Thursday, November 17, 2016
Shell-Shocked But Resilient
Dear Friends and
Family,
Today, I write you
at the beginning of a new era in American politics – I pray a very
short one. Never in my wildest imaginings did I think it would come
to this. I am shell-shocked, incredulous. The president-elect makes
Nixon look like a progressive (created by the political climate of
1970, when I attended the first Earth Day), and Reagan a relatively
harmless genial grandfather, though his policies created a launching
pad for Mr. Trump. George W. Bush, with all his failings, at least
acknowledged the reality of climate change on several occasions, as
did the 2008 Republican platform. That platform even insisted we had
an obligation to the poor who were at risk from its ravages, already
threatening their shores. Climate justice in a Republican platform,
two cycles ago.
The list of
hard-won accomplishments in the last eight years that Trump plans to
do away with is frightening. You all know that list, which, when
erased, would indeed wipe away Barack Obama's legacy. The pivotal
role of the Supreme Court going forward is key to much of what Trump
intends to undermine. At the very least, the Roberts Court will go
forward with a 5-4 conservative balance, and the probability of one
or more of the liberal octogenarians being replaced during Trump's
term is quite high, which would entrench that majority for another
generation.
I speak from a
place of privilege, a white male with a PhD, comfortably retired. I
am personally protected from the harm that Trump has either promised
or darkly hinted at, aimed at women (especially abortion rights),
undocumented workers, and the LGBT community. Muslims, both within
and without our borders, most of all climate refugees from the Middle
East, have been especially targeted.
However, as a human
being living in the Anthropocene period, I am hugely vulnerable to
his most momentous threat, to withdraw as soon as possible from the
Paris Accord which was negotiated last December, and went into effect
just last week under the looming shadow of the US election. The odds
of preventing catastrophic climate change are slim at best. Without
an international agreement pushing nations to set and periodically
ratchet up their carbon emissions reductions, those odds go from slim
to virtually zero.
One of the climate
warrior organizations to which I subscribe wrote today that the Paris
Accord would go forward without us, and the rest of the world would
continue to develop renewable energy so rapidly that we would be
caught up in the economic tide. But let's not kid ourselves. The US
and China, as the biggest emitters, need to lead the rest of the
world in the energy revolution. We are rapidly running out of time,
and the US's leaving the pact, just as it is getting on its feet,
would effectively kill this fledgling effort. The Paris Accord only
has a chance to dampen climate disruption if a culture of peer
nations, each trying to outdo the others in their pace of carbon
reduction through periodic review, is quickly established. Any
remnant of “greatness” left in our country would manifest in
competition with China to be first among those peers. To align
“greatness” with an attempt at rapid expansion of our economy,
powered by an all-out expansion of fossil fuel extraction, would be
even more devastating now than it was in the Reagan era.
As for China, they
are poised for leadership in the huge renewable energy market, once
we abdicate as their chief competitor. This happened before, when
Reagan tore down the solar collectors on the White House roof after
defeating Jimmy Carter and mothballed the emergent solar energy
revolution. Carter's plan for foreign aid during his second term
centered on capitalizing the shift in developing countries to
renewable energy for providing their increasing need for power. The
far-seeing Carter, our only engineer-president, saw this as a way to
leapfrog over the destructive fossil fuel pathway. I know this from
a member of the energy team he had assembled at the end of his first
tem. This was a huge blow to the climate struggle, even before we
realized what we were doing. This was thirty-five years ago, when
CO2 registered 339 ppm. We are well past the point where we can
afford a second blow of this scale. Forgive them, for they know
not what they do. Yes, Lord, in
1980. And now? The Creator's
forgiveness is
endless. Not so the Earth.
So what are we to
do? If Thomas Berry's prayer for “the re-invention of the human at
the species level” is answered rapidly enough, it won't matter that
we won't have an international agreement or governments committed to
reducing emissions and building a post-carbon energy infrastructure
at a wartime pace. Whether or not this requirement becomes reality
in the tiny interval remaining before it's too late, 3-10 years, we
can still work to change our own habits, and to build the resilience
of our local communities. Some of those communities are destined for
early dissolution, especially coastal communities that are already
vulnerable to frequent storm surges from rising sea-levels. But
others, like my own in Southern Appalachia, have a fighting chance,
at least for awhile. International climate diplomacy aside, climate
change happens at the level of the entire earth system, so even if
some places are spared the initial onslaught of the awakened giant of
climate disruption, refugees, some armed and desperate, will converge
on them soon enough. Stark questions of sufficient water, food and
shelter will ensue. This is already the reality in the Middle East and
East Africa.
The issues
associated with rapid climate change are inescapable. It's just that
with a Trump presidency looming on the horizon, they are coming at us
even faster than we had hoped. And those we would educate and
encourage to act mutually for the sake of our community, whether it
be local, national, or global, are now in power, ready to entrench
the very interests that are threatening global climate stability.
Our task is huge, and it involves some fundamental actions. First,
we must accept the new reality of a Trump presidency and everything
that entails. Secondly, we need to redouble our efforts at grounding
ourselves in a greater Reality, so that we are less effected by the
tides of change, the pain, angst, and loss. Thirdly, we need to each
find our place of resistance to the new regime, sharing with others
our process of discernment among the range possibilities available.
My next post will
outline my own personal choices along this spectrum within the rich
context of possibility in the international network for sanity,
resilience, and resistance. A key immediate opportunity is to
support the camp at Standing Rock, the Sioux water-keepers who are
risking their lives to block deployment of the Dakota Access Pipeline
(DAPL) through their Missouri River watershed and sacred sites. As
they prepare for the harsh North Dakota winter, they need food,
water, firewood, warm clothing and bedding, and reinforcements. They
also need contributions to their legal defense fund. I am happy
to report that a benefit at the Celo Community Center just down the
road this past weekend raised $900 for the fund.
Standing Rock is
the spear-tip of the phalanx constituted by the global climate insurgency (Jan 18 post). It is a pivotal community of civil disobedience
against the infrastructure being laid for a new era of fossil fuels,
the fracked oil and gas from the Bakken (Dakotas), Marcellus (NY,
Pennsylvania, and West Virgina) and Permian (West Texas) deposits.
Resistance groups are sprouting up along all of these proposed
pipeline routes. The attorney general of New York, backed by the
governor, has ruled against fracking in that state. But civil
disobedience, followed by consistent use of the necessity defense at
trial, remains our chief legal tool, in the US as well as globally.
Labels: climate insurgency, climate justice, DAPL, George W Bush, Jimmy Carter, Nixon, Paris Accord, Reagan, Republican platform, Roberts Court, Standing Rock Sioux, Thomas Berry, Trump
Thursday, December 10, 2015
Climate Justice: Does the Industrial West Owe Reparations?
It is a sad, harsh
reality that certain nations face earlier climate ruin than others.
The Pacific island nations, much of Africa, and Bangla Desh come
immediately to mind, as do the South Indians who are being flooded as
I write. An international Green Climate Fund has been created, with
a goal of $100 billion for helping weaker countries adapt to climate
change. As nations entered the Paris talks, this fund was less than
3% funded, though many are encouraged that some private capitalists,
notably Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg, have committed to the process
in a big way in Paris. Current U.S. commitments are paltry, dwarfed
by our governments continuing huge subsidies to gas and oil
interests.
I agree that firm
commitments from the wealthier nations to make this fund a robust
instrument of both adaptation and mitigation – as in the accord
between France and India to invest $3 billion to supercharge solar
energy in India – are absolutely required as part of a document
that most of the world's nations could sign. And it is a major
gesture, a huge shift since Copenhagen, that China has committed to
contributing to this fund.
A key element in the
climate justice demands of the G77 block in Paris is the historical
carbon debt of the First World. It is true that the Western powers,
primarily the UK and the US, have contributed most of the historical
CO2 emissions. This historical carbon, as James Hansen recently
pointed out, continues to represent the huge bulk of the extra CO2
burdening the carbon cycle. It persists for a long time, most of it
a mere 500 years, but a quarter of it lasts essentially forever. See
the sobering article in Nature.
The persistence of
fossil CO2 in the atmosphere means that we must not only ramp down
our emissions as fast as possible, but also find ways to pull it back
out of the atmosphere (my post on fixing CO2 in soil last month outlines
one pathway). So, yes, our industrial error has proved to be a
mammoth one. But at the time of the industrial revolution in
England, and later with the rapid industrialization of the US, we
simply did not know what we were doing. The consensus was that the
inventors were improving the lot of mankind. We now need to leave
the platform which fossil fuels built, but we also need to recognize
the many aspects of the modern world which were created by, and
continue to be fueled by, oil in particular. This is part of the
legacy of those who industrialized first to the rest of the world,
even as we acknowledge the brave new world of new sources of energy,
and new materials (see the current Economist for a fascinating look
at the emerging materials universe), one which needs to replace
the fossil platform as fast as possible.
In a recent
wide-ranging historical overview of climate science, US science advisor John Holdren argued that scientists reporting to the
President reached consensus by 1990 that the CO2 burden added by
burning fossil fuels was greater than the opposing effect of
industrial aerosol pollution (these aerosols, primarily sulfates,
ironically hinder the warming effect of greenhouse gases by damping
the amount of incoming solar radiation through re-reflection). If
political leaders had accepted that scientific
consensus, then any fossil-sourced emissions from that point on could
be charged as culpable, witting ecological sin. That would of
course include most of the cumulative emissions from China and India,
as well as the continuing emissions from countries who
industrialized first. The fact that the Republican Party continues to
deny that climate change is human-driven is probably the greatest
moral error in history, given this consensus. Even worse, Exxon
scientists had reached the conclusion that fossil carbon would prove
catastrophic before 1990.
But given that
concerns about fossil greenhouse gases did not lead to any conclusive
research until so late in the history of industrialization, I do not
think that the US and the UK (plus Russia, Germany, and Japan) owe
“reparations” for the historical carbon they dumped into Gaia's
system. However, given the clear judgment in hindsight of the
dominant role of the Anglo Atlantic partnership in the process of
industrialization fueled by fossil carbon, India's argument that they
and other developing nations like Indonesia should be alloted the
lion's share of the remaining fossil carbon production is a
convincing one – much as I would like to see all fossil carbon
burning cease in the critically immediate future. China, which has
developed faster than India, used to make the same argument, but air
quality there, not to mention recognition at the highest levels of
state of the imperative to limit global CO2 emissions, has shifted
their tone (China has arguably the strongest renewable program in the
world, despite the fact that it continues to use a lot of coal,
though at a significantly decreasing rate).
Nevertheless, I
think the international community needs to put the idea of
“reparations” behind it. The West correctly sees that setting any
kind of precedent for that opens the door to being given a bill for
any future disasters in the Third World, no matter what their cause.
Though I have enormous sympathy for those who are on the frontlines
of climate disruption, it is too much to expect a blank check
accepting blanket responsibilities from the heirs of some innovative
tinkerers in the coal country of England 300 years ago.
As for justice,
Exxon should be heavily prosecuted for their willful climate change
denial, the lynchpin in a strategy previously set by the tobacco
industry, which also cynically denied their own internal research.
Except that it is not just individual smokers killing themselves in
the instance of strategically motivated climate denial, but ecocide.
Reparations to extinct species are impossible.
Labels: bill Gates, climate justice, Exxon's denial and prosecution, G77, Green climate fund, historical carbon debt, James Hansen, john Holdren, Paris COP 21
Thursday, December 17, 2009
FOR WHOM THE BELLS TOLL
December 11 we vigiled around the Burnsville Square with our sign, “350= Climate Justice!” Three of us from Celo Friends Meeting were joined by a retired couple from Atlanta, sojourning at the Episcopal church in town. We were barely noticed, except when we stood under the “Go Cougars” sign. The same night, the Mountain Heritage high school football team was playing in Chapel Hill for the state 2A championship. It was very cold, and all got frosty fingers and toes. We walked around the square several times, turning our sign towards passing motorists. A woman walked across the crosswalk and gave us a quick, warm smile. There were no jeers, but also no inquiries or thumbs up. The only one among us born in the county was the gentleman from St Thomas, and he was impressed simply by the fact that such a vigil was possible in the town where he grew up. We vigiled until dark, the sky turning from deep blue to charcoal.
This was Friday night. On Sunday, Jim, one of the vigilers, brought a bell which we passed around at the close of Meeting, each person ringing it twenty times, until the number 350 was reached. (350 ppm CO2 is the upper limit climate scientists agree the earth can absorb and maintain anything like the world we grew up in. The present concentration of CO2 is 390.) Answering the call of 350.org and the World Council of Churches, bells tolled 350 times around the world, calling the negotiaters and climate ministers to climate justice via the treaty being negotiated in Copenhagen. A Baptist minister, shepherd of the church on the square, had first answered that they'd ring the bells 350 times Sunday afternoon, but he failed to respond to my calls for confirmation during the preceding week. Most people in Yancey county don't accept climate change, and so this proclamation was probably too risky for him.
For whom do these bells toll? First, they toll for the nations most at risk, the island nations, nations like Bangladesh with low coastlines, the African nations being pushed more and more irrevocably into drought. These are the countries providing leadership at the conference, courageously standing up to the industrial powers who have used strong-arm tactics against them in each of the negotiating sessions prior to COP-15. Meanwhile, the US and China carry on a diplomatic duel, pointing fingers at each other over responsibility for the mess. The EU has continued to provide leadership of its own, both promising the most cuts in CO2 emissions and the most money to help poorer nations pay the costs of shifting to lower carbon energy economies. Russia and Japan have also promised fairly deep cuts by 2020. But these levels remain insufficient, and as the climate summit heads into its final days, the rich and poor nations, and the US and China, remain deadlocked. Heads of state have started arriving and giving speeches ahead of the final scramble for a treaty framework. Gordon Brown, the British PM, arrived early, trying to help the poor nations and NGO's, (the latter being progressively excluded from the final sessions) broker a deal with the rich countires who have caused most of the pollution.
For whom do these bells toll? The poorer nations are clearly most at risk from climate change. But the bells toll not only for them, but for all nations, for rising seas and changing weather patterns will affect all, if not now, soon. Climate change has begun, and is picking up speed. Only a few years ago, scientists worried that the Arctic would be ice-free by 2070. Now a credible study by the US Navy points to five-seven years. And they have tolled already in New Orleans, where the poor either died, hang on with scant help or have become some of the earliest climate refugees.
Negotiating a treaty that will lay out a pathway towards climate justice will be difficult, close to impossible. The divides at COP-15 are many and deep, especially those between the developed and developing worlds, and the US and China. The key problem is the clash between politics and the laws of nature. Climate science reveals a narrowing window for action and a steepening curve for the costs of stabilizing and eventually cutting back carbon emissions. These costs, politically and economically, are enormous, verging on the astronomical as the window for action closes. Since we are dealing with tipping points for a whole interlocking series of positive feedback loops, what the Brits call “add-on effects,” it's not something we can fix after we are dead certain these effects have been unleashed. Some have already, yet denial allows many to enjoy “normal”life for a short while. We are a remarkably resilient species, and the mind is especiallly pliable, entertaining multiple fantasies of escape and salvation, either by technology or divine intervention. But as we sleepwalk like lemmings towards the rising seas, the Four Horsemen have already entered the field, swords and scythes upraised.
Concurrent with COP-15, the Parliament of World Religions has convened in Melbourne. I attended the last one in Barcelona in 2004, trying to get the religions of the world to accept anthropogenic climate instability as the chief moral issue of our times. Gary Gardner, the religion editor for Worldwatch, and I announced a meeting for those who agreed. One Spanish priest showed. Another meeting, held in Gaudi's storied la Pedrera, replete with wonderful speakers and multilingual translators, was attended by less than 50. A friend who was with me at Barcelona is attending, and says that religious leaders are very focused this time on the primacy of climate as a moral issue. A Christian pastor, he assured me this fall that “God will not let us fail..” Yesterday he wrote that things were looking pretty bleak for a new climate treaty, adding that he was holding out for a miracle.
All of us are praying for that miracle at Copenhagen, including some atheists trying new behavior. The miracle would be a fair, scientifically honest, binding treaty that builds on Kyoto and includes the US, China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia as signatories, as well as the 37 nations bound by emissions reductions in the Kyoto Accord. The bells are tolling, not just for rich and poor, but for the amphibians, the birds, and the mammals, including our species: all higher life on this remarkably blessed planet.
Father forgive them, for they know not what they do...
Friends, what have we done? Can it still be undone?
This was Friday night. On Sunday, Jim, one of the vigilers, brought a bell which we passed around at the close of Meeting, each person ringing it twenty times, until the number 350 was reached. (350 ppm CO2 is the upper limit climate scientists agree the earth can absorb and maintain anything like the world we grew up in. The present concentration of CO2 is 390.) Answering the call of 350.org and the World Council of Churches, bells tolled 350 times around the world, calling the negotiaters and climate ministers to climate justice via the treaty being negotiated in Copenhagen. A Baptist minister, shepherd of the church on the square, had first answered that they'd ring the bells 350 times Sunday afternoon, but he failed to respond to my calls for confirmation during the preceding week. Most people in Yancey county don't accept climate change, and so this proclamation was probably too risky for him.
For whom do these bells toll? First, they toll for the nations most at risk, the island nations, nations like Bangladesh with low coastlines, the African nations being pushed more and more irrevocably into drought. These are the countries providing leadership at the conference, courageously standing up to the industrial powers who have used strong-arm tactics against them in each of the negotiating sessions prior to COP-15. Meanwhile, the US and China carry on a diplomatic duel, pointing fingers at each other over responsibility for the mess. The EU has continued to provide leadership of its own, both promising the most cuts in CO2 emissions and the most money to help poorer nations pay the costs of shifting to lower carbon energy economies. Russia and Japan have also promised fairly deep cuts by 2020. But these levels remain insufficient, and as the climate summit heads into its final days, the rich and poor nations, and the US and China, remain deadlocked. Heads of state have started arriving and giving speeches ahead of the final scramble for a treaty framework. Gordon Brown, the British PM, arrived early, trying to help the poor nations and NGO's, (the latter being progressively excluded from the final sessions) broker a deal with the rich countires who have caused most of the pollution.
For whom do these bells toll? The poorer nations are clearly most at risk from climate change. But the bells toll not only for them, but for all nations, for rising seas and changing weather patterns will affect all, if not now, soon. Climate change has begun, and is picking up speed. Only a few years ago, scientists worried that the Arctic would be ice-free by 2070. Now a credible study by the US Navy points to five-seven years. And they have tolled already in New Orleans, where the poor either died, hang on with scant help or have become some of the earliest climate refugees.
Negotiating a treaty that will lay out a pathway towards climate justice will be difficult, close to impossible. The divides at COP-15 are many and deep, especially those between the developed and developing worlds, and the US and China. The key problem is the clash between politics and the laws of nature. Climate science reveals a narrowing window for action and a steepening curve for the costs of stabilizing and eventually cutting back carbon emissions. These costs, politically and economically, are enormous, verging on the astronomical as the window for action closes. Since we are dealing with tipping points for a whole interlocking series of positive feedback loops, what the Brits call “add-on effects,” it's not something we can fix after we are dead certain these effects have been unleashed. Some have already, yet denial allows many to enjoy “normal”life for a short while. We are a remarkably resilient species, and the mind is especiallly pliable, entertaining multiple fantasies of escape and salvation, either by technology or divine intervention. But as we sleepwalk like lemmings towards the rising seas, the Four Horsemen have already entered the field, swords and scythes upraised.
Concurrent with COP-15, the Parliament of World Religions has convened in Melbourne. I attended the last one in Barcelona in 2004, trying to get the religions of the world to accept anthropogenic climate instability as the chief moral issue of our times. Gary Gardner, the religion editor for Worldwatch, and I announced a meeting for those who agreed. One Spanish priest showed. Another meeting, held in Gaudi's storied la Pedrera, replete with wonderful speakers and multilingual translators, was attended by less than 50. A friend who was with me at Barcelona is attending, and says that religious leaders are very focused this time on the primacy of climate as a moral issue. A Christian pastor, he assured me this fall that “God will not let us fail..” Yesterday he wrote that things were looking pretty bleak for a new climate treaty, adding that he was holding out for a miracle.
All of us are praying for that miracle at Copenhagen, including some atheists trying new behavior. The miracle would be a fair, scientifically honest, binding treaty that builds on Kyoto and includes the US, China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia as signatories, as well as the 37 nations bound by emissions reductions in the Kyoto Accord. The bells are tolling, not just for rich and poor, but for the amphibians, the birds, and the mammals, including our species: all higher life on this remarkably blessed planet.
Father forgive them, for they know not what they do...
Friends, what have we done? Can it still be undone?
Labels: 350, Arctic melt, climate justice, COP-15, Parliament of World Religions
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