‘Canute Syndrome’ – the medical term for climate change denial

'Canute syndrome' - a belief you can go against nature

As the ice at the arctic diminishes signalling a potential acceleration of the effects of climate change we have to wonder about the welfare of the Climate Change deniers. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence they still cling to the deluded notion that it is somehow a hoax or even worse a conspiracy. The ‘conspiracy’ usually goes along the lines of global warming being invented by the liberal left to impoverish the economy except for their buddies in the green energy sector. So what to do about these deluded desperate deniers while the evidence against their thesis is all but lapping at their feet? Well if they persist in their beliefs against the weight of scientific evidence we have to jump to one of two conclusions. You could, like them, be a conspiracy theorist and say that they’re only taking this position because they have mates working for big energy companies and huge corporations who have profits as their principal amoral motive and that they couldn’t give a flying frack about the future of the ecosystem. Now I’m not by nature a conspiracy theorist (even though I do find them really interesting). UFO’s being hidden by the US, 9/11 being planned by the White House and fake moon landings are all concepts which fascinate me even though they are complete and utter bollocks. So if I don’t believe that climate change denial is just concocted drivel to protect vested interests then it must be an illness of some sort. Now a medical condition is something which we should react to sympathetically. We can’t go around ridiculing people who are ill. I mean what sort of bleeding heart, tree hugging, green liberal are you if you go around behaving like that? So from now on it is help and treatment that need to be order of the day for your Nigel Lawson’s and David Bellamy’s.

The real hardcore sufferers though are those in the extreme state of ‘climate change denial denial’ In this manifestation of the condition sufferers deny they don’t believe in climate change but their actions give them away. They cut feed in tariff subsidies to decimate the solar industry, they cut investment in renewable energy projects and champion fracking as a new energy source and call for more gas turbines and a third runway at Heathrow. Would they do this if they really believed in the devastating impact of climate change? Of course not. Crazy as it may seem our own government are sufferers of what I am now calling ‘Canute Syndrome’. King Canute (sometimes spelt ‘Cnut’) is of course the English and Norwegian King who tried to send back the incoming waves from his throne by a beach in Hampshire and got his feet soggy. I fear there are quite a few ‘Cnut’s’ in the cabinet and even more since the reshuffle. Actually Canute is supposed to have been demonstrating his humility before nature and God to his courtiers when he got his feet wet. This is a humility before nature that our current politicians need to demonstrate by their actions or perhaps they should give up their responsibilities and take the treatment they so obviously need in both their best interests and that of the wider planet.