The 12 Arguments Every Climate Denier Uses – And How To Debunk Them

VICE - Imogen West-Knights

"But what about China?"

Photo: David Cliff/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

In Europe, you don’t often rub shoulders with someone who doesn’t believe in climate change. Although climate change denial is alive and well in America – not least in the White House – people here mostly accept that climate change is, to some degree, happening.

But that doesn’t mean climate denialism has gone away. Instead, according to new research from the University of Cardiff, it has simply changed shape, into something they call “discourses of delay”.

These 12 arguments, favoured by politicians and industry figures, are a more subtle way of downplaying the need for action on climate change than full-on denialism, but no less corrosive to efforts to mitigate damaging climate effects. And they’re filtering into the public consciousness rapidly.

Rather than arguing that climate change isn’t happening, now you hear people arguing that it’s too late, too difficult, too controversial, too unfair, too hasty, to take serious action on climate change.

How do you debunk these arguments when you hear them? Tackling these types of misinformation is no mean feat; often they’re put forward in good faith.

But explaining to someone the fallacies behind these common discourses of delay can work as what Dr. William Lamb, one of the authors of the Cardiff paper, calls an “inoculation strategy” against future misinformation on climate change.

Here are their 12 discourses of delay, and what you can say to challenge them.

1.	“Ultimately, it’s individuals and consumers who are responsible for taking action”

This narrative first came from the fossil fuel industry. “They funded carbon footprint calculators,” Dr John Cook, a research professor at the Centre for Climate Change Communication, tells me, “and my hat off to them for coming up with an incredibly effective PR strategy to distract the public from the real need, to transform how we create energy.”

It’s not pointless to try to avoid plastic, or to limit your meat consumption but we’ll never convince everybody to do that, plus there are socio-economic reasons why it isn’t possible for everyone. Even if we did, it would be like trying to drain the ocean with a pipette compared to systemic change in polluting industries. One hundred companies are responsible for 71 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions.

2.	“The UK’s carbon footprint is tiny compared to China’s, so it doesn’t make sense for us to take action, at least until they do”

The report calls this “whataboutism”. The farming industry points the finger at the car industry, and vice versa. Politicians point out that their nation’s global carbon dioxide output is only small (in the UK it’s between 1 and 2 percent of the world total) and so justify inaction.

Firstly, every country could make a version of this argument, and if they did, there would be no hope to limit climate change.

Secondly, that 1 to 2 percent figure is misleading, because per capita emissions in the UK are relatively high – about five times as high as India's, for instance.

Thirdly, as a technologically and economically advanced nation, we are more able to take action than many other nations, and we have an additional historical responsibility to do so as a country that has polluted a great deal in the past.

3.	“But if we start to reduce emissions, other countries will just take advantage of that to increase their emissions”

You can challenge the narrative that we are necessarily giving something up by lowering our carbon emissions.

“There are a lot of benefits to be gained in our everyday lives from mitigating climate change, in terms of reducing local air pollution, more active travel, not spending so much money on fuel bills and so on,” says Lamb.

4.	“People are developing new, green technology right now, we just need to wait for it”

If only. The aviation industry is particularly good at manipulating this argument, so good in fact that Matt Hancock recently claimed that “electric planes are on the horizon”.

They aren’t. Or maybe they will be, in several decades time, but the IPCC finding is that we need to half our emissions in the next ten years.

“You have to demonstrate that these technologies are going to be available in the timeframe that matters,” says Lamb, and at present, climate friendly planes are a pie in the sky.

5.	“We’ve already declared a climate emergency and set ambitious targets”

Targets are emphatically not policies. As a global community, we are extremely bad at meeting environmental targets. Earlier this month, it was announced that humanity has missed every single one of the 2010 Aichi goals to protect world wildlife and ecosystems.

6.	“We need to work with fossil fuel companies, their fuel is becoming more efficient and we’ll need them as a stopgap before widespread renewable energy use in the future”

This kind of greenwashing is “at the heart of industry pushback against regulation”, says the Cardiff report. It is not a foregone conclusion that we need fossil fuels for now in order to transition into using renewables in the future:

“We can leapfrog it straight to renewables,” Cook tells me.

And we don’t have the time for a gentle climb down from fossil fuels: it’s ten years.

7.	“People respond best to voluntary policies, and we shouldn’t try to force people to do anything”

Or in other words, what we need is carrots, not sticks. Things like funding high-speed rail to substitute flights, and not frequent flyer levies.

But restrictive measures are a normal and accepted part of life already. Seatbelts, for instance, are a restrictive measure enforced by law for the safety of drivers and their passengers, and the car industry pushed back against them hard when they were introduced.

They also can and should be used in conjunction with incentives, it’s not an either/or.

8.	“Taking action on climate change will generate huge social costs. The most vulnerable people in our society will suffer the most from increased taxation”

These are legitimate concerns if put forward in good faith. But, as Cook says, often this is “a straw man argument attacking a basically non-existent version of climate policies,” which are often designed with social justice in mind to ensure that this doesn't happen.

In any case, you don’t have to increase taxation on the poorest people in society to mitigate climate change. Reducing the cost of train tickets is a good example. And frequent flier levies are a tax on the wealthiest people in our society, who by definition can afford it.

The most vulnerable in society are also the most negatively affected in terms of their health by continuing to burn fossil fuels – coal plants are near poorer parts of the country – and so in fact have the most to gain from green policy.

9.	“Abandoning fossil fuels would slow the growth that has lifted billions of people out of poverty”

Unfortunately, this argument is often a leveraging of human suffering to protect the interests of fossil fuel giants. If we actually cared about the plight of these people, we would be providing renewable energy technology patent free. And fossil fuels are already causing drastic damage to lives in the global south.

10.	“We shouldn’t act until we’re sure we’ve got perfectly-crafted policies to address climate change”

We are more sure about the impacts and future risks of climate change than we are about cigarettes harming human health, and yet we enact policy to limit people smoking.

We don’t need total certainty about outcomes to commit to climate policy, and we don’t require it in any other field of big government decisions, for example, going to war or, dare I say it, exiting the European Union.

Taking decisive action on climate change is going to cause a great deal less suffering than either of those examples.

11.	“Any effective measure to reduce emissions would run counter to human nature and the way we live now, and so it would be impossible to implement in a democratic society”

This is a difficult one, to be fair. We have failed, so far, to change the way we live enough to avert climate disaster. But searching for a way through the challenges is not as impossible as this argument makes it seem.

One way to counter this argument, Lamb says, is to look at historical analogies, social justice or civil rights movements, for instance, which have successfully “shifted opinion and shifted policies in the past”.

12.	“It’s too late to prevent catastrophic climate change and we should get ready to adapt or die”

Climate change is not a binary, of either having climate change or not. “We have already committed ourselves to some climate impacts” says Cook, “but it's not locked in just how bad it will be.”

You could also argue that there’s a moral failing in taking this view. We in Western Europe, or North America aren’t the first or the most severely affected by climate change, and giving up is giving up on all the people who don’t happen to live where we do.

Links

• The five corrupt pillars of climate change denial
• Is misinformation about the climate criminally negligent?
• We just had the hottest year on record – where does that leave climate denial?
• Climate denial: Donald Trump mimics criminal behaviour when justifying his stance
• IPCC: The Dirty Tricks Climate Scientists Faced In Three Decades Since First Report
• After Two Years Of School Strikes, The World Is Still In A State Of Climate Crisis Denial
• What Facebook And The Oil Industry Have In Common
• Facebook Creates Fact-Checking Exemption For Climate Deniers
• Climate denial hasn’t gone away – here’s how to spot arguments for delaying climate action
• (AU) The Number Of Climate Deniers In Australia Is More Than Double The Global Average, New Survey Finds
• How Much Do People Around The World Care About Climate Change? We Surveyed 80,000 People In 40 Countries To Find Out

How Many People Will Migrate Due To Rising Sea Levels? Our Best Guesses Aren’t Good Enough

The Conversation - Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson | Celia McMichael | Ilan Kelman | Shouro Dasgupta

Many villages in coastal Bangladesh are struggling with erosion of land, homes and crops. Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson, Author provided 

Authors Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson Senior Researcher, Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS), United Nations University Celia McMichael Senior Lecturer in Geography, University of Melbourne Ilan Kelman Professor of Disasters and Health, UCL Shouro Dasgupta Lecturer in Environmental Economics, Università Ca'Foscari

An article in 2011 shocked many by suggesting that up to 187 million people could be forced to leave their homes as a result of two metres of sea level rise by 2100.

Almost a decade on, some of the latest estimates suggest that as many as 630 million people may live on land below projected annual flood levels for the end of the century.

The idea that rising seas will force millions to move, unleashing a refugee crisis like no other, has now become commonplace. It’s a narrative that the media are fond of, but that does not mean it is based on evidence.

The potential scale of sea level rise is becoming clearer, but this does not necessarily translate into population movements. Everything we have learned so far suggests that decisions to migrate are far more complex than a simple flight response.

In our new review article, we looked at 33 different studies that have estimated how sea level rise will affect migration patterns. Reliable estimates are important to help support vulnerable populations, but there is deep uncertainty around the amount of people who will be exposed to rising seas, and how they will respond.

Trapped populations

We looked carefully at the methods and data sets of these studies to try and tease out uncertainties. One issue plaguing their estimates is assumptions about the number of people who will be living in vulnerable low-lying areas in the future.

Most of the studies we reviewed did note that the connections between migration and sea level rise are incredibly complex. Every person directly affected isn’t guaranteed to move away as a result. People may be just as likely to try and protect their homes against the water, by building sea walls or elevating their houses.

It’s impossible to predict how each person will respond, and there are countless reasons why someone might choose to stay in the place they call home rather than move or seek shelter elsewhere. Those who may be forced to migrate and resettle due to climate change receive far more attention than those left behind.

These so-called “trapped” populations can be just as vulnerable as those on the move, if not more so.

Despite flooding and erosion, many of the Bangladeshis we interviewed said they cannot or do not want to leave their home villages. Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson, Author provided

Research suggests that the decision to stay or leave will have as much to do with emotional and social pressures as financial or practical reasons. People may feel afraid or find it unbearable to leave, while others lack the necessary support. Many may feel obliged to stay due to binding social ties and reponsibilities.

How the health and wellbeing of those staying behind will be affected by rising seas is poorly investigated. More research is needed to understand the realities of staying put, for those who choose to stay and those who are unable to leave.

Where do we go from here?

Research on sea level rise and migration has often tried to obtain global estimates of those likely to be affected. These are useful for drawing attention to the potential scale of future impacts, but they lack local insights that could help make the picture clearer for different areas.

Rising sea levels are just one of the many ways climate change is remaking our world. Understanding how sea level rise interacts with other environmental changes, such as increased temperatures and changing rainfall patterns will be important, but this stretches the ability to predict exact migration numbers.

A young girl watches as a group of men return home from a fishing trip. Sonja Ayeb-Karlsson, Author provided

Despite all the unknowns, we do know that coastal changes wrought by climate change will be significant, and they require action now. That means devising measures to prevent or reduce inundation, figuring out how to live with the water, and planning for successful ways to migrate and resettle.

Evaluating options, developing scenarios, and making decisions around this must happen now, rather than waiting for the issue to become more urgent. It is just as important to avoid repeating myths around climate change triggering vast flows of people from the so-called “Global South” seeking refuge in the so-called “Global North”.

We do know that people will not inevitably flee across borders in a warming world. Where migration does happen, movements within countries are often neglected on the likely flawed assumption that most migrants are crossing borders.

The narratives create unnecessary concern while shifting focus away from what really matters – helping vulnerable people.

Not only do these myths reproduce xenophobic and outdated colonial power relations based on unfounded arguments, but they also create unnecessary fear and hostile environments for migrant populations around the world.

Links

• More Than 1 Billion People Face Displacement By 2050: Report
• The Great Climate Migration
• UN Ruling Could Be A Game-Changer For Climate Refugees And Climate Action
• Report Shows 2019 Global Climate Problems
• (AU) Too Hot For Humans? First Nations People Fear Becoming Australia's First Climate Refugees
• Climate Change Poses A ‘Direct Threat’ To Australia’s National Security. It Must Be A Political Priority
• Extreme Sea Level Events ‘Will Hit Once A Year By 2050’
• Melting Antarctic Ice Will Raise Sea Level By 2.5 Metres – Even If Paris Climate Goals Are Met, Study Finds
• NASA-Led Ice Melt Study Makes A Terrifying Prediction About Rising Sea Levels
• More Than Half Of World's Oceans Already Being Affected By Climate Change
• (AU) Flooding Could Occur Daily In Sydney By The End Of This Century Because Of Climate Change

(AU) What ScoMo Means By ‘Transition’: A Quick Guide To Climate Change Spin

Crikey - David Hardaker

The prime minister's words promoting fossil fuels are loaded with meaning — they just don't mean what they say.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison. (Image: AAP/Mick Tsikas) 

Scott Morrison is very much at home spinning the story for the fossil-fuel industry, with phrases like “gas-led recovery” and “transition fuel” leading his government’s messaging to sell the case for gas.

The term “transition” is rich in the promise of better days to come. For a government wrenched away from coal, the messaging speaks of a commitment to change — the idea that “we’ve heard your concerns and we’re acting”.

At the same time “transition” is utterly meaningless if you don’t know how long it will take to get where we’re going — or even where the destination is.

Like much of Australia’s messaging on climate change, the messaging on gas is largely the product of American industry bodies and think tanks. The idea of gas being a “transition fuel” or a “bridge” to renewables has been around since the 1990s, crafted by the American Gas Association as more evidence emerged on global warming.

In her new book, The Carbon Club, journalist Marian Wilkinson traces the influence of US fossil-fuel bodies to 1997 when representatives from the Frontiers of Freedom foundation arrived in Canberra to help spin public debate in the run-up to the Kyoto climate summit. 

Frontiers of Freedom was, according to Wilkinson, supported by some of the wealthiest men in America. Its aim was to sow doubt on whether the world really needed a new global agreement to protect the planet from climate change. It adopted messaging developed by the US Global Climate Coalition to attack Kyoto: “It’s not global and it won’t work.”

Later, America’s Peabody Energy came up with the messaging that energy poverty, not climate change, was “the world’s number one human and environmental crisis”.

© Provided by Crikey

Peabody first used that in 2011 and used it to great effect in the lead-up to the 2014 Brisbane G20 summit as US President Barack Obama pressed the case for change.

Wilkinson reports that Peabody’s “Advanced Energy for Life” campaign was designed by the global lobbying firm Burson-Marsteller.  It peddled the idea that millions of the world’s poor would be trapped in “energy poverty” without access to today’s “advanced clean coal technologies”. It was a powerful humanitarian appeal, even to the sceptics.

But this year — in Australia and the US — it’s all about spinning the gas story.

In January the American Petroleum Institute, the largest US trade association for the oil and gas industry, unveiled its campaign going into a US election year to sell the case for gas — or “natural gas” as the industry successfully branded it decades ago.

(API  has form stretching back to the late 1990s. The  New York Times obtained its communications plan showing it was working to promote “uncertainty” about climate change science and links to fossil fuels.)

The API’s current campaign, “Energy for Progress”, frames gas as central to solving the issue of climate change. The messaging is distilled into eight words, no doubt thoroughly tested in focus groups: “Powering progress through cleaner, reliable and affordable energy.”

American gas (and oil) companies are, it claims, researching “better climate solutions to create a cleaner, stronger tomorrow”.

The human story — because there always has to be a human story to sell the pitch — is of business owners in Moon Township, Pennsylvania, who are hailing the economic benefits of “natural gas production”, spurring “strong and lasting growth in revenues, wages and land values”.

Reuters reports API has spent an estimated US$3.1 million on TV ads promoting gas between January 1 and August 16. In the three weeks after Joe Biden’s climate announcement on July 14 — in which he opposed the use of gas — API had increased its spending on Facebook ads to an estimated average of US$24,000 a day, six times its average daily spending in the preceding six months.

Those who spin for gas have hammered the “clean” (and “natural”) message for decades, even though gas cannot actually be clean, in the way wind or solar are.

In Australia, and in the time of COVID-19, Morrison has given the API’s message a tweak to turn “a stronger tomorrow” into “a gas-led recovery”, neatly hitting the notes of progress, the future and strength. A little like “transition” itself.

“Language has been used very effectively as a weapon to obscure the issues,” chief executive of the Climate Council Amanda McKenzie tells Crikey. “Clean coal, carbon capture and storage are other examples — and gas is the latest iteration.

“Today there is ‘clean hydrogen’ which actually means hydrogen made from gas rather than hydrogen made from renewables.”

Said often enough, Morrison’s “transition” and “gas-led recovery” soon become part of the public discourse — a triumph of sorts for industry spin.

McKenzie warns: “The most dangerous thing about it is when journalists and activists start to use the language without questioning it.”

Links

• Vulnerable Australians will bear the brunt of climate change unless we act
• (AU) Cowardice: What Morrison And Albanese Have In Common On Climate
• (AU) Morrison Says You're Either For Gas Or Against It. Of Course It's Not As Simple As That
• (AU) ‘A Dose Of Reality’: Morrison Government’s New $1.9 Billion Techno-Fix For Climate Change Is A Small Step
• (AU) Critics Say Scott Morrison's New Power Plan Is A Recipe For 'Gas-Fuelled Climate Collapse'
• (AU) Scott Morrison's Power Plan Is Nothing But A Gas-Fuelled Calamity
• (AU) Australian Bushfires: How The Morrison Government Failed To Heed Warnings Of Catastrophe
• (AU) Four Corners: Climate Wars
• Morrison Government Cuts Funds To Australian-German Energy Transition Hub

David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet Review – Stark Climate Emergency Warning

The Guardian - Cath Clarke

This terrifying documentary looks back over the 93-year-old’s career – but at its heart is a short, sharp, shocking lesson

The clock is ticking for planet Earth … Attenborough in the Maasai Mara, Kenya. Photograph: Conor McDonnell/WWF-UK

‘I am David Attenborough and I’m 93. This is my witness statement.”

There is a tremendously moving sense of finality about Attenborough’s terrifying new documentary on the climate emergency.

It is being marketed as a retrospective, a look back at his life and 60-years-plus career.

But make no mistake about its true agenda: Attenborough is here to deliver a stark warning that time is ticking for the planet.

It is a personal film – and political, too. There is emotion and urgency in that familiar soothing voice. At one point he rubs his eyes, reddened and damp.


You could rename it The Dying Planet, a short, sharp, shocking 80-minute lesson on global heating. There is an obligatory dramatisation of Attenborough as a boy in short trousers collecting fossils. And, of course, clips from the BBC of him as a hearty young man rolling around with baby gorillas in Rwanda.

What he didn’t know then, he says mournfully, was how much damage we were inflicting on the planet. “The forests and seas were already emptying.”

The statistics on the screen are brutal. The “before” and “after” footage is even worse. Before: orangutans swinging through the rainforest in Borneo. After: no forest, a single orangutan attempting to clamber up a branchless tree trunk.

But, just when you think the film is bludgeoning you with bleakness, Attenborough lets the light in.

His message in the final 30 minutes is that it’s not too late if we act now. Halt the growth in the world’s population. Create no-fishing zones. Stop eating meat. It’s not about saving the planet, it’s about saving ourselves.

It occurred to me afterwards: what happens when Attenborough is no longer around to coax us out from behind the sofa?

He is a one-man Extinction Rebellion.

• David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, Netflix October 4.

Links

• David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet Trailer
• WWF - Attenborough: A life on our planet
• Netflix - David Attenborough: A Life on Our Planet
• David Attenborough to publish 'witness statement' on climate crisis
• The real David Attenborough
• The Guardian view on Planet Earth: its life in our hands
• David Attenborough Instagram
• Lethal Heating: David Attenborough Posts

Melting Antarctic Ice Will Raise Sea Level By 2.5 Metres – Even If Paris Climate Goals Are Met, Study Finds

The Guardian - Fiona Harvey

Research says melting will continue even if temperature rises are limited to 2C

Antarctica’s vast ice cap, which covers about as much of the earth as North America and is close to 5km. Photograph: imageBROKER/Alamy Stock Photo

Melting of the Antarctic ice sheet will cause sea level rises of about two and a half metres around the world, even if the goals of the Paris agreement are met, research has shown.

The melting is likely to take place over a long period, beyond the end of this century, but is almost certain to be irreversible, because of the way in which the ice cap is likely to melt, the new model reveals.

Even if temperatures were to fall again after rising by 2C (3.6F), the temperature limit set out in the Paris agreement, the ice would not regrow to its initial state, because of self-reinforcing mechanisms that destabilise the ice, according to the paper published in the journal Nature.

Simulation shows how much warming the Antartic Ice Sheet can survive.

“The more we learn about Antarctica, the direr the predictions become,” said Anders Levermann, co-author of the paper from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. “We get enormous sea level rise [from Antarctic melting] even if we keep to the Paris agreement, and catastrophic amounts if we don’t.”

The Antarctic ice sheet has existed in roughly its current form for about 34m years, but its future form will be decided in our lifetimes, according to Levermann. “We will be renowned in future as the people who flooded New York City,” he told the Guardian.

Temperatures of more than 20C were recorded for the first time in the Antarctic earlier this year.

Jonathan Bamber, a professor of glaciology at the University of Bristol, who was not involved with the research, said: “This study provides compelling evidence that even moderate climate warming has incredibly serious consequences for humanity, and those consequences grow exponentially as the temperature rises. The committed sea level rise from Antarctica even at 2C represents an existential threat to entire nation states. We’re looking at removing nations from a map of the world because they no longer exist.”

Earlier this week, the earth’s northern ice cap also showed the impacts of the climate crisis. Arctic sea ice reached its annual minimum, at the second lowest extent seen in four decades. On 15 September, the ice was measured at 3.74m sq km, which marked only the second time that the extent has fallen below 4m sq km in the current record, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center.

Scientists said the melting ice was a stark sign of how humans were changing the planet. Twila Moon, a research scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder, said: “It’s devastating to see yet another Arctic summer end with so little sea ice. Not only is there a very small area of sea ice, but it is also younger and more vulnerable overall. The Arctic is a changed place. All hope rests on humans to act on climate and slow this alarming pace of ice loss.”

While the Antarctic ice sheet will take centuries to melt in response to temperature rises, the new Nature paper showed how difficult it would be to reverse.

Antarctica’s vast ice cap, which covers about as much of the earth as North America and is close to three miles (5km) thick, holds more than half of the earth’s fresh water. Some of it is floating sea ice, which does not cause sea level rises in the way of ice melting from land, and is subject to melting from above and below because of the warming sea.

The researchers examined how ice over land in the region can be expected to melt, and found a strong “hysteresis” effect, which makes it harder for ice to re-form than to melt. When the ice melts, its surface sinks lower down and sits in warmer air, so it requires lower temperatures for the ice to reform than it did to keep the existing ice stable.

If temperatures rose by 4C above pre-industrial levels, which some predictions say is possible if the world fails to reduce greenhouse gas emissions quickly, then the sea level rise would be 6.5 metres from the Antarctic alone, not counting the contribution from Greenland and other glaciers. That would be enough eventually to inundate all of the world’s coastal cities and cause devastation on a global scale.

Links

• The sound of icebergs melting: my journey into the Antarctic
• The hysteresis of the Antarctic Ice Sheet
• South pole warming three times faster than rest of the world, our research shows
• Antarctica: 60% of ice shelves at risk of fracture, research suggests
• Antarctic temperature rises above 20C for first time on record
• Rising temperatures shrink Arctic sea ice to second-lowest level on record
• Children urged to strike against lack of action on climate emergency
• World's richest 1% cause double CO2 emissions of poorest 50%, says Oxfam
• Climate crisis could displace 1.2bn people by 2050, report warns
• Portuguese children sue 33 countries over climate change at European court
• James Lovelock: 'The biosphere and I are both in the last 1% of our lives'

Welcome To The Feminist Climate Renaissance

Grist - Brianna Baker

A new book marks the pain — but celebrates the power — of being feminists in the climate movement.



It’s no secret that the climate crisis will disproportionately disrupt the lives of women around the globe, especially women of color and those who live in the global south. Women make up a majority of the world’s impoverished population, and as the primary food growers and water collectors, they’re hardest hit by floods and droughts. They’re also less financially equipped to flee when natural disaster strikes — and vulnerable to gender-based violence.Suffice it to say, patriarchy does a number on women and anyone resisting traditional gender roles and toxic masculinity, so as the world formulates its climate response, the voices of those most affected are often the least heard.

That’s beginning to change, and to amplify those marginalized and undervalued voices, writer-activists Ayana Elizabeth Johnson and Katharine K. Wilkinson pulled together a formidable roster of changemakers and asked them to pen essays, compose poems, and create art all about the pain and power of being feminists in the climate movement. The resulting book, called All We Can Save, hits shelves on September 22.

With essays by author Naomi Klein, Sunrise Movement cofounder (and Grist 50 Fixer) Varshini Prakash, and Natural Resources Defense Council CEO Gina McCarthy, the anthology is a tribute to the fearless activists, journalists, conservationists, and others who are bringing forth what Johnson and Wilkinson call a “feminist climate renaissance,” rooted in the traditionally feminine qualities of compassion, connection, creativity, and collaboration.

“The feminine” is a spiritual and philosophical concept that transcends gender identity — but what does it really mean, and why is it crucial to the climate movement? To dive deeper, we talked to Johnson and Wilkinson, along with other Fixers, about how they define and embody femininity in their work, and what we can all do to bring more balance to climate activism and the world. Their responses have been edited for clarity and length.

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On building better, more inclusive activism 

Katharine K. Wilkinson: Author, strategist, teacher, and co-editor of All We Can Save

All We Can Save opens with the story of Eunice Newton Foote, the amateur scientist who discovered the link between carbon dioxide and planetary warming in 1856. She was also a signatory to the Seneca Falls Declaration, the first women’s rights convention in the U.S. I think of her as the first climate feminist. Her findings were published in The American Journal of Science and Arts, but then she was basically forgotten until a decade ago. I take the loss of her legacy personally, because that erasure is still happening. Women often don’t have adequate resources for their work or platforms, or to share their insights and visions, and they’re often stripped of credit for their contributions.

I think about the feminine as the life-giving energy that circulates through the world. It’s an appreciation for interdependence and the connectedness of all things. It’s about working with the living systems of the planet rather than trying to conquer or wrangle them. The Feminist Climate Renaissance is not a revolution or a takeover or a war, but rather an upwelling of a better way to do climate-oriented work.

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On finding a more feminine balance

Kandi Mossett White: Native Energy & Climate Campaign Coordinator for the Indigenous Environmental Network

People assume that, hundreds of years ago, our Native communities were run by male chiefs. But women also had power and were respected for their sacred ability to create life. We call our planet Mother Earth because she nurtures us and gives us abundance: soil to grow food, air to breathe, and water to drink. And yet America perpetuates a masculine narrative that it’s not enough, that we need more land, more oil, more power, and more money. That feeds the sickness of colonization and war and climate chaos.

If we had more balanced, feminine leadership, we’d realize we already have everything we need. A more feminine world would mean local systems of food, so we wouldn’t need to burn as much oil and gas for transportation. It would mean tighter-knit families, since people aren’t constantly working to generate profit. It would mean more time to visit your neighbors and strengthen the bond of humanity. It would mean actually being happy and feeling comfortable with where you are and who you are.

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On focusing on people, not objects

Varshini Prakash: Cofounder and executive director of the Sunrise Movement

I’ve heard a lot of men say our number one climate priority is decarbonization, and the benefits of that are jobs and clean water and livable climates. Their focus is on inanimate objects, on solar panels and electric cars, and not on the root of the problem, which is humanity. We need to ask ourselves: Who do these technical solutions actually help? Are they working to eradicate the existing inequalities in our system or to deepen them? We need policies like a Green New Deal that aim to create green jobs that give workers a good quality of life, sustain families, and employ communities that have suffered the longest and hardest from environmental damage. The world’s climate response needs to be an inclusive, collaborative process by which everyone benefits.

When my colleagues and I founded the Sunrise Movement, we decided our leadership team was going to be super-majority women, because we knew that women and queer people push for holistic, intersectional solutions. They’re also more capable of deeply vulnerable leadership that is able to publicly admit fault and apologize, that is able to hold on to strength and power while leaving ego at the door. One of our organization’s core principles is shining bright even when there are hard days. Changing the world can and should be a fulfilling process, and women and femmes embody that by bringing jokes, laughter, and joy to the movement, even when addressing something as terrifying as the climate crisis.

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On thinking like a mother

Jill Kubit: Cofounder of DearTomorrow and co-lead of Our Kids’ Climate global network

DearTomorrow aims to help everyone think the way that mothers do about climate change — in the form of a letter written to a child or other loved one, to be read in 2050, on what they’re doing now to ensure a liveable future.

The climate movement is shifting our work from a science and data-driven perspective to a values-based approach that uses the power of storytelling and emotion, and is driven by love. More often, it’s women and mothers driving those solutions. They are organizing on the frontlines, starting new organizations, forming unusual collaborations and networks, and experimenting with artistic and cultural strategies. Much of this work is underfunded and underappreciated, but moms do it because they feel they have to. They hold a deep love for their children and want the best possible futures for them and for the world.

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On getting the right support

Lydia Avila: Program officer at Climate + Clean Energy Equity Fund and board member for The Hive Fund for Climate & Gender Justice

When I think of femininity, I think of environments that are warm, welcoming and sensitive. I think of empathy and sympathy. There’s a lot of trauma associated with the climate crisis, as well as poverty, unstable homes, and gender-based violence. Women and femmes are great at creating spaces where people can show up as their whole selves, process trauma, engage in healing practices, and advance their common goals: clean energy and other equitable climate solutions.

Women and queer climate leaders, especially people of color, are often shouldering their own trauma, and the trauma of their communities. That’s why they need holistic support for themselves, not just their organizations. They need help with healthcare, childcare, school. They need a massage! At the Hive Fund, we’re unapologetically uplifting the individual, to make sure badass women don’t burn out and can stick around in the climate movement for a long time. J.Lo can be J.Lo because she has a manicurist, a therapist, a nutritionist, a personal trainer. We need similar support for our women climate leaders, so they can keep doing their amazing work.

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On bridging the leadership gap

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson: Founder and CEO of Ocean Collectiv, founder of Urban Ocean Lab, and co-editor of All We Can Save

The climate crisis is a leadership crisis. There’s a growing awareness that we need leaders from every community to represent their people. So having a diversity of leaders, which obviously includes women, is critical. Leaving out half of the planet’s brain power and creativity would just be dumb. And yet, that has happened repeatedly.

I’m not sure that the patriarchy is going to go willingly. Why would white men give up all of their power and access and money? But I will say that in the last year or so, as a result of the confluence of the #MeToo movement, the Movement for Black Lives, and climate strikes, politicians and corporations are more aware that they need to at least publicly state their support for women and people of color and put them in leadership positions. I don’t think they’re handing us the keys to the castle, just giving us a temporary password. But we’re coming in and resetting the whole operating system. If they mean for it to be tokenizing, then watch out, because we’re taking all of the tokens. 

Links

• All We Can Save Truth Courage & Solutions for the Climate Crisis
• The climate crisis is putting women in danger, study finds
• Q&A: Why Women Leading The Climate Movement Are Underappreciated And Sometimes Invisible
• 'Most Of The Men Are Your Enemies': One Woman's Crusade In Somalia
• India's Women Seaweed Divers Swim Against The Tide Of Climate Change
• Women Shouldering The Burden Of Climate Crisis Need Action, Not Speeches
• Women Fighting Climate Change Are Targets For Misogynists
• Want To Go For Inclusive Climate Action? Then Start With Integrating Gender Equality Into Climate Finance
• Why The Climate Crisis Is Harming Women More Than Men
• Lethal Heating: Women Posts

Climate Change: China Aims For 'Carbon Neutrality By 2060'

BBC - Matt McGrath

China's President Xi Jinping addressing the UN via video link. EPA

China will aim to hit peak emissions before 2030 and for carbon neutrality by 2060, President Xi Jinping has announced.

Mr Xi outlined the steps when speaking via videolink to the UN General Assembly in New York.

The announcement is being seen as a significant step in the fight against climate change.

China is the world's biggest source of carbon dioxide, responsible for around 28% of global emissions.

With global climate negotiations stalled and this year's conference of the parties (COP26) postponed until 2021, there had been little expectation of progress on the issue at the UN General Assembly.

However China's president surprised the UN gathering by making a bold statement about his country's plans for tackling emissions.

He called on all countries to achieve a green recovery for the world economy in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

According to the official translation, Mr Xi went on to say:

"We aim to have CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060."

Until now China has said it would peak its emissions by 2030 at the latest, but it has avoided committing to a long-term goal.

Emissions from China continued to rise in 2018 and 2019 even as much of the world began to shift away from fossil fuels.

While the Covid-19 crisis this spring saw the country's emissions plunge by 25%, by June they had bounced back again as coal-fired plants, cement and other heavy industries went back to work.

In 2014 the US and China reached a surprise agreement on climate change. Getty Images

Observers believe that in making this statement at this time, the Chinese leader is taking advantage of US reluctance to address the climate question.

"Xi Jinping's climate pledge at the UN, minutes after President Donald Trump's speech, is clearly a bold and well calculated move," said Li Shuo, an expert on Chinese climate policy from Greenpeace Asia.

"It demonstrates Xi's consistent interest in leveraging the climate agenda for geopolitical purposes."

Back in 2014 Mr Xi and then US-President Barack Obama came to a surprise agreement on climate change, which became a key building block of the Paris agreement signed in December 2015.

Mr Xi has again delivered a surprise according to Li Shuo.

"By playing the climate card a little differently, Xi has not only injected much needed momentum to global climate politics, but presented an intriguing geopolitical question in front of the world: on a global common issue, China has moved ahead regardless of the US. Will Washington follow?"

There are many questions about the announcement that remain unanswered, including what is meant exactly by carbon neutrality and what actions the country will take to get there.

"Today's announcement by President Xi Jinping that China intends to reach carbon neutrality before 2060 is big and important news - the closer to 2050 the better," said former US climate envoy Todd Stern.

"His announcement that China will start down this road right away by adopting more vigorous policies is also welcome. Simply peaking emissions 'before 2030' won't be enough to put China on the rapid path needed for carbon neutrality, but overall this is a very encouraging step."

This week has seen the second lowest Arctic sea ice minimum on record. Getty Images

Most observers agreed that the announcement from China was a significant step, not least because of the country's role in financing fossil fuel development around the world.

"China isn't just the world's biggest emitter but the biggest energy financier and biggest market, so its decisions play a major role in shaping how the rest of the world progresses with its transition away from the fossil fuels that cause climate change," said Richard Black, director of the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), a UK-based think tank.

"The announcement today is also a major fillip for the European Union, whose leaders recently urged President Xi to take exactly this step as part of a joint push on lowering emissions, showing that international moves to curb climate change remain alive despite the best efforts of Donald Trump and [Brazil's president] Jair Bolsonaro in the run-up to next year's COP26 in Glasgow."

Links

• China's Surprise Climate Pledge Leaves Australia 'Naked In The Wind', Analysts Say
• China’s 2060 Climate Change Gambit 
• China’s zero carbon pledge: What does it mean for the global climate change fight?
• Spotlight: China's pledge to cut CO2 emissions boosts global confidence in climate change 
• Analysis: Going carbon neutral by 2060 ‘will make China richer’
• China’s New Climate Pledge Is Extraordinarily Ambitious
• Experts praise China’s pledge to be carbon neutral by 2060—but more could be done
• Green plans diluted as government protects farmers
• Arctic sea-ice shrinks to near record low extent
• Prince Charles calls for 'swift' action on climate