28/12/2016

Trump’s Threat On Climate Change Pledges Will Hit Africa Hard

The Conversation - 


President-elect Donald Trump’s stance on climate change is very different to Barack Obama’s. Reuters/Kevin Lamarque
US  President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the US Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt, publicly questions the existence of climate change. He, and presumably Trump himself, opposes President Barack Obama’s environmental initiatives to limit greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
US withdrawal from these agreements would imperil Africa. It is the region least responsible, most vulnerable, and least able to afford the cost of adapting to global climate change. Southern Africa is already suffering effects of global warming rates twice as high as the global average.
If Trump forsakes US support for the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, endorsed by 193 members of the United Nations (UN), as well as Obama’s bilateral climate agreement with China, the resultant rise of global warming and extreme weather events will wreak havoc throughout Africa. Global social media will amplify the human dramas and dangers of forced migrations, viral epidemics and related deadly conflicts as credible evidence of global warming’s impact continues to accumulate. China and the US are the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases.
So it is incumbent on African governments, individually and with the African Union, the UN and civil society networks globally and in the US, to pressure the Trump administration to keep US commitments.

The outlook isn’t good
Trump’s personal convictions about the threat and causes of global warming remain obscure. Several of his key cabinet appointees’ views are less so. And the cabinet hasn’t had this concentration of representatives from the old Republican corporate and military establishment since Ronald Reagan governed in the 1980s.
Most are ideologically conservative, older, white, Christian men hostile to government regulation, including those related to the environment.
Reagan succeeded in overturning Jimmy Carter’s early attempts to promote clean energy and other environmental reforms.
Today, the consequences for Africa of such reversals could be catastrophic.
The nomination of Rex Tillerson, ExxonMobil’s chairman and CEO, to become the next Secretary of State is of immediate concern to environmental scientists. This is particularly the case given ExxonMobil’s history of concealing the truth about global warming.
Governor Rick Perry of Texas, nominated to become Energy Secretary, is another proponent of reliance on fossil fuels. The climate effects of these have caused major disruptions to communities in Africa. The drought plagued and conflict prone weak states of the Sahel are especially vulnerable. Meanwhile the better known legacy of environmental damage by US and other oil companies in the Niger Delta continues to cause hardship and conflict.

Lessons from the past
Mobilising popular opposition to US actions that are hurtful to Africans is never easy. But here too an analogy to the Reagan years may be instructive. In 1986 bipartisan majorities in Congress overrode Reagan’s veto of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act. This imposed sanctions on South Africa, with conditions requiring national liberation for their removal.
Curbing global warming for the benefit of Africa and humanity might seem less urgent than ending apartheid in the 1980s. And were international sanctions to punish the polluter they would be against the US. Yet in other ways comparing the global anti-apartheid movement to one seeking freedom of relief from global warming may be similar.
Popular and bipartisan opposition to apartheid took many years to coalesce. But a popular and powerful president was finally overpowered. Global warming already has 64% of the US public “worried/care a great deal” according to a recent Gallup poll.
Trump won the White House narrowly in America’s archaic electoral college and lost the popular vote by a greater margin – 2.8 million – than any US president.
Although Africa has never been among the US’s foreign policy priorities, public support development and humanitarian assistance have enjoyed broad public support, not only among liberals and those who voted for Trump’s opponent. Major programmes to benefit Africa’s people in public health, agriculture, clean energy, and education have been rare examples of bipartisan support in an otherwise mostly dysfunctional US Congress. A campaign to help Africans adapt to climate change could resonate publicly and politically in ways that would benefit America as well, as with the anti-apartheid movement.
Passing even popular legislation takes time. The 1986 anti-apartheid bill was first introduced in 1972. By contrast, global warming relief for Africa is on a fast track. In 2014, Barack Obama committed the US to make a major down payment of $US 3 billion as part of a special $100 billion programme for African and other low income countries seriously affected by climate change caused by the US and other global polluters.
Trump and his team appear poised to rescind this commitment. Successfully opposing such a decision would be an early big victory in what is shaping up to be a major test for Trump’s leadership at home and abroad.

African leadership
African leadership of this campaign is essential. South Africa is in a good position to speak with conviction. It is one of the countries most seriously affected by climate change and is also home to Africa’s leading climatologists.
But to stand up to the unilateral fact-free flailing of Trump and his climate change denialists will require more than evidence.
Global warming raises a moral imperative to help those of us who are most vulnerable, least responsible for contributing to it and most in need. For these reasons we should all draw inspiration and be driven by the “stubborn sense of fairness” that the late Nelson Mandela credits his father for instilling in him.

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Donald Trump And The Triumph of Climate-Change Denial

The Atlantic - Clare Foran

The science of man-made global warming has only grown more conclusive. So why have Republicans become less convinced it's real over the past decade and a half?
Lucas Jackson / Reuters
Denial of the broad scientific consensus that human activity is the primary cause of global warming could become a guiding principle of Donald Trump's presidential administration. Though it's difficult to pin down exactly what Trump thinks about climate change, he has a well-established track record of skepticism and denial. He has called global warming a "hoax," insisted while campaigning for the Republican nomination that he's "not a big believer in man-made climate change," and recently suggested that "nobody really knows" if climate change exists.
Trump also plans to nominate Republicans to lead the Environmental Protection Agency and the Energy Department who have expressed skepticism toward the scientific agreement on human-caused global warming. Indeed, Trump's election is a triumph of climate denial, and will elevate him to the top of a Republican Party where prominent elected officials have publicly rejected the climate consensus. It's not that the presidential election was a referendum on global warming. Climate change barely came up during the presidential debates, and voters rated the environment as a far less pressing concern than issues like the economy, terrorism, and health care.
But that relative lack of concern signals that voters have not prioritized action on climate change, if they want any action taken at all. Trump's victory sends a message that failing to embrace climate science still isn't disqualifying for a presidential candidate, even as scientists warn that the devastating consequences of global warming are under way and expected to intensify in the years ahead. If Trump fails to take climate change seriously, the federal government may do little to address the threat of a warming planet in the next four years.
A presidential administration hostile to climate science also threatens to deepen, or at the very least prolong, the skepticism that already exists in American political life. "If the Trump administration continues to push the false claim that global warming is a hoax, not happening, not human caused, or not a serious problem, I'd expect many conservative Republican voters to follow their lead," said Anthony Leiserowitz, the director of Yale University's Program on Climate Change Communication.
A presidential administration hostile to climate science also threatens to deepen the skepticism that already exists in American political life.
The entrenchment of climate-science denial is one of the ways the United States appears to be exceptional relative to the rest of the world. A comparative 2015 study of nine conservative political parties in countries such as Canada, Germany, and Spain concluded that "the U.S. Republican Party is an anomaly in denying anthropogenic climate change." Meanwhile, Americans were least likely to agree that climate change is largely the result of human activity in a 2014 survey of 20 countries, including China, India, Australia, and Great Britain.
Scientific reality does not seem to have escaped the distorting influence of political polarization in the United States. A paper published in Environment earlier this year suggests that as the Tea Party pushed the Republican Party further to the political right, it helped solidify skepticism of man-made climate change within the GOP. That happened as the Tea Party incorporated "anti-environmentalism and climate-change denial into its agenda," the authors write, and subsequently became part of a broader "denial countermovement" made up of fossil-fuel companies as well as conservative think tanks and media outlets.
As the ideological divide between Republicans and Democrats has widened, so has the partisan divide over climate change. Scientific evidence that human activity is the leading cause of global warming has continued to accumulate in recent years, and the evidence for man-made climate change is now overwhelming. In spite of that, Republicans are slightly less convinced than they were a decade and a half ago that the Earth is getting warmer as a result of human activity.
Democrats have moved in the opposite direction and become more likely to say that man-made climate change is real. This year, Gallup found that while 85 percent of Democrats believe human activity has lead to higher temperatures, only 38 percent of Republicans agree.In a deeply divided country, adopting views on climate change that conflict with scientific evidence can actually be a rational choice.
Liberals and conservatives frequently spend time with like-minded individuals, and people across the political spectrum may have a better chance of fitting in if they embrace shared partisan beliefs—regardless of whether those beliefs contradict scientific fact. This helps explain why highly educated Republicans are actually more likely to reject climate science. Yale University professor Dan Kahan put it this way in a 2012 Nature article:
For members of the public, being right or wrong about climate-change science will have no impact. Nothing they do as individual consumers or individual voters will meaningfully affect the risks posed by climate change. Yet the impact of taking a position that conflicts with their cultural group could be disastrous. … Positions on climate change have come to signify the kind of person one is. People whose beliefs are at odds with those of the people with whom they share their basic cultural commitments risk being labelled as weird and obnoxious in the eyes of those on whom they depend for social and financial support.
The complexity of climate science may have made it easier for global warming to get caught up in partisan politics as well. Voters look to the positions adopted by their political party as a kind of mental shortcut when deciding what to make of complicated subjects such as climate change, according to research from Cynthia Rugeley of the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and John David Gerlach of Western Carolina University.
That means that if Trump continues to voice climate skepticism after taking office, he could further cement skepticism among conservative voters. "I think it will reinforce climate denial among those who already doubt its existence. To that extent, yes, it will deepen denial," Rugeley said in an interview.
The power and influence of corporations relative to the government might also help explain why skepticism has thrived. An ideological preference for free markets may make some politicians and voters in the United States more sympathetic to arguments that environmental regulations will hurt the private sector—even if those arguments are used to dismiss climate science.
According to Matthew Paterson, a professor of international politics at the University of Manchester in England, skepticism over government intervention might help explain why climate skepticism also seems relatively entrenched in Anglo-Saxon countries such as Great Britain and Australia, though to lesser degrees there than in the United States.
Fossil-fuel interests, in particular, have managed to inject doubt into the climate debate in the United States, Paterson argues, by "funding deniers, and anti-climate politicians, and giving them a public voice."The more voters are skeptical of man-made climate change, the easier it may be for politicians to justify inaction.
It's impossible to predict what Trump will do in office, but he already appears poised to dismantle President Obama's agenda to combat climate change. He also seems willing to fill his administration with individuals who have cast doubt on the scientific consensus. Trump wants Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general, to serve as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Pruitt recently co-wrote an article claiming that scientists "disagree about the degree and extent of global warming and its connection to the actions of mankind."
Trump's choice to run the Energy Department, former Texas Governor Rick Perry, has claimed "the science is not settled" on climate change. And his pick to lead the Interior Department is Republican Representative Ryan Zinke of Montana, who has reportedly said that global warming is "not a hoax, but it's not proven science either."
Despite significant pockets of skepticism and denial, particularly among conservative Republicans, there are plenty of Americans across the political spectrum who believe that man-made climate change exists. Gallup recently found that a majority of Americans believe human activity is causing global warming, and feel worried about the rise in temperatures. Concern over climate change increased among Democrats and Republicans from 2015 to 2016 with 40 percent of Republicans and 84 percent of Democrats reporting concern this year. If that concern continues to increase, skepticism may decline over time among American voters.
Whether skepticism dissipates or intensifies may depend in part on the actions of the Trump administration over the next four years. If Trump makes climate science and policy a high-profile target, he might provoke a backlash among moderate Republicans who do believe global warming is a serious problem. But skepticism within the GOP could intensify if Trump's administration publicly misrepresents climate science and dismisses efforts to combat global warming as an expensive waste of time. If that happens, Democrats and liberal activists will counterattack, a dynamic that might cause partisan attitudes to harden further. That could leave the political debate over global warming more fractured than ever.

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5 Under-Reported Climate Change Stories Of 2016

Georgia Straight - Charlie Smith

2016 Arctic sea ice summer minimum. This map shows the reduction of Arctic sea ice since 1981. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
This is the time of year when some people talk about the news stories that didn't receive the attention they merited over the past year.
But with the threat of runaway climate change greater than ever before and a denier elected to the U.S. presidency, it seems appropriate to narrow the field to this area alone in 2016.
Here are my five picks for under-reported climate-change stories of the year.

1. Loss of global sea ice
Recent news has been bleak from the U.S. National Snow & Ice Data Center.
The extent of Arctic and Antarctic sea ice reached record lows this year for the month of November, each tracking two standard deviations from the norm for that time of year.
On December 22, the Washington Post reported that a weather buoy near the North Pole hit the melting point because of far warmer than expected weather.
"The entire Arctic north of 80 degrees, roughly the size of the Lower 48 states, has witnessed a sharp temperature spike reaching levels 30-35 degrees (nearly 20 Celsius) above normal. In reviewing historical records back to 1958, one cannot find a more intense anomaly – except following a similar spike just five weeks ago," wrote the Washington Post's Jason Samenow.
Donald Trump has named a climate-change denier, former Texas governor Rick Perry, as his secretary of energy. Michael Vadon
2. Republican Party's threat to humanity
Earlier this year in an interview with Truthout, U.S. linguist Noam Chomsky called the Republican Party "the most dangerous organization" in world history. That's due to the party's denial of human beings' impact on the climate and eagerness to burn fossil fuels.
According to Chomsky, the Republicans are "dedicated to racing as rapidly as possible to destruction of organized human life".
President-elect Donald Trump has promised to "cancel the Paris Climate Agreement and stop all payments of U.S. tax dollars to U.N. global warming programs". He's also pledged to rescind the Obama climate action plan, which aims to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 32 percent below 2005 levels.
Despite Trump's radical plans to reverse course, only 82 seconds in three U.S. presidential debates were focused on climate change. This issue simply wasn't a priority for the U.S. mainstream media during the election campaign.
In light of this, it shouldn't come as a surprise that his nominee for energy secretary, former Texas governor Rick Perry, is a hard-core climate-change denier from an oil-producing state. And Trump's secretary of state nominee, Rex Tillerson, is the CEO of ExxonMobil.
The price of solar power has fallen sharply, making it much more viable than ever before.
3. Generating all electricity via renewable energy
In an April interview with the Georgia Straight, Harvard science historian Noami Oreskes offered a blueprint for how North America could generate all electricity from renewable sources. And it wasn't that complicated.
She said that researchers have already demonstrated this could happen if governments focused on three major areas: integration of electricity grids, feed-in tariffs, and demand-response pricing.
If grids were better integrated from Mexico to Canada, it would become easier to make use of solar power, which has seen sharply falling prices.
Feed-in tariffs offer payments to people who generate their own renewable electricity and feed it back into the grid.
And demand-response pricing involves adjusting the cost of electricity during peak and slow periods of consumption to flatten the load.
“They’ve done the modelling to show that there is enough power between hydro, wind, and solar to fully power North America so long as you have grid integration to solve the intermittency problem," Oreskes said. "That’s actually a very exciting result, because this technology already exists.”
The City of Vancouver's goal is to become 100 percent reliant on renewable energy by 2050.
350.org
4. Keep It in the Ground movement
Organizations like Greenpeace and 350.org routinely speak about keeping fossil fuels in the ground. But the reasons for this are rarely articulated in the mainstream media.
A 2015 study published in Nature pointed out that if 80 percent of proven reserves of fossil fuels were actually burned, it would lead to average global temperatures reaching 2° C above the level before the Industrial Revolution.
This would sharply increase the risk of runaway climate change.
The Keep It in the Ground movement is devoted to blocking every attempt to free up new fossil fuel reserves to be burned. It's manifested in the intense opposition to new North American pipeline projects, coal-export facilities, the divestment groups on university campuses, and in the fracking of natural gas.
This movement serves as a constant reminder that financial analysts are playing a game of charades by continuing to pretend that companies like ExxonMobil or Chevron are as valuable as their CEOs claim. The reality is that their proven assets on their balance sheets can never be burned.
Once that realization hits home, thanks in large part to the Keep It in the Ground movement, it could have serious implications on the stock market.

Watch the trailer for the 2014 documentary Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret.

 5. Impact of eating meat on the climate
According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, more greenhouse gases are emitted through livestock production than through transportation. Methane, which is a byproduct of livestock production, is 23 times more potent than carbon dioxide for trapping heat in the atmosphere in the first 20 years after being released.
A study published several years ago showed that major changes in diet could have a huge impact on mitigating climate change. This could come not only from reduced consumption of meat but also from the amount of land that could be reclaimed from grazing. Despite this, the positive climate impact of curbing meat consumption was rarely covered in the mainstream media in 2016.
In 2014, filmmakers Kip Anderson and Keegan Kuhn completed a documentary called Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret, which exposed the impacts of modern agricultural production on climate change and other environmental crises. The filmmakers also pointed out that major environmental organizations have not given this topic anywhere near the attention it deserves.
Cowspiracy came under criticism from the Union of Concerned Scientists, which disputed the film's claim from a Worldwatch Institute report that 51 percent of greenhouse gases are generated through animal agriculture. According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the scientific consensus is that approximately 15 percent of greenhouse gases can be linked to animal agriculture, which is still a significant amount.
One journalist who's repeatedly blown the whistle on the links between meat eating and the climate is Chris Hedges. Below, you can watch an interview he conducted earlier this year with Anderson and Kuhn.

Journalist Chris Hedges discusses the impact of agriculture on the climate with Kip Anderson and Keegan Kuhn, codirectors of Cowspiracy: The Sustainability Secret.

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