Trump's Gift to the Climate Movement

The warning chart that NOAA issued shows Hurricane Ophelia ending in a straight line at 60 degrees north latitude, because the computer program never anticipated a hurricane so far north (source).

by Gaius Publius

A little while ago I looked at the coming year (and the next few years), saw a "train wreck" coming, and wondered whether it would be more worth writing about the train wreck or about something more interesting:

When we think of economic crossroads, those who don't regret the failed Obama opportunity of 2009 ... think of Sanders, Clinton and Trump; the Failed Revolt of 2016; and the road not allowed to be taken.

Our betters chose another path for us, and the rest, I'm afraid, will merely be consequences, the train wreck mentioned above, easily foreseen. Perhaps we won't write about the train wreck after all, but something less widely anticipated.

This is about the train wreck. It's also about a surprising opportunity from a surprising source, our dimwitted President Trump and his wrecking crew.

In a recent Rolling Stone piece entitled "Winning Slowly Is the Same as Losing," climate writer Bill McKibben said, "If we don't win very quickly on climate change, then we will never win. That's the core truth about global warming. It's what makes it different from every other problem our political systems have faced."

As an example, he cites the ice fields of Antarctica. "The latest models show that with very rapid cuts in emissions, Antarctic ice might remain largely intact for centuries; without them, we might see 11 feet of sea-level rise by century's end, enough to wipe cities like Shanghai and Mumbai 'off the map.'" In this case, "off the map" means literally off the map — non-existent; no where to be found on the earth.

For reference, note that the USGS lists the amount of ice sequestered in the Antarctic ice as the equivalent of 72 meters of sea level rise. That's quite a lot. Think of it as 240 feet — or 80% of an American football field — stood vertically. To see what that means on a map, click through to these speculative National Geographic maps from 2013; note though, as you do, that its numbers are out of date and too low. The situation will very likely be worse.

By any reckoning, the speed of change to our climate is catching most people off guard. For example, consider the map at the top. It shows a storm so far north that the computer programmers didn't consider it necessary to allow it to be fully mapped.

McKibben writes, "Another way of saying this: By 2075 the world will be powered by solar panels and windmills – free energy is a hard business proposition to beat. But on current trajectories, they'll light up a busted planet. The decisions we make in 2075 won't matter; indeed, the decisions we make in 2025 will matter much less than the ones we make in the next few years. The leverage is now."

Which brings us to the Trumpian good news.

Trump Has Taken Business As Usual — "Predatory Delay" — Off the Table

If Trump were not president, we might well be noodling along in that same happy valley where nothing much is being done — but much is made of the fact that much appears to be happening — and that thought comforts us.

The oil industry, of course, wants it this way, wants us in that happy state of seeing incremental change as "good enough." Considered in that light, the Paris Accord on climate is their best friend. They get to look like they're on the right side of history, by supporting climate "progress," while relentlessly digging up all of their buried cash — disguised as unextracted oil and gas — until the last cubic centimeter is sold and burned.

McKibben sees it that way too:

The planetary futurist Alex Steffen calls this tactic "predatory delay, the deliberate slowing of needed change to prolong a profitable but unsustainable status quo that will be paid by other people eventually." It's not confined to the moneybags at the oil companies and the utilities – he's written extensively about the otherwise-liberal urbanites in his home state of California. "A lot of cities are happy to talk about providing their power cleanly, but reducing cars, densifying, spending on bike paths, raising building standards – those things are all so contentious they're not even discussed." Ditto the folks who block windmills out of fear of chopping birds, thus helping lock in the next great mass extinction. ... In careful language that might have been written by a team at Exxon, the union [that builds pipelines] said it supported new pipelines "as part of a comprehensive energy policy that creates jobs, makes the United States more competitive and addresses the threat of climate change." "Comprehensive," "balanced," "measured" are the high cards in this rhetorical deck. "Realistic" is the ace in the hole.

Note that this is an encouraged and well-advertised policy, these reasons for delay. You heard the same arguments when the last administration talked about its "all of the above" energy strategy as a "path to sustainable growth." Growth in industry profit, of course, but death for millions of its victims.

Now all of that "reasonable" incremetalism is off the table, at the same time that data about the possibility of effective emergency action is coming available. McKibben writes that "if we wanted to power the planet on sun and wind and water, we could. It would be extremely hard, at the outer edge of the possible, but it's mathematically achievable. Mark Jacobson, who heads Stanford's Atmosphere/Energy program, has worked to show precisely how it could happen in all 50 U.S. states and 139 foreign countries – how much wind, how much sun, how much hydro it would take to produce 80 percent of our power renewably by 2030."

I said earlier that Trump wasn't the whole problem – in fact, it's just possible that in his know-nothing recklessness, he has upset the ever-so-patient apple cart. You could almost see the oil companies wincing when Trump pulled out of the Paris Agreement – for them, the agreement was a pathway to slow and managed change. The promises it contained didn't keep the planet from overheating – indeed, even if everyone had kept them, the Earth would still have gotten 3.5 degrees Celsius hotter, enough to collapse every ecosystem you'd like to name. The accords did ensure that we'd still be burning significant amounts of hydrocarbons by 2050, and that the Exxons of the world would be able to recover most of the reserves they've so carefully mapped and explored.

But now some of those bets are off. ... [W]ith Washington effectively gridlocked, the fight has moved elsewhere. When Trump pulled out of the climate accords, for instance, he explained that he'd been elected to govern "Pittsburgh, not Paris." The next day the mayor of Pittsburgh said his town was now planning on 100 percent renewable energy, a pledge that's been made by places as diverse as Atlanta, San Diego and Salt Lake City. Next year, representatives of thousands of regions, provinces, cities, parishes, arrondissements, districts and counties will descend on San Francisco for a Paris-like gathering of subnational actors[.]

This is the Trump opportunity. By sweeping the incrementalism so beloved of Establishment regulars off the table, and by forcing people at the state and local level to solve the problem themselves, Trump has handed the climate movement a gift he should be thanked for.

We were never going to win the climate war with "reasonable" people in charge, no matter their party. In real terms, if Clinton were president, we'd have been no better off. McKibben's title is deadly accurate — in this fight, winning slowly is exactly the same as losing. The only road to success involves sustained and forceful bursts of emergency action.

Will Americans take the opportunity they've been handed — freed of the handcuffs of the incrementalist Democratic Party — to start to win quickly? It's entirely possible. After all, no one in the climate movement today thinks our government offers even a shred of hope. They're moving on without it.

We may still watch much of our virtual village go under the waves, but at least we now may put up a fight to save it.

GP
 

Telling the Climate Truth — The Pros and the Cons

Cover image from the New York Magazine feature story, "The Uninhabitable Earth."

by Gaius Publius

We need new Cassandras to warn us of new disasters, even though they'll never be believed.

—Richard Clarke (paraphrased)

We aren’t doomed — we are choosing to be doomed by failing to respond adequately to the emergency.

—Margaret Klein Salamon

The recent, major New York Magazine article on the coming "uninhabitable earth" stirred quite a response, both positive and negative. The positive response was, in general, "Finally, someone telling the truth." The negative response was, in general, "But it contains these errors," and "Does it really help to scare people this much?"

The errors are secondary to the article's main point, but the question about climate communication strategy is both long-standing in the climate activism community and important.

If we tell this much truth, are we scaring people into inaction? Or does telling this much truth motivate people more effectively than the message that "we've got until 2050 to get fully in gear" currently does? (Is it even moral not to tell this much truth?)

My own thoughts below (click to go directly to them). First, here's one person's unique perspective on this question. The following is from Margaret Klein Salamon, a clinical psychologist and also the founder of the climate action group The Climate Mobilization (TCM), which advocates for starting a "World War II-scale" emergency mobilization to convert from fossil fuels, and starting it now.

The following is Ms. Klein Salamon's recent letter to her mailing list, also published here. Please read it through as she considers this critical issue — Does telling the climate truth hurt or help? I've highlighted a few key ideas and reformatted the piece just slightly.

As you read, please keep the terms affect tolerance and affect phobia in mind. She'll clarify the definitions. I'll offer closing comments at the end.

---

Allies—

Last week, David Wallace-Wells published a cover story in New York Magazine, “The Uninhabitable Earth,” on some of the worst-case scenarios that the climate crisis could cause by the end of this century. It describes killer heat waves, crippling agricultural failures, a devastated economy, plagues, resource wars, and more. It has been read more than two million times.

The article has caused a major controversy in the climate community, in part because of some factual errors in the piece — though by and large the piece is an accurate portrayal of worst-case climate catastrophe scenarios. But by far the most significant criticism the piece received was that it was too frightening:

“Importantly, fear does not motivate, and appealing to it is often counter-productive as it tends to distance people from the problem, leading them to disengage, doubt and even dismiss it.” –Michael Mann, writing with Susan Joy Hassol and Tom Toles.

Eric Holthaus tweeted about the consequences of the piece:

A widely-read piece like this that is not suitably grounded in fact may provoke unnecessary panic and anxiety among readers.

And that has real-world consequences. My twitter feed has been filled w people who, after reading DWW's piece, have felt deep anxiety.

There are people who say they are now considering not having kids, partly bc of this. People are losing sleep, reevaluating their lives.

While I think both Mann and Holthaus are brilliant scientists who identified some factual problems in the article, I strongly disagree with their statements about the role of emotions — namely, fear — in climate communications and politics. I am also skeptical of whether climate scientists should be treated as national arbiters of psychological or political questions, in general. I would like to offer my thoughts as a clinical psychologist, and as the founder and director of The Climate Mobilization.

Affect tolerance — the ability to tolerate a wide range of feelings in oneself and others — is a critical psychological skill. On the other hand, affect phobia — the fear of certain feelings in oneself or others — is a major psychological problem, as it causes people to rely heavily on psychological defenses.

Much of the climate movement seems to suffer from affect phobia, which is probably not surprising given that scientific culture aspires to be purely rational, free of emotional influence. Further, the feelings involved in processing the climate crisis—fear, grief, anger, guilt, and helplessness — can be overwhelming. But that doesn’t mean we should try to avoid “making” people feel such things! Experiencing them is a normal, healthy, necessary part of coming to terms with the climate crisis.

I agree with David Roberts that it is OK, indeed imperative, to tell the whole, frightening story. As I argue in The Transformative Power of Climate Truth, it's the job of those of us trying to protect humanity and restore a safe climate to tell the truth about the climate crisis and help people process and channel their own feelings — not to preemptively try to manage and constrain those feelings.

Holthaus writes of people feeling deep anxiety, losing sleep, re-considering their lives due to the article… but this is actually a good thing. Those people are coming out of the trance of denial and starting to confront the reality of our existential emergency. I hope that every single American, every single human experiences such a crisis of conscience. It is the first step to taking substantial action. Our job is not to protect people from the truth or the feelings that accompany it — it’s to protect them from the climate crisis!

I know many of you have been losing sleep and reconsidering your lives in light of the climate crisis for years. We at The Climate Mobilization sure have. TCM exists to make it possible for people to turn that fear into intense dedication and focused action towards a restoring a safe climate.

In my paper, Leading the Public into Emergency Mode—a New Strategy for the Climate Movement, I argue that intense, but not paralyzing, fear combined with maximum hope can actually lead people and groups into a state of peak performance. We can rise to the challenge of our time and dedicate ourselves to become heroic messengers and change-makers.

I do agree with the critique, made by Alex Steffen among others, that dire discussions of the climate crisis should be accompanied with a discussion of solutions. But these solutions have to be up to the task of saving civilization and the natural world. As we know, the only solution that offers effective protection is a maximal intensity effort, grounded in justice, that brings the United States to carbon negative in 10 years or less and begins to remove all the excess carbon from the atmosphere. That's the magic combination for motivating people: telling the truth about the scale of the crisis and the solution.

In Los Angeles, our ally City Councilmember Paul Koretz is advocating a WWII-scale mobilization of Los Angeles to make it carbon neutral by 2025. He understands and talks about the horrific dangers of the climate crisis and is calling for heroic action to counter them. Local activists and community groups are inspired by his challenge.

Columnist Joe Romm noted that we aren’t doomed — we are choosing to be doomed by failing to respond adequately to the emergency, which would of course entail initiating a WWII-scale response to the climate emergency. Our Victory Plan lays out what policies would look like that, if implemented, would actually protect billions of people and millions of species from decimation. They include:

1) An immediate ban on new fossil fuel infrastructure and a scheduled shut down of all fossil fuels in 10 years;

2) Massive government investment in renewables;

3) Overhauling our agricultural system to make it a huge carbon sink;

4) Fair-shares rationing to reduce demand;

5) A federally-financed job guarantee to eliminate unemployment;

6) A 100% marginal tax on income above $500,000.

Gradualist half measures, such as a gradually phased-in carbon tax or cap-and-trade system, that seem “politically realistic” but have no hope of actually restoring a safe climate, are not adequate to channel people’s fear into productive action.

We know what is physically and morally necessary. It’s our job — as members of the climate emergency movement — to make that politically possible. This will not be easy, emotionally or otherwise. It will take heroic levels of dedication from ordinary people. We hope you join us.

Margaret Klein Salamon, PhD
Founder and Director, The Climate Mobilization

---

Gaius again. I largely concur with Ms. Klein Salamon, that "gradualist half measures" which have no hope of achieving the real and only goal — "restoring a safe climate" — won't channel voter and citizen fear into productive action. They will instead, in my view, encourage those voters, those citizens, to continue to pass the climate buck to the next half-generation, unaware that this generation — today's voters and citizens, their own selves — will go over the first part of the climate cliff first.

About her action plan, note points five and six — a jobs guarantee program (MMT theorists have been calling for this for a while) and a 100% tax on all income over $500,000. Like it or not, none of the climate and environment goals can be met without great economic change as well. That may sound like too much of an ask, but remember the World War II analogy. FDR turned the U.S. into a rationed, command economy, a step absolutely necessary to deal with war demands.

Note also that the FDR tax rates to deal with the Depression were massively high by modern (post-Reagan) standards, were increased again during World War II, and stayed high through the Eisenhower administration and into the Kennedy administration.

Source; click to enlarge.)

If something is necessary for success, it must be made part of the plan. In this case, the alternative — and people need to be told this — is accelerating devolution of our species to hunter-gatherer lifestyles. Take your pick — but recall that World War II America chose the effective solution.

The View from the Oh It's You Senator Lounge

Why must we do this now? Because the climate crisis is starting now. Mass migration, in part due to climate change, is starting now. Deaths by weather extremes are increasing as we watch them. The three hottest years on record are the three immediately behind us. We're so close to +2 degrees warming already, we can almost taste it.

So what's in the way? The answer is simple — we have ceded control of climate policy to the greedy and pathological, to climate sexagenarians and octogenarians like Charles and David Koch, who, through the politicians they control (looking at you, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump), are marching to their own graves in triumph, leaving a wrack behind.

Does David Koch care about the world he will see from the grave? Or does he merely wish to enter it having won every battle he fought?

This is clearly pathological behavior on his part. It's therefore up to us to stand up for ourselves — or so it seems to this humble Cassandra — because few of our so-called "leaders," servants to pathological masters, care about us, "the littles," from their comfortable chairs in the Oh It's You Senator lounge.

An Easter Island Solution

Klein Salamon is right; an emergency mobilization is needed. But to get there, we have to gain control of the Titanic, to put our own hands on the wheel. Or, to put it differently, we must depose the village chief and enact our own "Easter Island solution." As I described it earlier:

You're a villager on Easter Island. People are cutting down trees right and left, and many are getting worried. At some point, the number of worried villagers reaches critical mass, and they go as a group to the island chief and say, "Look, we have to stop cutting trees, like now."

The chief, who's also CEO of a wood products company, checks his bottom line and orders the cutting to continue.

Do the villagers walk away? Or do they depose the chief?

There's always a choice ...

You can't change what you don't control — that way madness lies. And this madness, or its best friend, fatal resignation, has a world historical conclusion. Do we seize control of the ship and turn to safer waters? Or let the disaster happen to us all because the hands of the soon-to-die greedy were allowed at the wheel instead?

Do we depose the chief and save the island, or fail to act while action is still possible? Me, I say best depose the chief. After all, these won't be the first chiefs deposed in the arc of history — just the most dangerous.

Mes petits sous,

GP