environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility Durban Conference economics
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 26: The Times They Are a’Changing
The Jerusalem Post heralds the coming of the New World Order:
The outcome of the latest round of climate change negotiations in Durban was as good as any dared hope for. A second commitment period of the Kyoto Protocol, together with agreement from all countries to begin negotiations on a new legally binding instrument, or an agreement with “legal force,” is a major step forward. However, Durban will be remembered for much more than that; as the place where the tectonic plates of international relations fundamentally shifted.
The group of countries that drove the outcome in South Africa was a new coalition involving the EU and the BASIC countries – Brazil, China, India, Mexico and South Africa.
The emergence of this alliance of countries is significant for two reasons. First, these countries share a vision about the future and are committed to a path of low carbon, sustainable development. They recognize that this is the only pro-growth, pro-development strategy.
Second, this grouping signals a dissolving of the traditional divide between rich and poor countries. For too long international negotiations have been hampered by an overriding solidarity between developing countries and a culture of blame. Durban saw a new maturity with the major developing countries partnering with progressive, developed countries and beginning to take responsibility for the future direction of the global economy.
This shift of the tectonic plates is based on enlightened self-interest. On the one hand, there is no long-term scenario under which a fossil fuels-based economy is either sustainable or desirable for the human race as a whole. Reliance on fossil fuels, with supply risks in terms of political stability in oil producing regions, dwindling supplies and volatile prices together with an unstable climate caused by increasing emissions of greenhouse gases, present serious risks to a growing economy.
This gave me the opportunity for another more-in-sorrow-than-anger version of my “Corporations-are-teh-suck-and-America-is-doomed” screed. Sent December 22:
When an enormous amount of work must be done in an extraordinarily short span of time, it’s essential that everyone involved recognize the necessity of the task. Alas for the American exceptionalists, the USA’s energy and environmental policy is now essentially crafted for the benefit of the multinational corporations whose influence is felt throughout the country’s government — and these economic leviathans have no conception whatsoever of the greater good.
The “American Century” is well and truly over, a fact exemplified by the USA’s paralysis in the face of climate change. Fully half of my country’s lawmakers choose to deny scientific reality when it fails to match their ideological preconceptions. The emergence of the EU/BASIC coalition from the Durban talks is most welcome. If the United States cannot lead in the fight against climate catastrophe, then at the very least it should refrain from hindering the nations which can.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility Durban Conference rising ocean levels
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 25: Vayu, Dude!
Sri Lanka’s Energy Minister writes a long op-ed in the Sri Lanka Daily News, titled “Taking On The Energy Crunch”:
I observed two emerging trends in Durban. The first is that North America getting increasingly marginalized by Europe and the other is China and India, embroiled each other in many issues, coming forward with new proposals. The Chinese presence in Bali, Poznan or even Copenhagen was hardly noticed. However, the presence of China is now getting increasingly noticed, especially due to its possession of the most cost effective renewable energy technology (solar and wind) and more importantly, its sound financial position, required for implementation of its plans.
When China proposed emission cuts to be made effective from 2020, the developed countries, excluding European Union, raised objections to it. However, they finally settled down for a second commitment period for the Kyoto Protocol and accordingly, go in for mandatory agreements in 2015. By that time I hope China, India, Brazil, South Africa and Indonesia would be able to lead climate discussions with the progressive support from the European countries.
Since Asia is now moving and shaping the new world, it is high time it leads the sustainable development and green growth, whilst imposing green sanctions against the USA and Canada. This double dip global economic crisis may end up creating a new sustainable future if we were to fulfill our historical responsibility.
I’d love to visit Sri Lanka before it slides beneath the waves. Sent December 21:
It is obvious by now that the governments of the industrialized world have been so subverted and co-opted by corporate influence that they are unable to formulate and implement any genuinely responsible energy and environmental policies. The current dysfunction of America’s political system is a vivid example of what happens when the lust for profit trumps the well-being of the people.
While the world’s climatologists have long since come to a consensus about both the human causes and the genuine dangers of climate change, fully fifty percent of US politicians are unable to acknowledge scientific reality. While as an American citizen I am disappointed by my own country’s paralysis in the face of a grave existential threat, as a human being, I am delighted by Minister Patali Champika Ranawaka’s suggestion that Asia take the lead in developing meaningful strategies for addressing the climate crisis. There is no time to spare.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: floods Philippines Storms
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 24: Of Course I Believe In Free Will; I Have No Choice.
The Philippines got whacked with some serious weather recently. A lot of deaths, a lot of damage, a lot of tragedy. The Philippine Sun-Times runs an editorial titled “Tempting Fate”:
TWO interesting points in the latest tragedy to hit the country: Sendong poured a month’s worth of rainfall in 24 hours in certain regions, including the worst-hit areas of Cagayan de Oro and Iligan, and tropical storms do not hit Mindanao often.
The first point presupposes a calamity, the second complacency. When the two are in one brew, the result is deadly.
“Mindanao is usually not a typhoon-prone area,” Gwendolyn Pang, secretary general of the Philippine National Red Cross, was quoted by an Agence France Presse (AFP) report as saying, “that is why most residents were caught unprepared.”
“Climate is changing. We must also change the way we address climate issues,” she added. That’s another way of saying people everywhere, including places that feel safe by tradition, should be complacent no longer.
That can be done if officials dust off warnings left rotting in old files and wield political will to address them.
Meanwhile, American politicians are obsessing about your freedom to buy shitty light bulbs. Sent December 20:
Human-caused climate change is not something looming in the intangible future, but a phenomenon that is unfolding everywhere, right now. Human civilization is rooted in the stable and predictable weather our planet has experienced for the past twelve thousand years or so; it is during this comparatively short span of Earth’s history that agriculture was developed, and that industrialization transformed the world.
Now the atmospheric transformations brought about by the carbon-burning industrialized nations are bringing this time to an end. Consistent weather patterns will soon be a thing of the past; complacency in the face of this transforming climate is a very dangerous attitude.
Politicians from the developed world seem unable to imagine the world we are entering, or to conceive a culture that is not powered by burning coal and oil. Their failure to take responsibility for the disaster they have wrought has grave repercussions for the international community.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: idiots invasive species NASA Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 23: The Menace From Earth
The Miami Herald notes a new report from NASA detailing ecosystem transformation in the wake of climate change:
Global warming could bring a major transformation for Earth’s plants and animals over the next century, a NASA study says, driving nearly half the planet’s forests, grasslands and other vegetation toward conversion into radically different ecosystems.
The ecological stress could give a boost to invasive species, but at the expense of natives, reducing the diversity of plants and animals overall.
And humans are likely, almost literally, to cut them off at the pass: When plants and animals attempt to survive by shifting their geographical ranges, as they have in past episodes of climate change, they’ll be blocked by farms and cities.
“If half the world is driven to change its vegetation cover, and meanwhile, we’ve fragmented the surface of the Earth by putting in parking lots and monoculture agricultural zones and all these other impediments to natural migration, then there could be problems,” said lead author Jon Bergengren, a global ecologist who was a postdoctoral researcher at Caltech when he did the study.
“When, suddenly, plants and animals aren’t living in habitats to which they’re adapted, then you start to get an unhealthy planet,” he said.
The comments on the article are a mass of stupid. Plus ca change…
Sent December 19:
Conservative politicians routinely ramp up their anti-immigrant rhetoric for the benefit of their xenophobic constituents. Curiously, however, they dismiss the extralegals most likely to cross America’s borders in a post-climate-change future.
Let’s leave aside the obvious fact that climate-driven resource wars and geopolitical instability are likely to lead to vastly increased numbers of refugees in the coming decades. Rather, let’s focus on the immigrant populations which will do the most damage to America: invasive species. Migrating from their customary ecological niches in response to rapid climatic shifts, these visitors will be part of a traumatic environmental transformation over the next century, rendering vast parts of the United States unrecognizable.
While disease-bearing insects, non-native plants and other such unwelcome visitors will have far greater economic impact on our nation than any undocumented human immigrants, you won’t hear any candidates for election mention them at all. I wonder why?
Warren Senders
environment: denialists Katrina media irresponsibility
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 22: Oh! What A Situation Is Now Confronting The World!!!
The North County Times (CA) runs a piece on the specific local and regional impacts of climate change:
For instance, speaker Marty Ralph, a branch chief for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said both droughts and floods will become more pronounced in coming decades.
Water supply may diminish as snow lines rise in the mountains, reducing winter snow packs, which act as natural reservoirs, he said. As warmer temperatures extend the growing season, plants will absorb more runoff.
“You’re going to end up with less water in streams, because basically the ecosystem is consuming more of it along the way,” he said.
Fierce storms could exceed previous natural disasters, straining the state’s emergency resources, he said.
For instance, he said, models show increasing risk that an immense storm could strike Southern California, draw emergency responders from around the state, and then, days later, hit Northern California, to cause as much as $500 billion in damage.
“This is Katrina on steroids,” he said.
Katrina and Godzilla, sitting on a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. Sent December 18:
“Katrina on steroids.” It’s true that phrases which connect directly to our own experience have much more impact than the statistics and analyses which make up much scientific reporting. Nowhere is this more crucial than in the domain of climate change, where an ADD-afflicted media and an easily distracted population make it all but impossible for the facts of a profound global crisis to penetrate.
Climate change isn’t something that’s going to happen to some other people sometime in the future; it’s something that’s happening now, to you and me. Agricultural failures leading to higher food costs? Infrastructural damage? Droughts that are increasing in severity and frequency? Wildfires? Insects carrying tropical diseases migrating North? The coming decades will see all of us feeling ever more severe impacts as the greenhouse effect continues to destabilize the Earth’s weather patterns — the future is now, and those other people are us.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Canada corporate irresponsibility denialists Durban Conference Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 21: One Good Letter Deserves Another
The Malaysia Star runs an opinion piece by Guenter Gruber, the German Ambassador:
Changes in the climate destroy the basis on which human life subsists; drought, for instance, leads to shortages in food and water. Rising sea levels are already threatening the territories of small island states and vast stretches of coastland.
Weather patterns are changing. In Thailand, we have just seen severe flooding. Last year, the south of Malaysia was unusually dry. Now, 40% more rainfall than usual is expected.
Climate change is the definitive challenge of the 21st century. However, the international community has to admit that it has not, as things stand, stepped up to this challenge.
Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions went up again in 2010, global temperatures are already 0.8°C higher than before industrialisation, and sea levels rose twice as fast between 1993 and 2003 as they did in the preceding decade; icebergs and glaciers are melting at record speeds.
It’s a generic piece, and it gets a generic letter. Sent December 17:
There is no doubt: the climate crisis is not only the gravest threat our species has yet faced, but one which our existing political and economic systems cannot address competently. Just look at the parlous state of American politics, in which oil industry influence permeates the system to such an extent that one of the country’s two dominant political parties is reaping electoral rewards for a complete denial of scientific reality. Similarly, Canada ignores the danger posed to its own Arctic territories by pulling out of the Kyoto treaty and fostering climate-change denial in its own government.
Ultimately, of course, the laws of physics and chemistry will win; they always do, since they are unaffected by public opinion. The responsibility for preventing a runaway greenhouse effect necessarily rests with the world’s industrialized nations, for they are the ones whose CO2 emissions have pushed the planet to the brink of catastrophe.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility idiots Keystone XL Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 20: That’s A Libel On The Good Name of Weasels
The Arkansas Times-Record runs a story about purported jobs purportedly at stake from not doing the Keystone XL:
Rep. Lee Terry, R-Neb., pointed to the fate of 60 employees of Welspun Tubular as reason to support construction of the Keystone pipeline.
“They say miles of pipeline are on the property and that has caused five dozen employees to lose their jobs,” Terry said. “The pipes would be part of the Keystone oil pipeline which is a project running from Canada to Texas.”
“The president has said he would veto the bill,” Terry said. “Mr. President, this is about creating jobs. Please join us.”
Sen. John Boozman, R-Ark., brought up the same issue Wednesday on the Senate floor.
“Welspun Tubular Company, which makes pipes for the oil industry, has been producing pipe for the Keystone project. Unfortunately, due to the administration’s delay on Keystone, the company has already begun to lay workers off in Little Rock. They have 500 miles of pipe that was produced for the project, ready to go, that is just sitting at the facility,” Boozman said.
Boozman blamed politics for the delay, noting that the State Department has said a permit decision could not be delivered until after November 2012.
“President Obama needs to quit pandering to the radical environmentalists. He needs to do what is best for the country, not what he perceives is best for his re-election,” Boozman said.
Boozman, has also co-sponsored legislation that would require a construction permit to be issued within 60 days of passage.
Sociopaths. Hypocrites. Weasels. Sent Dec. 16:
In accusing President Obama of “pandering to radical environmentalists,” Senator Boozman’s remarks on the Keystone XL controversy inadvertently describe his own party’s pro-oil strategy. For decades, Republicans have branded many genuinely concerned and patriotic Americans with such grossly misleading descriptions — but the real pandering is taking place on their side of the aisle.
As for the “radical” tag, there are indeed those who espouse extreme action on environmental issues; their positions should be repudiated by any responsible citizen. Perhaps the most drastic thing these malefactors are advocating is the actual physical alteration of the air we breathe; these extremists propose to increase atmospheric CO2 levels to levels last found when dinosaurs walked the Earth. Surely that’s far more radical than the statements of anti-pipeline activists, who are simply pointing out that the long-term health and prosperity of our species should take precedence over the return-on-investment demands of multinational corporations.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: corporate irresponsibility denialists economics media irresponsibility
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 19: Hey, I Just Heard They’re Selling iPads For $19.95!
Mike Tidwell analyzes the gloom in the Baltimore Sun, with an op-ed called “The hottest issue: Climate change dwarfs other problems.” Not much to add to this:
An optimist might want to raise a glass as 2011 winds down. U.S. troops will be out of Iraq by New Year’s Eve. The global AIDS pandemic is ebbing. And the U.S. unemployment rate dropped by nearly half a percent in November.
But an optimist would have to totally ignore one really important number to maintain the cheer. That number is 11. It was tossed out by scientists and economists at the international climate talks that just ended in Durban, South Africa.
If we human beings continue to torch fossil fuels — oil, coal, natural gas — without any serious limitations in the next few decades, our planet could warm a full 11 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100. That was the message from the highly respected International Energy Agency in a report just released in Durban.
How much is 11 degrees of warming? For help, let’s inventory the warming we’ve already seen on our planet. Already, the Arctic Ocean has lost 40 percent of its ice mass since the 1970s. Already, wildfires in the American West destroy six times more forest land per year than 40 years ago. Already, the biggest hurricanes come more frequently, and the city of Virginia Beach is starting to plan a methodical retreat from its shoreline due to sea-level rise. Already, Allstate insurance company won’t issue any new homeowners policies in coastal Maryland and Virginia because of stronger storms.
And how much warming did it take to trigger all of the above? How much to trigger the extreme floods and droughts and heat waves from China to Australia to Texas that scientists say are connected to climate change?
Answer: 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit.
I’m gloomy today. Wonder why? Sent December 15:
The climate-transformed planet of 2100 offers, as Mike Tidwell states, little reason for optimism. Further gloom is warranted by the fact that a plurality of Americans have been egregiously misled by the industry-fueled message of triumphant consumerism and climate-change denial prevalent in our media. In the fantasy land inhabited by conservative denialists, the notion of climate change as a liberal conspiracy to enact a one-world government (forced re-education camps for SUV owners!) is more likely than the greenhouse effect, a scientific theory which has been verified repeatedly over the years since its discovery almost two hundred years ago.
In a political culture obsessed with short-term gain and empty symbolic gestures, the systemic changes necessary for the survival of our species (and the countless others sharing our planet) will never be discussed, let alone implemented. Too risky; too costly; too boring. Let’s go to the mall instead — there’s a sale!
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists idiots Republican obstructionism
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 18: You Know What Your Problem Is? Your Problem Is That You Don’t Play In The Middle Of The Beat.
The National Post (Canada) offers a forum to a not-completely-insane conservative named Ken Silber, who lives in a dreamworld where GOP voters can be persuaded by appeals to reality:
I have drafted a speech that may help some current or future GOP candidate achieve all of the above. Any candidate who wishes to use the following material is more than welcome:
My fellow Republicans,
I am a conservative and I believe that facing up to reality is essential to conservatism. Today I outline how I will lead our nation in addressing a difficult and complex – but very real – problem. That problem is climate change, and specifically the global warming that is being caused by humanity’s use of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.
There is ample evidence that global warming is happening and that human activities are the key factor causing it. Scientists overwhelmingly agree the temperature rise is real. Moreover, they have examined possible factors ranging from volcanoes, to the sun’s fluctuations to cosmic rays that bombard the Earth from space. There is a strong scientific consensus that fossil fuels are the main cause – as pumping car-bon into our atmosphere creates a greenhouse effect that traps the sun’s energy and heats the Earth.
Science never gives us absolute certainty, but the real uncertainties here are about the future. We do not know how fast temperatures will rise over decades, or the full effects this will have on our world. We do know that the risks are great – for example, large sections of American farmland becoming unusable, coastal cities flooding, 100-plus-degree heat waves, massive wildfires and other extreme events becoming common.
We must address those risks but not by weighing our economy down with taxes and regulations. On the contrary, a dynamic free-market economy is crucial to limiting the risks and managing the effects that do occur. My plan does not involve picking winners among energy companies and technologies with subsidized loans. Nor is it a capand-trade scheme that includes handing out credits to the politically connected. And for that matter, I note that President Obama never actually managed to bring a climate-change plan to a vote in Congress.
My plan is straightforward and honest. We will raise taxes on carbon emissions across the board, while cutting taxes on payrolls and incomes. That means more money in people’s pockets, and more incentives for industry to develop cleaner and safer energy supplies.
Wow. What can you say to that? Here’s what I sent them on December 14:
Ken Silber’s almost-but-not-quite advocacy of a fee-and-dividend approach to reducing carbon emissions is a rare manifestation of sanity in the bizarre world of conservative science denial. The problem isn’t with taxing CO2 — an eminently workable idea that has won the approval of experts from all sides of the ideological spectrum — but with the notion that there are enough conservatives left who actually care what scientists and economists have to say.
For decades, conservatives have employed the language of anti-intellectual American exceptionalism: only liberals pay attention to eggheads. This approach, refined through many electoral generations, has succeeded in producing an entire political demographic that regards measurable reality (all those boring statistics) as the exclusive province of liberals — that is, anathema.
Just as his party’s rank-and-file reject humans’ role in global warming, Mr. Silber cannot accept conservative ideology’s role in making a political environment hostile to science and factuality.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Durban Conference media irresponsibility
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Year 2, Month 12, Day 17: Sparkly!
Eugene Robinson tries to make it shiny in the Washington Post:
I’m inclined to believe that the apparent result of the climate change summit in Durban, South Africa, might turn out to be a very big deal. Someday. Maybe.
After the meeting ended Sunday, initial reaction ranged from “Historic Breakthrough: The Planet Is Saved” to “Tragic Failure: The Planet Is Doomed.”
My conclusion is that for now, at least, the conceptual advance made in Durban is as good as it gets.
This advance is, potentially, huge: For the first time, officials of the nations that are the biggest carbon emitters — China, the United States and India — have agreed to negotiate legally binding restrictions.
The thing is, when there’s stuff like this showing up in the news, there’s no wiggle room left for the world’s nations to eventually maybe someday get around to kinda sorta consider possibly doing something.
Sent December 13:
Our nation’s ongoing disconnect between political and factual reality is perfectly exemplified in Eugene Robinson’s attempts at an optimistic assessment of the Durban agreement. Yes, it’s nice that many nations have signed a new treaty, but the bad news has, so to speak, circled the globe before the good news has even gotten out of bed.
In the empirically verifiable world of scientifically confirmed facts, the window for avoiding catastrophic climate change is closing far more rapidly than any experts were predicting. In the non-linear world of American governance, though, kicking the can down the road is a perfectly adequate substitute for action — because politics, the “art of the possible,” makes action impossible. Remember the recent story of rural firemen watching a house burn to the ground because the homeowner hadn’t previously paid a $75 fee? Will commitment-averse politicians ensure that we all likewise become spectators at our own immolation?
Warren Senders