Don't worry (about climate change), be happy

Do we detect a trace of Dick Cheney in Lord Drayson?

While the Science and Innovation Minister lacks the former US Vice President’s trademark sneer and air of menace, it seems Lord Drayson too believes that, despite the threat of climate change, our current lifestyle is “non-negotiable,” and that green activists need to stop making people feel bad.

(For those who might have forgotten, Cheney famously said after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, that, “The American way of life is not negotiable.” President Bush the senior also said the same thing during an Earth Summit in 1992.)

“I think we have a danger of characterising the challenge of climate change as something pretty downbeat and, of course it’s very worrying, but I believe we should be more optimistic about the human race’s capacity to meet that challenge,” Lord Drayson told The Times during the Cheltenham Science Festival. “And it’s about inspiring people and motivating them to think about the solutions, where we can deliver the changes we need to make but to do so within the society, the quality of life, the benefits from the growth that we’ve enjoyed over the last hundred, 200 years, and not see responding to climate change as, really, a series of telling people that they can no longer do things which they enjoy and have got used to.”

He continued, “I don’t believe that that really will work. I do believe that science, technology, engineering has the potential to develop solutions which can do both, but I think we can we can do a better effort in communicating that.”

Hmmm, any thoughts, readers? Can we really have our cake and manage climate change too? Let us know what you think.