Så nettopp Al Gores Nobelforedrag Det er et herlig øyeblikk ca. 4 minutter inne i talen der kamera går ned i publikum, og man ser Carl I. Hagen sitter og ser pottesur ut, og rett bak ham sitter Erik Solheim og gliser.

the finest minds of our time at work educating the public

As I've said earlier, I've been reading George Monbiot's book Heat. It's a wonderful, informative, no-nonsense book, telling us in no uncertain terms that we have to change the way we live, and that many of the changes are going to be unpleasant and uncomfortable. On the plus side, less people will die from starvation and we might actually still have a functional ecosystem in 100 years. It's not a feel-good message, but it is what we need to hear and what we need to act on.

But even so, it's no wonder the climate-change message isn't getting through when you see the unbearable daftness with which it is handled in the mass media. Look at this YouTube clip of him debating the Heathrow camp with Labour MP Khalid Mahmood. At the end the interviewer says - I swear, this is a direct transcription:

Q: The government's chief scientific officer said that there is no bigger problem than climate change. Presumably you would think the terror threat is as big?

Mahmood: The terror threat is as big, but it's more immediate.

At which point the IPCC all showed up and the following scene took place:

IPCC: Are you crazy? As big? As big my ass.

(they thrash Mahmood and the interviewer with the IPCC report and the Nobel Medal for not knowing what they are talking about. Cries of "less people die of terrorism than all this other stuff, already to start with!", "we're talking global starvation, to begin with!", "and what's all this about a 'discussion' on climate change, there is no discussion on climate change!" and other expletives and insults.)

One wonders first how they sleep at night, second, exactly how ravaged the world would have to be in order for the press to start taking their moral responsibility to inform the public seriously. I'm starting to think more and more of the terrorism threat as a media phenomenon than actual violence. This isn't to say that terrorism isn't dangerous or real. Just that the figure terrorism has come to represent in public discourse as an absolute opposition to our civilisation is wildly disproportionate to its threat. The amount of resources and manpower being spent talking about and thinking about terrorism obscures the real problems killing people around the globe.

"These days what I do is say that 2+2=4"

Paul Krugman is a brilliant economist and writer. His columns in the NY Times are must-reads: always informative, educational and merciless. He is one of those rare pundits who also happens to be (gasp!) well-informed. His last column is on Gore and the Nobel peace prize.

“We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals,” said F.D.R. “We know now that it is bad economics.” These words apply perfectly to climate change. It’s in the interest of most people (and especially their descendants) that somebody do something to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but each individual would like that somebody to be somebody else. Leave it up to the free market, and in a few generations Florida will be underwater.

The solution to such conflicts between self-interest and the common good is to provide individuals with an incentive to do the right thing. In this case, people have to be given a reason to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions, either by requiring that they pay a tax on emissions or by requiring that they buy emission permits, which has pretty much the same effects as an emissions tax. We know that such policies work: the U.S. “cap and trade” system of emission permits on sulfur dioxide has been highly successful at reducing acid rain.

Which is not exactly news, but the more well-informed, rhetorically skilled people say this, the better.

Many economists mention Krugman as a possible winner for the Nobel Prize in economics himself, incidentally.

Anyway, I think I might have mentioned that he also has a wonderful blog where he shares little bits and pieces of interesting information which lead into his columns, or in which he answers questions that arise after his columns have been published. A sort of way of continuing the debate in the backstage area.

Also, there's this video interview of Krugman. At one point he says that he worries about the state of democracy in the US: "What I worry about is that we'll keep the forms, but the reality will just erode. Like the Roman senate kept meeting for a long time after the country had become, in effect, a monarchy." He also talks about how there is no longer non-political truth. He says that most of what he does these days is saying that 2+2 = 4 and getting called an extreme leftist for saying so. Special bonus in the interview: he reveals that he is a science-fiction fan and that a fascination for Isaac Asimov's Foundation series led him into economics.

in which me & Doris Lessing catch a play

Nine years, ten months + change ago, I was on a class trip to London. Ostensibly a trip to experience the glowing, happening centre of Imperial European culture - theatre in particular - it ended up being for all intents and purposes a party/socialising/sightseeing-trip. We had just started the IB a few months earlier, and didn't really know each other that well yet, so we ended up mostly getting drunk alot, going shopping and seeing sights and trying to get to know each other. Seeing the British Museum through a haze of near-hallucinatory hangover was a bizarre and unforgettable experience. The Rosetta Stone, for me = angst, weltschmertz, nausea.

One night between parties we finally went out to catch Ibsen's An Enemy of the People with Ian McKellan (whom you know probably as Gandalf or Magneto). The play was great, as far as I recall, but I was tired and not quite firing on all cylinders. During intermission, I was roaming around in the lobby outside the Laurence Olivier Hall or whatever it was called. As I was heading back from the bar with a soda, I passed a sweet-looking old lady with her hair rolled up in a bun. My English teacher Margaret pointed her out to me and in the sort-of-blasé, but very tense way one whispers "that's the queen" or "that's the prime minister", she whispered "that's Doris Lessing".

The funny thing: that afternoon, I had gone to a mother-huge chain bookstore in downtown London and bought two books as christmas presents for my parents. One was Future Noir: The Making of Blade Runner for my father the noirist, the other was Walking in the Shade, volume II of Lessing's autobiography, which had just come out that summer. What sucked about all this: I had left the book in my room at the hotel. It would have been too cool to just happen to bump into Doris Lessing while catching a play in London on the very day I bought her book and getting her signature. What are the odds of that? I had never met her before, and suddenly I meet her on the same day I bought a book by her.

So anyway, the Nobel Prize in Literature 2007? That's Doris Lessing.

And its about time, too.