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Science does not proceed on the basis of consensus. The history of science is full of cases where a minority (or even single individuals) turn out to be right and the majority turns out to be wrong.  The German scientist, Wegener, provides a Twentieth Century example, through the response of the scientific community to his notion of continental drift. For some sixty years the theory was derided by the majority of the geophysical community and papers supporting it were declined for publication by leading journals. Minorities, particularly, have a problem where there are strong ideological pressures towards conformity. In these cases, some fortitude is required to maintain what is seen to be a deviant or heretical view. Apart from the obvious example of Galileo the situation of biological scientists in the Soviet Union, subjected to the dominant (and erroneous) dogma of Lysenko about the inheritability of acquired characteristics, might be cited.

In the contemporary world of public financing of intellectual activity, there are also more subtle pressures towards conformity. One of the many baleful consequences of directed or ‘performance’-based research funding is the extent to which it privileges the prejudices and paradigms of those holding power in the system at any time. The result is to favour for research support and publication those who follow the party-line. This characteristic, and the dominating connection between this activity and promotion, ensures the production of vast quantities of mediocre and repetitive material in our universities and like establishments and discourages the long-term and more speculative activity that used to be their academic glory. It is to the continuing shame of all the New Zealand universities that this is so. In this connection it is noteworthy that in the UK the panels making these systemic judgements about academic worth have now been instructed to destroy all the notes on which the judgements were made.

All this has important implications for our contemporary concerns about climate change and about what our response ought to be to claims that a major crisis is looming and, as a consequence, certain social, political and economic steps should be taken. As is well-known, there is serious and persistent scepticism in regard to both the magnitude and the direction of climate change and the degree to which it may be said to be anthropogenic. This might be a largely ‘academic’ question were it not for the fact that measures of taxation and regulation are proposed that have the potential to cause significant harm to the economic well-being of New Zealand. Unlike the Wegener case, the consequence of suppressing the deviant view may not be simply that we remain in ignorance. It may be that we embark on policies that are likely to be very damaging to us and only marginally advantageous (if at all) to the wider global community. 

With the hindsight of history, it is hard to believe that the diplomats and various experts who came together in Rio (in 1992) and, again, in Kyoto (in 1997), would have agreed to a global mitigation plan under which only a quarter of the world’s states had any obligations to do anything, had they realised how the economies of India and China, and other Asian states, would grow in the years that followed. The argument that developed states achieved their relative prosperity without any restraints on their greenhouse emissions and that it would thus be wrong to impose any restraints on those still developing, may have seemed appealing at the time (and may still seem appealing to some) but if there is anything in the claim of climate crisis to come it is patently too simplistic.  And then, of course, there is the fact that, by all present signs, many of the states that have accepted commitments will (in varying degrees) fail to meet them.  Germany provides an interesting example here, since apart from the general slippage characteristic of European states, it is intending to make its problem infinitely worse by continuing with a minority-driven phase-out of its nuclear generation capacity.  Pathetically, the German government is intending to ask Brussels for a dispensation in regard to its Kyoto targets on this account.

Given that the world will very likely continue to increase its production of greenhouse gases (and in the light of the earlier-expressed doubts about the causation and extent of any climate change) there should surely be some thorough-going review of the facts before New Zealand, to its very considerable detriment, elects to fulfil what it sees as its Kyoto commitments. There is a need for a substantial and wide-ranging debate and this must surely mean that at least one of the political parties contesting the up-coming election must offer an alternative to the prevailing un-wisdom on climate. Most desirably, this should be the National Party. The central issues are very consistent with what National has stood for but the leadership of the Party is very clearly intent on offering only what it perceives to be consensus policies and is unlikely to make a stand on principle when expediency is doing so well. 

This, really, only leaves ACT. For them, to give New Zealand voters a clear policy choice at the election later this year could be seen as not only a moral obligation but also a political opportunity; an opportunity for national second thoughts. And it is surely consistent with core principles. In the light of the inevitable negative impact of the proposed Kyoto changes, this could be welcomed by a significant proportion of the electorate. To be sure, there may be some risk in such a policy to the main-stream support which, through the election of Rodney Hide in Epsom has ensured the Party’s place in Parliament. On the other hand, there may be little long-term virtue in maintaining a two-member party. This might be an opportunity to go for broke and offer a radically different approach to what is clearly shaping to be a major political issue. This, after all, is what Party-founder, Roger Douglas, offered in a different context, nearly a quarter of a century ago.

If ACT took up this challenge, it would offer an explicit commitment to oppose any legislation or regulatory measure, bearing on supposed climate change, until the evidence for such change and its anthropogenic character had been the subject of a formal commission of inquiry. This inquiry would also examine the likely social and economic implications for New Zealand of the various proposed mitigation measures.  In relation to this latter point, it may be that even if we satisfied ourselves that the scientific data pointed (with whatever degree of certainty) to undesirable change, caused by human activity, we still might conclude that we should not proceed with measures now proposed on the grounds of the damage that these will cause to New Zealand interests, both collective and individual.

The principle here is a familiar one. In the context of international relations, governments have a particular responsibility to protect the interests of their own citizens. Particularly, they may not to be self-sacrificing in respect of those interests, so that even if it were clear that the climate-mitigation measures envisaged for New Zealand would benefit humanity as a whole (another matter on which the proposed commission would be asked to report) it is not clear that it would justify the harms likely to be inflicted locally. Of course, individual citizens may be self-sacrificing with their own interests. In the present context, this would mean that they could volunteer to pay (say) carbon charges in relation to their own fossil-fuel usages or make other changes in their life-style and behaviour. It is just that the government would not impose such things upon them.

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