How many lightbulb jokes does it take to save the world?

Few academics and policy specialists can see the joke in climate change and that’s a shame, because when societies have big questions to address, some of the best work is done through the ‘cultural work’ of comedy and drama. With reference to my posting of 14th January it was a relief recently to come across Robert Butler’s blog entry on climate change comedy. There has been a healthy offering of lightbulb jokes about climate change deniers in response to his invitation. I think his own (the first) is the best.

Q: How many climate sceptics does it take to change a lightbulb?

A: None. It's too early to say if the lightbulb needs changing.

A: None. It's more cost-effective to live in the dark.

A: None. We only know how to screw the planet.

A: None. Eventually the lightbulbs will right themselves.

It has been assumed in the science and policy community that the only way to ‘beat the sceptics’ is to shout ever more loudly that the ‘science is finished’ and that the nay-sayers are ‘outside the consensus’. The most shrill voices have drawn on the most extreme comparisons to hand, including holocaust denial, to describe the mixed bag of libertarians and right wing retired politicians and advisers (Lawson; Monckton) and academic entrepreneurs (Lomborg) who dispute the IPCC and UNFCCC account of climate science and policy.

The tendency to paint ‘climate change deniers’ in such dark terms has greatly inflated the value of their stock in the eyes of the media. In this sense the Lomborg franchise (and a very profitable one it is too) is a creation of the environmental NGO and science community’s own making. These contrarians have enjoyed a degree of media attention out of all proportion with the quality of their science or policy arguments, and hence had a much larger impact on the public conversation than their arguments deserve.

It also does a disservice to the vital intellectual tool of scepticism to tag these doggedly contrarian commentators as ‘climate sceptics’. Scepticism should be one of the more prominent virtues of all journalists, researchers and students. Climate science is an unfinished – indeed unfinishable project. The attempt to make sense of how atmosphere, biosphere, geosphere and anthroposphere (us) work together is one of the great intellectual projects of our time, and we are working with best guesses. There will be the odd cold spell; quiet hurricane season, and badly deployed biofuels policy. However none of these need weaken the case for action on climate change if we recognise that we are working to reduce the risk of danger rather than acting on a body of certain, urgent, solid facts.

Image: Climate Cartoons

We all need to get comfortable with the fact that climate science and politics is a work in progress. This means we need to keep asking questions and welcoming well-considered challenges. These should include left-field thinking and yes, the odd gag. And in addition to laughing at the worst excesses of our contrarian friends we might sometimes choose to laugh with them. This simple act would help bring them down to their proper (modest but useful) size.

About the author

Joe Smith is Lecturer in Environment at the Open University and chair of Interdependence Day. Joe has written books on climate change and sustainability, the media and global issues, and the green movement.

The recent local elections prompted me to reflect on the meaning of the ballot box. When I went to vote last week, a tarnished and rather battered box lay humbly on a chair: how, I thought, could this humble object be both fount and symbol of British democracy? And if it is under threat, which it appears to be, in particular from postal voting, does this subtly change the latent understandings of what our democracy is?

By ‘latent’ I am emphasising a psychological approach to ideas. Namely, the idea of democracy like any idea, has some underlying meanings, which are perhaps not often very explicit or conscious.

On 28^th April, the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust published a damning report into called Purity of Elections in the UK: Causes for Concern. It shows how the mechanics of UK elections have been tampered with to the extent that the UK now has the lowest public confidence in free and fair elections in Western Europe. Voters can now obtain a postal vote by simply requesting one, whereas they used to have to demonstrate they needed one because they would be away from home, or because of work commitments preventing attendance in person. Now, instances of poll rigging are not rare; the Rowntree report refers to 42 convictions for electoral fraud in the last 7 years. Rowntree is not alone in its criticism; the Council of Europe, the Electoral Commission and the Electoral Reform Society have all highlighted serious defects. The clearest way to clean up the system is individual registration. But crosses on postal votes for a whole household can easily be made fraudulently by the nominated householder.

So the danger of postal voting is that individual voters are denied their vote. The Rowntree report says that cheating is not exclusive to any one party or group, but that in the cases of some groups, extended family and kinship networks are mobilised to secure support for particular candidates, and patriarchs and ‘community leaders’ find it all too easy to collect the votes of weaker members of their group. Only 46 per cent of British Asians regard postal voting as safe, according to the report. When there was a parallel concern in sectarian Northern Ireland, postal votes were limited to those who could prove genuine inability to get to a polling booth; and each voter registers individually. But, the government says that postal voting is ‘more convenient’.

So, what is the meaning of voting and what part does the ballot box as a technology of democracy play? As Tony Benn has often said, election day is a great day because only then is every one of us equal in power. You can vote or spoil your paper in privacy. Your vote counts no more and no less than anybody else’s. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights stipulates ‘universal and equal suffrage, held by secret vote guaranteeing the free expression of the will of the elector’.

A vote concerns the expression of views on a collective state of affairs and so it follows that these must be collectively addressed. Elections are a modern version for the meeting place in which citizens gathered to decide the issues of the day. In a world of large populations, citizens can no longer gather together in one place, so they elect proxies – representatives – whose legal standing depends on virtual gatherings: periodic collections of votes by the non-present body of citizens. From painted balls in the clay jars of antiquity to the glass, wooden, and then metal boxes of more recent centuries, voting systems have always signified a self evident simplicity and directness. A real, physical piece of paper, the ballot, is dropped into the box. So long as you know your own vote will both be counted and count towards the final outcome of the election, the system is legitimate.

The psychoanalyst D.W.Winnicott wrote perceptively some decades ago about democracy, saying that it can be defined as society well adjusted to its healthy individual members. That is, it assumes maturity for its members; but I’d turn this around to say that the very act of voting in a public space is what helps to create maturity. What are the accepted qualities of democratic machinery? he asked. In his view its essence is the free vote by secret ballot. This ensures the freedom of the people to express deep and private feelings, to vote someone in or to vote someone out. The secret ballot provides a space for individuals to take full responsibility for themselves.

One final thing occurred to me when I went to vote: the act of going to a place to vote brings one into an encounter, however brief and perfunctory, with one’s fellow citizens as citizens. The latent meaning of the ballot box is that it makes people gather, however temporarily. Thus it both symbolically and actually constitutes the very idea of a link between how individual people vote (a vote) and the aggregate (the vote). A vote is a gathering. But postal votes are surely part and parcel of the mantra of consumer choice in which the conception of public, shared space where all are equal is unimportant.

About the author

Jessica Evans is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, in the Faculty of Social Sciences, and a member of the Centre for Citizenship, Identities and Governance at the Open University.

I’ve just returned from two weeks in the US with my colleague Dr May Tan-Mullins. Each day we read reports of the passage of the beleaguered Olympic torch on its inappropriately named ‘journey of harmony’. And even as I write this, protestors have clashed with the authorities in Seoul. In cities across the globe we saw diversions, protests, and heavy-handed ‘torch guards’ man-handling people out of the way. In my last blog I was talking about China’s role in Sudan and Darfur. The issue now is Tibet, although it’s often wrapped up together with China’s broader human rights record at home and abroad. 

The Tibet issue is complex, but is seen as an internal issue with many Chinese supportive of their state’s stance on Tibet. When I was in the US various head of state pulled out of the Games’ opening ceremony. Hardly outright condemnation, but a symbolic gesture nonetheless. Others have called for a boycott of the Olympics to shed light on China’s occupation of Tibet.

Darfur protests in Washington. Photo: May Tan-Mullins

The call for a boycott is coming from a wide range of groups, including US Senators, Hollywood actors, international journalists, Tibetans in exile, Burmese activists, and Taiwanese political parties. They all use China’s human rights abuses domestically and internationally as the reason and believe a boycott would highlight these and shame China into reform as well as hurting China economically through lost revenue. But would a boycott work?

First, we need to look at the interests and agendas of some of these groups. For some in the US, while the headline is human rights abuses, there is list of other misdemeanours which go beyond human rights and are about US strategic interests (e.g. China’s support of Venezuela’s left-wing President Hugo Chavez, China’s blocking of sanctions against Iran in the UN Security Council, and the fact that China has allegedly been ‘spying’ on the US). And some sections of the Taiwanese Olympic boycott lobby have deeper political roots going back to China’s ‘One China’ policy and its denial of the legitimacy of Taiwan. So, in looking at a potential boycott let’s also look at the geoeconomic and geopolitical motives behind the proponents.

Second, history suggests that Olympic boycotts (in 1956, 1976, 1980 and 1984) haven’t achieved much, and often don’t achieve what they set out to do. If the issue is human rights abuses then how can anyone know that a boycott will lead to democracy in China and more ethical foreign policy? In the Tibet case an international boycott might only strengthen the Chinese peoples’ stance on Tibet, so more international dialogue might be better of the kind advocated by the Dalai Lama. Overseas, China’s role in the world is mediated bilaterally and multilaterally so how would a boycott of a sporting event work alongside these other, more lasting political institutions and relationships? A boycott might be a useful tactical device at a time of international attention on China, but if it is not part of a wider strategy then it’s unlikely to work.

Third, there is also an argument that beyond the high level state agendas and lack of apparent reforms that the Olympics have in fact led to a political and cultural shift in urban China, with a blossoming of civil society organisations that have been critical of the state. So, if we look at the actual political changes, as opposed to those represented in Western media, it may be that China is changing as a result of the Olympics.

Finally, there is the hypocrisy of scapegoating China to serve western agendas. If we are serious about boycotting China then similar public actions need to be taken against all rights abusers and not just China. Once again, singling out China in this manner serves to reinforce the spurious democratic credentials of many western governments. Moreover, the western firms who are heavily involved in the Olympics (e.g. GEC, Visa) are wary about upsetting a lucrative market and so would not support a boycott.

About the author

Giles Mohan is a senior lecturer in development studies. He teaches on the Open University’s development studies programme as well as in geography. Giles’ research examines politics in Africa, particularly ways in which rural communities access the government as well the role of diasporas in national politics.