Mike Hulme, Professor of Human Geography at Cambridge University, has come out with a dark warning that the obsession with climate change as the cause of all our ills, and the only problem worth focusing any attention on, has turned ‘climatism’ into an ideology and left the science far behind. The Mail, which interviewed him, has the story:
In his most recent book, Climate Change Isn’t Everything (2023), Hulme argued that belief in the urgent fight against climate change has shot far past the territory of science and become an ideology.
Hulme… dubs this ideology “climatism”, and he argues that it can distort the way society approaches the world’s ills, placing too much focus on slowing Earth from warming.
The problem, he said, is this narrow focus takes attention away from other important moral, ethical, and political objectives – like helping people in the developing world rise out of poverty.
As with other ‘isms’ – like cubism or romanticism – ideologies provide a way of thinking about things, explained Hulme.
“They’re like spectacles that help us to make sense of the world, according to a predefined framework or structure,” he said.
To be clear, Hulme does not claim that all ideologies are wrong.
“We all need ideologies, and we all have them – whether you’re a Marxist or a nationalist, you’re likely to hold an ideology of some form or other,” he added.
As Hulme sees it, many journalists, advocates and casual observers of climate change have become devotees of climatism, inaccurately attributing many events that happen in the world as being caused by climate change.
“No matter how complex a particular causal chain might be, it’s a very convenient shorthand to say, ‘Oh, well, this was caused by climate change’,” Hulme said.
“It’s a very shallow and simplistic way, I would argue, to try to describe events that are happening in the world.”
Hulme doesn’t argue that the effects of climate change are not happening, though, just that stopping climate change won’t stop disasters from happening altogether.
“Fundamentally, we’re going to have to deal with hurricanes, and we’re not going to deal with them just by cutting our carbon emissions,” he said.
The danger of climatism, he pointed out, is that it leads people down a false chain of events: if all of these things happening in the world are caused by climate change, then all we have to do is stop climate change, and all the other things will stop themselves. …
“The danger is if we obsess about just climate change, if we think that climate change holds the key to wellbeing and a better future, we take attention away from interventions that will make progress on the sustainable development goals,” he said.
Beyond these mixed up priorities, Hulme also takes issue with what he sees as an obsession with deadlines: “There’s this idea of the ticking clock counting down to Ground Zero – we’ve only got five years, 10 years, two years – however long different commentators put the deadline.”
He calls this line of thinking “deadline-ism”, a sort of sub-ideology of climatism, and he says he finds it unhelpful.
“It’s like holding a gun to your head and saying, ‘You’ve only got three seconds to make a decision’.”
Hulme warns that by promoting fatalism, the risk is that climatism will encourage people to give up on the grounds that it’s pointless. It also generates cynicism – because the world manifestly isn’t ending, and as one deadline after another passes without the promised catastrophe, people stop listening. Hulme emerges as a pragmatist, and while you may disagree with his view that “carbon-emitting energy sources” need to be phased out, his overall pragmatism is certainly refreshing, particularly from a Cambridge academic:
“We do need smart climate policies, whether it’s mitigation or adaptation,” he said.
“We need energy transitions away from carbon-emitting energy sources, and that energy transition is going to come through innovation. It’s going to come through smart people doing smart things more efficiently, with the human ingenuity and creativity that we’ve been granted, making use of the material resources that the planet offers.”
Worth reading in full.
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‘Says Cambridge Academic…’Well done, A+.
Most of us who aren’t professors twigged to this 20 years ago.
“We need energy transitions away from carbon-emitting energy sources”
At first I thought this would be good news but it looks like this professor wants to keep a foot in both camps so ultimately he’s a paper tiger.
Carbon emitting energy sources have transformed the planet and the lives of billions so we should not be thinking about moving away from carbon energy. The truly useful approach is supplementing our electricity needs via nuclear. Given the beneficial effects of CO2 on agricultural output I would be pushing for at least a doubling of CO2 volumes thus ensuring that the world gets comfortably fed.
Nuclear generation should now be a primary export of the West and this would allow Third World economies to play catch-up. Real World poverty cannot be eliminated until Third World countries have reliable electricity supplies. Of course the Davos Deviants like to keep billions in poverty because “they work harder” so the chances of this happening are beyond remote.
Genuine aid to the Third world does not mean stuffing dictators pockets with cash it means providing local businesses with the means to modernise and that requires electricity generation. Until these economies can modernise they have no means of improving the health of their citizens. Of course for “philanthropists”
such as Gates a healthy population is the last thing he needs.
Professor Hulme is a tiny aide-memoir and though welcome, nothing more.
I agree wholeheartedly. He could do with putting Bjørn Lomborg’s 2001 book “The Skeptical Environmentalist” on his reading list. Of course, in my day, climatology fell under “physical geography”; it’s interesting that he is a professor of human geography – presumably reflecting the overtly political nature of the subject these days.
Cheers.
He could also back up your recommendation with Michael Schellenberger’s “Apocalypse Never.”
Ten quid off the Bay.
There are another 50 books on this issue I could recommend if anyone is interested. And I can also guarantee that nothing that appears in those books ever appears or is likely appear on BBC News or the Climate Show on SKY News.
I would classify Gates more as a ‘philanthropath’
Off-T
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/the-anatomy-of-our-state-strangulation/
The criminal waste of taxpayers money on utterly self-defeating non jobs involved in “regulation.” Talk about read it and weep.
It’s pretty amusing to see people tiptoeing around the fundamental issue which is that the whole man-made climate change story is a load of bullshit.
They do what this Professor is doing which is to find all manner of reasons why maybe we shouldn’t pay so much attention to climate change short of saying it’s a load of bollocks.
Indeed. The guy seems to like ‘isms’, so perhaps he might like to adopt a new one – a-load-of-bullshit-driven-by-the-left-and-happily-consumed-by-retarded-guardian-readers-and-wet-behind-the-ear-millenials. Ism.
Hmm, this guy worked for 12 years at the climate research unit at University of East Anglia – where the “Climategate” emails were leaked showing the underhand workings of so-called climate experts. He is also the founding director of The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research.
From Wiki: “The Tyndall Centre has four main research themes: Accelerating social transitions, Building resilience, Overcoming poverty with climate actions, and Reaching zero emissions. (“Reaching zero emissions assesses the need for rapid decarbonisation within the energy and transport sector”).”
So, on the one hand he has a dark warning that the obsession with climate change as (sic) the cause of all our ills (and makes money by writing books on this theme), but also founds an institute that obsessively aims for zero emissions.
Just because you work in a place doesn’t mean you necessarily agree with everything that goes on in that place, and being a founding director of an organisation doesn’t mean you will for ever agree with that organisation – Andrew Neil was the founding chairman of GB News – Professor Mike Hulme ceased being a director of the Tyndall Centre in 2007. People’s views can – and should – change over time.
Correct. —Even Bjorn Lomborg before he looked into the issue thoroughly just believed what he was seeing in the mainstream news about climate change.
Richard Lindzen, John Christie, Roy Spencer, Paul Reiter, all experts in their field have been associated with the IPCC. These people and many more mostly disagree with the “official science” that they promote. They point out to them where they disagree and why they think they are wrong. So being inside an organisation does not mean you approve of everything they say or stand for. Infact many of those people are quite scathing in their criticisms of the IPCC——-Hulme in his book admits he thinks humans are affecting climate but warns of what he calls “climatism”, where issues that formerly had nothing to do with climate are now being viewed and analysed through the lens of climate change. He gives examples like where the food we eat is viewed only through its impact on climate or the amount of children we have is viewed as detrimental to climate, even tourism and recreational activities viewed primarily on impact on climate. In fact all human activity is looked upon in this way. The extreme levels climate alarmists go to justify interfering in every single thing is demonstrated by their idea that 0.05 C can be shave off future global warming if whales could be returned to their pre whaling numbers as they would sequester more carbon dioxide. ——–What Hulme is really saying here is that it is one thing to think humans are affecting climate, and another to take it to the extreme levels that climatism does. ———It is also possible to think we affect the climate in some way, but that it is not necessarily the apocalypse the UN with its political objectives paint it as.
Off-T.
There is growing evidence that the mRNA injections are now causing an epidemic of dementia cases.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/epidemic-prion-brain-diseases/5855986
Personally I have concerns that this is what I am seeing in my father who these last few weeks certainly is exhibiting symptoms of dementia. We hope it’s a currently prescribed prescription issue but now I am not so sure.
“Hulme doesn’t argue that the effects of climate change are not happening though”———————–I have read Hulmes book and it was a very good one. But I have also come to the conclusion that saying things like “there is no such thing as climate change” or “there is no global warming” is a pointless exercise, and it would only confirm that I was as stupid as the activist who claims there is climate change.
There is no way I can know these things, but crucially no scientists, or expert or modeller knows what the climate will be doing in 50 or 100 years either. Those who claim they do know are hijacking science for political purposes, and they are basing their world view on the output from un-validated climate models. But models are NOT science and they are NOT evidence of anything.
We need energy transitions away from carbon-emitting energy sources
In plain English, this means we must stop using fire for anything as fire is the exothermic reaction which oxidizes carbon into carbon dioxide (somewhat simplified). And that’s not going to happen because of human ingenuity because it’s not going to happen at all. Or rather, it’s going to happen once fusion energy is real and every human settlement on this planet has been connected to an efficient electricity grid. It’s a safe bet that a mass extinction event of Chris Packham will have happened long before this has been accomplished if it can be accomplished at all.
No, we don’t ‘…..need energy transitions away from carbon-emitting energy sources,..‘
It’s the dogmatic belief in that bee ess that is the cause of all this nonsense. Both the flora and fauna of this wonderful world would benefit from much higher CO2 ppmv than we have now. As the long geologic history of this planet would confirm.
He could invite Bjorn Lomborg to talk at Cambridge, since they seem to be like-minded