environment: Cancun media irresponsibility
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 16: Hearin’ It Through The Grapevine…
An editorial in the Guelph Mercury gives a qualified approval to Cancun’s results, while reminding us that the bulk of the work is ours to carry out.
Amelia Meister correctly notes that the Cancun agreements, while a tentative step in the right direction, leave much of the heavy lifting unaccounted for. This means that the world’s people will have to lead; our leaders are almost without exception too busy following the scents of money and power to be relied upon for responsibility on behalf of the planet. Meister’s suggestions for individual action are well-formulated, but she omits the most important one of all for those who are concerned about our global future: all of us must talk to other people. Because many of the world’s media networks have deep financial interests in spreading disinformation, staying genuinely and reliably informed about climate change is extremely tricky. It is up to us to move the conversation about climate change out of corporate control, and to help one another understand this complex and challenging subject. In the face of the gravest threat humanity has ever confronted, ignorance attains profound moral dimensions, along with human and environmental costs we cannot afford.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes climate zombies idiots
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 15: Betcha Didn’t See THAT One Coming!
The Times reports on a new study released by the National Academy of Sciences that predicts a world of hurt for the Southwest.
As scientists attempt to warn residents of the American southwest that potentially catastrophic droughts are all but inevitable in the coming decades, the area’s politicians are locked in an ideological trap that makes it impossible for them to respond sensibly. Since the rise of the Tea Party movement, inflexible denial of the very possibility of climate change is now the only position open to Republican legislators who wish to avoid primary opposition. Interestingly, this isn’t the first time they’ve refused to admit the relevance of warnings from other sectors of society. If I recall correctly, “nobody” anticipated the breach of the levees in New Orleans, the absence of Iraqi WMDs, the collapse of the housing market, or, for that matter, that Osama Bin Laden might attempt a terror attack in the United States. The word “nobody” seems to be a sort of conservative shorthand for “people who understand the problem.”
Warren Senders
environment: Cancun optimism
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 14: Rah, Rah, Bah, Bah!
The Toronto Globe and Mail runs a fairly routine piece of cheerleading for the results of the Cancun conference.
But you know me — ever the contrarian, I have to point out that there’s a lot that the agreement hasn’t dealt with. Grumble, grumble, grumble; what a grouch.
While the Cancun accord offers reasons for hope at a time when the planetary warning signs are pointing ever more unequivocally towards irrevocable climate chaos, we should not be lulled into complacency by the diplomatic tour de force represented by a 193-nation agreement; the devil is, as always, in the details. The international community has never before faced a situation where smaller nations actually face physical disappearance due to larger countries’ long-term irresponsibility. The developed world needs to overcome the political and societal inertia that has prevented significant reductions in greenhouse emissions in the past, and must also recognize that the costs of immediate action on climate change are dramatically smaller than those of inaction. Finally, our news media should acknowledge that the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming is essentially unanimous; reporting which suggests or implies that there is equal evidence for both sides of the issue is irresponsible.
Warren Senders
environment: Cancun capitalism
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 13: Not Bad News
The Cancun climate conference ended on a friendly note, with mild intimations of progress all around. Lots of handshakes and polite applause, with only a few dissenting notes.
Yvo de Boer, who stepped down this year after four years as executive secretary of the United Nations climate office, said that the success of this year’s conference was in large measure attributable to the modesty of its goals.
“This process has never been characterized by leaps and bounds,” he said in an interview. “It has been characterized by small steps. And I’d rather see this small step here in Cancún than the international community tripping over itself in an effort to make a large leap.”
In all, the success of the Cancún talks was a shot in the arm for a process that some had likened to a zombie, stumbling aimlessly but refusing to die.
Is it just me, or is that last paragraph a desperate journalistic attempt to reconfigure the “climate zombie” meme?
It’s vaguely reassuring that the Cancun conference did not end with walkouts and public squabbles on the issues surrounding climate change. When representatives of the world’s countries gather to discuss the gravest existential threat our species has ever faced, and conclude with a modest agreement that further progress needs to be made, that’s good news. That is to say, it’s good news if you think about the alternative: contentious squabbling over trivialities as a means of ignoring the looming, slow-motion disaster that imperils us all. As Michael Levi notes, the most significant work will likely take place in areas that are not addressed by the U.N.’s decisions, which means individuals and communities at the smallest levels of scale, and multinational corporations at the largest. The question emerges: can transnational corporate entities acquire enlightened self-interest quickly enough to make a difference to the planetary systems upon which their customers’ survival depends?
Warren Senders
environment: Barack Obama
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 12: Grouchy Edition
Sunday POTUS, written in a bleak mood. What the hell happened to the guy we elected?
Dear President Obama —
I was one of your fervent supporters in 2008, in part because it seemed obvious to me that a man of your intellectual depth would understand that the long-term threat to our planetary environment posed by global warming would be the central issue for our survival as a nation, as a civilization, and as a species.
Now, after two years of your administration, I’m not so sure. I first ascribed the failure to reach a genuine agreement at Copenhagen to incompetence and intransigence; now it seems at least plausible that my own government colluded with that of China to ensure that no meaningful emissions control agreement would be reached. This is beyond disappointing; this is outrageous.
Now comes the news that your administration’s E.P.A. is reversing its commitment to new environmental regulations, saying it needs “more time to analyze” the effects of proposed rules on pollution. Forgive me for not taking this at face value; if it looks like a capitulation, walks like a capitulation and quacks like a capitulation, I say it’s a capitulation.
And what a capitulation it is! The past several years have offered ample evidence that the world’s fossil fuel industry is a hotbed of mendacity, cupidity, sociopathy and idiocy. From environmental destruction to the subornation of scientists, Big Oil has demonstrated that it can only be trusted to act in its own interests, and that those interests are emphatically not aligned with the people of this country and this planet.
These companies should be nationalized; their assets redistributed and their leaders jailed.
I voted for you because I had hoped for justice and environmental policy that would be based on science. Now, as I watch the criminals who destroyed so much reap the rewards of their corruption, I have abandoned hope for justice — and as I watch your administration’s E.P.A. kowtow to some of the world’s worst environmental criminals, I must abandon hope for science-based policy as well.
Please tell me: what (if anything) can I hope for in the months and years to come?
Yours Sincerely,
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Barack Obama corporatism idiots
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 11: It’ll Feel Better When It Stops Hurting. But When Will It Stop Hurting?
Well, this sucks:
The Obama administration is retreating on long-delayed environmental regulations — new rules governing smog and toxic emissions from industrial boilers — as it adjusts to a changed political dynamic in Washington with a more muscular Republican opposition.
The move to delay the rules, announced this week by the Environmental Protection Agency, will leave in place policies set by President George W. Bush. President Obama ran for office promising tougher standards, and the new rules were set to take effect over the next several weeks.
Beating my head against a wall would feel better.
President Obama’s reversal on EPA policy is a shameful capitulation to some of the most environmentally irresponsible elements in the global economy. The big oil companies, unsatisfied with year after year of record-breaking profits, are anxious to undermine the only remaining authority with the capacity to regulate pollution — and the President, incomprehensibly, seems to believe that acceding to their agenda will be a positive step for this country and the world. When accelerating climate change is endangering the world’s agricultural systems, when increased acidity is jeopardizing the ability of our oceans to sustain life, when the scientific evidence for human causes of global warming is irrefutable — it is not the time to bow to the desires of the fossil fuel industry for an even more unconstrained regulatory environment. Fossil fuel is the crack cocaine of the American economy. Why should we reward the dealers?
Warren Senders
environment: forest fires Israel wildfires
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 10: Only YOU Can Prevent, etc., etc., etc.
Israel is burning, reports the Sydney Morning Herald. And (of course) it’s because of climate change — arguably the largest tossed-away cigarette to trigger a forest fire in humanity’s history.
The news accumulates daily, reinforcing a sobering message: climate change is not something that will affect the lives of our grandchildren, but a real-time emergency. Israel’s spreading forest fires are one among multiple symptoms of our planetary fever. Our survival depends on two things: we must learn to think in longer spans of time (for when the lag between climatic cause and climatic effect is measured in decades, where will a politician find the courage to do what is right?), and we must learn to think beyond national boundaries. In Cancun, the world’s nation’s are negotiating; the richest are reluctant to surrender their privileges, while the poorest simply want to keep their land, their lives and their hopes. A moment’s objective reflection makes it obvious: if humanity is to prosper in a post-climate-change world, an “us vs. them” mindset is an unaffordable luxury.
Warren Senders
Month 12, Day 9: Okay — YOU Think Of A Clever Headline For This One
I’m played out.
The Vancouver Sun covers a story about the increasing frequency and intensity of wildfires. Needless to say, that’s yet another symptom of climate change, and one which will add its own further push to the accelerating processes that are going to make life for my daughter much more awful than I want to think about.
The feedback loop in which climate change accelerates wildfires which in turn add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere is a terrifying example of the ominous future that awaits our children. The fact is that global heating is the single gravest existential threat facing the world today, and one that our present international order is particularly ill-equipped to handle. If specific climatic symptoms had specific causes, it would be easier to make reciprocal agreements between affected nations, but the climate system doesn’t work that way; the effects of a warmer troposphere are felt all over the globe, often far from major sources of greenhouse gases — as in the case of Pakistan, a nation whose contribution to CO2 emissions is negligible, but which is still reeling from disastrous flooding. Just as climate change ignores national boundaries, our response to this common enemy must be cooperative in nature and planet-wide in extent.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Chris Christie denialism idiots
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 8: Hey, “Right-Wing Jim!” You Reading This?
I just couldn’t resist this. Some climatologists from Rutgers are hoping to change Chris Christie’s mind on climate change. Heh heh heh.
Maybe I’ll get another piece of hatemail!
If Governor Christie were motivated by longer-term concerns than his own electoral survival in a Republican environment dominated by the anti-science zealots of the Tea Party, he might be able to pay attention to the advice he’s receiving from climatologists. After all, it should be apparent to anyone that catastrophic climate change will be bad for business in multiple ways. Rising sea levels could submerge large swaths of coastline; droughts could imperil agriculture and lead to food shortages; increasingly severe storms could destroy or degrade infrastructure, necessitating expensive repairs. Unfortunately, the Governor is motivated exclusively by short-term electoral exigency — he’s made his ideological bed and is unlikely to get up from it. He has become a “climate zombie,” unable to acknowledge scientific reality without alienating his base constituency, a group of voters united in their distrust of expertise in general and scientific expertise in particular.
Warren Senders
environment: false equivalence media irresponsibility
by Warren
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Month 12, Day 7: OF COURSE Ignorance is Idiogenic. Where Else Could It Come From?
NPR ran a piece this weekend on how
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fewer and fewer Americans believe climate change is a problem. Naturally, they fail to address their own role in the issue.
This went to the NPR Ombudsman.
Sunday’s story on the decreasing number of Americans who believe that climate change represents a significant threat was another triumph for false equivalence, and another failure of journalistic responsibility.
There are two sets of facts, each fairly simple.
The first is the straightforward scientific reality that climate change is happening, that it is going to have disastrous consequences across the planet, and that humans are the primary causal agents.
The second set of facts concerns the manipulation of public opinion, and rests on the reality that conservative “think tanks,” heavily funded by fossil fuel industries, employ contrarian scientists who appear regularly in the print and broadcast media to convey the false impression that there is no clear climatological consensus on global warming.
How many times has the American Enterprise Institute’s Ken Green been featured on NPR news or opinion programming in the past year? And how many of those appearances have included the information that Green’s parent institution is funded by the petroleum industry?
In the absence of actual scientific analysis, listeners are left with dueling voices, one on each side of a complex issue. The media’s role in shaping American ignorance of climate change is (oddly enough) not addressed anywhere in the Weekend Edition piece, which treats this national failure of understanding as something entirely apart from a systemic failure in our communications systems.
To say that NPR has been more responsible than most media outlets on this issue is to set the bar very low.
Warren Senders