The dominant political narratives are utterly disengaged from reality. This isn't novel, it has perhaps always been so, but it may be that the consequences of such behavior are becoming graver.

. . . the Group of 8 leaders decreed last month that the planet’s average temperature shall not rise more than 2 degrees Fahrenheit above today’s level. But what if Mother Earth didn’t get the memo? How do we stay cool in the future? Two options:

Plan A. Keep talking about the weather. This has been the preferred approach for the past two decades in Western Europe, where leaders like to promise one another that they will keep the globe cool by drastically reducing carbon emissions. Then, when their countries’ emissions keep rising anyway, they convene to make new promises and swear that they really, really mean it this time.

Plan B. Do something about the weather. Originally called geoengineering, this approach used to be dismissed as science fiction fantasies: cooling the planet with sun-blocking particles or shades; tinkering with clouds to make them more reflective; removing vast quantities of carbon from the atmosphere.

Really Really?

Speaking in Korea at the World Environment Forum 2009 UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon has given a speech that is remarkable for its over-the-top rhetoric and also its disconnect from anything resembling reality. He starts with an apocalyptic warning:

If we fail to act, climate change will intensify droughts, floods and other natural disasters.

Water shortages will affect hundreds of millions of people. Malnutrition will engulf large parts of the developing world. Tensions will worsen. Social unrest – even violence – could follow.

The damage to national economies will be enormous. The human suffering will be incalculable.

Moon tells us that time is short:

We have just four months. Four months to secure the future of our planet.

He also tells us that all the solutions are in hand:

What is needed is the political will. We have the capacity. We have finance. We have the technology. The largest lacking is political will.

He says that we are being guided by a non-human power, science:

When the leaders of the G-8 agreed in July to keep the global temperature increase within two degrees centigrade by the year 2050, that was welcomed and I welcome that statement.

But I also said again, it was not enough.

But leaders have agreed to cut green house gas emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. That is welcomed again. But that must be accompanied by the ambitious mid-term target by 2020 as science tells us to do.

This speech is wrong at just about every level. . .

If Moon's rhetoric is even noted in the mainstream climate debate it will be applauded, and certainly not critiqued. Is it any wonder that climate policy is such an utter mess?

Climate rhetoric provides many examples of political derangement syndrome, but it's pervasive in all current issues. The recent spate of posts about agricultural fantasies deal with the same subject. Somehow the idea that reality can be replaced by political will escapes normal and natural sensibility. Few people jump off of cliffs in the belief that they can fly since that is exceedingly unlikely, but a group of people can apparently convince one another that up is down and pigs can fly if only they all wish it so.