Lethal Heating: 09/07/17

07/09/2017

Can ‘Cli-Fi’ Actually Make A Difference? A Climate Scientist’s Perspective

The Conversation - Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick

The Day After Tomorrow’s apocalyptic depiction of climate change is a little embellished. But such storylines can ignite conversations with people that mainstream science fails to reach. 20th Century Fox

Climate change - or global warming - is a term we are all familiar with. The warming of the Earth’s atmosphere due to the consumption of fossil fuels by human activity was predicted in the 19th century. It can be seen in the increase in global temperature from the industrial revolution onwards, and has been a central political issue for decades.
Climate scientists who moonlight as communicators tend to bombard their audiences with facts and figures - to convince them how rapidly our planet is warming - and scientific evidence demonstrating why we are to blame. A classic example is Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, and its sequel, which are loaded with graphs and statistics. However, it is becoming ever clearer that these methods don’t work as well as we’d like. In fact, more often than not, we are preaching to the converted, and can further polarise those who accept the science from those who don’t.
One way of potentially tapping into previously unreached audiences is via cli-fi, or climate-fiction. Cli-fi explores how the world may look in the process or aftermath of dealing with climate change, and not just that caused by burning fossil fuels.
Recently, I participated as a scientist in a forum with Screen Australia, looking at how cli-fi might communicate the issues around climate change in new ways. I’m a heatwave scientist and I’d love to see a cli-fi story bringing the experience of heatwaves to light. After the forum, Screen Australia put out a call for proposals for TV series and telemovies in the cli-fi genre.
We absolutely need and should rely on peer-reviewed scientific findings for public policy, and planning to stop climate change and adapt to it. But climate scientists should not expect everyone to be as concerned as they are when they show a plot of increasing global temperatures.
Cli-fi has the potential to work in the exact opposite way, through compelling storylines, dramatic visuals, and characters. By making people care about and individually connect to climate change, it can motivate them to seek out the scientific evidence for themselves.

Imagined worlds

The term “cli-fi” was coined at the turn of the millennium, but the genre has existed for much longer. One of the earliest examples is Jules Verne’s The Purchase of the North Pole, where the tilt of the Earth’s axis is altered by human endeavours (of the astronaut, not industrial kind), bringing an end to seasonal variability.More modern examples of cli-fi take their prose from real-life contemporary issues, imagining the effects of human-caused climate change. Some pieces of cli-fi are perhaps closer to the truth than others
Could the thermohaline circulation (which carries heat around our oceans) shut down, bringing a sudden global freeze, as The Day After Tomorrow suggests? There is evidence that it will, but perhaps not as quickly as the film imagines.
Is it possible that fertility rates will be affected by climate change? The television-adapted version of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale blames pollution and environmental change for a world-wide plummet in fertility, thus giving a cli-fi undertone to the whole dystopian series. While there is no scientific evidence to currently back this scenario, as a new parent, it struck a chord with me personally. The thought of a world where virtually every couple is unable to experience the joys of parenthood, particularly due to climate change, is quite distressing.

Poster for The Road Warrior, the second in the first Mad Max trilogy. Kennedy Miller Productions

Cli-fi also underpins the highly acclaimed Mad Max movie series. In a dystopian near-future, fossil fuel resources have depleted and the social and environmental impacts are vast. Australia has become a desolate wasteland and our society has all but collapsed.
Although such a scenario will be unlikely to occur in the next couple of decades, it is not completely unrealistic. We are burning fossil fuels far faster than they are forming, with some predictions that accessible sources will run out in the next century. And some of our famous ecosystems are already very sick thanks to climate change.
And then there is Waterworld. Yet another dystopia, where there is no ice left on Earth and sea levels have risen 7.5km above current levels. Civilisations exists only in small settlements, where inhabitants dream of the mythical “dry land”. While the movie overestimates exactly how much water is locked away in ice (sea levels can only rise by up to 60-70 metres), many major global cities would be inundated and no longer exist. And while it will take thousands, not hundreds of years for complete melting to take place, sea level rise is already posing a problem for some coastal settlements and small islands. Moreover, Arctic ice is predicted to completely melt away well before the end of this century.

Sure, the scientific evidence underpinning these storylines is embellished to say the least, But they are certainly worth deliberating over if they ignite conversations with people that mainstream science fails to reach.

The power of fiction
In the long run, cli-fi might encourage audiences to modify their everyday lives (and maybe even who they vote for) to reduce their own carbon footprint.
From personal experience, some audiences tend to disengage from climate change because of how overwhelming the issue may seem. Global temperatures are rising at a rate not seen for millions of years, and we are currently not doing enough to avoid dangerous climate change. Understandably, the scale and weight of climate change likely encourages many to bury their heads firmly in the sand.
To this audience, cli-fi also has an important message to deliver – that of hope. That it is not, or will it be ever, too late to combat human-caused climate change.
Imagining a future where green energy is accessible to everyone, where global politicians work tirelessly to rapidly reduce emissions, or where new technologies are discovered that safely and permanently remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere are absolutely worth air time. Cli-fi can act as prose for science. And on the topic of mitigating climate change, there is no such thing as too much prose.

Links

Dealing With Climate Change Means Transforming Society

Toronto Star - Matthew Hoffmann*

We have to understand that climate change is not a separate issue from most aspects of everyday life

Individuals, corporations and governments are not making the connection between climate change and the need to change everyday lifestyle decisions, like picking which car to purchase next, Matthew Hoffmann writes. (Tony Bock / Tornto Star file photo)

The gulf between the enormity of the climate change challenge and our readiness to undertake it is staggering. This is painfully obvious when climate change is visible, when we are faced with the evidence that the impacts of climate change are happening now with devastating consequences. But this gulf is also evident in society’s failure to internalize climate awareness and concern. As a society we are simply not fully “woke” to the idea that climate change is not some discrete problem to solve; it is, as characterized by climate scientist Mike Hulme, a part of the modern condition. Addressing and living with climate change requires serious transformation of society. We have a lot of work to do and it will not be easy.
Consider the seemingly innocuous juxtaposition of two articles in Saturday’s Star. In the World section, there was an article on the tragic aftermath of Hurricane Harvey in Texas. In the Wheels section, the front-page story was on a Kelley Blue Book ranking of the “Top 10 Back-To-School Cars of 2017.” These articles seem entirely unrelated.
A reader coming to the hurricane article could feel a sense of urgency about acting on climate change — “We have to do something. It is clearly devastating lives already and it is only going to get worse!” Then, a few sections later, the same reader comes to the list of best back-to-school cars. Climate change concern recedes into the background or disappears altogether. This is a fun read on the new cars out this year that are good for families — “Maybe I should look at a Kia Soul this fall.”
The failure to internalize climate change is in this juxtaposition. Not a single car on the top-10 list is hybrid or electric (though some have decent fuel efficiency). So either the list makers at Kelley Blue Book do not factor climate change into their rankings, or hybrids/electrics are not considered “student-friendly choices” that “are affordable and will meet with your kid’s approval” as per the article’s description of what cars make the list. It’s probably both. That’s the problem.
Climate change and the need for decarbonization is not yet fully penetrating into this kind of everyday thinking and decision-making at an individual, corporate or societal level. Many people, corporations and governments care about climate change and want to deal with it, but still treat it as a separate issue from everyday life. Everyday life is not yet about climate change, whether that means considering what car to buy, what cars to manufacture, or what cars to extol as the best.
This is obviously not just about cars. We have to understand that climate change is not a separate issue from most aspects of everyday life. Climate change is everyday life and decarbonization has to become a part of that.
This is not a plea for individuals to make consumer choices to save us from climate change. Consumers have some control over the choices that they make, though these are constrained by income, marketing, culture, etc. Consumers have less control over the range of choices that are available (only indirectly through market demand); that is the province of corporations and governments. It is a call to internalize the challenge of climate change and decarbonization and to make both visible and conscious. Individuals, corporations and governments have to realize that there are relatively few decisions unrelated to climate, because climate change is our reality.
We are making progress. From the rising public concern about climate change, to increased availability of renewable energy and climate-friendly technology, to emerging municipal, provincial and federal climate plans, climate action is more visible and possible than ever before. After all, page 2 in that same Wheels section had a glowing review of a 2018 Hyundai that comes as both hybrid and electric that looked awfully family friendly to me.
We still have to do more. Climate action needs to be front of mind and we have to normalize it not just in our big political decisions, economic planning, and in everyday life. Otherwise we face the prospects of normalizing articles on the tragic aftermath of climate-related disasters.

*Matthew J. Hoffmann is a professor of political science at the University of Toronto and is co-director of the Munk School’s Environmental Governance Lab.

Links

CSIRO A Paid-Up Member Of Minerals Council, Which Fights Climate Change Action

The Guardian - Michael Slezak

Science agency stands in contrast to Australia’s biggest polluter, AGL, which parted ways with MCA over climate change

The CSIRO has been listed as an associate member of the MCA since at least 2004 and the annual subscription for membership was just under $10,000. Photograph: Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Australian government’s science agency, the CSIRO, has paid tens of thousands of dollars to peak mining lobby group the Minerals Council of Australia, which fights against government action on climate change.
The CSIRO has been listed as an “associate member” of the Minerals Council of Australia (MCA) since at least 2004 and new documents obtained by the Australian Institute, under freedom of information laws, show that in 2017 the “annual subscription” for membership was just under $10,000.
The mining lobby plays a vocal role in Australian climate change policy debates and the positions it takes are on the extreme end of the spectrum and include pushing for more coal power stations to be built.
The CSIRO continues to be a member of the MCA despite even Australia’s biggest climate polluter, AGL, publicly parting ways with the Minerals Council of Australia in 2016, saying it did so because of the positions the MCA took on climate change.
“AGL’s positions on climate change and renewable energy differed from those held by the Minerals Council of Australia ... and AGL has elected not to renew its membership,” the company said in its 2016 sustainability report.

CSIRO declined to answer specific questions about how long it had been a member, what the cost had been and what the CSIRO got in return for membership. A CSIRO spokesman instead gave a statement, published in full below.
The executive director of the Australia Institute, Ben Oquist, said: “The Minerals Council has been on the fringe of the climate and energy debate in Australia, opposing policies that would tackle emissions effectively.
“It defies commonsense that the CSIRO, an organisation that researches climate change and develops renewable technology, gives money to a lobby group that campaigns against effective climate policy and against policies that would increase renewable energy.”
CSIRO has come under fire in recent years for a perception it has not been giving fearless advice to the public and to government on climate-related issues. At the same time, the organisation has cracked down on employees who themselves seek to speak publicly on policy issues.
Internal CSIRO emails leaked earlier this year show significant internal unrest over CSIRO’s failure to make a submission to the government’s consultation on greenhouse gas emissions targets in 2009. In one email, a CSIRO executive said it didn’t provide a submission because the “questions posed in the discussion paper are very policy-focused”. She said CSIRO would engage government agencies behind closed doors.
But Oquist said one of MCA’s main functions is to lobby to change government policy. “In its 2013 annual report the MCA boasts it ‘was at the forefront of the debates over the carbon and mining taxes; and their abolition (expected after July 2014) will be in no small part due to the council’s determined advocacy on both issues’,” Oquist said.
“While the commonwealth’s key scientific research organisation effectively funds political advocacy for the coal industry, it works to prohibit its own staff from commenting on national science policy.”
John Church, a world-leading climate scientist who was made redundant in the organisation’s 2016 job cuts and who was one of the disgruntled employees in the leaked emails, told the Guardian CSIRO’s membership of the MCA was in contradiction to its refusal to engage in policy debates.
“I would definitely say there was a conflict,” Church said. “CSIRO is putting itself in a position where it is implicitly supporting particular policy positions by being a member of the Minerals Council.
“They should not only be independent but be seen to be independent.”
A senior climate scientist still at the CSIRO told the Guardian that currently it is almost impossible for climate scientists there to speak publicly about policy.
David Karoly, a climate scientist from the University of Melbourne and a former member of the government’s Climate Change Authority, said: “It’s a small amount of money but it is odd in my view that they are spending this level of funding on an organisation that is arguing against the conclusions the CSIRO has made about the science of climate change.”
When asked about AGL’s move to quit the MCA, Tim Nelson, AGL’s head of economics, policy and sustainability, told the Guardian: “We think there’s a strong opportunity for all corporates and industry associations to document a very scientific approach to how they see the consistency of their industry and their business with the 2C goal that Australia has signed up to.”
The Minerals Council of Australia website says “full membership” is given to companies “directly involved in mining, prospecting or contracting activities relating to the obtaining, concentrating, smelting ore refining of minerals.”
They say “associate membership”, such as that held by the CSIRO, “is open to companies which carry on as their principal business the supply of equipment, materials, services or capital to a company eligible for full membership.”
Other public organisations with associate membership of MCA include ANSTO Minerals and the University of Western Australia.
A CSIRO spokesman gave the following statement:

CSIRO has a long history collaborating with professional societies and bodies including industry associations. Memberships are an important part of our dialogue with a wide range of stakeholders by allowing us to build networks, share research results, collaborate on research projects, and generally help ensure the relevance and uptake of our research.
No organisation we are a member of has authority to speak or act on behalf of CSIRO. Further, as standard practice CSIRO officers must work within relevant policies to ensure our independence and impartially. For example, they cannot comment on policies of the government, opposition or any other political parties; or outside of their areas of expertise in their interactions with any industry body.

An MCA spokesman said: “The MCA represents Australia’s mining industry as part of its contribution to sustainable development, economic growth and social and community affairs.
“As outlined on our website, full membership of the MCA is available to businesses involved in mining, prospecting or contracting activities while associate membership is open to groups providing equipment, materials, services or capital to mining companies.”
ANSTO Minerals, part of the government-owned Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation is also an associate member of the Minerals Council and a spokesman said ANSTO was a member of the Uranium Forum of the MCA and also sits on the radiation protection working group.
“These are forums through which we provide advice on all aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle including safety, compliance, radiation management, efficiency, and international best practice,” the spokesman said.

Links