Climate Change Is A Disaster Foretold, Just Like The First World War

The Guardian - Jeff Sparrow

The warnings about an unfolding climate catastrophe are getting more desperate, yet the march to destruction continues

‘The extraordinary – almost absurd – contrast between what we should be doing and what’s actually taking place fosters low-level climate denialism’ Photograph: Guido Dingemans/Alamy Stock Photo

“The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time.”
The mournful remark supposedly made by foreign secretary Sir Edward Grey at dusk on 3 August 1914 referred to Britain’s imminent entry into the first world war. But the sentiment captures something of our own moment, in the midst of an intensifying campaign against nature.
According to the World Wildlife Fund’s 2016 Living Planet Report, over the last four decades the international animal population was reduced by nearly 60%. More than a billion fewer birds inhabit North America today compared to 40 years ago. In Britain, certain iconic species (grey partridges, tree sparrows, etc) have fallen by 90%. In Germany, flying insects have declined by 76% over the past 27 years. Almost half of Borneo’s orangutans died or were removed between 1999 and 2015. Elephant numbers have dropped by 62% in a decade, with on average one adult killed by poachers every 15 minutes.
We inherited a planet of beauty and wonders – and we’re saying goodbye to all that.
The cultural historian Paul Fussell once identified the catastrophe of the first world war with the distinctive sensibility of modernity, noting how 20th century history had “domesticate[d] the fantastic and normalize[d] the unspeakable.”
Consider, then, the work of climate change.
In February, for instance, scientists recorded temperatures 35 degrees above the historical average in Siberia, a phenomenon that apparently corresponded with the unprecedented cold snap across Europe.
As concentrated CO2 intensifies extreme events, a new and diabolical weather will, we’re told, become the norm for a generation already accustomising itself to such everyday atrocities as about eight million tons of plastics are washed into the ocean each year.

"It may seem impossible to imagine, that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we’re now in the process of doing.”

This passage from the New Yorker’s Elizabeth Kolbert concluded a piece on global warming, which was published way back in 2005. Over the 13 years since, the warnings from scientists have grown both more specific and desperate – and yet the march to destruction has only redoubled its pace.
The extraordinary – almost absurd – contrast between what we should be doing and what’s actually taking place fosters low-level climate denialism. Coral experts might publicise, again and again and again, the dire state of the Great Barrier Reef but the ongoing political inaction inevitably blunts their message.
It can’t be so bad, we think: if a natural wonder were truly under threat, our politicians wouldn’t simply stand aside and watch.
The first world war killed 20 million people and maimed 21 million others. It shattered the economy of Europe, displaced entire populations, and set in train events that culminated, scarcely two decades later, with another, even more apocalyptic slaughter.
And it, too, was a disaster foretold, a widely-anticipated cataclysm that proceeded more-on-less schedule despite regular warnings about what was to come.
As early as 1898, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia initiated a conference to discuss international arbitration and limit the arms race taking place in Europe. At its opening session at The Hague, he noted that the competition between nations, in which each country was building up its forces to defend against its neighbours, had “transform[ed] the armed peace into a crushing burden that weighs on all nations and, if prolonged, will lead to the very cataclysm that it seeks to avert.”
Over the next years, the rivalries intensified, leading to further militarisation and a complex series of (often secret) treaties, as, between 1908 and 1913, the military spending of the major powers increased by 50%.
In 1912, the international socialist movement had staged an emergency meeting in Basel in Switzerland in which representatives from almost every nation spoke out for peace.
“The great European peoples are constantly on the point of being driven against one another,” the congress resolved, “although these attempts are against humanity and reason cannot be justified by even the slightest pretext of being in the interest of the people.”
Yet in early 1914, Winston Churchill noted that “the world is arming as it has never armed before”. The eventual declaration of war in August that year was still a shock – but only in the sense that those attending a patient expiring from a long illness might be startled by the death rattle.
The appeals to humanity and reason did not move states jostling for trade and commercial advantages. For the people of Europe, the arms race was disastrous; for specific governments, it made perfect sense, for those who did not compete risked falling behind.
The same might be said today.
From a global perspective, the necessity to abandon fossil fuels cannot be denied. But for individual economies, change risks undermining comparative advantages.
If we don’t sell coal, says Malcolm Turnbull, our competitors will – which was, of course precisely the logic of the British fleet expansion in 1908.
The devastation of the first world war eventually engendered a wave of revolt from a populace appalled at the carnage their politicians had wrought.
Climate change has not yet spurred an equivalent of the mutinies in France or the revolution in Petrograd or the uprising in Berlin.
Yet Labor’s appalling equivocation over the Adani mine – a piece of environmental vandalism for which there can be no justification – illustrates the urgency with which we need a new and different type of politics.
The stakes could not be higher. Lamps are going out all over the natural world … and no one will ever see them lit again.

Links

• Arctic has warmest winter on record: 'It's just crazy, crazy stuff'
• The Guardian view on snow and ice: it’s too cold here but too warm in the Arctic
• The mass extinction event going unnoticed as the planet’s biodiversity dwindles
• Bird populations in steep decline in North America, study finds
• More than 75 percent decline over 27 years in total flying insect biomass in protected areas
• 'Huge loss': more than 100,000 orangutans gone from Borneo in 16 years 
• Why World Elephant Day?
• Europe Was Colder Than the North Pole This Week. How Could That Be?
• The Climate of Man—III
• Arctic warming: scientists alarmed by 'crazy' temperature rises

Climate Change And Looters Threaten The Archaeology Of Mongolia

The Conversation - Julia Kate Clark

Burial sites may contain treasures, or just old bones. And looters won’t know until they’ve destroyed them. Julia Kate Clark

The history and archaeology of Mongolia, most famously the sites associated with the largest land empire in the history of the world under Ghengis Khan, are of global importance. But they’re facing unprecedented threats as climate change and looting impact ancient sites and collections.
Climate change and looting may seem to be unrelated issues. But deteriorating climate and environmental conditions result in decreased grazing potential and loss of profits for the region’s many nomadic herders. Paired with a general economic decline, herders and other Mongolians are having to supplement their incomes, turning to alternative ways of making money. For some, it’s searching for ancient treasures to sell on the illegal antiquities market.



The vast Mongolian landscape, whether it be plains, deserts or mountains, is dotted with man-made stone mounds marking the burials of ancient peoples. The practice started sometime in the neolithic period (roughly 6,000-8,000 years ago) with simple stone mounds the size of a kitchen table. These usually contain a human body and a few animal bones.
Over time, the burials became larger (some over 400 metres long) and more complex, incorporating thousands of horse sacrifices, tools, chariots, tapestries, family complexes, and eventually treasure (such as gold, jewellery and gems).
For Mongolians, these remains are the lasting reminders of their ancient past and a physical tie to their priceless cultural heritage.
Mongolia has reasonably good laws regarding the protection of cultural heritage. But poor understanding of the laws, and the nearly impossible task of enforcing them in such a large space with relatively few people and meagre budgets keep those laws from being effective. And laws can’t protect Mongolia’s cultural heritage from climate change.

Looting losses
The looting of archaeological sites in Mongolia has been happening for a very long time. Regional archaeologists have shared anecdotes of finding skeletons with break-in tools made from deer antlers in shafts of 2,000 year old royal tombs in central Mongolia. These unlucky would-be thieves risked the unstable sands collapsing in the shafts above them for a chance at riches, not long after the royal leaders had been buried there.
But many recent pits dug directly into burial sites around Mongolia, some that are more than 3,000 years old, suggest modern day looting is on the rise. For the untrained looter, any rock feature has the potential to contain valuable goods and so grave after grave is torn apart. Many of these will contain no more than human and animal bones.

While looters discard bones, they are invaluable to archaeologists’ research. Julia Kate Clark

Archaeologists’ interest in these burials lie in the information they contain for research, but this is worthless on the black antiquities market. But to steer looters away from these burials would be to teach them which ones to target for treasure and so this strategy is avoided.
Archaeologists working in northern Mongolia in 2017 found hundreds of looted sites, including an 800 year old cemetery consisting of at least 40 burials. Each and every one of them had been completely destroyed by looters looking for treasure. Human remains and miscellaneous artefacts such as bows, arrows, quivers, and clothing were left scattered on the surface.
Having survived over 800 years underground, these priceless bows, arrows, cloth fragments and bones likely have less than a year on the surface before they’re gone forever. This is not to mention the loss of whatever goods (gold, silver, gems) the looters decided was valuable enough to keep.

The mummy race
Archaeological teams are currently working against climate change, looters, and each other for the chance to unearth rare mummies in the region that are known to pique public interest within Mongolia and abroad. A 2017 exhibit at the National Museum of Mongolia featured two mummies and their impressive burial goods - one of which had been rescued from the hands of looters by archaeologists and local police. Though they appeared not to have been particularly high ranking individuals, their belongings displayed incredible variety, artistry and detail.

Discovering mummies offers the opportunity to increase interest and tourism in Mongolia. The Center of Cultural Heritage of Mongolia

 The result of natural processes rather than intentional mummification as in ancient Egypt, some of these mummies are preserved by very dry environments protected in caves and rock shelters. Others are ice mummies, interred in burials that were constructed in such a way that water seeped in and froze - creating a unique preservation environment.
Both preservation environments produce artefacts that rarely survive such long periods of time. This includes human tissues like skin and hair, clothing and tapestries, wooden artefacts, and the remains of plants and animals associated with the burial.
As looters zero in on these sites, and climate change melts ice and changes the environmental conditions in other yet unknown ways, archaeologists are racing to locate, and preserve these finds. But with little infrastructure, small budgets and almost no specialised training in how to handle such remains, there’s some concern about the long term preservation of even those remains archaeologists are able to rescue.
Efforts to provide training opportunities, international collaborations with mummy experts, and improved infrastructure and facilities are underway, but these collections are so fragile there is little time to spare.

What Mongolia can teach us
The situation in Mongolia could help us to understand and find new solutions to dealing with changes in climate and the economic drivers behind looting. Humans around the world in many different times have faced and had to adapt to climate change, economic strife and technological innovations.
There’s truth represented by a material record of the “things” left by ancient peoples and in Mongolia, the study of this record has led to an understanding of the impact of early food production and horse domestication, the emergence of new social and political structures and the dominance of a nomadic empire.

Links

• Beyond Genghis Khan: how looting threatens to erase Mongolia's history
• Climate change in Mongolia destroying pastures on which nomadic herders rely
• Archaeology sheds light on Mongolia’s uncertain nomadic future
• Archaeologist gives a glimpse into Mongolia’s first discovery of a mummified horse

Farmers For Climate Action Say A Unified Parliament Needed To Address Looming Crisis

The Land - John Chanter

WEATHER WATCH: Riverina stud beef operator Lucinda Corrigan chairs Farmers For Climate Action and says it is time for a bipartisan approach to tackling climate control.

Most farmers have been adjusting to a changing climate for years and Farmers For Climate Action hope national attention will bring a united approach to tackling “pretty in-your-face climate change”.
ABC’s 4Corners’ March 5 episode Weather Alert highlighted climate change, showcasing agriculture as one of Australia’s most climate exposed industries.
“I think what was probably missing the other night was the fact there are lots of people working on solutions,” said FCA chair Lucinda Corrigan.
Mrs Corrigan has spent most of her life in the Riverina and has seen farming practices change over the years from her childhood in the Coleambally district to her family’s Rennylea Stud operation between Holbrook and Albury.
“Data from the Australian Farm Institute shows that we’re already farming in the most variable climate in the world,” she said. “It’s incredible how Australian farmers have adapted to that but the question is ‘how much more adaptation do we have left in us?’
“We have to do a lot of investment and in the meantime we need to do lots of mitigation and try to actually reduce that outcome and that will only happen through good policy, and consistent policy, and policy that lasts much, much longer than one, or two, or three election cycles.”
FCA was formed in 2015 by farmers frustrated with the inadequate progress on climate action in Australia.
Chief executive Verity Morgan-Schmidt said climate change was hurting Australian farms and politicians needed face reality.
“Farmers across Australia know that climate change is already hitting them hard – this isn’t just a problem for future generations, it’s hurting us here and now,” she said.
“Momentum for climate action is growing rapidly across rural Australia and we’re calling on farmers to speak up and our politicians to keep up.”
Mrs Corrigan said changes in the wine industry was clear evidence of climate issues and urged a bipartisan approach to address it.
“I think there's plenty of evidence and people who are at the coalface, and farmers are obviously at the coalface, are seeing that,” she said.
“People are changing their practices, there’s no doubt about that.
“Do I think that there’ll be a bipartisan approach to climate action? I’d love to think there would be.
“I actually think the adversarial approach hasn’t got us anywhere so lets forget that and do something different … there’s enough awareness in Australia to have a much more consistent message to politicians.
“I’d love to see all political parties embrace that as the right way to go forward instead of fighting just to score political points.”

Links

• While Politicians Question The Reality Of Climate Change, Farmers And Businesses Act
• Farmers For Climate Action
• ABC Four Corners: Weather Alert
• Climate change - issues for farmers
• Australian farmers are adapting to climate change
• Climate change and agriculture
• Australia's Farmers Challenged by Climate Change
• Southern NSW Farmer Says Changing Climate Is Forcing Him To Move His Flock
• Hot Dry, And Deadly: Impacts Of Climate Change On Nature In NSW
• Changing Climate Has Stalled Australian Wheat Yields: Study
• From Asia To Outback Australia, Farmers Are On The Climate Change Frontline
• Farmers Demand The Coalition Government Do More On Climate Change
• Betting The Farm: Farmers Confront Climate Change
• Farmers Asked To Share Their Climate Change Experience

Global Science Leaders Call For Further Action On Climate Change Ahead Of CHOGM 2018

Australian Academy of Science

The Australian Academy of Science has joined Commonwealth of Nations science leaders from around the globe to call on the Commonwealth Heads of Government to use the best available science to guide action on climate change.
The call is part of a Consensus Statement on Climate Change launched by 22 national academies and societies of science from around the Commonwealth, ahead of next month’s CHOGM summit in the United Kingdom.
The consensus statement, which represents the consensus views of tens of thousands of scientists, marks the first time Commonwealth nations have come together to urge their Governments to take further action to achieve net-zero greenhouse gases emissions during the second half of the 21st Century.



Secretary of Science Policy at The Australian Academy of Science, Professor David Day, said the long-term goal of keeping the increase in average global temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels, agreed to by 160 parties in the 2015 Paris Agreement, was only the first step in a long journey.
“Even if all the country commitments from the Paris Agreement are met, the best interpretation of the latest data shows that by the end of the century the global climate is likely to be 3°C above pre-industrial levels.
“This is substantially higher than the Paris target to limit warming to less than 2°C, and would have profound impacts affecting billions of people throughout the world,” Professor Day said.
Sustainability is one of the key themes to be discussed by Commonwealth leaders at the 2018 CHOGM summit, with a focus on the resilience of developing and vulnerable countries to climate change.
“Recognising different capacities, challenges and priorities, the approaches of each nation will not be the same. But, they must be informed by the best available scientific evidence, monitoring and evaluation,” Professor Day said.
“The Academy stands ready to assist the Australian Government, and indeed broader Commonwealth efforts, by continuing to provide sound scientific advice on issues relating to climate change.”

Links

• Consensus Statement on Climate Change
• Australian climate science capability review
• Science of climate change publication
• Nobel laureates sign climate change declaration
• Climate change will affect vulnerable people’s health most: Academy
• Climate change a real and serious threat

Slavery & Human Trafficking Booming Thanks To Climate Change Induced Migrations

CleanTechnica - James Ayre

Over the coming century, large portions of the most densely inhabited parts of the world will become essentially incapable of supporting human populations above very limited nomadic levels. The people living in these regions will be left with a simple choice: migrate or die.
While the current refugee crisis is certainly not a trivial matter for those most involved with it, the reality is that it represents just a trickle compared to what’s now slated to occur — owing to the greenhouse gases already released into the atmosphere to date, and also due to the widespread deforestation and topsoil erosion/exploitation that has accompanied that.
As it stands, most refugees are by and large either: people coming from war zones with enough money available to them to arrange for possible transit to safer areas; or economic migrants on the other (mostly young males coming from regions where there isn’t enough work). As the century grinds on, the “refugees” will very likely be originating more and more with the rougher portions of the societies in question (those with military or police backgrounds, etc.).


For the time being, though, most of those that are actually coming from war zones (rather than simply from economically depressed regions) are from the “middle” or “upper” classes, relatively speaking. As such, they often make easy prey for human traffickers — with a great many inevitably being sold into slavery. This is especially true of unaccompanied minors.
Estimates from the European Union’s criminal intelligence agency Europol place the number of lone migrant children that have gone missing in Europe since arrival over the last few years at +10,000. It’s no real mystery what happens to these children, though, as it’s an open secret that some of the wealthiest countries in Europe are also some of the global hot spots when it comes the slavery of foreign women and children in sex work.
The point that’s being made here is that as refugee movement and mass migrations pick up over the coming decades, human slavery is slated to continue growing as a problem … with it already being the case that criminal gangs seem to be benefiting to a large degree from the growing ease at which trafficking can occur. As it stands, it’s estimated that some 40 million people are living as slaves worldwide.


On that subject, the prominent Nobel laureate Kailash Satyarthi recently made some interesting comments as part of a workshop in Jordan put together by the Thomson Reuters Foundation. The comments seem worth discussing here.
One of the primary points that Satyarthi made in his comments was that the refugee crisis was greatly worsening the problem of human trafficking and slavery, by making it clear to criminal gangs how profitable such activities can be. It’s now estimated, according to Satyarthi, that organized gangs now profit from slavery to the tune of an estimated $150 billion a year.
“This refugee crisis has resulted in trafficking and slavery,” stated Satyarthi, the joint-winner of the 2014 Nobel Peace Prize with Pakistan’s Malala Yousafzai, due to his work fighting child labor.
“Human trafficking, small firearms, and drugs are the 3 most organized crimes. Now they are intermingled,” he stated at the aforementioned workshop.
Reuters provides more: “India is home to more slaves than any other nation — previous global estimates put the number at 18 million — with men, women, and children trapped in forced labor and sex work. … Satyarthi said he had heard reports of Syrian refugees agreeing to child marriages for their daughters to stop them from being sold into the sex trade or other forms of slavery.

“He will meet with leaders from Jordan’s King Abdullah to Panama’s Juan Carlos Varela and various Nobel laureates and activists this month to address challenges facing children on the move, such as migrants, refugees, and trafficking victims. … Satyarthi said India’s first anti-trafficking law, which may be passed this month after being approved by cabinet last week, was a major step forward with life sentences for traffickers and a rehabilitation fund to help victims rebuild their lives.”

Obviously, while all such efforts are commendable, they aren’t enough on their own. As Satyarthi noted while speaking specifically about the situation in India: “The caste system, gender discrimination, and the apathetic attitude of government officials and corruption are the biggest hurdles.”
The situation isn’t much different elsewhere of course, though divisions always vary by region based along different ethnic, religious, identity, etc., lines.
The reason that I chose to highlight this subject is because discussions about these matters — slavery, the refugee crisis, future mass migrations, etc. — usually seem to devolve to pre-staked out positions and mischaracterization of the motives of others.

An Even-Handed Overview Of The Current Refugee Crisis & Future Mass Migrations
So, to offer a condensed view of the situation here, to those who aren’t too partisan to hear it … based on decades of international travel, related work, and an extensive reading of history:

• Current refugee flows comprise a mix of: genuine refugees coming from war zones; economic migrants; and those being trafficked into slavery of various types.
• The motivations of German Chancellor Angela Merkel — with regard to the supposedly humanitarian gesture of inviting large numbers of refugees into Europe — likely stemmed from a mixture of: the expectation that such people could make up part of the economic underclass of Germany (which Turks who were let in many decades ago still comprise a large part of), thereby helping to curtail the effects of an aging workforce; and virtue signaling to the international community.
• Truly “humanitarian” actions depend, as all other effective actions do as well, on an honest appraisal of a situation. No one who has spent much time in Germany (or Northern Europe) as a foreigner is likely to have any real illusions about the openness of the society — bringing in large numbers of people from outside of these societies was never going to lead to anything but mass-projection, conflict, scapegoating, and the balkanization of society. Putting people in such a situation is not “helping them.”
• While climate change — through the effects of droughts, water scarcity, declining crop yields, and accompanying conflict and societal breakdown — certainly represents one of the broader causes behind the current refugee flows, there is no doubt that the extensive bombing of the regions in question by foreign powers (the US and European powers primarily) is a more immediate cause. Bombing people’s countries out of existence isn’t helping them.
• To put that another way, when one country imposes its own cultural and political institutions on another in the name of idealistic universalism, which is often accomplished through wars or proxy wars (ahem…), what often enough results is a failed state.
• Much of Southern Europe is itself slated to experience desertification and rapidly increasing water stress and falling crop yields within just the next 50–100 years. In other words, mass migrations out of Southern Europe and into northern territories is pretty much a given at this point — those coming from the Near East, the Middle East, and Africa are mistaken if they think that they are going to find long-term stability in Southern Europe.
• There are substantial cultural differences between the societies of Northern Europe and Southern Europe (to greatly oversimplify the divisions) — and accompanying widespread stereotyping, projection, and scapegoating. This will only worsen as time goes by and climate weirding and warming intensifies — which will occur at the same time that global geopolitical power is shifting to Asia and away from Europe, which will intensify the cultural conflicts in question.
• The lifestyles that those in Europe have become accustomed to over recent history are an aberration, which was only possible because of fossil fuels and colonialism. As the effects of those two factors continue to diminish (as high-grade fossil fuel reserves in Europe continue to deplete, and as the “third world” grows in influence), much of the population will be forced to accept a “lower” standard of living. That is, a standard of living that’s less of an outlier from the global average. The general public will not comprehend why this is happening, and will demand that someone or some group of people be to blame. That being the case, the idea that large numbers of refugees can be accommodated isn’t credible.

Links

• What Will Happen To Indian Subcontinent’s ~2 Billion People As Temperatures Soar?
• 2 Critical Climate Change Problems Most People Don’t Know About
• Gangs exploit refugee crisis to enslave people: Nobel laureate Satyarthi
• Tackling climate change and slavery
• Climate Change Is Eco-Slavery: A Climate Future Of Australian Property Law (pdf)
• Modern Slavery, Environmental Destruction and Climate Change

Apparently We Can Let The Stock Market Fight Climate Change

Wired - Adam Rogers

Hotlittlepotato

Fixing the effects of climate change on Earth isn’t complicated. When you get down to it, all we humans need to save the world is ingenuity, grit, cooperation, and $53 trillion.
Where is humanity supposed to come up with that kind of cash at this time of night? The International Energy Agency says Earth needs those trillions invested in energy supply and efficiency by 2035 to keep global warming below 2 degrees C. So, you could tax greenhouse gas emitters until they cry—oh, sorry, I probably meant to say “price carbon according to its real market cost.” But also, go to where the big money is—statewide or national funds, piles of assets emblazoned with names like BlackRock and Fidelity, and other institutional investors. Convince them to stop investing in carbon emitters and start investing in... anything but them.
Except, whoa there, li’l Communist, because the people who run those funds are bound by a fiduciary duty to act in the financial interests of their clients. Which is to say, legally and regulatorily, they can’t not make money—at least, not on purpose. And if you compare an asset portfolio optimized for “make all the money” to one optimized for “make all the money except if it emits carbon,” guess which one wins? “So how can we move the majority of investors to integrate environmental factors into their thinking?” asks Soh Young In, an engineering doctoral student at the Global Projects Center at Stanford. “That’s the problem. They think that environmental factors are a suboptimal decision.” In a new working paper, In and her fellow researchers hope to convince those skeptical investors otherwise.
Finance researchers and analysts have been chewing on this problem for years—how (and whether) to integrate environment, social, and governance factors, or ESG, into investment planning. Stipulate that the right-thinking humans who work in finance know climate change is an existential threat; what they don’t know is how to put that knowledge to work without sacrificing money. So lots of folks have tried to show that taking ESG into account can increase investment returns (as well as, like, save the planet or whatever).
Research into the “G” part has shown that, yes, companies that perform well on metrics for corporate governance—essentially how well a company is run—have also performed better on the market. “S” looks pretty good, too, if you look at how happy workers are. Companies with higher worker satisfaction have also done better. It’s hard to tell if those trends will continue, but at least retrospectively, it’s good stuff.
But what about the E? “The E, the jury is still out on,” says Adair Morse, a finance professor at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. In part, the problem may be a lack of data. Despite various projects to mandate environmental disclosures and to try to collate that data into useful metrics, those metrics are still hard to come by. Determinations of what constitutes fiduciary duty have been a decades-long process.
People touting ESG ideas argue they can have as much of an impact on bottom lines as supply chains, market size, raw material availability, and all the other stuff finance people worry about. “This movement said, look, these things are relevant for shareholders and pricing,” Morse says. “So shouldn’t we have information that’s material in the ESG factors? Shouldn’t they be disclosed?”
When they are, investors have something to act on—like Moneyball, but for money. “Portfolio managers tend to be quantitatively focused. They’re used to relying on a suite of financial data about companies and asset classes that appear on the Bloomberg terminal,” says Chris Davis, senior director of the Ceres Investor Network, a group of 150 pension funds and asset managers collectively responsible for $27 trillion. (See? I told you somebody had the money.) And Bloomberg data, for example, does indeed now include ESG metrics.
That swings us back around to In’s research. To be clear, it’s a working paper, not peer reviewed—intended, as she says, to be the beginning of a discussion and not the end. What her team brings to bear is access to a database from a company called Trucost. Established in 2000 to develop those quantitative metrics, Trucost has been tracking carbon emissions since the middle of the last decade—and not just a company’s emissions at the end of its line, but all up and down the value chain, from raw materials to transportation to the places that cough out the widgets.
So this is pretty slick, actually. In’s group took a firm’s Trucost carbon emission data and then divided it by the firm’s revenues to come up with a metric they call “carbon efficiency.” Then they used those numbers to build carbon-efficient and carbon-inefficient portfolios, and compared their returns. “It’s an investment strategy,” In says. “You’re shorting your carbon-inefficient firm stocks and longing your carbon-efficient firm stocks.”
Whoo, did that ever work. Depending on how they constructed the portfolio, from 2009 to 2015 profits ranged from 3.5 to 5.4 percent over what you’d expect from similar levels of risk, ignoring carbon. And according to their analyses, the numbers held even when they controlled for other things that often drive profits—size, value, momentum, and so on.
“So we can say we’re getting alpha on our portfolio. But we want to know why this is happening,” In says. More variables, more regression analyses. “What we find is, carbon-efficient firms tend to be good firms in terms of financial performance and corporate governance.” In other words, low-carbon firms tend to be good at other stuff, too. That’s a correlation, not a causation, but it’s also a rational, fiduciarily responsible way to build a portfolio.

'It’s an investment strategy. You’re shorting your carbon-inefficient firm stocks and longing your carbon-efficient firm stocks.'
Soh Young In, Global Projects Center, Stanford University

This is good news! “From casual conversations with investors managing institutional portfolios, they were very happy to see this kind of academic research,” In says. They’re looking for ways to see so-called green investing as within the scope of their duty. “If they want to change their portfolios, they need to have objective evidence.”
In the case of In’s working paper, that’s evidence added to a growing canon. “There are leaders and there are laggards. In our investor network, many if not most of the members, particularly the pension funds, take climate risk very seriously,” Davis says. “A number of them have done quite a bit already in reducing the carbon footprint of their portfolios and investing affirmatively in solutions.”
For example, the $209 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund audited its portfolio’s carbon footprint, says Davis, and then had the investment bank Goldman Sachs build a bespoke low-carbon index ...and put $4 billion into a fund based on it. The California State Teachers’ Retirement System put $2.5 billion into its own low-carbon index fund. The next step: “Get some quantitative criteria that can be used in risk models,” says Davis. “There’s a lot of research going on with the likes of BlackRock and State Street to try to figure out just that.”

'Most of the markets of the world are far more comfortable with where the investment risks and opportunities are going to come from.'
Nathan Fabian, Principles for Responsible Investment

The research comes in the nick of time, if not slightly after. Not everyone thinks fiduciary duty and lack of metrics are as much of an obstacle as US investors seem to. “That data’s not perfect, but there’s sufficient data to know what the emissions profile of fossil fuel assets is, and there’s sufficient data to know what the storm risk for infrastructure and physical assets is,” says Nathan Fabian, director of policy and research for Principles for Responsible Investment. “It might take a bit more effort than simply using the portfolio return numbers or company earnings numbers you’ve used for the last decade, but the truth is, all the risk is in front of us, not behind us.”
The 1,700 signatories to PRI’s standards for ESG-based investing collectively manage $62 trillion. That’s a lot of oomph if someone could point it in the right direction. And in lots of places, people are. “The truth is, most of the markets of the world are just far more comfortable with where the investment risks and opportunities are going to come from than US regulators and the US financial sector,” Fabian says. “That’s a real competitive issue for the US over time.”
This week, Fabian says, the European Union plans to update rules to clarify how fiduciary duty can incorporate environmental, social, and governmental issues. The Chinese government is setting its financial system up to encourage green financing. “You’ve got Europe moving aggressively, China moving aggressively, and the Californians trying quite hard. But really there’s a drag on the US economy,” Fabian says.
The In team’s working paper doesn’t solve that problem. The relatively short timeframe of the Trucost database, for example, makes for a bit of a frowny face; her group hasn’t yet gotten all the data for 2016 to see if the trend continues. And the correlation between carbon efficiency and governance and performance means you have to ask what’s actually driving that performance—governance, revenues, or carbon? But something has to convince firms to get on board a transnational movement. The journey of $53 trillion must begin with a single step.


Politician and activist Al Gore answers the Internet's most searched questions about climate change.

Links

• World needs $48 trillion in investment to meet its energy needs to 2035
• Is 'Being Green' Rewarded in the Market?: An Empirical Investigation of Decarbonization Risk and Stock Returns
• NY State Comptroller DiNapoli Doubles Low Emissions Index Investment to $4 Billion
• CalSTRS Commits $2.5 Billion to Low-Carbon Index
• World Energy Investment Outlook - Special Report
• World Energy Outlook 2017 to include focus on China’s energy outlook and the natural gas revolution

Scientists Have Issued A Warning To Humanity, And It's Finally Getting A Huge Reaction

ScienceAlert - Mike McRae

Now is the time to act.

(joruba/istock)

It's been just over 25 years since 1,700 leading scientists from around the globe put their names to a document warning of a 'collision course' between humanity and the rest of the natural world.
Last year, a follow-up report was signed by more than 15,000 researchers from 184 nations. Needless to say, it wasn't exactly glowing. So much so, several months later it's still one of the most talked-about research papers in the world.
In 1992, a group of Nobel Laureates teamed up with other researchers to form the Union of Concerned Scientists. Their tagline was "science for a healthy planet and a safer world."
This union outlined the biggest environmental threats faced by our population in a report titled World Scientists' Warning to Humanity, ending it with a powerfully written call to action.
What's happened in the quarter of a century since? Not a whole lot, it seems.
The 1992 report was followed up in November last year with a paper in the journal Bioscience called "World scientists' warning to humanity: A second notice".
In what amounts to a report card you wouldn't proudly stick on the fridge, we earned one gold star for taking care of that thin patch of ozone over Antarctica ... and not much else.
So it's time for another wake-up call.
"Humanity is now being given a second notice, as illustrated by these alarming trends," the report states.
Before you think it was just a few alarmists waving their hands wildly, the article has been trending in scientist circles ever since, seeing it co-signed by a record-breaking 15,364 names from 184 countries.
If that's not impressive enough, it currently ranks 6th out of 9 million papers on the Altmetric scale, and has even inspired some high-level speeches before Israel's national assembly and Canada's BC Legislature.
"Our scientists' warning to humanity has clearly struck a chord with both the global scientific community and the public," says the paper's lead author, William Ripple from Oregon State University.
Responses to the document are also coming in thick and fast.
One paper by the University of Sydney recently published in Bioscience emphasises the need to take economics into account when guiding action.
"There are critical environmental limits to resource-dependent economic growth," the authors write.
The researchers propose two key actions that are necessary for us to turn things around.
Firstly, in awarding prizes for influential work in economics, we must acknowledge the limits of the biosphere and other environmental factors.
Secondly, carbon pricing must be expanded from its current application in some 42 countries and 25 states into a globalised system.
Economics is clearly a critical factor in our impact on the environment, and any action we take must take into account such driving factors behind our 'collision course'.
The Second Notice ends with an equally powerful call for change. "We must recognise, in our day-to-day lives and in our governing institutions, that Earth with all its life is our only home," the authors write.
Whether we'll see a third notice in 2042 or not is anybody's guess.
If we do more than just talk about the first two, we might have something we'll proudly stick on the fridge.

Links

• 15,000 scientists in 184 countries warn about negative global environmental trends
• Largest Ever Group of Scientists Issues Humanity an Urgent Warning: Time Is Running Out 
• Scientists' warning to humanity 'most talked about paper'
• Epoch-defining study pinpoints when humans came to dominate planet Earth
• 1992 World Scientists' Warning to Humanity