must be done.

As George Monbiot says in the same edition of the same newspaper:

Capitalism is killing the planet – it’s time to stop buying into our own destruction

The base understanding is in error. The assumption is being made that capitalism demands growth. Which isn’t the point at all. Humans desire growth in the economy - who doesn’t like being richer? - and capitalism is a good way to get it.

But it’s also wrong in another manner. As the basic economic assumptions behind all the predictions of climate change say (the SRES models) continued economic growth is entirely consistent with the continued health of the planet and also with beating climate change. What’s worse for the argument that capitalism is to blame is that those models with globalised free market capitalism do this better, Horrendous results stem from having a regionalised, non-market, socialised economy (the B2 model).

The reason being that very lust for profit directed by that capitalist and market system. It encourages efficiency, it encourages the use of fewer inputs to gain any specific output. Given that the ecological constraint is those inputs (defining the disposal of wastes correctly as an input as well) then for any given standard of living a capitalist and market system will use fewer inputs. Equally, for any possible set of input limitations a capitalist and market based system will provide a higher standard of living.

We can’t help but think that at least some of what we’re being told here just isn’t true. On the basis that at least some are using climate change as the excuse for their desired socioeconomic system rather than as a rational analysis of the problem or even a reason for a specific response.

This is no doubt cynical of us but then as we’ve said before the only correct question in politics is “Am I being cynical enough?”