{"id":12515,"date":"2015-09-22T07:27:24","date_gmt":"2015-09-22T12:27:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12515"},"modified":"2015-09-22T07:27:24","modified_gmt":"2015-09-22T12:27:24","slug":"the-state-of-the-climate-movement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12515","title":{"rendered":"The state of the climate movement"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.globaldashboard.org\/2015\/09\/08\/the-state-of-the-climate-movement\/\" target=\"_blank\">The state of the climate movement<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><em><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" src=\"http:\/\/the-shift.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/peoples-climate-march.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"601\" height=\"341\" \/><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>This is the text of a talk I gave today at Save the Children as part of their #changehistory series, organised by Campaigns Director (and fellow GlobalDashboard contributor) Kirsty McNeill. Kirsty\u2019s opening talk in the series is\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.globaldashboard.org\/2015\/07\/12\/lessons-from-make-poverty-history\/\"><em>here<\/em><\/a><em>; see also\u00a0<\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/historyofchange\"><em>@changehistory<\/em><\/a><em>\u00a0on Twitter.<br \/>\n<\/em><span id=\"more-24349\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>I.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s the afternoon of 28 June 1988. NASA scientist Jim Hansen is testifying on global warming to Congress. Outside, it\u2019s an oven. Temperatures are sweltering to an unheard-of high of 38 degrees Celsius. The legislators and journalists in the room are close to fainting.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s one of those moments when it all comes together. Next day, climate\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/1988\/06\/24\/us\/global-warming-has-begun-expert-tells-senate.html\">leads the\u00a0<em>New York Times<\/em><\/a>. By September, 58% of Americans have heard of the greenhouse effect. Two months after that, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is set up. Global climate policy is born.<\/p>\n<p>Now it\u2019s 1990. In Geneva, the Second World Climate Conference is taking place. Margaret Thatcher \u2013 herself a chemist \u2013 is lavishing praise on the IPCC, which has just published its First Assessment Report. And as if to anticipate the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Stern_Review\">Stern Review<\/a>\u00a016 years later, she\u2019s interpreting the IPCC\u2019s findings very much through a rational lens of self-interest \u2013\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2013\/04\/09\/margaret-thatcher-climate_n_3043873.html\">telling leaders<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cit may be cheaper or more cost-effective to take action now than to wait and find we have to pay much more later\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>Already, the terms on which climate policy will play out over the next two decades have been set. This is to be a technocratic agenda. Climate change will be owned by\u00a0a \u2018priesthood\u2019 of experts, with its own language, rituals, gatherings, and assumptions. NGOs can be admitted as members, but only if they\u2019re willing to adopt the priesthood\u2019s worldview and profess its creed.<\/p>\n<p>As for the public, their job is to listen to the experts and then remember to turn out the lights. It\u2019s certainly not to\u00a0<em>participate<\/em>, much less wield\u00a0<em>power<\/em>.<\/p>\n<div>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/div>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The state of the climate movement This is the text of a talk I gave today at Save the Children as part of their #changehistory series, organised by Campaigns Director (and fellow GlobalDashboard contributor) Kirsty McNeill. Kirsty\u2019s opening talk in the series is\u00a0here; see also\u00a0@changehistory\u00a0on Twitter. I. It\u2019s the afternoon of 28 June 1988. NASA [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[141,9181,9182,369,5161,440,9183,929,1796],"class_list":["post-12515","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environment","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-movement","tag-global-dashboard","tag-global-warming","tag-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-change","tag-ipcc","tag-jim-hansen","tag-nasa","tag-us-congress"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12515","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12515"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12515\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12516,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12515\/revisions\/12516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12515"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12515"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12515"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}