I've seen the effects of climate change - and if people won't face up to it, governments must make them

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Tahmima Anam
The Guardian,
Thursday July 3, 2008

Two recent polls attempting to judge the public mood about climate change have revealed contradictory results. Last week's Ipsos Mori poll told us that most people doubt the human causes of climate change. Yesterday's Guardian/ICM poll told a slightly different story, one of a growing concern with climate change, with many people considering it a higher priority than the faltering economy.
The roots of scepticism can be traced to many sources. In this newspaper on Monday, Peter Wilby criticised the media for not doing its part to lend credibility to the argument. Some have pointed the finger at that fateful Channel 4 documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle; others at the sometimes contradictory messages from environmentalists. Whatever the reason, there is no doubt that many people still remain unsure of the causes of climate change, and the seriousness with which we need to tackle it.
The scientists and campaigners have done their best. The IPCC's latest report states that there is a 90% chance that humans are the main cause of climate change. Al Gore has gone around the world with graphs and arresting photographs of the melting Arctic ice, proving that climate change really is happening. And, of course, there is the anecdotal evidence: everyone knows someone who has witnessed an extreme storm, or had their house flooded, or watched from a balcony as the Asian tsunami leapt from the sea.
But if, after all the messages we have received about the perils of ignorance, we remain unconvinced, it must be because of a failure of imagination. To remain in doubt about our own culpability means that we are unable to imagine an era that is dramatically different from our own.
Unfortunately, as I come from Bangladesh, I do not have to envisage the horror of what is to come because climate change has already arrived in Bangladesh. I must simply describe what I see before me: the sight of fresh water turning to salt, leaving the paddy fields yellow and withered; the rivers eroding at lightning speed; the water slowly gnawing away at the land, so that people can point to the sea and say, "When I was a child, our village was over there." In a few weeks, I will be travelling to Bangladesh to stay with families who have had to build their homes on plinths to stop them being washed away. I will return to dry land and write about them, and hope to fire the imagination: to frighten people into believing that this may someday happen to them. I will attempt to perform a feat of wordsmithing that will make people suspend their disbelief once and for all.
But though I have staked much on the power of words, I know that the imagination has its limits. And when the imagination fails, it is the duty of those who govern us to set the rules. They must make us give up our cars and cheap holidays, our lightbulbs and draughty windows. I don't say this easily, because I come from a country that regularly flirts with dictatorship. I know the dangers of a heavy-handed government. But if these two surveys have anything in common, it is in the fact that people want the government to take the lead.
Last week, Gordon Brown revealed his plan for a green revolution - bold and expensive, it will mean a dramatic change in the source of our energy. This is precisely the type of commitment we need. But I hope he will forgive me for being wary: the jet lag from his trip to Saudi Arabia, where he went to beg for lower oil prices, had probably hardly passed. More importantly, his scheme, dependent as it is on private financing, relies on companies taking their own decisions on whether or not to invest in renewables.
The time has passed for subsidies and grants. The time has passed for our leaders to treat us like clients - advertising, cajoling, giving incentives and subsidies. It is time now for a leadership that does not attend to popularity ratings or re-election percentages. Climate change is happening. We, and the generations before us, have caused it. It should not matter whether we believe it or not.
· Last week I attended my friend Shelly's baby shower. In the course of talking about her plans for the birth (drugs, drugs, drugs), she told me she had signed up for a 10-week "perineal re-education" course straight after having the baby. Shelly lives in France, and according to the French, it is imperative to retrain one's birth-giving muscles. It is part of the national healthcare, she said.
I had just been reading about how NHS nurses were being persuaded to smile more so, feeling irrationally jealous, I asked her what this re-education would consist of. A woman is going to come to her house to massage her nether regions and get her to do a series of exercises to rebuild her pelvic floor muscles. Otherwise, she tells me sagely, everything is going to sink. Incontinence will follow. By now I am slack-jawed.
Then Shelly's sister, who lives in Geneva, tells us that whatever the French do, the Swiss do better. After the birth of her son, her perineal re-education included a machine to measure the strength of her pelvic floor muscles. She was told to exercise at home, and given regular progress reports. Her programme took just five weeks, half the time it will take Shelly. Either way, I thought, this must have something to do with why French women look disgustingly chic at any age - an unsqueamish response, on all fronts, to the humiliations of ageing.
· This week Tahmima read David Singh Grewal's Network Power: "A groundbreaking book that tackles globalisation's central conundrum: its ability to simultaneously enable and limit our freedoms." She watched Kung Fu Panda: "The visual effects were impressive - clearly borrowed from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. And it was hilarious."