At a party you find yourself squeezed between two old friends, both scientists. Uncharacteristically they start to bait each other. Facts explode and temperatures rise. One is a climate change denier, the other a believer and they argue over the biochemical cycle, MMTCO2Eq, thermohaline circulation, mixing ratios, flux adjustments and halocarbons. Hot numbers and mathematical equations fly, but to you its gobbledegook on speed.
Both of them look down. 'So what do you believe?'
You may have read some science delivered by the celebrity climate change posse like Flannery and Monbiot, which left you thinking that the best thing you could do for the planet was swallow cyanide and slip off to die under a tree. You may have read the sceptics and felt relief that the status quo would continue and your children had a chance at the good life. You looked at the Garnaut report, saw Al Gore's movie, and have been unable to grow anything colourful in your garden for three years.
You might be suspicious of how the Carbon Emissions Scheme is appearing in convoluted layers over an already questionable economic system. You might wonder at how living simply now seems rather complicated. You may have felt the weather change: down at your place, up at your folks' by the Murray, and you have lived through a few heatwaves.
You have engaged as much as you can and, especially if you're sitting between scientists, honesty demands you admit that white noise appears every time graphs and calculations are shoved in your face. You also might believe that science is another human endeavour, as fallible as we are.
You note that your friends have not asked about facts. They have couched their question in terms of faith.
At the base of the climate change debate lies a rousing giant. A massive question demanding an examination of not only the particles that comprise daily life but also what we believe, how we relate and find meaning in the place we find ourselves, and to explore this issue doesn't require a science degree. The scientific debate has encouraged many to question and rediscover their relationship with the dirt upon which, despite our best efforts to run away to places like the moon, we all stand.
Perhaps we are getting closer to collectively exploring what Judith Wright called a 'poetics of place' where through story telling, for many of us a more accessible medium than scientific facts, our vision expands and we see that the environment is not mere matter given to us to play with as we wish.
The French philosopher, Michel Serres, talks about the motor of human history being driven by wars. We have fought great muddy battles all over the earth's surface, and when one is vanquished, both sides retreat to lick their wounds, turning their back on the equally wounded battleground, muddied and embedded with deadly shrapnel. Serres calls for a Natural Contract, a new way for those under the jurisdiction of western legal systems, to establish something similar, though not as advanced, to an indigenous understanding of place.
He calls for us to recognise that the place on which we fight our wars has as much right to exist and be respected as we have towards one another. He advocates a new contract containing our rights and responsibilities to the earth and most importantly, the inalienable rights of the earth. The Natural Contract may become like the Social Contract: a strange idea we now take for granted.
When the rights of man expanded, slavery came to be viewed in a new light — as a moral abomination. Perhaps our progeny will view us as we regard those who remained silent about slavery. Perhaps they will be abhorred at the immorality of slaying rainforests, lining the planet with carbon and bleaching coral.
When we see slave owners in history books we shake our heads at their moral naiveté, but how would we feel if we knew our descendants might do the very same thing?
From a Natural Contract there is slim hope that the motor of human history will cease to war over the earth as if it didn't exist and enshrine the truth that we all stand on the same dirt and, like us, the dirt is not necessarily indestructible, permanent and omniscient — neither noble savage nor plaything for our pleasure.
I confessed to my friends that I have hedged my bets to the wagon of those who believe in global warming, not only because their scientific explanations have convinced me, but also because if there is any possibility that earth suffers due to my behaviour, I have a responsibility to pull my head in and look at how I live with it.
There is no opting out of the scientific debate. It has to be followed and understood by the layman because power seems to be setting up shop at its heart, but there are many other reasons to live respectfully with our environment, and to remain fixated with one discipline will lead us up a narrow path. The possibility of 'all being rooned' cannot be the sole motivation to live ethically on the earth. Who wants their descendants to hang their heads in shame? Not me.
Bronwyn Lay lives with her family in rural France, over the border from Geneva. She is currently enrolled in a Masters of English Literature at the University of Geneva and is working on her first novel. Previously she worked as a legal aid lawyer in Australia with post-graduate qualifications in political theory.