Climate change used as a fig leaf -- to conceal a more challenging issue?

Insights for the Future from the Change of Climate in Copenhagen (Part #7)

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To what extent is it appropriate to understand the climate change debate as a relatively unchallenging issue which in effect distracts attention from a more challenging underlying issue, and a more systemic perspective from which to handle crises -- as variously discussed in:

• United Nations Overpopulation Denial Conference: exploring the underside of climate change (2009)
• Climate Change as a Metaphor of Social Change: systemic implications of emissions, ozone, sunlight, greenhouse and overheating (2008)
• Climate of Change Misrepresented as Climate Change (2008)
• Climate Change and the Elephant in the Living Room: in quest of an endangered species (2008)
• Systemic Crises as Keys to Systemic Remedies: a metaphorical Rosetta Stone for future strategy? (2008)
• Playfully Changing the Prevailing Climate of Opinion: climate change as focal metaphor of effective global governance (2005)

Few commented on the occasion of the Copenhagen event on the population issue:

• Louise Gray. Copenhagen climate summit issues: population growth. The Telegraph, 8 December 2009, to the effect that:

The UN has insisted the issue does not become part of the negotiations at Copenhagen, pointing out that the population will control itself as countries develop, women become better educated and families shrink.

• Tom Levitt. Copenhagen and population growth: the topic politicians won't discuss. Ecologist, 15 September 2009, to the effect that:
  
  The UN's top climate official, UNFCCC executive secretary Yvo de Boer remains reluctant to bring the issue into talks at Copenhagen. 'A lot of people say population pressure is a major driving force behind the increase in emissions, and that's absolutely true but to then say 'OK, that means that we need to have a population policy that reduces emissions,' takes you onto shaky ground morally,' he has said.... The UK government's new chief scientific advisor John Beddington said... that population growth would contribute to a 'perfect storm' by 2030 as demand for food and resources increased [World faces 'perfect storm' of problems by 2030, chief scientist to warn, The Guardian, 18 March 2009].
  
  
• Jack A. Goldstone. The New Population Bomb: the four megatrends that will change the world. Foreign Affairs (Council on Foreign Relations), January/February 2010
  
  
• Paul Ehrlich. US: The population bomb is still ticking. University World News, 13 December 2009
  
  
• Saliem Fakir. Africa: Climate Change and the Population 'Bomb': a debate not to shy away from. AllAfrica.com, 19 November 2009
  
  
• Agence France-Presse. U.N. finally draws link between population bomb and climate change. Cosmos, 19 November 2009
  
  
• Pierre Desrochers. Deconstructing The Population Bomb. Quebecois Libre, 15 September 2009
  
  
• Adam Stein. Defusing The Population Bomb Adam Stein. World Changing, 11 September 2009
  
  
• Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich. The Return of the Population Bomb. Environmental Health News, 14 July 2009
  
  
• Paul R. Ehrlich and Anne H. Ehrlich. The Population Bomb Revisited. The Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development, 2009, 1 (3)
  
  
• Eric Heidenreich. The Latest Population Bomb. American Spectator, 4.2.09
  
  
• Fred Pearce. The Population Bomb: Has It Been Defused? Environment360, 11 August 2008
  
  
• Thomas Robertson. The Population Bomb 40 Years Later: Neo Malthusianism and the International Origins of American Environmentalism.25 July 2008
  
  
• David Nicholson-Lord. Why don't we discuss human population control? Ecologist, 22 September 2006
  
  
• Steven Salmony. Is the Human Population Bomb Exploding NOW? Fragile Ecologies, 22 March 2005

Does the level of denial and avoidance merit recognition as a dangerous form of 'shunning' calling for radically different approaches to debate as discussed in:

• Institutionalized Shunning of Overpopulation Challenge: incommunicability of fundamentally inconvenient truth (2008)
• Overpopulation Debate as a Psychosocial Hazard: development of safety guidelines from handling other hazardous materials (2009)

Is the climate change crisis effectively an engineered crisis, following a pattern of scare politics shared by crises over recent years (Y2K, SARS, BSE/CJD, swine flu, avian flu, foot-and-mouth, WMD, terrorism)? A possible indication of this is concern within the EU regarding the complicity of the WHO in the agenda of the pharmaceutical industry in handling the swine flu pandemic (F. William Engdahl, Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly to Investigate WHO and "Pandemic" Scandal, Global Research, 2009). A related concern, of relevance to future geoengineering proposals, is articulated by Simon Jenkins (Swine flu was as elusive as WMD: the real threat is mad scientist syndrome, The Guardian, 14 January 2010).

Is there an intention to engender a degree of confusion and lack of faith in any conventional authorities such as to justify the use of other means, as variously argued with respect to:

• Emergence of a Global Misleadership Council: misleading as vital to governance of the future? (2007)
• Abuse of Faith in Governance: mystery of the unasked question (2009)
• Geo-engineering Oversight Agency for Thermal Stabilization (2008)

Is framing crises in this way a means of testing the capacity of governance and its many constituencies to frame, through misinformation, disinformation and spin, to habituate people to a mode of crisis-led governance? Is this a new means of providing a "guarantee" of the credibility of governance -- given that "fire-fighters" can only be upheld as "good"?

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