An Audacious Plan To Stop Climate Change: Remake The Entire Economy

Washington Post - David Grinspoon

Naomi Klein makes a passionate case that market capitalism can’t avert disaster.

Luke Sharrett/Bloomberg

Climate disruption looms, and we are dithering. We are in need of a vision. You can be forgiven the occasional moment of paralyzing despair. But then snap out of it, because we’ve got work to do. But what exactly? We’d all love to see the plan.
Some say technical wizardry and unleashed market forces can come to our rescue, as green entrepreneurs chase the gold of alternative energy.
But in “On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal,” Naomi Klein makes a keenly argued, well-researched and impassioned case for why market capitalism cannot get us out of this mess and the only way to avert a climate breakdown is to undertake a radical reset of our entire economy.
This will require a vast expansion of public investment, including sectors far beyond those directly associated with energy and climate resilience, such as health care, education and labor rights. Given that Klein was promoting a similar program before she explicitly tied it to climate action, one has to ask whether this truth is a little too convenient. In “The Shock Doctrine” (2007), she described “disaster capitalism,” in which corporations and the politicians they control never let a good crisis go to waste, using the pretext of emergencies to achieve neoliberal goals of privatization and erosion of the public sphere.
Here it’s fair to ask if Klein and her colleagues in the Green New Deal movement are practicing “disaster socialism,” seeking to use the climate threat to vastly expand the role of government and quash corporate influence. Klein enthuses that “battling climate change is a once-in-a-century chance to build a fairer and more democratic economy,” and she doesn’t mince words about her belief that “climate change supercharges the preexisting case for virtually every progressive demand on the books, binding them into a coherent agenda based on a clear scientific imperative.”

The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal

Naomi Klein

Simon & Schuster

308 pp

Is the Green New Deal a plot to use the climate emergency as a pretense for socialism? Klein is well aware of this accusation.
She makes her best case for why an effective societal response to the climate crisis must include a rejuvenation of genuine democracy that wrests power from the petrochemical and extractive industries; forces a more equitable distribution of resources; subsidizes massive new investments in energy, transit and housing infrastructure; and protects those whose lives are upended by the rapid economic transition.
Parts of the argument are somewhat strained. Yes, we need comprehensive health-care reform, but does it absolutely have to be part of a climate package? Klein insists it does because an improved and fairer health system will help Americans weather the necessary economic dislocations and the expected increase in natural disasters.
Is the only plausible way to avert a climate breakdown a full transformation of our society from corporate to social democracy? Can’t we put out the climate fire first and then get the rest of our house in order? I don’t think this book will convince anyone who is not already fairly open to these ideas. Klein is not subtle about applying her ideological lens to the problem.
However, if you are sympathetic to the goals of the Green New Deal but are as yet unconvinced, as I was before reading “On Fire,” you need to read this book. Klein marshals the most powerful arguments for why climate change cannot be effectively addressed without a simultaneous deep reckoning with our society’s other ills of wealth and income inequality, racial discrimination, and crumbling infrastructure.
As a scientist I was on the lookout for misrepresentations. It is, of course, not strictly true that “science says that political revolution is our only hope.” (Wouldn’t it be great if science could give us a blueprint for how to organize ourselves as a society?)
But science does tell us that our current course, absent a radical and rapid change in our energy supplies, will lead to disaster. I am bothered by the fetishization of somewhat arbitrary deadlines, as in: “We are fighting for our lives. And we don’t have twelve years anymore; now we have only eleven. And soon it will be just ten.” But we are facing an existential threat, and perhaps the repetition of these numbers will help people appreciate the urgency, which is real.
Basic quantitative reasoning confirms one of Klein’s central arguments — that the survival of a healthy biosphere on this finite planet is inconsistent with an economic system dependent on continuous growth. Whether or not one accepts every detail of the Green New Deal as currently conceived, it is hard to deny that a successful fix to the climate crisis will involve a radical reduction in corporations’ influence over our political process.
Klein’s tone is urgent but hopeful. She reminds us that looming disaster can sometimes bring out the best in people, awakening transformative impulses in the nick of time. She highlights the work of inspiring young activists to show us that no future is written in stone and that we have the choice, and the obligation, to change course.
She sketches an alternative future, possibly within our grasp, which is imaginative and inspiring, a world where “day-to-day life for working people has been improved in countless ways, with more time for leisure and art, truly accessible and affordable public transit and housing, yawning racial and gender wealth gaps closed at last, and city life that is not an unending battle against traffic, noise and pollution.” The Green New Deal draws upon Roosevelt’s New Deal as historical analogy and proof-of-concept that we are capable of responding to crisis with creative transformation.
Klein proposes that once again, government-supported artists should play a vital role, helping us imagine and realize our societal renovation as Works Progress Administration artists did in the 1930s.
Although Klein and the Green New Deal will be accused of building a Trojan horse for socialism, in the vision laid out in “On Fire,” capitalism is not discarded, just somewhat tamed. Klein talks about “democratic eco-socialism,” but the examples she holds up are Sweden and Denmark, places where capitalism is alive and well.
The future United States she describes is not Venezuela. The pursuit of wealth is not eliminated, but obscene excess is constrained, with resources channeled back into supporting infrastructure for a cleaner, fairer economy and safety nets for those displaced in the transition.
The market is alive but defanged. There’s still room in this picture for entrepreneurship and competition, with riches coming to those who can invent an efficient carbon-sucking widget. They would just have to pay their workers a decent wage and give back a fair share. Maybe it will really be all of the above: green capitalism chasing a new alternative gold rush within the sturdy guardrails provided by a strengthened public sector.
It’s not enough to lament the world we would have had if we had acted sooner or to picture the future we want to avoid. We need something to aspire to, to work toward. Dwight Eisenhower famously said that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.
But here the plan is essential. It is lacking in detail, grandiose and surely flawed in some respects. But the people need a vision, and “On Fire” challenges us to choose the Green New Deal or try to find a better one — in a hurry.
At present it is still a vague outline, not a detailed policy proposal. But this plan, or some version of it, is going to be part of our urgent national and international conversation on this most pressing of issues.
Reading this book will equip you to enter into that dialogue with a rich understanding of the rationale.
Klein lays it out vehemently and clearly for us to debate, adapt and improve upon if necessary. Time is of the essence, and we’d better choose right.

Links

• Naomi Klein: ‘Our Future Is Radical. The Present Is Pretty Radical Too.’
• Naomi Klein: 'We are seeing the beginnings of the era of climate barbarism'
• 'We have a once-in-century chance': Naomi Klein on how we can fight the climate crisis
• Why Naomi Klein thinks now is the moment for climate action
• Naomi Klein: Capitalism Killed Our Climate Momentum, Not “Human Nature”
• The Inconvenient Truth: Fixing Climate Requires Major Economic Change, Naomi Klein Says

John Hewson Slams Coalition On Climate Change While Business Takes Lead Reducing Emissions

ABC Country Hour - Joshua Becker

John Hewson addresses the Australian Farm Institute Round Table in Canberra. (Supplied: Edgars Greste)

Key points John Hewson takes aim at the Government's policies and its "entrenched anti-climate sentiment' The former Liberal leaders argues that regenerative agriculture can offset a large amount of future emissions Academics say government policy might be less influential than market forces as companies move faster to reduce emissions

Former Liberal leader and treasury economist John Hewson has delivered a scathing rebuke of the Federal Government's climate change policy during an address to farmers and industry leaders.

"We don't have a sense of urgency to achieve these emission [reduction] targets," he told the Australian Farm Institute Roundtable in Canberra.

"There's an entrenched anti-climate sentiment in the Government at the moment, and indeed government ministers are not turning up at events if they have the word 'climate' in the title.

"The comments made by the Prime Minister at the UN, that we are going to meet our emissions targets, was a gross misrepresentation and was staggering for someone in his position."
Dr Hewson, who is now the chair of the Business Council for Sustainable Development, said he would like to see regenerative agriculture form part of the solution.
"Regenerative agriculture can offset a very significant portion of our future emissions, and I'm staggered that is not being recognised by the National Party," he said.
"It would have a lot of benefits for regional Australia; a farmer could earn carbon credits or a stream of income for sequestering carbon on their farm."

Is agriculture prepared to be part of the solution?
Large multinational food companies are moving to adopt new targets to reduce emissions in line with the Paris Agreement on climate change.

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Analysis: Morrison's UN speech

RMIT ABC Fact Check looks at some of the key claims made by the Prime Minister at the United Nations to see if they stack up.

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The Sustainable Food Policy Alliance, which represents companies like Nestle, Unilever, Mars and Danone, has backed calls for companies to use their political influence to push governments to implement a science-based policy agenda.
Some academics believe this marks a shift in the global effort to combat climate change, when companies are moving faster than governments to reduce emissions.
Richard Eckard, a professor of agricultural sciences at the University of Melbourne, said government policy might be less influential than market forces.
"In the past six months, I've been back and relooked at all these companies' sustainability statements and noticed that they've all switched to absolute emission reduction targets in line with the Paris Agreement," he said.
"Some of them have interim steps to get there, but all of them are aiming for carbon-neutral food production by 2050."

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Paris 2030: Will we make it?

Are Australia's efforts to curb global warming enough to meet our Paris targets? Four Corners investigates.

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To achieve this goal, some companies agreed to use 100 per cent renewable energy, while others committed to reducing their emissions.
Industries that cannot reduce their emissions will have to explore using carbon offsets to meet these targets, which is creating a lot of demand.

"I think it's quite notable that of the 100 largest economies in the world, 69 are companies, not countries," he said.

"And we've been looking to government for leadership — in actual fact, maybe it's these companies that are sending us the signals that need to be responded."
While there are possibilities for agriculture to form part of the solution, with its ability to sequester carbon, the current carbon market in Australia is fragmented and immature.
Dr Hewson supported plans for a HECS-style scheme that would see farmers receive a baseline carbon reading to help remove barriers for those looking to explore carbon farming initiatives as the market developed.

James Madden has created what is believed to be the first carbon-neutral meat brand in the world. (Supplied: Flinders and Co)

Can meat industry reach carbon-neutral goal?
Meat and Livestock Australia is moving towards a goal that would see the industry become carbon neutral by 2030.
However, experts believe it will fall short due to a lack of research and funding.
"Achieving that target will be a very tall order," Professor Eckard said.

"As an industry, they don't have the funding to allocate to create a low-methane cow — that's a long way off."

Professor Eckard said the industry had only 10 to 20 per cent of the funding needed to develop low-emissions solutions for livestock.
It will require partnerships with multinational companies to fund that gap in research and require academics to collaborate across countries with long-term projects.
"One problem is the short-termism that we have towards research with one-, two- and and three-year contracts — these are 10 to 20-year problems," he said.
"And we're not alone, we're not the only country with this problem, Brazil and New Zealand have a bigger problem than us.
"There is no one organisation that can fund this solution, we need a coordinated long-term effort."

Links

• John Hewson urges Liberal conscience vote on climate emergency
• Scott Morrison uses UN speech to slam 'internal and global critics' of Australia's climate change policy
• Climate Change, Poverty And Human Rights: An Emergency Without Precedent
• Climate, The Crisis That Threatens Our Political Duopoly
• World 'Gravely' Unprepared For Effects Of Climate Crisis – Report
• Relying on prayers for rain is politically and theologically irresponsible
• The radical climate solution no-one really wants
• Grand Symbolic Gesture': Attempt To Declare A Climate Emergency Fails In Parliament
• Morrison takes veiled swipe at UN, urging against 'negative globalism'
• Climate of the Nation report 2019

Climate Emergency Declarations In 1,123 Jurisdictions And Local Governments Cover 285 Million Citizens

Climate Emergency Declaration and Mobilisation

1,123 jurisdictions in 20 countries have declared a climate emergency.
Populations covered by jurisdictions that have declared a climate emergency amount to 285 million citizens, with 47 million of these living in the United Kingdom.
This means in Britain now roughly 70 per cent of the population lives in areas that have declared a climate emergency.
In New Zealand, the percentage is even higher: 74 per cent of the population.
It’s around 25 per cent in countries like Switzerland and Italy.

National Declarations
On 29 April 2019, the first parliament in the world to declare a climate emergency at the national level was the Welsh Parliament. Some say it was Scotland, though, because on 28 April 2019, the First Minister of Scotland declared a climate emergency on behalf of her government at an annual Scottish National Party conference.
On 1 May 2019, the United Kingdom Labour Party got unanimous support for a non-binding motion in favour of a climate emergency declaration in the House of Commons, claiming Britain thereby was the first country in the world where a bipartisan parliament had declared a climate emergency.
On 3 May 2019, the Gibraltar Parliament followed, and the government of the Republic of Ireland announced their declaration on 9 May. The next day, the Isle of Man parliament declared a climate emergency as well.
The Parliament of Portugal declared a climate emergency on 7 June 2019, the Canadian House of Commons followed on 17 June 2019, and the French parliament a climate emergency on 27 June 2019. Argentina followed on 17 July 2019.

Local Governments
On the list below are only included jurisdictions that have passed a binding motion declaring a climate emergency. As such, the non-binding motion instigated by UK Labour, for example, is not included in this data. Typical resolutions include setting up a process to develop an action plan and report back to council within three to six months.

Australia
In Australia, where the climate emergency declaration mobilisation and petition was launched in May 2016, over 60 jurisdictions representing roughly 6 million people – a quarter of the population – have declared a climate emergency, including the government of the Australian Capital Territory, based in the capital Canberra.
More than 100 of the candidates in the 18 May 2019 federal election had signed the Climate Emergency Declaration petition.

The list is maintained by Cedamia

Similar lists
www.cedamia.org/global
www.caceonline.org/councils-that-have-declared.html
www.climateemergency.uk/blog/category/climate-emergency
www.theclimatemobilization.org/city-by-city

Links

• More Than 370,000 Sign E-Petition For Climate Emergency Declaration
• 'Grand Symbolic Gesture': Attempt To Declare A Climate Emergency Fails In Parliament
• Greta Thunberg Condemns World Leaders In Emotional Speech At UN
• Climate Disasters To Leave 150 Million In Humanitarian Need By 2030: Red Cross
• Why Declaring A National Climate Emergency Would Neither Be Realistic Or Effective
• John Hewson Urges Liberal Conscience Vote On Climate Emergency
• World 'Gravely' Unprepared For Effects Of Climate Crisis – Report
• Climate Change: 'Invest $1.8 Trillion To Adapt'
• Climate Change, Poverty And Human Rights: An Emergency Without Precedent
• Australian Medical Association Declares Climate Change A Health Emergency 

The Methane Gun

Surviving C21 - Julian Cribb

Julian Cribb Julian Cribb is a distinguished science writer with more than thirty awards for journalism. He was a newspaper editor, founder of the influential ScienceAlert website and is the author of 10 books: Food or War Surviving the 21st Century Poisoned Planet The Coming Famine Open Science (with Tjempaka Sari) Dry Times (with Mark Stafford Smith) Sharing Knowledge (with Tjempaka Sari) The White Death The Forgotten Country Australian Agriculture

In all the sound and fury over climate change, too little public and media attention has been devoted to the ‘methane gun’ – and yet this terrifying phenomenon could usher humans unceremoniously off Earth’s stage for good.
Like CO2, methane (CH4) is a greenhouse gas that helps trap the sun’s heat within the Earth’s atmosphere. The big difference is that it is 25-84 times more potent at doing so.
The planet has massive stores of methane, locked as frozen ice in the seabed (the world’s largest natural gas reserve), in the frozen soils of the Canadian, US and Russian Arctic, and buried in the sediments of tropical swamps and peatlands. Like the bubbles in a stagnant pond, the gas is mostly the work of bacteria digesting organic matter over millions of years.
How large these reserves of methane are is still a matter for scientific debate – but estimates fall between 1.5 and 5 trillion tonnes. Very, very large indeed. If released suddenly, these are thought more than capable of driving the Earth’s temperature up by another 7-10 degrees, on top of the 2-5 degrees likely to result from human emissions from burning fossil fuels and clearing land (currently rising at record rates).
The worst-case scenario – a large-scale, rapid release of trapped gas known as the ‘methane gun’ – could potentially render the Earth uninhabitable by humans and other large animals. This is why we need to pay attention. Now.
What has some scientists concerned – and others frightened – is that atmospheric levels of methane which have doubled since the Industrial Revolution and have been rising for steadily for the past 30 years, began to rise more steeply in the past five years, as the following graph shows:

Atmospheric methane concentrations up to October 2019: Mauna Loa Observatory, USA.

The source of the new methane is debated. Is it mainly caused by the mining of natural gas, petroleum and coal – as several lines of evidence suggest? Is it released by expanding world cattle and rice production, the draining of tropical swamps and burning of tropical forests? Is it the frozen gas seeping out of the oceans and tundra as the planet warms and its ice vanishes? Or is it all of the above? The evidence is starting to favour the latter view – but the scientific jury remains undecided.
We know that a mass-release of methane can be catastrophic for life on Earth, because that’s exactly what took place 55 million years ago in an event known as PETM - the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum - when global temperatures shot up by 5-10 degrees, wiping out a number of species. There were no humans round then to release carbon, so it was probably due to one or more of the natural sources rapidly giving up its gas. Recently opinion has narrowed in favour of tropical swamps and peatlands drying out and catching fire during a warming cycle, as the main source. The frozen methane, apparently, remained largely undisturbed in the ocean and tundra.
But that is not the case today. Not only are tropical forests burning and swamps being drained, but scientists have observed major escapes of methane from the Arctic tundra in the form of exploding pingos – mounts of frozen methane, mud and water – and the eruption of melted methane ice from the seabed. In October 2019 veteran Russian researcher Igor Semiletor, from Tomsk Polytechnic University, reported “the most powerful seep I have ever been able to observe” venting in a potent eruption of gas bubbles in the East Siberian Sea.
Two years earlier, in June 2017, Russian reindeer herders reported a violent explosion that left a 50- metre deep crater in the tundra of the Yamal Peninsula, Siberia, which scientists attributed to a methane blast. In recent years researchers have reported numerous craters left by explosions across Siberia, the Canadian and Alaskan tundra – and even craters in the seabed. Many are recent – but some are up to 12,000 years old, and still leaking gas. Therein lies the uncertainty: are the methane explosions observed today part of a process that occurs more or less constantly through Earth history – or do they represent the start of a sudden release, ramping up to runaway global warming? The scientific jury is at odds.

Methane hydrate, a frozen form of methane gas, at one of the many cold seeps off the U.S. Atlantic coast. Hydrate is widespread in the deep ocean and sequesters as much as 20% of all carbon on Earth. NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research

Pennsylvania State climate scientist Prof Michael Mann, for instance, characterises the methane bomb idea as “catastrophism” and claims it is being exploited by the climate denial lobby to discredit climate theory generally. He says the amount of methane released will be “small compared to human emissions” of carbon. Other scientists, like Gavin Schmidt of the NASA Goddard Institute, argue that it is highly unlikely that a large volume of seabed methane would be released suddenly, i.e. over a period less than thousands of years, because it did not do so in past warming events. Instead it will continue to trickle out.
Oceanography and ice expert Prof Peter Wadhams disagrees. He says loss of Arctic sea ice from the shallow continental margins could trigger such a release which “could happen very suddenly and … is the greatest single threat that we face”. He says that mainstream science, represented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), does not generally recognise the threat.
Australian National University earth scientist Prof. Andrew Glikson cites the Global Carbon project finding that there are 1.4 trillion tonnes of accumulated methane stored on land and 16 trillion tonnes in the ocean, available for release if the planet grew warm enough, and this ‘could have catastrophic effects on the biosphere’. He points out there is already clear evidence for the explosive release of methane, on land and at sea. With Arctic temperatures already 3-8 degrees warmer due to global warming, the risks of a sudden methane release “have not yet been fully accounted for in climate projections.”
At temperatures above +4 degrees, many scientists now consider the risk is increasing of the planet becoming partly or wholly uninhabitable to humans and large animals. Certainly, such heat and climate instability would destroy most of our current food production systems, spilling billions of climate refugees across the planet and causing wars to break out between and within nation states.
How many would die in such an event is not knowable, because we cannot predict how humans will respond, how many wars we will start, or how many nukes we will unleash in the ensuing chaos. Potsdam Institute climatologist John Schellnhuber has said: “At 4 C Earth’s... carrying capacity estimates are below 1 billion people.” Prof Kevin Anderson of the U.K.’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change concurs: “Only about 10 per cent of the planet’s population would survive at 4 C.” Several scientists have voiced the view that the human population will be reduced from 9-10 billion to around 1-3 billion in the long run.
We already know that our physical survival is in jeopardy in extended periods above 35 degrees Celsius – that is, where daytime temperatures constantly reach 40-50 degrees C or more. Such temperatures will occur frequently with +7 degrees of global warming and will render large parts of the earth uninhabitable – including the most heavily populated. Above +12 degrees of global warming, human survival becomes physically impossible. However long before our heat tolerance limits are reached, local and global food and water supplies will collapse, prompting mass migration and war. Without urgent worldwide action, the global economy – and with it civilized society – are predicted to go down as we approach +4 degrees. Such warnings come, not from ‘radical greens’, but from authorities no less conservative than Bank of England governor Marc Carney, who states that the global financial system is currently investing in catastrophe by backing new fossil fuel projects. These numbers represent the current most-informed estimates of the impact of the unfolding climate crisis, should world efforts to halt it fail and should the climate deniers triumph.

Methane bubbles out of the seafloor off the coast of Virginia, north of Washington Canyon. NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research

The risk for humanity posed by the ‘methane gun’ is that rapid global mass-release may be ‘locked and loaded’ and firing before we have sufficient scientific data to confirm it. It is, as they say, an event of low probability – but very high impact. Is it a risk that a rational person would take?
Once the gun has begun to fire, there is practically nothing humans can do to stop it. It will unleash other dangerous feedbacks, potentially leading to runaway warming. It will shift the planet from its present warming state to a ‘hothouse Earth’ state where human survival comes into question.
The only viable strategy – possibly – is preventative: to move civilization far faster towards total elimination of all fossil fuels and land clearing worldwide – and plant billions of trees as quickly as possible, to slow the global warming trend before it triggers the methane gun.
This means that countries like America, Australia, Brazil and Russia must cease their dangerous do-nothing policies, and stop mining coal, oil and gas, and clearing land. Countries like India and China need to cease building coal-fired power stations immediately. And every country needs to scale back carbon emissions on an accelerated time-scale from transport, agriculture, concrete and industry.
While some scientists urge geoengineering solutions, such as the artificial release of sulphate aerosol particles to erect a giant sunshade over the Earth, this represents a counsel of despair. It means allowing the atmosphere to attain virtual temperatures that would cook humans, then trying to chill them down with a planet-sized ‘air-conditioner’. The consequences, should our air conditioner fail, would be terminal. That really only leaves us with the option of trying to contain global warming by eliminating human carbon emissions – before the methane gun fires.
In the end, the worst that can happen by banning fossil fuels and regreening the planet is that we get a new clean energy system, cheaper energy, renewed economic growth and a more sustainable Earth.
If the climate deniers – fifty huge energy corporates and their political and media cheer squad – get their way, the worst that can happen is human extinction.
Which risk do you prefer?

Links

• Atmospheric methane - Wikipedia
• Why Methane Matters | UNFCCC
• Sharp rise in methane levels threatens world climate targets
• Arctic methane emissions
• Clathrate gun hypothesis
• Methane facts and information
• Chasing The Methane Dragon That Lurks In The Deep Sea
• Rising Methane May Thwart Efforts To Avoid Catastrophic Climate Change
• Melting Permafrost In Arctic Will Have $70tn Climate Impact – Study
• Why 'Flammable Ice' Could Be The Future Of Energy
• Arctic Cauldron
• Planet At Risk Of Heading Towards “Hothouse Earth” State
• Domino-Effect Of Climate Events Could Push Earth Into A ‘Hothouse’ State
• Earth At Risk Of 'Hothouse Climate' Where Efforts To Reduce Emissions Will Have No Impact, Study Finds

Drop The Doom And Gloom: Climate Journalism Is About Empowerment

The Conversation - Kamyar Razavi

A farmer who installed solar panels to power his irrigation systems on the family farm walks by the panels near Claresholm, Alta., in June 2019. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jeff McIntosh

There is a simple irony in dealing with climate change. To get a handle on the problem means that, at a certain level, the conversation has to move away from climate change. What does that mean?
The secretary general of Amnesty International shed some light on this apparent contradiction ahead of September’s United Nations climate change conference in New York.
“I think one of the catastrophic mistakes we made in 1992, when the Rio Earth Summit happened, was framing our response to the threat of climate change solely or primarily as an environmental issue,” Kumi Naidoo said on the news program Democracy Now!
“I think we needed to have done then what we are trying to do now … which is to ensure that we bring a cross-cutting understanding of climate change and bring a more human-centric approach to addressing (it).”
This means, Naidoo said, dealing with climate change by focusing on human rights and on reducing inequality.

Broadening the climate conversation
When it comes to climate-related economic issues, news narratives typically focus on the trade-off between jobs and protecting the environment.
That was one of the findings of a December 2018 study by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. “Although they tend to choose different sides, mainstream and alternative media both frequently reinforce the assumption that there is an inevitable trade-off between environmental protection and job creation,” the study concluded.
What if the discussion in the news media, and in politics, instead focused on what a post-carbon economy would actually look like, and, crucially, how such an economy would actually thrive? It’s the vision of a society and of a prosperous, modern economy that has climate change baked into it.
But how does the world actually get there, especially when mitigating climate change is still largely seen as an impediment to economic growth?
Better climate change communication is a good place to start.

Making the uncomfortable comfortable
Mitigating climate change is often seen in the context of making choices that can be undesirable: flying less, buying less, ditching the car.
Instead, the choices people must make to fight climate change can be framed as enjoyable, desirable or even moral, instead of avoidable. In other words, things that people actually want to do.
To make that shift, University of Michigan sustainability professor Andy Hoffman argues for a “consensus-based” approach to climate change. Such an approach treats climate change as a cultural issue instead of simply as a scientific and environmental problem. It “frames climate change mitigation as a gain rather than a loss to specific cultural groups,” Hoffman writes. He adds:

“To be effective, climate communicators must use the language of the cultural community they are engaging.”

It’s important to speak to people about climate change through values that make sense to them.
Stories of people taking action that others around them can relate to also have a huge impact. A neighbour enjoying their electric vehicle (and saving on gas) has a far more persuasive influence over other residents on the block than an expert on the news telling people they need to drive less.

A neighbour’s love of her electric car is likely a lot more compelling than experts urging people to drive electric vehicles. Shutterstock

A different narrative
When it comes to climate change coverage, doom and gloom is usually the lead. There is also a heavy emphasis in conventional climate journalism on individual lifestyle changes.
Instead, climate journalism can play a much more important role in painting the picture of how a post-carbon economy might actually work. That process can begin with a conversation around solutions that are already being implemented, especially those that are happening through collective action and a sense of empowerment.
A great example is a recent Global News report on the T’Sou-ke Nation on Vancouver Island, a community that is taking renewable energy production into its own hands. Or a story in Maclean’s magazine about an Ontario town that is working toward a greener future.
These forms of storytelling are crucial for the conversation to shift toward a new default position: climate change as the current upon which the economy rides. Ultimately, it will require political will for the world to get there. But support is building, and it’s the masses who are leading the way.
“If you actually look at the most beautiful parts of our histories, it’s mass movements, it’s collectives, it’s groundswells,” author and activist Rebecca Solnit recently said on CBC Radio’s The Current.
“We need a framework in which maybe everybody is potentially a hero, and it’s not the exceptional but the ordinary people who change the world.”
As stories about collective action become a more prominent feature of climate journalism, so too will climate change start to feel more accessible and less scary. In the near future, climate change will not be something big, distant and seemingly impossible to overcome.
Instead, it will just be a fact of life around which everything else revolves, including human rights, jobs and the economy. The best climate change story, in other words, may very well not be a climate change story at all.

Links

• If warming exceeds 2°C, Antarctica’s melting ice sheets could raise seas 20 metres in coming centuries
• There are three types of climate change denier, and most of us are at least one
• Climate explained: why some people still think climate change isn’t real
• View from The Hill: Malcolm Turnbull delivers the unpalatable truth to Scott Morrison on climate and energy
• Grattan on Friday: A little more confusion added to the climate policy debate
• It’s only October, so what’s with all these bushfires? New research explains it
• Cattle prods and welfare cuts: mounting threats to Extinction Rebellion show demands are being heard, but ignored

What Is Climate Change And What Can We Do About It?

Climate Council - Explainer




Climate science can be complex, and misinformation in politics and the media can make it difficult to sort fact from fiction. Here, we’ve answered eight common climate change questions, including what’s causing climate change, what scientists are saying and what we can do about it. Read on to get up to speed.

1. What is climate change?
2. What is causing climate change?
3. How is climate change affecting Australia?
4. Why do only a few degrees of warming matter?
5. How do scientists know the climate is changing?
6. What are the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Australia?
7. What can Australia do to combat climate change?
8. Where can I find out more?

1. What is climate change?
Climate is different from weather. When we talk about the Earth’s climate, we are referring to the average weather conditions over a period of 30 years or longer. Weather, on the other hand, refers to what you see and feel outside from day to day (e.g. sunny, rainy).
So climate change is any change in the climate, lasting for several decades or longer, including changes in temperature, rainfall or wind patterns.

And according to science, our climate is changing quite dramatically – it’s getting hotter.

Long-term air and ocean temperature records clearly show the Earth is warming. The global average temperature has already risen by 1.1°C since the pre-industrial period. This might not sound like a lot, but 1.1°C represents a massive amount of extra heat and energy – the equivalent of four Hiroshima bomb detonations per second.

While the earth’s climate has changed throughout history, scientists agree that the significant changes we’ve seen over the past hundred years or so have been due to human activities. Recent warming is also happening at a rate that is much faster than previous climatic changes.


Temperature Anomalies by Country 1880-2017 based on NASA GISTEMP data. By Antti Lipponen.

2. What is causing climate change?
The short answer is, the excessive amount of greenhouse gases entering the Earth’s atmosphere due to human activity is causing our climate to change dramatically. But there’s more to it than that.

Let’s break it down. A certain amount of greenhouse gases (like water vapour, ozone, carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous dioxide) occur naturally. For example, carbon dioxide is produced by plants, or decaying organic matter (biomass). These greenhouse gases act like a blanket in our atmosphere, trapping some of the sun’s heat close to the Earth’s surface. This is known as the ‘greenhouse effect’ – and it makes the planet warm enough for us to live.
But since the Industrial Revolution (which began in the mid to late 1700s), greenhouse gases have built up in the atmosphere, which is trapping more heat close to the earth’s surface. This is because humans began digging up and burning coal, oil and gas, as well as scaling up agriculture and tree-clearing (deforestation), and increasing waste (landfill), which are all processes that produce greenhouse gases.

As more greenhouse gases are added to the Earth’s atmosphere, more of the sun’s heat is trapped and this causes the Earth’s average temperature to rise.

Carbon dioxide is the most significant of all the greenhouse gases, followed by methane. Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have increased by more than 45% since the Industrial Revolution and are now the highest they have been for at least 800,000 years.

3. How is climate change affecting Australia?
Australia is one of the most vulnerable developed countries in the world to the impacts of climate change, which include:

• Increased frequency and/or severity of extreme weather events including floods and droughts
• More frequent, more intense and longer-lasting heatwaves. Heatwaves are deadly, having killed more people than all other extreme weather events in Australia combined.
• Greater risk and severity of bushfires and earlier, longer bushfire seasons
• Sea level rise, leading to more coastal flooding, erosion and saltwater intrusion into freshwater wetlands, such as in the World-Heritage listed Kakadu National Park
• Impacts on wildlife due to heat stress, drought and habitat changes, which have flow-on effects down the food chain. Australia holds the first record of a mammalian extinction due to climate change.
• More frequent marine heatwaves, which impact marine ecosystems such as the Great Barrier Reef. After the back-to-back marine heatwaves in 2016 and 2017, 50% of the coral on the Great Barrier Reef died.
• Impacts on health due to changes in air pollution and aeroallergens (such as pollen), vector-borne diseases, extreme weather events and other factors
• Increased pressure on emergency services and health systems, as the fire seasons of states and territories increasingly overlap which stretches resources, and the health impacts of climate change worsen
• Agricultural impacts from more frequent droughts, floods and heatwaves

We are already experiencing these impacts today, at a rise in temperature of just 1.1 ̊C since the pre-industrial period. In 2019, Australia has seen devastating floods in Townsville, an early start to the bushfire season damaging properties and burning through untouched rainforests in NSW and QLD, and an ongoing drought which has threatened the food and water security of Australians for many years.
The risks to our wellbeing and livelihoods, and to other species and ecosystems, become much more profound as temperatures continue to rise.
Read more about droughts, bushfires and other extreme weather events in Australia here.

4. Why do only a few degrees of warming matter?
A few degrees of warming is incredibly significant.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) strongly recommends limiting the global temperature increase to 1.5°C, to avoid the impacts of climate change steeply escalating. Even at 1.5°C of global warming, times will be tough. But the impacts amplify rapidly between just 1.5°C and 2°C of temperature increase, as visible in the following infographic.

Adapted from WRI (07/10/18) based on data from IPCC (10/2018).

To avoid the impacts we’d experience at 2 degrees warming, we have no other choice but to limit our warming to 1.5 ̊C. It is still possible, but only if we act now.
If nothing changes, we are on track for a rise in temperatures of between 4-6 ̊C. To put this in context, the difference in temperatures between now and the last ice age was around 4 ̊C.
The Paris Agreement (a universal agreement involving over 190 countries committing to limit global warming to well below 2°C and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5 ̊C) is an important step towards addressing the global challenge of climate change. But with the current pledges that countries have put forward, the world is on track for at least 3.2 ̊C of warming by the end of the century.
Read more about limiting temperature rise to 1.5 degrees here.

5. How do scientists know the climate is changing?
Scientists collect data about the climate by testing a number of things: air and ocean temperature, precipitation (rain, snow), sea level, ocean salinity and acidity, tree rings, marine sediments, and pollen, to name a few.
Ice cores from Antarctica are incredibly helpful in showing how the climate has changed over time, because they can provide a record of what the level of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane were in our atmosphere in the past, as well as providing clues about past temperatures. Ice core data stretches back 800,000 years and shows that the concentration of greenhouse gases in our atmosphere over this period never increased so quickly, or by so much, as during this era of human influence.

Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere over the past 800,000 years, based off data from ice cores. C02 levels have never been as high as they are now. Source: NOAA

Pulling all of this data together, scientists have concluded that humans have been driving the significant changes in climate that we are currently experiencing. The evidence that supports anthropogenic (human-caused) climate change is vast and includes many lines of evidence published in tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles.

6. What are the main sources of greenhouse gas emissions in Australia?
There are eight major areas (sectors) in Australia responsible for our greenhouse gas emissions:

1. Electricity (emissions from burning coal and gas to power our lights, appliances and more)
2. Transport (emissions from petrol and diesel used to power cars, trucks and buses, and emissions from aviation fuel used to power planes)
3. Stationary energy (fuels like gas consumed directly, rather than used for electricity, in industry and in households)
4. Agriculture (greenhouse gases such as methane and nitrous oxide produced by animals, manure management, fertilisers and field burning)
5. Fugitive emissions (gases leaked or vented from fossil fuel extraction and transportation)
6. Industrial processes (emissions produced by converting raw materials into metal, mineral and chemical products)
7. Waste (methane from decaying organic matter)
8. Land use, land use change and forestry (LULUCF) (emissions and removals mainly from forests, but also from croplands, grasslands, wetlands and other lands).

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Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions by sector, 2019. Electricity is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in Australia, responsible for 32% of emissions. This is mainly because 84% of our electricity comes from burning fossil fuels, the large majority of which (62.3%) comes from coal. Fortunately, Australia is the sunniest and one of the windiest countries in the world, which means we are perfectly placed to generate our electricity from renewable energy sources, like solar and wind. Updating Australia’s energy system with renewables and storage is crucial for cutting our greenhouse gas emissions and combating climate change. Source: March 2019 quarterly updates.

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7. What can Australia do to combat climate change?
Although we are already experiencing the consequences of climate change today, we also have the solutions to address it.
Australia urgently needs to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions as part of a strong global effort. But currently, emissions in Australia and globally are still rising.
The IPCC has suggested that the world must cut carbon dioxide emissions to net zero by no later than 2050 to have a chance of limiting warming to 1.5 ̊C. This means that global carbon dioxide emissions have to start dropping now, and be on a path to fall by at least 45% below 2010 levels by 2030. Methane and other greenhouse gas emissions must drop steeply as well.
For this goal to be achievable, we have to start driving down all emissions across all sectors now.

Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions (excluding land use) have been rising consistently for five years since 2014, and are at the highest levels on record.

Here are the easiest, most efficient and cost-effective ways for Australia to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions:

• Electricity
  Rapidly transitioning away from fossil fuel generated electricity to renewable energy and storage technologies is the quickest and cheapest way to reduce emissions. In Australia and many other countries, new renewable energy is now cheaper than new coal (over its lifetime), and global investment in coal has plummeted by 75% in three years.
• Transport
  Avoiding dangerous climate change doesn’t start and end with changing electricity. We also need to electrify our transport systems – like buses, cars, trains and trams – and power them with 100% renewable electricity too. Transport makes up around 19% of Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, but these emissions can be reduced by: improving public transport’s quality, efficiency and accessibility, encouraging active transport (such as cycling and walking), and building infrastructure (like vehicle charging stations), to encourage people to use electric vehicles.
• Agriculture
  Agriculture contributes roughly 13% of Australia’s emissions, and deforestation accounts for around 9% of Australia’s emissions. But climate solutions like reforestation and regenerative agriculture can increase how much carbon is stored in soils and vegetation, removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
• Fossil fuels
  Australia needs to actively transition away from fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas, including those we export. As the second largest exporter of both thermal coal (which is burned to generate electricity) and gas, Australia has a huge influence on global emissions and the fossil fuel market. If we include all the fossil fuels that Australia exports, Australia is the fifth biggest polluter in the world – so we’re a big deal when it comes to climate change. Australia should not approve any new fossil fuel projects, and must actively phase out existing projects to reduce emissions. This process has to support fossil fuel-dependent communities and workers – and make sure that they have opportunities to move into other industries.

8. Where can I find out more?
The Climate Council has created a range of science-backed materials to further explain the causes, impacts and solutions to climate change. Take a look at our Reports, Videos and Infographics.

Links

• What can YOU do to tackle climate change?
• Watt’s watt? A guide to renewable energy capacity and generation
• Climate Action: 6 reasons to feel inspired not defeated
• Let’s Get Something Straight – Australia Is Not On Track To Meet Its Paris Climate Target
• Deforestation and Climate Change
• How climate change is damaging Australia’s economy