Climate Change

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From Denial to Delay

Michael E Mann is one of the scientist who came up with the hockey stick graph which graphically displayed the increase in the earths temperature over the past century and in doing so sparked a rapid increase in the political temperature around the causes of that increase. He has personally felt the flames of the debate he helped trigger as the bots, trolls and pseudo academic mouthpieces, funded by those with a vested interest in fossil fuels, have challenged and denigrated his professional integrity, threatened his livelihood and indeed his life.

Given this, you can understand he is something of an impassioned advocate on the climate change crisis facing the world. His passion does not overwhelm his intellect however. He is profoundly committed to the scientific method embracing evidence based theories, peer review, replicability and open debate. His front line position in the debates over the reality of climate change has provided him with some unique insights into how that debate has been conducted by those who are not so keen on evidence and often prefer “alternative facts”.

His latest book”The New Climate War” is an interesting insight into the lessons he has learned and into how the nature of the debate has evolved over time. He believes the outright denial strategy is now very much a minority sport played on the fringes of society in the realms of places like the world of QAnon.

However, this does not mean those with enormous wealth and power invested in fossil fuel have given up. Denial has given way to deflection. Campaigns designed “…to divert attention from – and dampen enthusiasm for – calls for regulatory reform to reign in bad industry behaviour…” A key part of this strategy is to focus the debate on the role of individual as opposed to collective, government sponsored action.

To support this approach sophisticated social media campaigns focus on the individual’s responsibility for climate change and work to sow division within the groups advocating state action. Trying to undermine the credibility of leaders focusing on the “hypocrisy”of those flying around the world to attend conferences about the impact of international travel on C02 emissions.

The aim is to shift blame for the crisis to the level of the individual consumer, if they did not travel, eat meat, heat their homes excessively, demand infinite amounts of consumer goods, demand cheap food etc we would not be in the mess we are in.

Mann dissects the various deflection tactics and calls on fellow campaigners to avoid being drawn into divisions and debates which are promoted to undermine the effectiveness of collective actions. He considers a whole series of proffered non-solution solutions.

Geo engineering with sea algal blooms, and cloud seeding to counteract the effect to C02 warming. The use of bridge fuels like “clean coal” to manage the move away from the worse dirty coal. Various carbon capture strategies to suck the C02 out of the atmosphere. Variously these solutions rely on unproven technology and the hope it will emerge over the next few years and the risks they generate not proving more catastrophic than the climate based risks they allegedly solve.

The other strategy is that which focuses on adaptation and resilience. This is often underpinned by another deflective narrative, that of the doomsayers. The claims that things have already got beyond the point of no return or that the real politic of corporate vested interests or the complacency of the general public mean that action will not be taken until it is too late. Given this we need to prepare to live in a new, more hostile environment. One where food scarcity, coastal inundation, super storms, droughts and floods promote global migrations and international strife.

Against this Mann calls for balance. Recognition of the seriousness of the current situation but also recognising the progress that has been and continues to be made in terms of sources of renewable energy, changing farming practices, fossil fuel divestment campaigns and much more. Not least a growing popular awareness of the urgency of climate change and the political response to that. There remains much to be done but it is in our hands to change things and hold the increase in temperature to below 2 degrees centigrade of its pre industrial average.

Whilst throughout the book Mann warns of the divide and rule tactics of the opposition he is not averse to making clear the errors his colleagues are falling into. He certainly does not think the linking of climate change and the radical reform or overthrow of capitalism is helpful. He takes issue with those like Naomi Klein and Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who have little faith in the role the market might play in addressing the use of fossil fuel via carbon pricing.

Mann on the contrary sees industry and market based solutions, including subsidising renewable energy sources and carbon pricing, as being helpful aides to bring about real change. He believes, when the market is properly structured it will naturally channel investment into new green investment bringing the innovation and entrepreneurship of the private sector to the battle.

In arguing climate change is a battle which requires a coalition of all the talents, Mann is probably right. The solutions of the current crisis do not lie in the hands of the captains of industry alone, not in the hands of the political elites. Rather, there has to be a partnership forged around a common aim of saving the planet. A partnership in which the wider population also needs to be actively engaged.

No one should be under any illusion about how difficult it will be to forge that alliance. It would be wrong to accuse Mann of that. The procrastinators, the delayers, the doomsayers generously funded and aided by corporate and state promoters will not dissolve in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence. The battle to overcome their misinformation and diversions will have to be relentless and multi faceted.

Whilst occasionally Mann seems to be a little too critical of those who are essentially on his side, but don’t sign up to all the elements of his battle plan, you have to respect someone who has been basically on the front line for the whole of his professional career.

The book is clear, informative and motivating. It also communicates an authentic passion to prevent the amazing planet we live on being turned into a far less beautiful and much less habitable home. Very much worth a read.

The New Climate War: the fight to take back our planet. Michael E Mann, Scribe Publications, 2021.

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Is Oil Being Removed from the Wheels of Change?

For the past 40 years the oil industry has been engaged in what the tobacco industry had been engaged in before it. The manufacture of doubt.

Eventually, the scientific evidence overwhelmed the spurious arguments and pseudo science generously sponsored by tobacco companies. They quietly refocussed in parts of the world where less informed consumers could continue to provide them profits through their deaths.

Doubt for the oil industry, however, was, in many ways, an easier sell. Firstly, the link between harm and product was less tangible. People using an enormous amount of oil did not die from using it. Second, the damage it did was to one of the most complex systems in the world, climate, so demonstrating the link was open to far more challenge. Third, the essential benefits of using it were manifest, not least in the internal combustion engine and the freedom it provided.

In addition to this the scale of the industry was and remains daunting. The world uses approximately 100m barrels of oil per day. The current price of oil is around $50 per barrel. This means oil sales every day are worth about $5bn, or $1.8trn per annum. This compares to the the roughly $800bn per annum for the tobacco industry.

All this means there are enormous levels of vested interest in oil production and comparable levels of resource to be applied to defend it. The application of the interest and resource to political influencing has been documented by many.

Jane Meyer notably charts the relationship between the “Dark Money” of oil wealth and direct political lobbying, and the more insidious funding of law makers supportive of the industry with enormous campaign donations via the Political Action Committee (PAC) system in the United States.

In America both Democrats and Republicans were targets of the oil industry but it certainly found a more welcome and eager advocate in the GOP. The logical conclusion of which was a president who was a climate change denier, withdrew from the Paris Climate Accord, downgraded the Environmental Protection Agency and opened federal lands to carbon fuel explorations.

However, the growing traction of public concern is starting to impact the oil industry and other fossil fuel companies. It is now clear major changes needed, like the adoption of electric cars, are beginning to become real.

Uncertainty is the greatest fear of all major industries as has been made clear by the Brexit debacle in the UK where most businesses got to the point where they did not care whether we were “in” or “out” as long as it was clearly one thing or the other.

This craving for certainty partly explains the support for Joe Biden’s clear statements about climate change and the inevitable consequences for the motor industry from the industry itself. When they know there is a date for the abandonment of the internal combustion engine they can develop a strategy to achieve this. For all businesses, once the writing is on the wall, the job of the CEO is to read it.

Similarly, savvy investors can hear the change in the music and are starting to evaluate their strategies accordingly. Stranded assets, like oil that cannot be extracted if we are to avoid run away global warming, flash red light risk. What are the oil companies doing about it? How credible are the strategies?

Black Rock, one of the world’s largest asset manager’s with some $8.6trn of assets in management, has made clear it sees climate change as “investment risk”. Its Chairman and CEO Larry Fink states future investment decisions will be guided by how those seeking cash can demonstrate their business models are compatible with net zero emissions by 2050.

Much as the response of Boris Johnson to the pandemic has come to be seen as belated and lacking urgency at a critical time, so also, in the future, the response of the fossil fuel industry may come to be seen in a similar light. The timescales may be different, 12 months and 30 years, however so is the scale of change needed.

According to Bill McKibben’s book “Falter”, it was the oil industry itself which first identified burning fossil fuels as leading to changes in global climate back in 1977. After a brief period of transparency and cooperation, vested interest determined a revised approach of secrecy and “doubt manufacture” which has lasted for the best part of 40 years.

However, as scientific evidence piles up, real world weather starts to illustrate climate challenge and impacted populations begin to campaign the industry can see the “manufacturing of doubt” strategy has run its course. Having flipped once on the reality of climate change and it is not inconceivable, in fact, it is highly likely, the industry will flip again. Indeed there are all sorts of signs the change is happening.

As it happens the industry will no longer wish to support politicians who are swimming against the tide of history and creating uncertainty. They will want to develop new strategies within a clear national policy framework. Instead of impeding change to net zero they may well become powerful advocates for it. Ironically, this may be a rare case where oil lubricates a process more by its absence than its presence.

All of this adds to the current woes of the GOP in the United States. If the above has any relation to reality their wagon is firmly hitched to the wrong team. The “Dark Money” which has been flowing into their coffers may start to dry up as the wells are capped. What is more this may happen much quicker than they anticipate. We can live in hope!

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The EU must overhaul its farming policy to save the Green Deal – Célia Nyssens

European decision-makers are entering the final sprint of reform of the CAP. Their choices will make or break the European Green Deal.

Source: The EU must overhaul its farming policy to save the Green Deal – Célia Nyssens

 

Northern Comment – clearly the CAP does not fit and time is not on our side in relation to food equality and biodiversity. The CAP is over a third of the European budget at 37%. This is substantially down from the 70%+ of the 1980’s. More a welfare policy for farmers it is badly targetted in a context where 80% of farmland in the EU is owned by 20% of farmers. The majority of the money going to richer farmers including a substantial amount to the British aristocracy. Whether we are in or out of the EU we have a vested interest in how this major player structures its relationship to a key part of the environment.

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Losing Earth

Reading this book you feel the United Nations ought to identify the crime of humanicide and turn to the book for its first list of suspects. It provides an account of how the issue of anthropocentric climate change was brought to the attention of politicians in the decade from spring 1979 to November 1989. What is shocking is the fact that the basic science was clear right from the start of the period. Indeed governments and the fossil fuel industry had been doing research into the issue for some considerable time before that and had come to the conclusion that fossil fuels were set to have a significant impact on climate if they continued to be burned at the rate they were.

At the start of the period the engagement of the coal, oil, motor and other industries seemed to be a genuine search for the truth. The problem was once they found it. They didn’t like it.

It tells a tale of how a few determined individuals, mainly scientists and environmentalists worked diligently to inform and then push to action politicians and policy makers. It charts the ups and downs of a process where two steps forward in scientific confirmation were pushed one step back, sometimes three steps, by doubt sowing special interests.

One of the three step back was the year Ronald Reagan was elected President. On taking office he increased coal production on Federal land, deregulated surface coal mining and appointed Anne Gorsuch as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. An “anti regulation zealot” she cut the Departments staff and budget by 25%. The parallels with the actions of the current President of the United States are remarkable.

Whilst the basic science and the trajectory of change was clear, the evidence of change in actual weather patterns, which voters could see, was not there in the early 1980’s. The scientists were aware this would not become apparent for “ten or twenty years” however they were also aware that if action was not taken immediately it would require far more dramatic change later, leave a legacy of negative environmental effects and in the worst case scenario simply be too late.

The book has numerous examples of issues which dogged the debate about climate change at the time and have continued to do so through the 1990’s, the 2000’s and 2010’s. In an early meeting of experts convened to provide policy proposals a public health scholar called Annemarie Crocetti made the following point, “I have noticed that very often when we as scientists are cautious in our statements, everybody else misses the point, because they don’t understand our qualifications.” This is a problem which the scientific community are still grappling with. The carefully calibrated language of IPCC reports does not chime with the existential nature of the threat they are reporting nor does it communicate the urgency of the issue they believe exists.

Another issue was how scientific results were spun to avoid what was regarded as precipitate action. The Changing Climate Report mentioned above was published in October 1983. Its preface made clear that action was required immediately, before all the detail could be confirmed with certainty as by then it would be too late. This is not how the Report was presented at the launch press conference. Its authors, the very people that had written the stark warning argued the opposite, no need for urgent action. The accompanying press release confirmed the no action needed story and of course this is what the press picked up. How many journalists read 496 page reports? Quite why a group of scientists provided a gloss which contradicted the findings of their report is not clear.

A rather sinister and worrying answer may be the direct intervention of the White House in the science. James Hansen of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies was one of the scientists who had been working to convince politicians of the importance of CO² emissions throughout the 1980’s. In 1989 he was asked to provide evidence to a Congressional Committee chaired by one Albert Gore.  As a public employee he had to submit his evidence to the Office of Management and Budget for review prior to publication at the Committee. When his paper came back it had been amended to change significantly the strength of the conclusions. 

Hanson wrote to Congressman Gore and explained what had happened. He then went to the Committee and read the paper as censored by the Bush administration. Al Gore then questioned him about contradictions in the paper. Through a series of questions and answers the attempted censorship was revealed. At one point Hanson explained that he appreciated the need for the White House to review the policy statements of employees but went on to say, “…my only objection is being forced to alter the science.”

I certainly had not appreciated quite how well settled the science was as far back as the early 1970’s. Reading this book  and seeing how the denigration of experts, “alternative facts”, “fake news”, doubt funding were all used to undermine science back then. If it was a scandal then, how much more so now, 30 years later, when every prediction made in the early 1970’s has only been proved wrong in being too optimistic.

It would be wrong to say that political elites around the world have done nothing on climate change over the past 40 years.There has been real progress in alternative energy development and greater fuel efficiency. There has also been a whole lot of lip service about the rights of future generations. However, there is an enormous gap between ambition and reality. There is also an enormous lack of real political leadership.

When we consider the amount of political energy and time given to Brexit over the past 3 years to secure Britain’s future inside or outside of Europe you might have thought a similar level of effort would be worth expending on humanities future inside or outside of planet Earth.

If the 1980’s was the decade we could have stopped Climate Change we now face the decade where we may have to mitigate the devastation it will inevitably wreak. If we stopped all CO²e emissions tomorrow climate change would continue for centuries to come however its impacts would be significantly less than if we fail to act. Whereas change commenced in the 1980’s might have been a very inconvenient process we now face a quantum difference in the scale of the challenge. It needs to be a much more abrupt, radical and consequently painful process. A process which will involve adaptation to problems which are already inevitable. And a process which will require dramatic and profound changes to our behaviour to prevent compounding problems which may make the world effectively uninhabitable.

Those purveyors of doubt in the 1980’s have much to answer for. However, with the scale of scientific consensus that has built up over the intervening years with every fresh piece of evidence confirming the basic thesis it is inexcusable for anyone, much less political leaders, to deny the existence of the problem. Everyday their culpability grows.

It is time that the International Criminal Court started to arraign those guilty of recklessly committing actions likely to result in the crime of humanicide. Call Donald Trump, Leader of the United Fossil Fuel Purveyors of Doubt.

 

“The Decade We Could Have Stopped Climate Change”: Losing Earth. Nathaniel Rich, Picador, 2019.