A lot of people wonder why we are doing so little to prevent the
slow-motion catastrophe of climate change. One theory is that it’s too big a subject to understand.
It’s
a big subject, all right. And a difficult one to address. But too big
to understand it isn’t. Quantum physics is too big to understand.
Climate change is simple. I’ll put it in one sentence: There are known
heat-trapping gasses, and if we add too much of them to the atmosphere,
it will cause large, foreseeable damage to humans and natural
environments. That is not too big to understand.
And a majority
of people understand it just fine. They are making the assumption that
the political process will work normally and that the government will
take the steps necessary to deal with it. Like government did with smog,
and with polluted water, and with acid rain, and with ozone depletion.
The thing that is hard to understand is how people in positions to do
something about it do nothing. Or rather, do everything in their power
to stop action.
And even this isn’t impossible to understand. People with a large
financial stake in emitting heat-trapping gasses have been protecting
their financial interests. People in government have allowed themselves
to be swayed to inaction by these powerful financial interests.
The
biggest, hardest thing to understand is how we have come to such
worship of wealth that it has completely overwhelmed and paralyzed our
government’s ability to do its necessary work. This is what ordinary
people fail to grasp. It is this gigantic failure of ethics in the face
of money that is too big to understand, because it violates everything
we were taught about how government and American society work.
It
is not the role of individuals to solve climate change. It is a
collective-action problem, the kind of problem that governments are
designed to solve. Even so, a lot of individual people have been working
very hard on the climate issue. Their government has been worse than
unresponsive. And now in the Trump era, government is not merely
paralyzed; it is actively making it even harder for people to take action on the climate.
And government officials know full well what they are doing. Climate change is not too big to understand. Oil companies have understood it for decades. Government
officials understand it, too. They. Don’t. Care. They have put
short-term personal interests first. They have sold their share of Earth
to the highest bidder. And your share, too.
That’s the unbelievable thing that is hard to understand.
Eviation’s Alice Commuter plane–the winner of the transportation category of Fast Company’s 2018 World Changing Ideas Awards–seats nine people and is entirely battery powered.
[Image: Eviation]
In five years, if you want to take a trip from San Francisco to
San Diego, it may be possible to do it on a small electric plane–and
with a ticket that costs less than driving or taking the train.
The
Israel-based startup Eviation,
which is building a new all-electric, nine-seat airplane, called the
Alice Commuter expects to begin making its first commercial flights in
2021 and scale up to hundreds of routes across the U.S. over the next
few years.
The timing is right, the founders say,
because of the current state of technology.
“There is a revolution
happening in aviation, and it’s happening because of lightweight
materials, energy density of batteries, the power of electric
propulsion, and the computer power of managing this together,” says Omer
Bar-Yohay, co-founder and CEO of Eviation, the winner of the
transportation category of Fast Company‘s 2018 World Changing Ideas Awards.
[Image: Eviation]
While some other startups in the space (including Zunum Aero, which
has the backing of the VC arms of JetBlue and Boeing) are focusing
first on hybrid planes, Eviation chose to go all-electric for its first
plane because it thinks that’s what will make flights as affordable as
possible.
“This will really be available to all, and [it will] make
sense to take our aircraft and not drive,” he says.
The
technology, he says, is cheaper than hybrid options both because
electricity is cheaper than jet fuel and electric planes cost less to
maintain.
“If you look at the numbers, the overall cost of maintaining
the cost of complexity of a hybrid unit compared to just swapping
batteries every two years or so–the batteries win hands down.”
Because
electric batteries store less energy by weight than jet fuel, the tiny
planes can only travel relatively short distances–650 nautical miles–and
because they carry a small number of passengers, this won’t be
replacing most large commercial flights.
But many flights do only fly
short distances, and because of the competitive cost of the technology,
Eviation saw it as a good place to begin.
The plane is designed to
feel as steady and comfortable as flying on a standard private jet so
that the small size won’t intimidate passengers.
At first, the company
expects that regional operators will use the planes to fly people
between smaller airports. But over time, it’s possible that big airlines
could begin to use the planes for short flights, rather than using
something like a 737.
They might also begin to shift away from the
current hub-and-spoke model, in which most journeys require a connecting
flight, to more direct flights between smaller cities.
“What we’re really giving here is a potential for a kind of high-speed rail–A to B–but from any A to any B,” says Bar-Yohav.
The
startup has been building a full-scale aircraft since mid-2017 and
expects to take demonstration flights in 2019. By 2021, it hopes to be
certified and flying on a first proof-of-service route.
After the
first plane comes to market, the next step may be a larger plane that
can carry 19 passengers.
The company may also develop a smaller vertical
takeoff plane for urban transportation, similar to those in development
by Uber and others.
“We’re trying to do this first with regional transportation, and then
look to the edges of this huge market,” says Bar-Yohav.
When they first warned more than 30 years ago that
human activity could create an enhanced greenhouse effect, scientists
hoped it would lead to decisive action to lower fossil fuel emissions.
Instead,
levels have continued to rise to a point most scientists agree that
climate change accelerated by fossil fuel emissions is changing the
weather and intensifying storms.
"Plan A was the hope governments
would step up and social movements would be powerful enough to put
pressure on governments," University of Adelaide Law School Associate
Professor Peter Burdon said.
"But that hasn't happened, so Plan B is to try the courts," he said.
Across
the world a shift towards climate change litigation is gathering steam
as low-lying island countries and even United States' cities take aim at
governments and big oil companies for failing to act proportionately on
emission reductions.
One of the most recent cases involves 21
teenagers in the US state of Oregon, who have been given judiciary
permission to sue the federal government for failing to uphold their
constitutional rights.
"They
assert that the actions of the [US] government and their delays and
failure to take meaningful action against climate change has violated
their generation and their constitutional rights to life, liberty and
property," Professor Burdon said.
"They've gone
through several layers of hearings and at every stop, the government has
sought to throw it out, and have been joined by companies like
ExxonMobil and Chevron, but it was decided they had a legal case and it
can be heard."
Elsewhere in the US, cities such as San Francisco
and Oakland have filed lawsuits against big oil and gas companies to pay
damages caused by rising seas, while in the Netherlands, Friends of the
Earth have threatened litigation against Royal Dutch Shell if it
doesn't bring its business in line with the Paris Agreement within eight
weeks.
It follows a landmark ruling in the Hague District Court
during 2015, which forced the Netherlands government to reduce emissions
by 25 per cent by 2020 after it was found to be breaching a duty of
care.
Drawing similarities with big tobacco cases
The Hague court
accepted there was a class of greenhouse gas emissions caused by human
activity (anthropogenic) and therefore no dispute whether the government
was contributing or causing a degree of climate change.
Professor
Burdon said accusing big oil and gas companies and governments of
contributing to climate change rather than blaming them outright was a
similar approach to those who fought big tobacco in the past.
"That
was precisely what big tobacco did in the case against them, because
how do you prove that your smoking led to this particular type of
cancer?" he said.
"Attribution science, drawing the link of
causality between what a company did and the effect you're experiencing,
is something that government and fossil fuel companies can delay or run
counter arguments against.
"But
if you argue that their actions perhaps didn't cause a storm event or
bushfire, but exacerbated it and increased its intensity, that, I think,
is a stronger argument."
The Netherlands decision of
2015 was achieved by 886 individual co-plaintiffs represented by the
Urgenda Foundation, which was subsequently "inundated with requests for
assistance to commence like litigations around the globe".
The National International Law Association (NILA) warned at the time
that it had potential for a "significant ripple effect for establishing
climate liability around the world and in Australia".
It
acknowledged, however, that the Netherlands have a civil system and a
constitutional requirement to keep the country habitable and to protect
and improve the environment, as does the US.
"Australia has a
common law system and any case must be founded first on an appropriate
course of action," a NILA spokesperson said.
"There is no similar express constitutional requirement."
Low-lying countries with Australia in their sights
Australia's
carbon footprint per capita is among the highest in the world — 15.4
tonnes during 2014 compared to 16.5 tonnes in the US, according to World
Bank figures.
This means its citizens punch well above their
weight even if the country's overall emissions are comparatively low
when compared to the likes of the US, Russia and China.
The
Pacific island country of Palau has sought an advisory opinion from the
International Court of Justice about whether it has a case against other
countries for failing to prevent, reduce or control the risk of
environmental harm to other states.
It follows threats by nearby Tuvalu in 2002 to take Australia and the US to court for failing to act on emissions.
Federal Environment Minister Josh Frydenberg did not answer if he was
concerned by litigation manoeuvres taking place overseas but said
Australia's emissions per capita and per GDP were now at their lowest
level in 28 years and were on track to beat its "2020 target by 294
million tonnes".
"We have ratified the Paris Agreement alongside
170 other countries and we are committed to a strong but responsible
2030 target of 26 to 28 per cent below 2005 levels, which will see a
halving of our emission per capita," he said.
Environmental
Defenders Office Queensland chief executive officer Jo Bragg said the
nation's governments were taking a "huge risk" if they failed to
implement measures that effectively protected or "cushioned Australian
citizens from the reasonably foreseeable impacts of climate change".
"While
we have not seen the breadth or number of civil suits in Australia that
have been launched in other countries, government must not be
complacent and assume such suits will not be run," he said.
"Certainly,
over the last seven years there have been a number of legal challenges
by community groups to government decision-making approval of major
thermal coal mines in Queensland and New South Wales."
Secondary effect of tarnishing reputations
Professor Burdon
pointed out that climate change litigation often had the secondary
effect of causing reputational damage to big oil companies.
"It's
well documented now that Exxon have known about the risk that their
work and their extraction processes have created for climate change for
more than 30 years," Professor Burdon said.
This
includes media reports in 2015 about an email written by Exxon's former
climate expert Lenny Bernstein — in response to an inquiry by Ohio
University — that revealed the company was aware of carbon dioxide's
contribution to climate change nearly 40 years ago.
Mr Bernstein wrote to the university's Institute for Applied and
Professional Ethics director that Exxon first became "interested in
climate change in 1981 because it was seeking to develop the Natuna gas
field off Indonesia".
"Exxon needed to understand the potential
for concerns about climate change to lead to regulation that would
affect Natuna and other potential projects," he wrote.
"They were
well ahead of the rest of the industry in this awareness; other
companies, such as Mobil, only became aware of the issue in 1988 when it
first became a political issue."
Professor Burdon said that
bringing a suit against an organisation like ExxonMobil was also about
"hoping you can cause some reputational damage to them, or it could be
about trying to halt or delay a project that they're trying to get
through".
Both BP Australia and the Australian Petroleum
Production & Exploration Association declined to comment on the
likelihood of facing law suits in Australia.
But even if the
evidence supporting anthropogenic climate change continues to increase,
Professor Burdon said the primary success of court action will depend on
a judge and whether or not they were the right person to understand the
science.
"While they strive to be neutral, the judges are still human beings with their own political views and ideas," he said.
"It's
about trying to get the perfect storm, get the right case with the
right set of data with a judge who's open to the argument."
