Tag: climate

It’s going to be all right?

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Climate Change

So we had the Paris climate accord and everything is going to be all right? Unlikely. Nothing is binding and business goes on as usual, with exceptionally low oil prices.

My_village
‘My Village’ in Bangladesh

Scientific voices are increasingly strident about the dangers. Have we actually already reached a tipping point? We do not know. In one recent piece of research, former top NASA scientist  James Hansen and 18 co-authors suggest that current climate models grossly underestimate the effects of climate change on ocean currents. It seems that ice sheets may melt much faster than current models have anticipated – leading to much faster rise in sea levels than currently predicted. And storms could become much more severe that we have experienced so far, resulting in unimaginable tsunamis.

In the recent ‘Network Review’ of the Scientific & Medical Network, David Lorimer reviews the book ‘Paris and the Survival of Civilisation’ by David Ray Griffin, retired American professor of philosophy of religion and theology. Griffin, a meticulous scholar, analyses the current situation. Lorimer’s review gives a good overview, which you can read if you join the network.

Here’s my 3 point summary:

  1. There is already clear evidence of disruption caused by climate change in the increasing incidence of extreme weather events and related political problems, such as Syria, which are leading to increasing refugees and terrorism. This can only accelerate with current emission trends.
  2. There has been a massive collective failure of media and politicians across the world to respond to the challenge, encouraged by fossil fuel interests funding climate denial and a mindset dominated by the need for short term economic growth in a system that is clearly failing us.
  3. 80% of known fossil fuel reserves would need to stay in the ground to avoid catastrophe, yet governments continue to subsidise fossil fuels when in fact the rapid transition to ‘mostly renewables’ is the only real viable option.

In the above, I’ve just picked out a couple of examples of the voices calling for sanity. There are many.

What is really needed is a clear vision of a sustainable future with renewable energies, such as that being pioneered by Elon Musk and Tesla, and a worldwide programme to manage the transition. And then a sense of urgency, that was not evident in the conclusions from Paris.

Minimal first steps would be removal of all carbon subsidies and their transfer to renewables, and immediate carbon taxes to establish the funds needed to fight the consequences. Then at least we’d know our leaders were taking it seriously.

The economic/banking system also needs some sort of overhaul, so that it will support the transition and not be a continuous obstacle.

Will it happen? Not today. A sea change in the cultural and economic climate is needed. Every mind changed will help. Every piece of research, personal interaction, tweet, post and book will help. Every vote for right thinking politicians will help, in the democracies. Every choice to reduce personal carbon emissions will help.

We have to believe that collectively we can act in time.

The danger is that we get bogged down in fighting the symptoms, such as flooding, wildfires, water shortages, refugees and terrorism – and forget about the real problem that will eventually overwhelm many or all of us, or our children and grandchildren.

Picture of ‘My village’ By Almunimsajib2014,
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36054289

 

 

Mother Nature Bats Last

barryh1 Comment

This Changes Everything

Review of the book by Naomi Klein

this_changes_everythingIt took me a long time to read Naomi Klein’s latest book, published in 2014. Basically, a lot of the material was so depressing that I could only take in so much at a time, and yet it was also deeply encouraging. Naomi Kline has been a leading writer and activist on climate change and the problems of capitalism for many years, and this book shines light in all the dark places she has come across, and that is a lot of places.

Here we see close up the waters of the gulf and Mississippi delta degraded by the BP Deepwater Horizon disaster; we follow the pipeline, fracking and tar oil battles and spills across the US and Canada; we witness the horrific social and environmental degradation and corruption in the Niger delta, and so on and on… We see how democratic politics has been undermined across the world by the corporate interests intent on continuing this plunder.

Diagnosis

Why has climate change “never received the crisis treatment from our leaders, despite the fact that it carries the risk of destroying lives on a vastly greater scale than collapsed banks or collapsed buildings”?

Klein’s diagnosis is clear:

“A destabilized climate is the cost of deregulated, global capitalism, its unintended, yet unavoidable consequence…”

Essentially she suggests that the neoliberal consensus with its three pillars  — privatization of the public sphere, deregulation of the corporate sector, and the lowering of taxes, paid for with cuts to public spending — is incompatible with the actions necessary to bring emissions to safe levels. Corporate interests have systematically exploited this situation, funding the movement of climate change denial and ramming through policies that enrich a small elite. The situation has also been the excuse for crackdowns on civil liberties and human rights violations.

Politicians and regulators have not been up to the job, even “systematically failing to conduct basic research, and silencing experts who are properly tasked to investigate health and environmental concerns”, so that they can suggest that all is well with the oil industry. “The failure of our political leaders to even attempt to ensure a safe future for us represents a crisis of legitimacy of almost unfathomable proportions.”

Children

At some point Klein became aware that what suffered most from chemical overload in the environment was the foetus and the young, and the worst effects of disasters such as Deepwater Horizon may be felt many years later because it was the young fauna that were most affected. There are moving parallels in the book with her own experiences of failing and then succeeding in having her own child.

“More than three quarters of the mass-produced chemicals in the United States have never been tested for their impacts on fetuses or children…  it was only once humans came up with the lethal concept of the earth as an inert machine and man its engineer, that some began to forget the duty to protect and promote the natural cycles of regeneration on which we all depend.”

Hope

But there are also signs of hope. Klein describes how indigenous movements have marshalled across North America and elsewhere to successfully resist the depradation of their lands. She invents the concept of Blockadia to describe these bottom-up initiatives to block further extraction of fossil fuels.

“What is clear is that fighting a giant extractive industry on your own can seem impossible, especially in a remote, sparsely populated location. But being part of a continent-wide, even global, movement that has the industry surrounded is a very different story… Blockadia is turning the tables, insisting that it is up to industry to prove that its methods are safe…”

Fossil fuels have always required what Klein calls ‘sacrifice zones’, such as the Niger delta or the Alberta tar sands, where the unfortunate inhabitants of particular areas are sacrificed so that others may have their fuels. Most people, including the middle classes, were not affected.

But “… the extractive industries have broken that unspoken bargain… the sacrifice zones have gotten a great deal larger, swallowing ever more territory and putting many people who thought they were safe at risk… Fracking, tar sands pipelines, coal trains, and export terminals are being proposed in many parts of the world where a clear majority of the population has made its opposition unmistakable…”

This is mobilising people as never before, and governments need to respond.

“… if governments are unwilling to live up to their international (and domestic) responsibilities, then movements of people have to step into that leadership vacuum and find ways to change the power equation.”

Liberation movements

Klein finds positive evidence in the liberation movements of the past few centuries. The situation on fossil fuels is very similar to that before slavery was abolished – the vested financial interests were eventually forced to change, or bought off.

A similar level of change was achieved by the labor movement in the aftermath of the Great Depression— the massive wave of unionization that forced owners to share more wealth with their workers, and helped create a context for social programs like Social Security and unemployment insurance [this is a US perspective].

There is ‘unfinished business’ with most of the powerful liberation movements of the past two centuries, from civil rights to feminism to indigenous sovereignty, which are very much related to the climate movement.

Klein suggests that “… climate change can be the force— the grand push— that will bring together all of these still living movements.”

Unwinnable battle

Finally, we are reminded that humankind cannot win the battle against nature that it has appeared to be engaged in. The solutions must involve working in sympathy with nature:

“The notion that we could separate ourselves from nature, that we did not need to be in perpetual partnership with the earth around us, is, after all, a relatively new concept, even in the West.”

At the end of the day, “Mother Nature bats last.”

Should you read it?

This book is certainly not easy to read, and you may not agree with some of Klein’s analysis – many will see her anti-corporate position as too extreme. But you will be better prepared for the battles to come – a generational change in values is no easy task.

 

 

Crazy world?

barryh1 Comment

crazyIn my blog profile I say it’s a crazy world we live in. Why?

Where to start?

We live under threat of nuclear annihilation, yet few people have any concern or give any priority to reducing this threat. It didn’t go away after Reagan’s deal with Gorbachev, and new nuclear powers have emerged.

We face a catastrophic change of earth’s climate through global warming, caused by our own carbon emissions. Since Rio 1992 and earlier we have had global discussions on this, yet nothing has been allowed to interfere with the rapid economic/technological/debt expansion that has caused this. We have pious words from Paris 2015, yet are hell-bent on economic expansion and refuse to take necessary actions such as taxing carbon fuels or controlling them at source. Indeed, we still subsidise carbon fuels to a much greater degree than renewables. We are still chopping down trees at a rapid rate, reducing yet more the protections provided by forests and their sequestered carbon.

We have allowed the transfer of resources from poor to rich to continue unabated for many years. Inequality means that life is a struggle for many of the poorest, and the middle class that ensured 70-ish years of stability in the West is being eroded. The erosion of tax base means that resources are being taken away from the public sphere through ‘austerity’ policies.

The globalisation programme over the past 30 years or so has ensured this hollowing out of the centre, moving jobs and pollution to poorer countries of the earth. Yes it enables Western economies to continue to expand, but at what price? The development of expanded free trade areas (TTIP etc) aims to continue and accelerate this process. The crazy competition of low-tax countries and tax havens has greatly reduced the moneys paid by global corporations into the treasuries of the countries in which they operate – so they have competitive advantage against local small/medium businesses – a long term catastrophic change.

The financial crash of 2008 was never fully followed through. Few were punished and many prospered at the subsequent expense of the people. It is arguable that lessons were not learned and the system has reverted to something quite like it was before. The system does not work in the interests of all, and the opportunity should be taken to change it before the next crash – eg measures such as publically created money, tobin taxes, land taxes, basic income, etc.

Religious fundamentalism again stalks the earth, as in the middle ages. Despite major advances in education it continues to gain traction with the credulous and those who will always rise up in times of confllict. Religions themselves seem largely divorced from the inner spiritual experience of many in the modern world.

It is apparent that democracy has a much-flawed implementation in many places, notably the USA where big money and corporations seemingly have overwhelming traction on the political process. In other countries it is often the fig leaf for maintaining a ruling clique in power.

Science has made great advances, which have been translated into wonderful technologies which dazzle us all. The internet gives the potential to revolutionise the way we live our lives. Yet we become more vulnerable to misuse of the technology, such as cyber crime and cyber wars, and to the cracks which we had not foreseen in the world we have created, such as the adaptation and emergence of new forms of bugs and diseases resistant to modern antibiotics and other treatments.

There has long been a ‘war on drugs’ that have millions of users, providing fertile ground for criminal enterprises with massive rewards. This so-called war manifestly failed many years ago. As for the ‘war on terror’, how was that nonsensical idea ever invented?

The spectre of species extinction haunts the earth – particularly the large mammals, birds and sea creatures that remain after the depradations since the European expansions spread across the earth. It is accelerating.

The seas and the soils are becoming increasingly contaminated by plastics and chemicals whose effects in many cases will be long lasting threats to living organisms. The ‘precautionary principle’ appears to be insufficiently applied and often bypassed in the exploitation of new innovations.

What can one say of the Middle East, which appears to be in chaos to such an extent that the disastrous Israel-Palestine impasse is now but a sideshow.

We have a United Nations that is dysfunctional, in that it is powerless whenever so-called Great Powers, aka known as members of the Security Council, disagree. There is no effective system of global governance.

The consumer society. Well I could go on and on about this. Too many cgoods, too much stuff. Too much to do. Focus on the surface, while ignoring the essence and what really matters…

I could go on…

So, crazy world or not?

I rest my case.