Ian Jack has been reading Bill McKibben and some others that he, Mr. Jack, has published on the subject of climate change:

The idea of a better future has been replaced by one of a future not as bad as it could be, providing urgent steps are taken; but for more than 20 years (more than 30 years, if the counting starts with Hansen’s address to Congress) the science behind our understanding of climate breakdown was widely dismissed either as an international conspiracy or an inconvenient speculation, or relegated to a problem on a par with McKibben’s “growing trade deficits”.

That rather depends upon who you read on the subject of climate change. We ourselves would avoid the hysterics and go and have a look at the science. But, you know, perhaps we’re funny that way.

That science is easiest understood in the SRES. This is the set of economic models that has underlied all discussions since the early 1990s. In which we are presented with a range of possible futures. Where humanity as a whole becomes perhaps 5 times richer this century by being somewhere between socialist and social democrat. Or up to 11 times richer by being globally capitalist and free market. In that latter case absolute poverty is entirely extinguished as a part of the human experience which is something that we’d describe as a better future.

That lowest flourishing of humanity also leads to high emissions and thus climate change. That glorious enrichment is consistent with low emissions and little climate change. This is not just the science these are the underlying models upon which everything else done by the IPCC, Stern Review and so on is built.

We do think that’s rather a better future.

Who knows, perhaps Mr. Jack should try reading some of the people correct about climate change rather than just those that he himself publishes?