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If climate and energy policy matter, then here are the three questions to ask instead

Yesterday, Bloomberg reported that the Biden Administration is once again considering declaring a national “climate emergency,” explaining that such a declaration could be used to “halt [fossil fuel] exports, drilling.” Today, I have extensively updated a 2022 piece I wrote on such a declaration. The consideration of such a declaration reveals a stark divergence between election-year politics and effective climate and energy policies. Rather than asking whether a “climate emergency” declaration makes sense, I recommend the three other questions to ask instead. Comments welcomed!

“A significant feature of American government during the last fifteen years is the expansion of governmental activity on the basis of emergency.” That is the opening line in a 1949 academic paper on “Emergencies and the Presidency.” The role of the president in declaring a state of emergency to achieve policy goals has been a policy issue that dates back at least to President Abraham Lincoln.

Today, President Biden is once again being called upon by his supporters to declare a national emergency on climate change. Rather than argue for or against it, in this post I’m going to explain the history of such declarations, what recent experience says about their effectiveness in policy, and suggest the three questions we should be asking instead.

A national emergency declaration may be a political end, but it is also supposed to be a policy means — a mechanism intended to achieve certain outcomes in the national interest. Apart from the politics of using an emergency declaration to signal affinity with certain political interests, below I recommend the policy questions that we should be asking instead.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Climate Disaster Is Here—and the State Will Never Save Us

November 16, 2023

Climate Disaster Is Here—and the State Will Never Save Us

“States demonstrate, again and again, that not only do they not protect the Earth, they facilitate its destruction.” Dean Spade on the promise of speculative fiction and a review of The Ministry for the Future and The Deluge.

The Isle de Jean Charles in Louisiana was once 22,000 acres of bayous. Now, less than 2% of it is still above water. In 2016, residents left because of the effects of climate change in what was labeled the “first federally recognized climate-displaced population” in the United States.PHOTO BY CÉCILE CLOCHERET / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Global temperatures have reached new record highs, flooding and wildfires reaped widespread destruction this summer, and rainwater was declared, for the first time, unfit for human consumption around the globe. Amid these crises, I delved into two novels portraying our current and developing ecological and societal crises: The Ministry for the Future by Kim Stanley Robinson and The Deluge by Stephen Markley.

Reading fiction about ecological crisis and societal collapse — including heavily researched books like Deluge (Simon & Schuster, 2023) and Ministry (Hachette, 2020) that aim to realistically paint future scenarios, as well as young adult stories (often with elements of magic or science fiction) — can be useful for combating the persistent culture of denial of current conditions. Seeing how an author imagines emerging conditions also helps me grapple with and digest the difficult-to-comprehend onslaught of daily news.

Even those of us who know that climate change is already killing and displacing tens of millions of people (let alone other species) annually are mostly missing the scale of the impending global collapse.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Concerns that The White House Could Declare COVID-Like ‘Climate Emergency’

August 2, 2023

Concerns that The White House Could Declare COVID-Like ‘Climate Emergency’

Concerns are rising within energy industry circles that the White House might declare a climate emergency, reminiscent of the COVID-19 emergency declaration.

Tim Stewart, President of the U.S. Oil and Gas Association, expressed this apprehension, stating such a move would equip the president with “vast and unchecked authority to shut down everything from communications to infrastructure.”

Stewart raises concerns on critical infrastructure, ‘climate emergency’ impact

Credit: DepositPhotos© Provided by Everyday Chirp

Mr. Stewart suggested that critical infrastructure, including water and electricity, could be impacted.

“They can literally do exactly what they did in COVID,” he said. He voiced worries over the potential to stifle dissenting voices and the indefinite nature of the ‘climate emergency.’

White House remains silent on speculations on climate emergency

The White House didn’t respond to requests to comment on these speculations.

President Joe Biden, although emphasizing the urgency of the “climate crisis,” has refrained from declaring an emergency. Yet, some Democrats and environmental groups continue to advocate for such a measure.

Momentum grows for climate emergency declaration

Rep. Earl Blumenauer’s (D-Ore.) “Climate Emergency Act of 2021” has received backing from about 60 Democrats. This legislation demands a climate-related emergency declaration from the Biden administration.

On another front, U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres issued a dramatic message, declaring that “the era of global boiling has arrived.”

Divergent views on climate change action, criticism from Stewart

Concurrently, media outlets like the Los Angeles Times have suggested deliberate “occasional blackouts” to combat climate change, while The Guardian urges Biden to “declare a climate emergency” immediately.

Mr. Stewart criticized these reports as a “propaganda war” attempting to “condition the public to think it is their duty to the State to be miserable, cold, and hungry.”

…click on the above link to read the rest…

Covid Emergency, Climate Emergency: Same Thing

February 15, 2023

Covid Emergency, Climate Emergency: Same Thing

Would a ‘Climate Emergency’ Open the Same Door to Authoritarian Governance as the ‘COVID Emergency?’

I am always happy to welcome new content from The Brownstone Institute, one of the last few beacons of common sense left in the world.

This week they published a new piece on how, as the Covid emergency fades away, the climate emergency is becoming prominent. After lamenting the rights that were taken from citizens during the Covid emergency, the article looks at exactly what superpowers the government would get in declaring a climate emergency. You guessed it: more power to ram through ways for government to micromanage your life, interfere with the economy and – best of all – further the Keynesian nightmare by printing and spend as many U.S. dollars as they want without consequences.

I reached out to the publication last year and requested permission to share their content when I enjoy it, in full, with my readers, which they kindly granted. If you’re interested in the topic – or simply just having a grasp on the objective truth – I believe it is a “must read”.

The article is written by W. Aaron Vandiver, a writer, former litigator, and wildlife conservationist. He is the author of the novel, Under a Poacher’s Moon. Photographic annotations have been added by QTR.

In February 2022, 1,140 organizations sent President Biden a letter urging him to declare a “climate emergency.” A group of US Senators did the same, in October 2022, and a House bill, introduced in 2021, also called on the president to “declare a national climate emergency under the National Emergencies Act.”

Biden has considered declaring such an emergency, but so far he has declined, to the disappointment of many progressives.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

The Global North isn’t ready for climate breakdown

September 29, 2021

The Global North isn’t ready for climate breakdown

European responses to extreme weather demonstrate post-industrial nations have much to learn from people in the Global South, writes Aranyo Aarjan

Flooding in Tilff, Belgium, July 2021 (Photo: Regine Fabri; licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0)

When I was growing up in Kolkata, every monsoon the streets would get flooded. I remember looking forward to the days when school would get cancelled and I would get to stay home and watch cartoons. I would look out from the balcony to see life carrying on, people wading through sometimes waist-deep murky brown water. Somehow it all still seemed fun through the eyes of a child, like an adventure.

This summer, however, as I’ve watched places around the world face historic levels of flooding, I’ve felt nothing but a sense of creeping horror at the onset of the realisation that climate change is here. It’s all happening even sooner than predicted, and will get far worse.

Of course, climate change has already been here for a long time, its effects felt most acutely by the people in the Global South who have contributed the least to the current state of affairs. Yet in the face of unprecedented amounts of rainfall, multiple countries around the world, including some of the richest and most technologically advanced nations, faced deadly flooding in the month of July alone. It would appear that the Global North’s preparedness for climate catastrophe is also far from what many may have expected.

Climate systems are incredibly complex and it is difficult to conclusively prove that this summer’s flooding was caused by climate change. However, these types of weather events certainly fit the model that many scientists have long predicted…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why The Climate Emergency is now The Methane Emergency

August 25, 2021

Why The Climate Emergency is now The Methane Emergency

We are about to go through the most profound shift in the climate debate in 20 years. The result will be the end of the gas industry’s hope of being a transition fuel, a brutal market disruption to the agriculture and livestock industries and the arrival of the climate emergency into public consciousness. This will all be driven by the acceptance of methane as the critical response to the climate emergency.

The Climate Emergency Arrives

As always on climate change, the underlying driver is the science. In this regard, the latest IPCC report was crystal clear. Our climate is changing; we’re suffering severe consequences decades earlier than predicted; the impacts will keep getting worse; we’re facing tipping points which could trigger runaway warming; and we’re rapidly running out of time. By any interpretation we now face a full-blown climate emergency.

While many lament the lack of earlier action, that is typical of how we behave. We wait for a crisis to be underway and then respond dramatically. It’s inefficient, it’s expensive, it’s frustrating and it’s how we always do things. We took this approach in WWII, to the 2008 global credit crisis and to the COVID19 pandemic. It was always going to be like this with climate change.

What we now confront then is kind of good news. Faced with the existential risk of runaway climate change and resulting global economic collapse, we are far more likely to take the action. However, as Professor Jorgen Randers and I argued in our 2009 paper The One Degree War Plan, acting this late requires a profoundly different approach than what would have worked 20 or 30 years earlier. It requires a dramatic reset of assumptions about the pace of change, the type of actions needed and the economic disruption that will result.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

This ship is sinking

August 2, 2021

This ship is sinking

Is there time to rearrange the deck chairs as in the Paris Agreement, or should we just start passing out lifejackets? Many people still hope we’ll make a manageable transition to a low-impact economy. I’ve pretty much lost hope for that outcome, primarily because two factors now must be included in a realistic forecast—currently discernible collective human will, and already-appearing climate impacts.

Currently discernible collective human will

Oil companies have known of the link between their products and climate change since 1965. The news media was told about it when James Hansen testified before Congress in 1988. By 2000 environmentalists were beginning to educate the public and elected officials, testing terminology to find words that would capture attention and motivate action. “Should we say ‘global warming’ or ‘climate change?‘ ‘Greenhouse gases’ or ‘climate pollution?’” For at least two decades there has been steady and often brilliant effort by scientists, climate activists, and energy experts to show both the perils we face and the possible solutions.

We know the results. Major emitters have clung to fossil fuels and used their clout to obfuscate the issue rather than change direction. Emissions are rebounding post-pandemic, and 2023 is predicted to see the highest levels of CO₂ emissions in human history. At this point it is probably a fact that the desire not to exceed 1.5^oC is just a wish and not a fully inhabited intention for most of those who have the power to make it happen.

I’ve been surprised by the inertia, but I shouldn’t have been. The climate crisis may be seen as the logical result of cumulative actions that go back thousands of years. The agricultural revolution seems to have encouraged top-down social and economic systems, and perhaps the subjugation of nature and of humans lower in the hierarchy encouraged the development in the human population of what I will call insensitivity…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The last climate warning: heat waves and the IPCC leak

July 28, 2021

NEARLY 50 CELSIUS DEGREES ON THE WEST COAST OF CANADA

Records everywhere, and at the same time, a leak to the press, a preview, of a part of the major report on the climate crisis. It doesn’t sound like a coincidence

In Lytton, Canada, 49.6º was recorded at the end of June, during a historic heat wave that has caused a fire in the area, wiping the population off the map. Other records were also broken during those days in a multitude of cities as diverse as Seattle, Moscow or Benni Abbes in Tunisia.

Climate change is no longer denied by anyone. Or at least no one who thinks of anything other than his or her own benefit and those who let themselves be manipulated by the first ones.

According to a recent Yale University study, more than 90% of people surveyed around the globe assume that climate change is a real and very serious problem.Unfortunately, there is still some doubt about two crucial issues:

The first issue is that a third of society or more do not believe that it is human activities that are primarily responsible for climate chaos in most countries. In Indonesia, the most serious case, this percentage would be over 80%. Truly incredible for the current knowledge, which does not admit any doubt in this regard. Natural phenomena not only have nothing to do with it, they are actually helping us.

Just as there were fires before humans even existed, there are fires now, both natural and human-induced. Of course there have been many previous climate changes casued by the interaction of orbital cycles or Milankovitch cycles with the carbon cycle…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

What if we treated the climate emergency as seriously as we treated COVID–19?

July 21, 2021

What if we treated the climate emergency as seriously as we treated COVID–19?

Prof Alice Larkin, University of Manchester, argues that, if our society were really serious about tackling climate change, we would put much greater priority on social and economic change – as shown by the emergency response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Article from Responsible Science Journal, no.3; advance online publication: 29 June 2021.
_____

I’ve learnt two important lessons so far from the pandemic. The first is that change can take place quickly and the second is that government and societal priorities can shift dramatically to tackle an emergency.

My third observation is not a lesson as such but something that has sparked my interest. It is that, in the same way that climate science and scientists find themselves scrutinised for clear facts when policy makers are faced with the need to engage with the science, so our medical colleagues find themselves and their science also thrust into this spotlight.

It is even more the case now that they too are now tackling some of the same economic questions, in the terms of the ‘GDP versus science’ debate that many climate researchers have been dealing with for decades.

Policy-makers don’t yet consider climate change an emergency

So what can be harnessed from these lessons to tackle the climate emergency? The pandemic became all-consuming, leading to rapid policy, social and media responses that I suspect hasn’t been experienced by any of us before in our lifetimes. As such, it draws attention to how little credence has been given to the term ‘emergency’ in a climate rather than a COVID-19 context.

First, on the speed of response and government priorities, I’ve spent the last 18 years trying to understand the scale of the climate emergency and how our energy systems need to transform to minimise cumulative carbon emissions…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Latest Fraud of CNN

July 14, 2021

The Latest Fraud of CNN

CNN is deliberately misleading the public, and they REFUSE to do any real investigative reporting. They should be shut down as a propaganda organization that is against the national security of the United States. Anyone who would bother to just look at how that statistic was created would be ashamed to repeat it. CNN and others are intimidating scientists who are afraid to tell the truth, for they will be canceled, ridiculed, and may even lose their job.

In 2009, the University of Illinois sent a survey online to about 10,000 scientists with the following two questions:

QUESTION #1

Do you agree that global temperatures have generally risen since the pre-1800s?

QUESTION #2
Do you think that human activity is a significant contributing factor?

Only 3146 responses were received of 10,000, and of that 31%, 90% said yes to the first question but 82% said yes to the second question.

This is how the fraud was carried out by people who have used this survey. They narrowed down the responses and found that among meteorologists who responded, only 64% said yes to the second question, so about 1/3 said NO!

Then disregarding all the others of the 3146 responses, they focused on only 77 who described themselves as “climate experts” without any proof of their credentials and found that only 75 said yes to the second question.

Therefore, when we divide 75/77 we get to their claim of 97% of all scientists in the world say there is a climate emergency that warrants raising taxes and seizing property.

This was only 2.3% of those who bothered to respond, and I doubt that they would agree with the solution which is COMMUNISM!

0.0075%

If we take the 75 responses of 10,000 scientists surveyed, that means only 0.0075% agreed that there is climate change with some human causality…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Vancouver Council Votes Against Delay for Climate Emergency Plan

June 13, 2021

Vancouver Council Votes Against Delay for Climate Emergency Plan

City bylaw will require new homes built after Jan. 1 to use zero-emissions heat and hot water systems, effectively banning natural gas hookups.

‘What’s clear to me after years of doing climate work is that climate delay is the same as climate denial,’ said Coun. Christine Boyle of the vote. Photo by Ervins Strauhmanis, Creative Commons license CC BY 2.0.

New homes in Vancouver will be built with zero-emissions heating and hot water systems starting Jan. 1 following a city council vote this week.

Council was considering delaying the zero-emissions requirement by one year to give the heating and plumbing industry additional time to adapt to the new bylaw, which was introduced in 2019.

Council voted 6–4 to stick to the original timeline outlined in Vancouver’s Climate Emergency Action Plan. OneCity’s Christine Boyle, independent Mayor Kennedy Stewart, COPE Coun. Jean Swanson and Green councillors Adriane Carr, Pete Fry and Michael Wiebe voted to keep the original timeline.

Independents Rebecca Bligh, Lisa Dominato, Colleen Hardwick and Sarah Kirby-Yung voted for a one-year deferral. NPA Coun. Melissa De Genova abstained.

“I’m really pleased and relieved about it,” says Boyle. “What’s clear to me after years of doing climate work is that climate delay is the same as climate denial. We’ve been losing slowly for too long, and we don’t have enough time to continue to take that approach.”

Boyle was an outspoken opponent of the one-year delay. Earlier in the week she told The Tyee a delay would punish businesses that had invested in Vancouver’s low-carbon transition and signal to the fossil fuel industry that the city was willing to cave on its climate goals “with a tiny bit of pressure.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XX

June 9, 2021

Today’s Contemplation: Collapse Cometh XX

Today’s contemplation is once again generated by way of an article from the online media site The Tyee. It’s topic is the city of Vancouver’s (British Columbia, Canada) attempts to require ‘electrification’ of all new buildings as part of their Climate Emergency Action Plan and the pushback by the Canadian Institute of Plumbing and Heating.

My first comment below was to bring to the surface the Overton Window that most media articles tend to display when discussing climate change actions and associated issues, particularly that it is only via ‘electrification’ of our society that we can adequately sustain our complexities and wean ourselves from the energy provided by fossil fuels; and thus ‘save our planet’.

The comment that follows is in response to another who responded to my comment with the tendency of some to buy into false (magical?) ‘solutions’. We tend to do this for any number of reasons, most (all?) of which are bio-psychological in nature.

* * *

The Overton Window established around policies/actions to address our ecological/environmental dilemmas is on full display here.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Biden’s Climate Plan: It’s Too Late for Gradualism

April 28, 2021

Biden’s Climate Plan: It’s Too Late for Gradualism

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

President Biden gave us his climate plan on March 31. It was buried inside his American Jobs Plan. The 12,000-word Fact Sheet about it released by the White House hardly acknowledges the climate emergency. The plan is presented as a jobs through infrastructure program.

The climate emergency demands a radical and rapid decarbonization of the economy with numerical goals and timetables to transform all productive sectors, not only power production (27% of carbon emissions), but also transportation (28%), manufacturing (22%), buildings (12%), and agriculture (10%). That emergency transformation can only be met by an ecosocialist approach using public enterprise and planning.

Instead, Biden’s plan emphasizes corporate welfare: subsidies and tax incentives for clean energy that will take uncertain effect at a leisurely pace in the markets. Moreover, it does nothing to stop more oil and gas fracking and pipelines for more gas-fired power plants, or to shut down coal-fired power plants. Without out directly saying so, it is a plan to burn fossil fuels for decades to come.

The scale of spending falls pathetically short of what is needed to decarbonize the economy. An effective plan would not only reach zero emissions on a fast timeline. It would also move quickly toward negative emissions, drawing carbon out of the atmosphere because we are already at a carbon level that is triggering dangerous climate change.

Climate Emergency

It’s too late for gradualism. We must at least aim for the “initial target” of 350 ppm (350 parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) that was proposed 13 years ago by climate scientists James Hansen and colleagues in a 2008 study. Even in that research report Hansen et al. concluded that 300-325 ppm “may be needed to restore sea ice to its area of 25 years ago.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

BC Needs a ‘Wartime Approach’ to the Climate Emergency. And Now

October 2, 2020

BC Needs a ‘Wartime Approach’ to the Climate Emergency. And Now

The urgent response to the pandemic has shown us we can do it. We can’t dither another minute.

COVER.Coquitlam-Smoke.jpeg — Wildfire smoke reached Coquitlam, BC last month. Intensifying wildfires are just one indication that we, like the rest of the planet, aren’t doing enough to stop climate change. Photo by Joshua Berson.

All of us who heed the warnings of climate scientists are increasingly alarmed as we stare at the harrowing gap between what the science says is necessary and what our politics seems prepared to entertain. Despite decades of calls to action, our greenhouse gas emissions are not on a path to stave off a horrific future for our children and future generations.

Case in point: The accompanying chart tracks British Columbia’s emissions going back to the year 2000. What is evident is that, in the face of the defining challenge of our time, our politicians are not rising to the task at hand.

582px version of GHG_Chart.jpg — Source: Environment and Climate Change Canada: Tables IPCC Sector Canada.

Let this deeply disturbing chart sink in. And then let us all agree — political leaders, civil servants, environmental organizations, academics and policy wonks, labour leaders, socially responsible business leaders — that what we have been doing is simply not working. We have run out the clock with distracting debates about incremental changes.

But where it matters most — actual GHG emissions — we have accomplished precious little and have frequently slipped backwards. The most recent GHG data is from 2018, and B.C.’s new Clean BC climate plan was only introduced late that year, so it may yet show some progress. But our track record leaves much to be desired.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A letter to real power: a letter to us

September 2, 2020

A letter to real power: a letter to us

When I heard that Culture Declares Emergency was organizing a series of ‘Letters to Power’, I thought to myself: “Rupert, you should probably write one”. You see, I have spent much of my life attempting to talk to, persuade, even beg those with power – our elected leaders, heads of banks and businesses, big organisations or media companies, for example. I have written many, many letters to power before.

Though to be frank, it’s been largely pointless; while some appear to listen, most fail to hear and even more refuse to act.

Trying once again felt a bit like bashing my head against a brick wall. I felt my enthusiasm for the project draining away.

But then I stopped for a minute and really thought about power. Especially in the context of these last three tumultuous years.

I started to re-assess my assumption about who this letter would be directed to. When I looked up the dictionary definition – “the capacity or ability to direct or influence the behaviour of others or the course of events” – and I recalled the way the world has changed since 2018, it became clearer where the power really is.

With us, the people.

We were the ones who, earlier this year, initiated precautionary action when, at least in the UK, our government was clearly going down a different, deadly, route of (non-) response to the Covid crisis.

We were the ones who supported our family, friends and neighbours with countless good deeds during lockdown, and who stood in public solidarity with the NHS and key workers.

We were the ones who questioned, and continue to question, the motives of our rudderless governments in their stance on coronavirus.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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The Climate Emergency Arrives

Climate change is no longer denied by anyone. Or at least no one who thinks of anything other than his or her own benefit and those who let themselves be manipulated by the first ones.

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