Culture of Climate Change

The World Bank gives and the World Bank takes away.  With respect to climate change, the World Bank is funding the expansion of coal-fired power plants in India and China that will vastly increase the rate of CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere.  The World Bank also funds so-called climate change mitigation and adaptation programs.  What the WB does with its super-sized right hand it hides from the dwarfed, green left hand.

In similar fashion,  reports from the World Bank are often full of useful information, which is then not used much at all as projects are pursued.   K.M. Norgaard’s  “Cognitive and Behavioral Challenges in Responding to Climate Change” might have taken the executive offices of Bank officials as its field of investigation.  Instead, Norgaard’s earnest inquiry is, like climate change, global in scope.   But its focus on average individuals’ inaction in the face of the threat of climate change seems odd given the powerful interests that have opposed political action to address green house gas emissions.

Nov. 23, 2009

Communications professionals employ sophisticated analysis of image, word, attitude and action.  The professionals at Environmental Communication Network have started a blog on environmental communication and culture called Indications. The posts so far entertain with the wide variety of materials posted.  The Sierra Club’s video, coal is too dirty even for college, shines with unexpected ineptitude.  World Wildlife Fund Canada’s witty like goad to change provokes a chuckle.  Watching super models strip for climate change?  Does it prompt you to get active?   The photographs of artists Chris Jordan and Edward Burtynksy are stunning — which might or might not be good at provoking action.

Chris Jordan's photo of baby albatross starved to death with a full stomach of plastic.

Creating a culture of environmental activism via images  is rather different from, say, creating a generation of smokers or coke drinkers.  In our remediated society, is the image of green enough to create a green reality?  Can images of enviro-destruction inspire?

Nov. 23, 2009

Science is being claimed by media culture in this hullabaloo of the hacked emails.  Pro-climate change scientists are confident that their emails reveal little other than normal scientific chatter about opposing researchers whose work they disdain.

Anti-climate change forces allied to powerful oil and gas industries are feared to be plotting a huge PR coup based on snippets of emails interpreted in the most insinuating manner possible.  So far my favorite post articulating this orchestrated pr onslaught is Ike Soleman’s comment (#79) on the Real Climate site.

The anti-climate change pr campaign  is “a desperate, last-ditch tactic by fanatics who have lost the rational debate” opines George Marshall in  a commentary in The Guardian .  George Marshall, who founded and directs projects at the Climate Outreach and Information Network fears that climate scientists are too wedded to their rational, scientific arguments and cannot compete in the spinmeister contests of today’s media.

This website focuses on the Culture of Climate Change, and NOT on climate science.  Spencer Weart is the expert-of-reference on the history of climate science.  However, the Culture of Climate Change is underwritten by climate science.  It is the scientific consensus that anthropogenic climate change threatens the ecological systems across the globe.  This scientific consensus is the motor that is driving huge investments in various climate change mitigation and adaptation programs.  What would happen to the UN international climate change regime if that consensus buckled?

Climate change skeptics are wandering in the wilderness — out of step with funding priorities, at odds with their powerful fellow scientists.    Apparently someone from that camp of beleaguered outsiders hacked into the email accounts of notable pro-climate change scientists, exposing office gossip that tarnishes the veneer of truth to climate change science.  It was a computer system at the University of East Anglia that was hacked.  A similar hack of the pro-climate change website www.realclimate.org was thwarted.

The anti-climate change hackers posted their heisted emails at The Air Vent, a site devoted to anti-climate change advocates.

Dr. Patrick J.  Michaels, a noted climate change skeptic, claims that some of these emails reveal an effort to block the release of data for independent review.

Dr. Mann, University of Pennsylvania, wrote one of the revealing emails in which he described using a  ‘trick’ to accomodate data inconsistent with climate warming.

For more of the skeptical point of view see Stephen McIntyre’s climateaudit.org

Gavin A. Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA, is one whose emails have been published publically. In his view, the emails reveal little other than the fact that scientists are human and prone to indisposition.   Schmidt is quoted as saying, “Newton may have been an ass, but the theory of gravity still works.”

In Peru, demonstrations in June of 2009 against government plans for forest use ended in violence that left dozens dead.

REDD = Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and environmental  Degradation.

[The Culture of Climate Change is not for those who wilt at the sight of acronyms.   I used to have such an aversion to acronyms that I literally could not read documents sprinkled heavily with these consonant-heavy capitalized clods.  They seemed to me somehow an indication of modern barbarism, and I am not sure that is not the case.  Still, I have had to put that behind me in order to research climate change issues.  Every issue, policy, or program comes with at least one, usually several, of these spell-check-defiant, not-quite neologisms.   ]

REDD is mostly the baby of the Norwegian government, with the backing as well of the UK.  It seeks to establish forest policies that preserve large tracts in less developed countries so that these can continue to absorb carbon emitted around the globe.  The largest forests are in the Amazon and in the Congo Basin.

If these forests are preserved, the carbon rights to them can be sold in the developing international carbon markets.

Question: who, within participating states,  gets the REDD money?  who gets the money from selling the carbon rights to these forests?  what happens to that money?

Question: what happens to the people who live in these forests? (see stories about deaths in Peru)

The Answers are still to be determined, but consider the following:

On the global level, billions of dollars each year will be allocated via these forest programs.  For example, it is projected that by 2015 from $10 to $20 billion will be allocated annually to forest programs.  The policies set in place by Copenhagen (and the pre and post Copenhagen processes) will determine how these funds flow from the global programs to national governments.

Such a huge flow of funds from the international community into forestry projects operated at the national level raises major issues of rights.

REDD is an initiative that is evolving via international negotiations centered around the United Nations and the World Bank.  Nationals governments with forests that can qualify for the REDD initiative are also making plans and participating in negotiations.  The overall shape of the REDD initiatives will arise out of this mixture of international and national decision making and policy expertise.

The interface between national governments and multilateral funds is a common focal point for many of these meetings.  It is crucial to develop this interface via a process that engages civil society and indigenous people and yet such engagement runs counter to the cult of expertise and statism.

The culture of climate change has encouraged putting a price tag on all the diverse elements of the natural world.  Whereas in the old era, pre-climate change culture, polluters polluted for free, in the new era carbon caps will gradually begin to exact payment for carbon emissions.

There is already a booming industry in carbon sequestration, and the Katoomba Group’s Ecosystem Marketplace is sharing expert news on how this is developing.

Art, essays, and poetry on culture, identity and climate change are featured in the third issue of TIG, which stands for TakingIt Global.  This issue is multi-lingual, with contributions in original languages from around the globe.

Freedom Summer ‘09 is a group dedicated to making the summer of 2009 a memorable moment in the history of climate change activism.  Organized by Tom Pollak, Freedom Summer ‘09 takes its name from the famous Freedom Summer of 1964, which featured voter registration of African Americans in Mississippi.   Freedom Summer ‘09 aims to turn the youth enthusiasm for Barack Obama into more sustained activism centered around climate change.  They are looking for volunteers in the broader metro area of Washington, DC.

The Climate Change bill (The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009) scheduled to come up for a vote next week in Congress contains language that ends key provisions of the Clean Air Act.   The proposed legislation would allow old coal plants to continue emitting based on free carbon allowances, and would allow some 100 new coal plants to be built.  The full information on the proposed house legislation can be found at the Committee on Energy and Commerce website.

For up-dated information on coal plants in every state in the USA, see the Sierra Club site, “Stopping the Coal Rush.”

Coal is abundant and cheap fuel.  It is also a huge contributer to carbon emissions, amounting to 40% of U.S. emissions.  Smoke stack filters and scrubbers remove toxic materials from coal soot, but do not reduce the carbon emissions.

Carbon capture and storage is the best hope for making coal power plants environmentally friendly, but this technology is still under development.  It has not been successfully achieved anyplace and key demonstration projects have been derailed by huge cost overruns.

Coal is plentiful and cheap.  The economy of the US is deeply dependent on coal power, as are the emerging economies of India and China.   (For more information, see the Time Magazine article on the politics of coal in the U.S.).

By the looks of the pending “Climate Change” legislation, the U.S. Congress will indeed support climate change, and King Coal, rather than climate stabilization and renewables.

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) funds small grants for climate change adaptation and mitigation.  These grants cannot be used to aid people displaced by climate change.  They can only be used for environmental projects.  So, if your aim is to aid people directly impacted by climate change, then you need to somehow develop a project focused on the environment that also helps the people in need.

These grants are designed for small group implementation and are supposed to be linked to community involvement.  However, non-profits can undertake the grant projects, provided there is also community involvement.  Applications are processed through national agencies in the project-site state.

As ‘Culture of Climate Change’ develops, we will research the outcomes of GEF grants.  If you have been involved in a GEF climate change project, send a comment and let us know how it went.