How Bad Is Global Warming?

[Nordic]

Oh yeah, trees!

Gosh maybe we shouldn't have cut down so many of them.

But no it's all emissions emissions emissions.

[Luther Blissett]

Oh yeah, trees!

Gosh maybe we shouldn't have cut down so many of them.

But no it's all emissions emissions emissions.

Yeah. And "liberating" clearcut / industrial / corporate farmland for reforestation.

But then again we also have to question the health of the soil.

[coffin_dodger]

Oh yeah, trees!

Gosh maybe we shouldn't have cut down so many of them.

But no it's all emissions emissions emissions.

Yeah. And "liberating" clearcut / industrial / corporate farmland for reforestation.

But then again we also have to question the health of the soil.

https://archive.org/stream/LivingWater_823/ViktorSchauberger-LivingWater#page/n0/mode/1up

[Luther Blissett]

July was likely Earth’s hottest month in what’s destined to be Earth’s hottest year

For planet Earth, no other month was likely as hot as this past July in records that date back to the late 1800s. And the global is well on its way to having its hottest year on record.

Both NASA and the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) have published data that show it was the hottest July on record. Since July is on average the planet’s warmest time of year, it’s fair to say temperatures this past month were at or very close to their highest point in the history of instrumental records*.

NASA’s map of July temperatures shows large areas of much warmer than normal temperatures in the Pacific Northwest, western Europe, central Asia and Africa. It also reveals the telltale signature of the powerful El Nino event, portrayed by the much warmer than normal sea surface temperatures in the eastern and central tropical Pacific.

The heat from El Nino not only manifested itself over the tropical Pacific, but also likely boosted temperatures in other areas due to its ripple effects on global weather patterns. In sum, NASA data reveal July 2015’s average temperature edged July 2011 as the warmest on record(by 0.02 degrees), making back-to-back months of record-setting temperatures after a toasty June. Every month this year has ranked among the top four warmest in NASA’s analysis.

In JMA’s analysis, the last three months (May, June, and July) have ranked warmest on record. In fact, 5 of 7 months so far this year have ranked warmest on record in JMA’s analysis. The two other months (February and April) ranked third warmest.



NOAA’s analysis of temperatures for July is not yet available, but should be published in the next few days. The first half of 2015 ranked as the warmest on record in NOAA’s analysis, with three of the first six months warmest on record.

Considering every month this year has ranked among the top several warmest if not the warmest on record for the planet, it is almost an inevitability that 2015 will be the warmest year on record. Both the “significant and strengthening” El Nino event along with the longer-term warming trend due to rising concentrations of manmade greenhouse gases are taking temperatures to new heights.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

This piece is a few months old, but I think it's important to include here as I think it does a great job encapsulating why efforts at carbon emission reductions and hitting the 2C goal seem to be a cornucopian fantasy.

The awful truth about climate change no one wants to admit

Updated by David Roberts on May 15, 2015, 12:50 p.m. ET



There has always been an odd tenor to discussions among climate scientists, policy wonks, and politicians, a passive-aggressive quality, and I think it can be traced to the fact that everyone involved has to dance around the obvious truth, at risk of losing their status and influence.

The obvious truth about global warming is this: barring miracles, humanity is in for some awful shit.

Here is a plotting of dozens of climate modeling scenarios out to 2100, from the IPCC:



The black line is carbon emissions to date. The red line is the status quo — a projection of where emissions will go if no new substantial policy is passed to restrain greenhouse gas emissions.

We recently passed 400 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere; the status quo will take us up to 1,000 ppm, raising global average temperature (from a pre-industrial baseline) between 3.2 and 5.4 degrees Celsius. That will mean, according to a 2012 World Bank report, "extreme heat-waves, declining global food stocks, loss of ecosystems and biodiversity, and life-threatening sea level rise," the effects of which will be "tilted against many of the world's poorest regions," stalling or reversing decades of development work. "A 4°C warmer world can, and must be, avoided," said the World Bank president.

But that's where we're headed. It will take enormous effort just to avoid that fate. Holding temperature down under 2°C — the widely agreed upon target — would require an utterly unprecedented level of global mobilization and coordination, sustained over decades. There's no sign of that happening, or reason to think it's plausible anytime soon. And so, awful shit it is.

Nobody wants to say that. Why not? It might seem obvious — no one wants to hear it! — but there's a bit more to it than that. We'll return to the question in a minute, but first let's look at how this unsatisfying debate plays out in public.

Are scientists keeping it real?

The latest contretemps was sparked by a comment in Nature by Oliver Geden, an analyst at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs. In it, he made a simple argument. Politicians, he says, want good news. They want to hear that it is still possible to limit temperature to 2°C. Even more, they want to hear that they can do so while avoiding aggressive emission cuts in the near-term — say, until they're out of office.

Climate scientists, Geden says, feel pressure to provide the good news. They're worried that if they don't, if they come off as "alarmist" or hectoring, they will simply be ignored, boxed out of the debate. And so they construct models showing that it is possible to hit the 2°C target. The message is always, "We're running out of time; we've only got five or 10 years to turn things around, but we can do it if we put our minds to it."

That was the message in 1990, in 2000, in 2010. How can we still have five or 10 years left? The answer, Geden says, is that scientists are baking increasingly unrealistic assumptions into their models.

Can we really suck a bunch of carbon out of the atmosphere?

Geden focuses on one such assumption: that substantial negative emissions will be possible in the latter half of the 21st century. We will be able to suck thousands of megatons of carbon out of the atmosphere, so humanity can go net negative by 2100, even if we emit a bunch more carbon in the short term.

The mechanism for negative emissions is supposed to be bioenergy — burning plant mass — coupled with carbon capture and sequestration. The combo is called BECCS, and in theory, it buries more CO2 than it emits.



If you work enough BECCS into your model, you can almost double humanity's "carbon budget" — the amount of carbon we can still pump in the atmosphere without passing 2°C. After all, if you can suck half the carbon out, you can afford to pump twice the carbon in.

But is large-scale BECCS plausible? There's the problem of finding a source of biomass that doesn't compete with food crops, the harvesting of which does not spur additional emissions, and which can be found in the enormous quantities required. The IPCC scenarios that come in below 2°C require BECCS to remove between 2 and 10 gigatons of CO2 a year from the atmosphere by 2050. By way of comparison, all the world's oceans combined absorb about 9 gigatons a year; all the world's terrestrial carbon sinks combined absorb about 10 gigatons a year.

These scenarios mean potentially doubling the capacity of terrestrial carbon sinks, capturing and burying — permanently, without leaks — gigatons of CO2 a year. How will it be monitored? What if it leaks or is breached?

There's no consensus on the viability of widespread BECCS, which, after all, doesn't exist yet. One 2014 commentary in the journal Nature Climate Change, co-bylined by 14 researchers, raised serious doubts about the feasibility of large-scale BECCS and the wisdom of betting the climate farm on it. They note that "deployment of large-scale bioenergy faces biophysical, technical and social challenges, and CCS is yet to be implemented widely," and that "widespread deployment [of BECCS] in climate stabilization scenarios might become a dangerous distraction."

Tips and tricks for producing optimistic model conclusions

But BECCS isn't the only way to make models produce happier results. The scenarios that show a high likelihood of avoiding 2°C also presume policy regimes that are positively utopian: a rising price on carbon, harmonized across every country in the world; the availability, maturation, and rapid deployment of every known low-carbon technology; all bets paying off, for 50 years straight. It would be quite a run of luck.

Is it possible in models? Yes. Is it possible IRL? Climate modeler Glen Peters doesn't think so:



There are other ways to shape model outcomes. Peters draws attention to this chart, from the IPCC AR5 report:



Row four is the total carbon budget available to humanity this century, in gigatons. As you can see, if you move right or left on the chart, relatively small changes substantially alter the carbon budget. If you tweak the scenario from having a 66 percent chance of staying under 2°C to a 33 percent chance, the carbon budget goes from 1,000 gigatons to 1,500 — 50 percent more breathing room.

If you decide 2°C is too difficult, and maybe 3°C is okay, your carbon budget goes from 1,000 gigatons to 2,400, more than doubling. That sure looks a lot easier. (Though, important note: even hitting that easier target would require substantial BECCS!)

Kevin Anderson, of the UK's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, is another frequent critic of these model assumptions. He says that models have often included unrealistically low estimates of current and future emissions growth, unrealistically early peaks in global emissions, and unequitable estimates of emission curves in developing countries (implicitly assuming stunted development).

Add to all these considerations the high rate of decline in emissions necessary after global emissions peak. It used to be that 2 percent annual global emission reductions was considered the maximum feasible (without serious economic contraction). Now models routinely show 4 or even 6 percent annual reductions, a rate of emissions decline that has never been achieved by anyone, anywhere, ever, much less consistently over 50 years.

Peters also shares this figure, from researcher Robbie Andrew:



In these scenarios, emissions never go net negative, though BECCS can get used. As you can see, for each year that emissions continue rising, the rate of decline afterward has to be steeper to stay within the budget.

Now policymakers are being told that emissions can peak in 2030 and still keep temperature rise under 2°C. To get that result in a modeling scenario, emissions have to fall 6 percent a year, even with large amounts of BECCS thrown in. To find that plausible, one has to imagine all of human society turning on a dime, beginning in 2030, deploying massive amounts of nuclear, bioenergy, wind, and solar, and doing so every year for decades.

It's "possible," yes, but at a certain point that term loses much meaning. Something that would require human beings to quickly and fundamentally change their collective behavior may not violate the laws of physics, but it is unlikely, given what we know about human beings, path dependence, and political dysfunction. This is what I once called the "brutal logic of climate change."

Are scientists to blame?

The question is, who is responsible for publicizing the truth about the assumptions behind these scenarios? Is it scientists? Niklas Höhne, director of the New Climate Institute, offered a reasonable response to Geden:

"The IPCC has never advocated for any target and has not commented on the feasibility, nor has the UNEP gap report [which shows the gap between current emission commitments and what's necessary for 2°C]. Both have shown the scenarios and the related assumptions, such as the need for net negative global emissions in some cases," he said.

"Both reports do not make a judgement on the feasibility. They leave that to the policy makers."

I think there's a good bit of truth in this. The integrated assessment models (IAMs) used to produce these scenarios are not meant to yield predictions, or even plausible alternatives. They show what outcomes result from a particular set of inputs; they reflect their assumptions. Theoretically policymakers ought to know this, but political misuse of modeling is as old as modeling.

Nonetheless, the heated reactions elicited by Geden's piece do show that he's on to something. You can see some of those reactions on BuzzFeed, ClimateWire, and Responding to Climate Change (RTCC). A few are just crazy and knee-jerk, like Bill Hare of Climate Analytics, who "lumped [Geden] in with climate skeptics and other naysayers 'who systematically downplay the risks of climate change and argue against action to reduce emissions on spurious and ill-founded grounds.'" That is roughly the opposite of what Geden does.

Others respond by, in my view, missing the point. Stefan Rahmstorf and Michael Mann both insist that Geden is wrong, that 2°C is still physically possible.

I don't take that as the main thrust of Geden's argument, though. Lots of things are physically possible that nonetheless require heroic assumptions about collective human behavior (like, say, aggressive mitigation policy, in the face of powerful vested interests, harmonized across the globe, sustained for decades ... and also many gigatons worth of BECCS). The question is not whether 2°C scenarios violates laws of physical science, but whether they are reasonable given what we know about human beings.

That's not really a scientific judgment, though, is it? Geden makes the same mistake when he writes, "the climate policy mantra — that time is running out for 2°C but we can still make it if we act now — is a scientific nonsense." No. It may be a nonsense, but it's not a scientific nonsense. No branch of science, certainly not climatology, can tell us what the humans of 2050 are capable of. We are all, on that score, making educated guesses, and a knowledge of history, politics, and economics will be just as important to that judgment as any knowledge of the physical sciences.



Who owns the nonsense?

I imagine the scientists want to blame the policy advisors and the politicians — after all, they didn't hide the unrealistic assumptions, they are right there in Appendix 17 for anyone interested.

And yes, theoretically, the policy advisers surrounding politicians should make clear to them exactly the assumptions required to produce the 2°C outcome. And politicians should be straight with their constituents about those assumptions.

However, as the kids say these days, politicians gonna politic. They all have enormous incentive to try to thread the needle, to accept the 2°C target on one hand while maintaining that current policy commitments are adequate, or might some day be adequate, on the other. To do that, they need evidence that success is still within reach.

There is not a politician on earth wants to tell his or her constituents, "We've probably already blown our chance to avoid substantial suffering, but if we work really hard and devote our lives to the cause, we can somewhat reduce the even worse suffering that awaits our grandchildren." [crowd roars]

And Geden is right that scientists have very little incentive to tell the unpleasant truths either. They can stick to physical science and the "possibility" of 2°C for quite a bit longer, I would imagine. Geden fears that the next big thing, the next deus ex machina to save the 2°C target, is going to be solar radiation managements (aka geoengineering). If they're told to model it, what can scientists do? They'll model it.

The sad fact is that no one has much incentive to break the bad news (except, ahem, my colleague Brad Plumer). Humans are subject to intense status quo bias. Especially on the conservative end of the psychological spectrum — which is the direction all humans move when they feel frightened or under threat — there is a powerful craving for the message that things are, basically, okay, that the system is working like it's supposed to, that the current state of affairs is the best available, or close enough.

To be the one insisting that, no, things are not okay, things are heading toward disaster, is uncomfortable in any social milieu — especially since, in most people's experience, those wailing about the end of the world are always wrong and frequently crazy.



Who wants to put on the posterboards, go out to the street corner, and rant?

Yet here we are. The fact is, on our current trajectory, in the absence of substantial new climate policy, we are heading for up to 4°C and maybe higher by the end of the century. That will be, on any clear reading of the available evidence, catastrophic. We are headed for disaster — slowly, yes, but surely.

Even as many climate experts are now arguing that 2°C is an inadequate target, that it already represents unacceptable harms, we are facing a situation in which limiting temperature even to 3°C requires heroic policy and technology changes.

And yet ... the world doesn't appear to be ending; there's no big, visible threat. Climate change moves so slowly that its pace is evident primarily through graphs and statistics. It rarely rises above the background noise.

So people want to hear that there's hope of 2°C. Politicians want to say that there's hope of 2°C. When asked, modelers are still able to produce scenarios that show 2°C. And nobody wants to be the one to pee in the punch bowl.

[justdrew]

well, maybe just a little nuclear winter... combined with ensuing substantial emissions reductions.

[justdrew]

'Diamonds from the sky' approach turns CO2 into valuable products
August 19, 2015

Finding a technology to shift carbon dioxide (CO2 ), the most abundant anthropogenic greenhouse gas, from a climate change problem to a valuable commodity has long been a dream of many scientists and government officials. Now, a team of chemists says they have developed a technology to economically convert atmospheric CO2 directly into highly valued carbon nanofibers for industrial and consumer products.

The team will present brand-new research on this new CO2 capture and utilization technology at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

"We have found a way to use atmospheric CO2 to produce high-yield carbon nanofibers," says Stuart Licht, Ph.D., who leads a research team at George Washington University. "Such nanofibers are used to make strong carbon composites, such as those used in the Boeing Dreamliner, as well as in high-end sports equipment, wind turbine blades and a host of other products."

Previously, the researchers had made fertilizer and cement without emitting CO2 , which they reported. Now, the team, which includes postdoctoral fellow Jiawen Ren, Ph.D., and graduate student Jessica Stuart, says their research could shift CO2 from a global-warming problem to a feed stock for the manufacture of in-demand carbon nanofibers.

Licht calls his approach "diamonds from the sky." That refers to carbon being the material that diamonds are made of, and also hints at the high value of the products, such as the carbon nanofibers that can be made from atmospheric carbon and oxygen.

Because of its efficiency, this low-energy process can be run using only a few volts of electricity, sunlight and a whole lot of carbon dioxide. At its root, the system uses electrolytic syntheses to make the nanofibers. CO2 is broken down in a high-temperature electrolytic bath of molten carbonates at 1,380 degrees F (750 degrees C). Atmospheric air is added to an electrolytic cell. Once there, the CO2 dissolves when subjected to the heat and direct current through electrodes of nickel and steel. The carbon nanofibers build up on the steel electrode, where they can be removed, Licht says.

To power the syntheses, heat and electricity are produced through a hybrid and extremely efficient concentrating solar-energy system. The system focuses the sun's rays on a photovoltaic solar cell to generate electricity and on a second system to generate heat and thermal energy, which raises the temperature of the electrolytic cell.

Licht estimates electrical energy costs of this "solar thermal electrochemical process" to be around $1,000 per ton of carbon nanofiber product, which means the cost of running the system is hundreds of times less than the value of product output.

"We calculate that with a physical area less than 10 percent the size of the Sahara Desert, our process could remove enough CO2 to decrease atmospheric levels to those of the pre-industrial revolution within 10 years," he says.

At this time, the system is experimental, and Licht's biggest challenge will be to ramp up the process and gain experience to make consistently sized nanofibers. "We are scaling up quickly," he adds, "and soon should be in range of making tens of grams of nanofibers an hour."

Licht explains that one advance the group has recently achieved is the ability to synthesize carbon fibers using even less energy than when the process was initially developed. "Carbon nanofiber growth can occur at less than 1 volt at 750 degrees C, which for example is much less than the 3-5 volts used in the 1,000 degree C industrial formation of aluminum," he says.

[Luther Blissett]

They better hurry up with that.

Study Links Polluted Air in China to 1.6 Million Deaths a Year

By DAN LEVIN AUG. 13, 2015

BEIJING — Outdoor air pollution contributes to the deaths of an estimated 1.6 million people in China every year, or about 4,400 people a day, according to a newly released scientific paper.

The paper maps the geographic sources of China’s toxic air and concludes that much of the smog that routinely shrouds Beijing comes from emissions in a distant industrial zone, a finding that may complicate the government’s efforts to clean up the capital city’s air in time for the 2022 Winter Olympics.

The authors are members of Berkeley Earth, a research organization based in Berkeley, Calif., that uses statistical techniques to analyze environmental issues. The paper has been accepted for publication in the peer-reviewed scientific journal PLOS One, according to the organization.

According to the data presented in the paper, about three-eighths of the Chinese population breathe air that would be rated “unhealthy” by United States standards. The most dangerous of the pollutants studied were fine airborne particles less than 2.5 microns in diameter, which can find their way deep into human lungs, be absorbed into the bloodstream and cause a host of health problems, including asthma, strokes, lung cancer and heart attacks.

The organization is well known for a study that reviewed the concerns of people who reject established climate science and found that the rise in global average temperatures has been caused “almost entirely” by human activity.

The researchers used similar statistical methods to assess Chinese air pollution. They analyzed four months’ worth of hourly readings taken at 1,500 ground stations in mainland China, Taiwan and other places in the region, including South Korea. The group said it was publishing the raw data so other researchers could use it to perform their own studies.

Berkeley Earth’s analysis is consistent with earlier indications that China has not been able to successfully tackle its air pollution problems.

Greenpeace East Asia found in April that, of 360 cities in China, more than 90 percent failed to meet national air quality standards in the first three months of 2015.

The Berkeley Earth paper’s findings present data saying that air pollution contributes to 17 percent of all deaths in the nation each year. The group says its mortality estimates are based on a World Health Organization framework for projecting death rates from five diseases known to be associated with exposure to various levels of fine-particulate pollution. The authors calculate that the annual toll is 95 percent likely to fall between 700,000 and 2.2 million deaths, and their estimate of 1.6 million a year is the midpoint of that range.

The Chinese government is sensitive about public data showing that air pollution is killing its citizens, or even allusions to such a conclusion. Though the authorities have gradually permitted greater public access to air quality readings, censors routinely purge Chinese websites and social media channels of information that the ruling Communist Party worries might provoke popular unrest. In March, after a lengthy documentary video about the health effects of air pollution circulated widely online, the party’s central propaganda department ordered Chinese websites to delete it.

Much of China’s air pollution comes from the large-scale burning of coal. Using pollution measurements and wind patterns, the researchers concluded that much of the smog afflicting Beijing came not from sources in the city, but rather from coal-burning factories 200 miles southwest in Shijiazhuang, the capital of Hebei Province and a major industrial hub.

Promises to clean up Beijing’s air were a centerpiece of the nation’s bid to host the 2022 Winter Olympics. The mayor of Beijing, Wang Anshun, championed restrictions on vehicles in the city, and state news media outlets lauded projects to replace coal-fired heating systems in urban areas with systems that use natural gas and generate far less particulate pollution.

“We will improve the air quality not only for the Games, but also for the demand of our people,” said Shen Xue, an Olympic gold medalist and ambassador for the 2022 bid, according to a report last month by Xinhua, the state news agency.

The Berkeley Earth paper showed, however, that to clear the skies over Beijing, mitigation measures will be needed across a broad stretch of the country southwest of the capital, affecting tens of millions of people. “It’s not enough to clean up the city,” said Elizabeth Muller, executive director of the organization. “You’re going to also have to clean up the entire industrial region 200 miles away.”

[justdrew]

so this really changes everything. I know I know I know all the 'reasons' why we can't just sit back and hope for a tech fix, but isn't it very clear by now that the only hope is precisely that? Nothing else has a chance of saving nearly every living thing on earth, we'd be royally fucked and looking at climate induced civilization collapse (at minimum and that will include total uncontrolled meltdown of every nuclear reactor) for sure, if there isn't a way out. Now it looks like there is.

This (these) techs described below (the concrete and fertilizer tech (and elsewhere road building tech)) are crucial not just to the survival of human civ, but most life forms on the planet. Rapid implementation of these and other solutions are absolutely the most important thing. Nothing can be allowed to stand in the way.

'Diamonds from the sky' approach turns CO2 into valuable products
August 19, 2015

Finding a technology to shift carbon dioxide (CO2 ), the most abundant anthropogenic greenhouse gas, from a climate change problem to a valuable commodity has long been a dream of many scientists and government officials. Now, a team of chemists says they have developed a technology to economically convert atmospheric CO2 directly into highly valued carbon nanofibers for industrial and consumer products.

The team will present brand-new research on this new CO2 capture and utilization technology at the 250th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS).

"We have found a way to use atmospheric CO2 to produce high-yield carbon nanofibers," says Stuart Licht, Ph.D., who leads a research team at George Washington University. "Such nanofibers are used to make strong carbon composites, such as those used in the Boeing Dreamliner, as well as in high-end sports equipment, wind turbine blades and a host of other products."

Previously, the researchers had made fertilizer and cement without emitting CO2 , which they reported. Now, the team, which includes postdoctoral fellow Jiawen Ren, Ph.D., and graduate student Jessica Stuart, says their research could shift CO2 from a global-warming problem to a feed stock for the manufacture of in-demand carbon nanofibers.

Licht calls his approach "diamonds from the sky." That refers to carbon being the material that diamonds are made of, and also hints at the high value of the products, such as the carbon nanofibers that can be made from atmospheric carbon and oxygen.

Because of its efficiency, this low-energy process can be run using only a few volts of electricity, sunlight and a whole lot of carbon dioxide. At its root, the system uses electrolytic syntheses to make the nanofibers. CO2 is broken down in a high-temperature electrolytic bath of molten carbonates at 1,380 degrees F (750 degrees C). Atmospheric air is added to an electrolytic cell. Once there, the CO2 dissolves when subjected to the heat and direct current through electrodes of nickel and steel. The carbon nanofibers build up on the steel electrode, where they can be removed, Licht says.

To power the syntheses, heat and electricity are produced through a hybrid and extremely efficient concentrating solar-energy system. The system focuses the sun's rays on a photovoltaic solar cell to generate electricity and on a second system to generate heat and thermal energy, which raises the temperature of the electrolytic cell.

Licht estimates electrical energy costs of this "solar thermal electrochemical process" to be around $1,000 per ton of carbon nanofiber product, which means the cost of running the system is hundreds of times less than the value of product output.

"We calculate that with a physical area less than 10 percent the size of the Sahara Desert, our process could remove enough CO2 to decrease atmospheric levels to those of the pre-industrial revolution within 10 years," he says.

At this time, the system is experimental, and Licht's biggest challenge will be to ramp up the process and gain experience to make consistently sized nanofibers. "We are scaling up quickly," he adds, "and soon should be in range of making tens of grams of nanofibers an hour."

Licht explains that one advance the group has recently achieved is the ability to synthesize carbon fibers using even less energy than when the process was initially developed. "Carbon nanofiber growth can occur at less than 1 volt at 750 degrees C, which for example is much less than the 3-5 volts used in the 1,000 degree C industrial formation of aluminum," he says.

[Luther Blissett]

The dangerous paradox of neoliberal environmentalism: Why global warming can’t be solved by the free market”
Establishment Dems are trying to take climate action while still satisfying corporate interests. That won't work


On July 17, the White House announced that President Obama will visit Alaska visit at the end of August, attending a conference “to discuss how climate change is reshaping the Arctic” and what can be done about it. On Aug. 13, Obama released a video about the trip.

“I’m going because Alaskans are on the front lines of one of the greatest challenges we face this century — climate change,” Obama began his brief message. “What’s happening in Alaska isn’t just a preview of what will happen to the rest of us if we don’t take action,” he said. “It’s our wakeup call. The alarm bells are ringing. And as long as I’m president, America will lead the world to meet this threat before it’s too late.”

But just four days later, he directly undermined his own message, when his administration issued the final permit allowing Shell Oil to drill in the Arctic, despite the administration’s own assessment that the chances of a significant oil spill in the area were 75% — not to mention that a good deal of existing known oil reserves must be left in the ground to protect against global warming. A recent article in Nature found that “development of resources in the Arctic and any increase in unconventional oil production are incommensurate with efforts to limit average global warming to 2 degrees Celsius.”

The sharp contradiction did not go unnoticed. “It’s perplexing and depressing, quite frankly, to hear President Obama say he wants to fix climate change but then approve Arctic drilling,” said Rebecca Noblin, Alaska director for the Center for Biological Diversity, in an AP story highlighting environmentalists’ concerns. “It’s like a doctor diagnosing a patient but then refusing to write a prescription.”

“It sends a terrible signal to the rest of the world for the United States to be using public resources to promote that development,” AP quoted Niel Lawrence of the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We have to make clear to the rest of the world that we are all in on a clean energy future. And we’ve got to stop giving the rest of the world license to go exploring by permitting Shell to do it.”

“The president cannot have it both ways,” Greenpeace USA Executive Director Annie Leonard chimed in. “Announcing a tour of Alaska to highlight climate change days before giving Shell the final approval to drill in the Arctic ocean is deeply hypocritical.”

But these contradictory mixed signals are nothing new. Indeed, they typify the ambiguity not only of the Obama administration (recall their sluggish response and muted criticism of BP — even expressions of trust — during the Gulf oil spill) but of neoliberalism more generally, which looks at the world through business-friendly eyes, no matter what the subject, no matter what the goal it says it’s trying to achieve. It can never even begin to contemplate the idea of a “green New Deal,” as George Soros discusssed with Bill Moyers just weeks before the 2008 election. Such a vision would burst the limits of neoliberalism’s worldview, and so we’re left with a profound disconnect between the recognized problem and the policies offered in response. This disconnect represents yet another dimension in which there’s not just tension but a deep divide between activists in their communities and Democratic politicians supposedly representing them.

This helps explain why Hillary Clinton quickly criticized the decision, tweeting, “The Arctic is a unique treasure. Given what we know, it’s not worth the risk of drilling.” Yet, Clinton — also a neoliberal, like her husband — has ambiguity problems of her own, as seen by her refusal to take a stand on the Keystone XL pipeline (“If it’s undecided when I become president I will answer your question”), despite the fact Bernie Sanders has drawn a sharp contrast, (“It is totally crazy for the Congress to support the production and transportation of some of the dirtiest oil on the planet.”)

The contradiction was further sharpened by Obama’s Aug. 3 announcement of his Clean Power Plan, devoted to lowering greenhouse gas emissions from power plants, which he called, “the single most important step America has ever taken in the fight against global climate change.”

“I think that what we’re seeing from Obama is a really good example of what a climate leader sounds like,” author/journalist Naomi Klein responded on Democracy Now. “But I’m afraid we’ve got a long way to go before we see what a climate leader acts like, because there is a huge gap … the measures that have been unveiled are simply inadequate.” She went on to explain:

If we were to stay below two degrees, we would need to be cutting emissions by around 8 to 10 percent a year. Those are numbers from the Tyndall Centre on Climate Research in Manchester. And this plan would lower emissions in the United States by around 6 percent overall — I’m not just talking about the power sector, but overall emissions by 6 percent by 2030. So compare what we should be doing — 8 to 10 percent a year — with 6 percent by 2030. That’s the carbon gap, and it’s huge.

It’s a stunning disconnect, and it’s rooted in the neoliberal’s acceptance of the marketplace as reality-defining, with all the institutional limits from existing oligopoly-dominated markets baked in, regardless of how little those markets may resemble the textbook ideals. Grassroots environmentalists — moved by nature, facts and concern for future generations — see one kind of pragmatism: what works to create a livable future. Neoliberal environmentalists see a very different kind of pragmatism: what’s politically achievable, whether or not it actually solves the underlying problems. Fundamentally changing the rules, so that polluting oligopolies no longer control the system, is simply unthinkable for them. The tensions between the two types of environmentalists have rarely been so stark — but they’ve long been consequential.

Similar tensions contributed to Gore losing voters to Nader in 2000 — witness the formation of Environmentalists Against Gore by 61 grassroots environmental leaders from 18 states in July 2000 — and they could cut into the Democratic Party’s ability to mobilize 2008 and 2012 levels of support in 2016. This means there’s a real, practical, political price to be paid for the supposedly “practical” “adult” politics of neoliberalism, of which Hillary Clinton has long been a part.

Pundits, campaign activists and the like resist even considering this price — or if they do, they treat it as a matter of “perception,” “image,” “communication,” “trust” or anything else, really, except for what it actually is: a consequence of bad policies — and bad faith. So it’s helpful to recall what it actually entails, and just how long it’s been that neoliberals continue to ignore it.

Let’s go back to July 1992, on the first leg of the Clinton-Gore campaign bus tour following the Democratic Convention, in Weirton, West Virginia, where the candidates were asked for their assistance, “to stop Waste Technologies Incorporated, the largest toxic waste incinerator in the world, being built 20 miles north of here on the Ohio River.” Gore began, “I’d like to say that I admired your fight, I’m familiar with exactly what you’re fighting against and I think that its important for us as a nation to learn from the struggle that you are now engaged in.” After discussing various details, he concluded, “I’ll tell you this, a Clinton/Gore Administration is going to give you an environmental presidency to deal with these problems. We’ll be on your side for a change instead of the side of the garbage generators the way they have been.” Clinton added, “When we’re in office we will have real meaningful national standards about the permitting of these sort of incinerators.”

After the election, this early environmental promise went on to become the subject of Gore’s first press release on the environment in December 1992, which included the subtitle “Clinton-Gore Administration Would Not Issue Test Burn Permit.” Yet, in the end, Greenpeace would come to call it “Al Gore’s First Broken Promise.”

In April 2000, Jake Tapper wrote a story here looking back at what happened and the stain it left on Gore’s environmental reputation. “Al Gore was supposed to be the environmental hero, but meanwhile I have a toxic-waste incinerator in my backyard,” said Terri Swearingen, a nurse living less than two miles from the incinerator.

Tapper went on to quote Gore on the campaign trail that month, back in Ohio, claiming that “Most of the options available to us were taken away from us by a last-minute decision by the Bush-Quayle administration,” but pledging to get EPA to “do a full-scale review.” However, Tapper noted, “Clinton-Gore overturned other last-minute decisions by the Bush administration,” according to his critics, who “say Gore had plenty of opportunities to hinder the process.” Greenpeace Toxics Campaigner Rick Hind added further points questioning Gore’s profession of helplessness in a letter responding to Tapper’s story.

The bottom line was that manipulations of government bureaucracy for private interests were deemed insurmountable, while manipulations in the public interest were barely even mentioned. That’s just how neoliberal governance works. It typified the atmosphere which led to the aforementioned creation of Environmentalists Against Gore. Of course, Bush’s environmental record was so disastrous as to obliterate any memory of Gore’s environmental shortcomings. Yet, if Gore hadn’t let grassroots environmental activists down as VP, he likely would have won the 2000 election, despite the Supreme Court.

Fast forward to December 2008, and something remarkably similar took place: the outgoing GOP administration put a rush on screwing over the environment. A number of last-minute measures were rushed through, with varying degrees of disregard for proper process, as well as the environment. One such measure was the Election Day announcement of a lease sale of drilling rights to hundreds of parcels totalling 360,000 acres in Utah’s scenic redrock desert. As the Salt Lake Tribune reported, objections came “from the National Park Service, members of Congress and John Podesta, the head of President-elect Barack Obama’s transition team, who said the lease sale should be halted or altered to accommodate environmental concerns.”

On Dec. 19, when bids were taken on 116 parcels, a 27-year old graduate student, Tim DeChristopher, intervened in the bidding process, driving up the prices and winning bids on more than 10 parcels, as a form of non-violent action to disrupt the process which legal actions had been unable to stop. His actions were possible, in part, because of the rushed, haphazard nature of the process. He had no advance plans to engage in the bidding, but saw it was possible once he was there.

The Obama administration’s reaction was tellingly split. On the one hand, it acted quickly to reverse the leasing decisions, canceling 77 of the leases that had already been bid in early February 2009.

The LA Times reported that it was just one of several last-minute Bush actions being questioned by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar:

Salazar has said he wants to revisit Bush-era regulations that open much of the West to oil shale development, the delisting of the gray wolf as an endangered species, and a rule that allows federal agencies to avoid consulting scientists on whether the Endangered Species Act applies to certain projects.

On the other hand, the prosecution of DeChristopher continued under Obama, as if Bush were still in office. He was charged with two felonies, and sentenced to two years in prison in July 2011 — a remarkably severe sentence for an act of civil disobedience. At his trial, DeChristopher was essentially prevented from mounting his defense in several key respects — he was not allowed to use a necessity defense or to present evidence the lease auction was deemed unlawful, that he was motivated by moral convictions about climate change, that he had raised sufficient funds for the initial lease payment to the BLM (refused by the BLM) or that he was being subject to selective prosecution.

The arguments excluded were a de facto roadmap to the borderline between grassroots and neoliberal environmentalism: only arguments congruent with private business interests are allowed on the latter side of the line. It should also be noted that a single bidder pushing prices up like DeChristopher did clearly demonstrates that the bidding market was rigged — and not just for those drilling leases, but for all such leases. The Obama administration showed no interest in exploring this, any more than they were interested in exploring and prosecuting rigged markets on Wall Street.

A year after DeChristopher’s one-man intervention, in December 2009, the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference was held in Copenhagen. As the conference got underway, a controversial secretly-negotiated document (“The Danish Text”) was leaked to the Guardian, sparking an uproar, as developing nations denounced it for both its substance — shifting costs onto them — and for its subversion of the open deliberative UN process. In the end, nothing was agreed to at the conference — a non-binding document was merely “taken note of.” Afterwards, British author/journalist George Monbiot wrote in the Guardian:

The immediate reason for the failure of the talks can be summarised in two words: Barack Obama.

The man elected to put aside childish things proved to be as susceptible to immediate self-interest as any other politician. Just as George Bush did in the approach to the Iraq war, Obama went behind the backs of the UN and most of its member states and assembled a coalition of the willing to strike a deal that outraged the rest of the world. This was then presented to poorer nations without negotiation: either they signed it or they lost the adaptation funds required to help them survive the first few decades of climate breakdown.

In addition, activists from Friends of the Earth and other mainstream environmental groups were denied access to the UN conference center as world leaders started to arrive, while years later it was revealed in documents leaked by Edward Snowden that the NSA had been spying on conference participants, much as the U.S. spied on other countries in the run-up to the Iraq war. These were two further signs of the deep disconnect between neoliberal environmentalism and those it claims to represent.

There’s no doubt, of course, that the Obama administration felt politically hemmed in. Monbiot’s article was even titled, “If you want to know who’s to blame for Copenhagen, look to the US Senate,” and it traced the blame back to the lack of campaign finance reform. But the Obama administration’s response to feeling hemmed in was not to fight back with everything they had, forging alliances with natural allies in the fight against global warming — including those it claimed to represent. Instead, they waged a multi-front covert war against the very people they ought to have been forging alliances with. Such is the “logic” of neoliberal environmentalism — and the result, not surprisingly, is contradiction, confusion and paralysis.

More of the same was on display a few months later, when the BP Deepwater Horizon blowout occurred on April 20, 2010. While Obama argued that “Those who think that we were either slow on our response or lacked urgency don’t know the facts,” a Rolling Stone story, “The Spill, The Scandal and the President,” argued that the problem went much deeper than the questions of response:

Like the attacks by Al Qaeda, the disaster in the Gulf was preceded by ample warnings – yet the administration had ignored them. Instead of cracking down on MMS [Minerals Management Service], as he had vowed to do even before taking office, Obama left in place many of the top officials who oversaw the agency’s culture of corruption. He permitted it to rubber-stamp dangerous drilling operations by BP — a firm with the worst safety record of any oil company — with virtually no environmental safeguards, using industry-friendly regulations drafted during the Bush years. He calibrated his response to the Gulf spill based on flawed and misleading estimates from BP — and then deployed his top aides to lowball the flow rate at a laughable 5,000 barrels a day, long after the best science made clear this catastrophe would eclipse the Exxon Valdez.

Again and again, Obama has put himself in the position of fighting against the very people he should be allied with — both experts and activists who would much rather being mobilizing a movement in support of his leadership, rather than clashing with him repeatedly.

But this is not a personal criticism. It’s not just Obama, it’s the neoliberal mindset, and the real-world power relationships behind that mindset. That’s why the same sorts of problems were seen with Clinton-Gore, and why the same problems persist with Hillary Clinton as well. She was, after all, Obama’s secretary of state, and it was under her that the State Department issued a draft review approving Keystone XL that was sharply criticized by Obama’s own EPA, but still approved in final form, despite the objection of expert critics such as James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, who has argued that the big-picture global warming concerns mean that tar sands must be left in the ground:

An overwhelming objection is that exploitation of tar sands would make it implausible to stabilize climate and avoid disastrous global climate impacts….if emissions from coal are phased out over the next few decades and if unconventional fossil fuels including tar sands are left in the ground, it is conceivable to stabilize earth’s climate.

Phase out of emissions from coal is itself an enormous challenge. However, if the tar sands are thrown into the mix, it is essentially game over. There is no practical way to capture the CO2 emitted while burning oil, which is used principally in vehicles.

So, in short, it’s nice that Hillary Clinton has shown herself willing to break with Obama’s self-contradictory actions around Artic drilling. But it’s even more necessary to say “no” to Keystone XL, if she’s at all serious about her commitment to protecting the climate — and environmental activists know it. Bernie Sanders certainly knows it. The political press remains blissfully ignorant. But if Clinton does win the nomination, and she remains ignorant as well, it will be that much harder for her galvanize the activist base support she needs. She should check in with Al Gore about that. If Bernie Sanders gets the nomination he will have no such problem.

Paul Rosenberg is a California-based writer/activist, senior editor for Random Lengths News, and a columnist for Al Jazeera English. Follow him on Twitter at @PaulHRosenberg.

[Nordic]

1. Quit cutting down the fucking trees.

2. Plant more trees.

Fuck all this talk of "emissions". Just go on Google Maps and look at any formerly wooded areas just about anywhere. It's clear as fuck that all the trees are being cut down. We're cutting down all the fucking trees!!!

It's pretty godamn simple. We don't need all these high tech solutions. God put it here for us. Everything we need on earth is already here. B

The only reason there is oxygen on earth in the first place: plant life.

[NeonLX]

^^^^^And hemp plants. Lots and lots of hemp plants.

[smoking since 1879]

1. Quit cutting down the fucking trees.

2. Plant more trees.

Fuck all this talk of "emissions". Just go on Google Maps and look at any formerly wooded areas just about anywhere. It's clear as fuck that all the trees are being cut down. We're cutting down all the fucking trees!!!

It's pretty godamn simple. We don't need all these high tech solutions. God put it here for us. Everything we need on earth is already here. B

The only reason there is oxygen on earth in the first place: plant life.

Couldn't agree more

Nordic for President

[PufPuf93]

Oh yeah, trees!

Gosh maybe we shouldn't have cut down so many of them.

But no it's all emissions emissions emissions.

Yeah. And "liberating" clearcut / industrial / corporate farmland for reforestation.

But then again we also have to question the health of the soil.

I worked in forestry for 35 years and was professional forester post university for the Feds, as an academic, private corporate, timber appraiser, and private small owner but have been retired for a decade. My undergrad education was forest science with a minor in soil science.

Problems with forests in the USA are far more often vegetation structure related rather than the need for reforestation. We have too many trees of the wrong kind. Attributes such as age or size class distribution and species mix result in forests that are less productive in a commodity sense or as wildlife habitat and other biological values and at the same time are less resilient to environmental stressors like drought, insects, disease, fire, and pathogens. Forests can be looked at on the landscape, stand, or individual tree level of resolution. Even with GIS, there can be weak linkages between planning and implementation. Even without global climate change, there are ever dynamic regional trends of forest condition and land use in the USA.

Regarding the fires, I would like to see more vegetation management to limit the extent and severity of the wild fires. The primary vegetation management tools being thinning and prescribed fire, often in conjunction. Logging also plays a role but logging and industry may have a different look than past practices, particularly on public lands. Our money and resources could be better spent. Living in close relation to Nature is good for humans. I don't like what I have seen about carbon offset credits programs. Forest and wildland management is complex and too political. My druthers are that a maximum amount of land be placed in legislated Wilderness or other protective status.

We are going through a human-caused great extinction event. Humanity will have to manage its relationship to climate change as, practically speaking, there is no choice.

Here are two links I use to follow the wildfires:

http://inciweb.nwcg.gov/state/5/ (set for California but one can look at any state)

http://wildfiretoday.com/

[Luther Blissett]

Given your expertise, could we play out a thought experiment? If we could go back in time about 550 years, how do you think humans could peacefully and sustainably come and live together in North America without making the developmental mistakes of the Industrial Revolution? Nothing is off the table or too far into the realm of science fiction for me.

In 1500, how healthy were North America's wildernesses? How often did the people who lived here before use utilize thinning and prescribed fire? I don't think it's impossible for humans in greater numbers to have lived in harmony with them.

I'm going camping near a virgin forest this weekend in a very remote place and will be doing some hiking around in the designated Wild Areas. The guide says solitude is "almost guaranteed". I am looking forward to seeing a landscape like that for only the second time in my life and the first time being specifically conscientious of what "it means". I plan on meditating on what it would have meant for people to have thrived in a vast environment like that.