CLIMATE CHANGE AND THE ELEPHANT IN THE LIVING ROOM

COMMENTARY ARCHIVES, 29 Oct 2008

Anthony Judge

Quest of an Endangered Species

Introduction

The debate on climate change has offered many occasions for reference to the proverbial "elephant in the living room". Climate change itself has been seen in this way as an unmentionable feature in a context of efforts to ensure "business as usual". Indicative examples include:

·    discussion of the biased coverage of the BBC by John Vidal (The BBC can’t win on climate change, The Guardian, 10 July 2007)

·    discussion with regard to understanding of the issues by children in the ProgressiveKid (The Climate Change Elephant, 24 March 2008)

Now that "climate change" has become an acceptable topic of discourse, the concern in what follows is the identification of any elephants in the living room with respect to climate change discourse — namely topics that are implicitly recognized but cannot be formally acknowledged. The expression helpfully illustrates the possible dimensions of the challenge of overpopulation — that it is so easy to ignore in common discourse. The argument builds on a detailed earlier study (Institutionalized Shunning of Overpopulation Challenge: incommunicability of fundamentally inconvenient truth, 2008).

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