I’ve never been that interested in natural disasters. I’m not entirely lacking in compassion, but it tends to be directed towards the victims of human evil or stupidity – news of people dying or injured as a result of terrorist attacks or at the hands of murderous fascist regimes affects me much more than a similar number dying in an earthquake or floods or even a tsunami.
I suspect that’s because when human beings are the cause of suffering, there’s a possibility that the individuals or governments responsible can ultimately be captured or toppled. Anthropogenic suffering satisfies our deep human needs for apportioning blame and believing that retribution will follow.
Natural disasters are a different matter, because there’s rarely anyone to blame, or any very obvious way of stopping them from happening all over again. I’m all for aid being poured in (preferably from states which have some meaningful ties to the affected region – i.e. they’re right next door to them, or they’re co-religionists, or they have some shared colonial history). I’m pleased to see lives being saved and suffering relieved, and I’m particularly cheered to hear of steps being taken to ensure that the authorities will be better prepared the next time a similar disaster occurs (because it undoubtedly will – Nature can be a right cow).
But I (and, I suspect, many other TV viewers - but most people won’t admit to it) soon weary of endless footage of rushing water with bits of houses and shacks and dead cows bobbing along in it, and shanty towns, and distressed parents clutching crying children, and sodden, abandoned teddy bears. After a few days, this becomes a sort of disaster pornography. It’s news to start with, but then it turns into a macabre form of entertainment for people who like that sort of thing.
Now, if psychopathic terrorists or some blood-crazed despot were to blame, the hunt for justice would keep the story alive, offering, as it does, the promise of a satisfying conclusion - i.e. some horrible bastards swinging at the end of a rope. But, let’s face it, it’s hard to stay interested in what happens to people we don’t know in a country which we’ve never visited, many of whose inhabitants seem to hate Westerners like us.
But TV News hates to let go a story, especially one that that will already have cost a fortune to cover, and in the middle of the Silly Season as well. And so, rapidly, the game becomes to fill the guilt vacuum by apportioning blame. Aid isn’t getting to the victims fast enough! The authorities were totally unprepared for a predictable disaster! The last aid tranche got spent prosecuting some daft civil war or on developing nuclear weapons! Western countries aren’t stumping up enough cash (yesterday’s Big Story)! It’s all basically America’s fault (every day’s Big Story)!
And when the usual suspects have been duffed up in a series of brutal interrogations, there’s the absolutely inevitable point in the wake of every natural disaster that the Western media has been waiting for all along: the moment when, for the first time, an “independent” climate “expert” – i.e. a scientist or pseudo-scientist whose salary relies on whole-hearted adherence to the myth of global warming – is wheeled into a TV studio in London or New York to explain, gleefully, but in slightly coded language (because he or she knows there isn’t a shred of convincing evidence to support the tendentious rubbish they’re spouting), that this flood, earthquake, drought or tsunami could very well be the result of CLIMATE CHANGE. Of course, it’s a short hop from “could” to “is” and in no time at all it’s my fault and your fault, and – generally - the fault of every lard-arsed, gas-guzzling Westerner who doesn’t read the Guardian or drive a Prius, that poor people are suffering.
Of course, the best protection poor countries could have against the worst effects of natural disasters would be better housing designed to cope with Nature’s scary moods, better infrastructure so that help has a chance of reaching victims, and more reliable methods of producing and delivering the necessities of modern life – electricity and fresh water, for a start. But, apart from sensible, competent governments – in short supply in most parts of the globe – the fundamentals that could mitigate suffering in particularly vulnerable areas rely on economic growth, which tends to require lots of carbon emissions and nuclear power, which those who suck greedily at the AGW-funding teat abhor.
When the AGW sponge has been wrung dry, it’s God’s turn to be pulled in for questioning, usually represented by his jolly clever but utterly ineffectual brief, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who is snarlingly asked just what the hell God thinks He’s playing at, causing all this suffering. Hasn’t the time come for Him to resign? (Mind you, now that we’re all supposed to be Pantheists, I’m not sure why they don’t get some tree-hugger on to ask why lovely, cuddly, wise Gaia is suddenly acting as if she’s got a cosmic attack of PMT – but, then again, that, of course, would be our fault for making her angry.)
It’s time TV News people - in fact, most of the Media - grasped a simple fact: there isn’t always someone to blame for human suffering.
No comments:
Post a Comment