Can Humanity Prevent Climate Catastrophe

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Can Humanity Prevent Climate Catastrophe?

• Brian Davey
• Feasta and
• Cap and Share Britain

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Things aren't looking good

• 1. Increasing emissions despite Kyoto (1.5ppm in
  1990s to 2.4ppm 2000-2006)
• 2. Intergovernmental consensus targets grossly
  inadequate 50 global cuts by 2050 with 80 in
  developed countries but just to achieve 450ppm
  would require global 85 cuts and 95 cuts in
  developed countries according to the 4th
  Assessment Report 2007
• 3. Climate system appears more sensitive than
  originally thought due to reinforcing feedbacks
  e.g. Albedo flip on Arctic so the 4AR out of
  date in regard to targets

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Danger of runaway process

• Recent suggestions are that a safe level of CO2
  might be in the range 300-350ppm or even lower
  - even though we are already in the range
  387ppm.
• This is because of the need to restore Arctic sea
  ice and allow for reduction in global dimming as
  the atmosphere is cleaned up. These very low
  targets are outside of the range considered
  possible in the mainstream consensus for
  example the Stern Review.

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Scale of Challenge

• Research by Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows of the
  Tyndall Institute shows that, under highly
  optimistic assumptions, even to stabilise at
  450ppm CO2e requires energy related emissions to
  peak as early as 2015 and then to fall at 6-8pa
  between 2020 and 2040
• The collapse of the Soviet Union led to 5 pa
  emissions reductions over 10 years this was a
  period in which Russias economy collapsed. In
  1998 the Russian economy was only a half of its
  size in 1990 twice the scale of collapse in
  1930s America.

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Elements necessary for a comprehensive climate
solution

• 1. A society wide agreement on how bad things are
• 2. A social consensus on matching targets and
  timescales
• 3. Policy mechanisms to drive change
• 4. Technologies and lifestyle changes
• 5. Mobilisation of adequate resources
  financial, person power and materials/energy
• 6. An agreed Global Framework....this has to be
  done by humanity as a whole.....

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Elements of a climate package reformulated

• Well informed public and politicians prioritising
  climate mitigation based on impartial
  information...
• ....motivated to devote time to understanding
  issues, changing lifestyles and retraining,
  making sacrifices to consumption including a
  substantial solidarity element...
• ......supporting structural economic change with
  a drive against carbon business interests in
  favour of energy efficiency, distributed
  renewables and local food organic food
  producers.....

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The Green New Deal
The Green New Deal, while being a start, is
nothing like ambitious enough measured against
the scale of the challenge. It will take more
than 1-2 of GDPpa to get down to the lower
target GHG concentrations The question is Are
the existing structures of political-economic
power capable of delivering on a much bigger
scale?
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My best guess on whether this is possible is
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My best guess on whether this is possible is

• Probably Not
• Humans are in a pretty difficult position and I
  don't think they are clever enough to handle
  what's ahead. I think that they'll survive as a
  species all right, but the cull during this
  century is going to be huge...The number
  remaining at the end of the century will probably
  be a billion or less James Lovelock (New
  Scientist quote)

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Why?

• The inability to mobilise the public leads to a
  lack of political will and regulatory capture
  an inability to get tough with the vested
  interests of the carbon economy.

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Problems in getting a social consensus on how bad
things are

• Climate Activism typically proceeds as if the
  problem is a lack of information by public,
  policy makers and businesses
• From this follows attention seeking activities
  to get people to focus on climate, its threats
  and what must be done about it....

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The Economy of Attention

• While they are awake people can devote their
  attention their focused awareness on
  different things this is an allocation decision
  if I spend more time focused on choosing my
  next holiday I have less time to spend on
  thinking about climate mitigation (and other
  things).
• What people in aggregate devote their attention
  to, and how this time allocation is determined,
  may be termed the economy of attention (
  following the ideas of the Austrian academic
  George Franck in his book Oekonomie der
  Aufmerksamkeit)

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What we give attention to is a choice focusing
on climate mitigation is just one option among
many

• The world is drowning in all kinds of
  information

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What we give attention to is a choice focusing
on climate mitigation is just one option among
many

• The world is drowning in all kinds of
  information making claims on our attention
• Most of this other information is competitive for
  our attention and much counterproductive to
  climate change mitigation

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In the 'economy of attention' climate issues
have a very small market

• Most people do not devote attention to climate
  change, and responses to it, on anything more
  than a superficial scale
• There are plenty of indicators to illustrate that
  people spend virtually no time at all focusing
  their attention on the climate issue

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World News Statistics Topics on the front page
of 248 English language newspapers

• Politics 27.7
• Economy 27.65
• Crime 18.08
• War 10.77
• Sports 6.87
• Health 5.66
• Education 4.52
• Community 4.4
• Entertainment 3.93
• Accidents 2.31
• Technology 1.9
• Weather 1.7
• Environment 1.67
• Source http//geographicalmedia.com/topics

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This is also true of social science academics

• Academe is supposedly a place where concentrated
  high quality attention is devoted to issues of
  importance if society is to be mobilised to do
  something about an impending climate catastrophe
  one would have thought that academics would be
  highly focused on the topic

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Not a bit of it....

• One can get a rough and ready view of what
  academics find interesting and important by what
  they decide to write about and publish in their
  journals, particularly prestige journals.
• The figures are for articles on climate change
  mitigation in 3 prestigeous economic journals
  2006-2008

• American Economics Review 6 of 656 (1)
• Journal of Political Economy 0 of 117 (0)
• The Economic Journal 0 of 298 (0)

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However, the Royal Economics Society's Economics
Journal does have 4 articles about the economics
of wine

• This has clearly greater welfare implications
  than whether the greater part of the earth
  becomes uninhabitable, todays children go to
  early graves and outweights any need to study a
  market failure on the greatest scale the world
  has seen (Stern Review)

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Money Power Attention Seeking

• Amount of money spent on non governmental grants
  for climate work in the UK - 2.788million
• Amount of money spent on private sector
  consumption advertising in the UK 19.4billion
• Trust donations for climate work compared to
  payment for consumption advertising 0.01437
• An average child sees 30,000 TV commercials in a
  year in the USA and by the time s/he reaches the
  age of 65, the average American will have seen
  two million TV commercials

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Focus on climate change by contrast

• Is complex the science is not straightforward
• Is frightening in its implications
• Does not lead to simple quick fixes

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This unpalatability accentuates the choice of
public and politicians to avoid focusing their
attention on climate mitigation

• Climate denial and avoidance cannot be dealt with
  by more information alone
• climate ignorance is
• climate ignor - ance

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Manageable Routines

• The time and energy and commitments needed to
  hold in balance a lifestyle package of home,
  work, income, personal and work relationships
  means most people are relatively impervious to
  messages which they sense might entail the
  stress of huge lifestyle adjustments

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In the long run we are all dead - so forget the
long run...

• Knowing that we are all dead in the long run, but
  that in the here and now there are things that
  need doing, a lot of people have no time for
  engaging with the long run issues. Instead most
  of the people are content to leave these matters
  to the politicians and their officials.

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The immobilising effect of neoliberalism

• Our entire culture tells us to look after number
  one first and most people have no belief in,
  taste for, or skills in, a life of community and
  civic engagement. They don't see themselves as
  getting involved in anything as naff as tree
  hugging environmentalism. To a large degree
  economists have created the intellectual basis
  for this culture.

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Governments are not concerned to challenge this
mass avoidance

• We must not frighten the public
• We must not engage in doom and gloom

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A Culture of Avoidance and Facile Optimism

• Denial becomes becomes collective through
  consensus trance - there is a tacit agreement
  that some things will not be devoted any group
  attention, they will not be talked about..
• A faith in technology, the power of the market,
  or God...plus a mind set habituated by the deluge
  of reassuring films and stories with happy and
  tidy endings... creates an attitude that assumes
  everything will probably turn out all right no
  need to worry...
• The resultant condition of collective psychology
  has been called
• Panglossian disorder the neurotic tendency to
  extreme optimism in the face of likely cultural
  and planetary collapse

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Why it matters an absence of political will and
regulatory capture

• Politicians who try to grapple with these matters
  do not find themselves dealing with an alarmed,
  aroused and well informed public, acting
  together, with plenty of time on its hands to
  follow things through, demanding that radical
  steps are taken....
• They find themselves dealing with a few well
  informed NGOs which are however mostly outgunned
  by the exceedingly well resourced and well
  connected businesses who have most to lose in the
  short term by policy action.
• The business interest then take over the policy
  process eg the design of the EU ETS or the so
  called clean coal agenda

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With the political will a simple no- nonsense
carbon energy policy was and is still possible
(cap share)

• (1) Declare all fossil fuels to be climate toxic
  goods to be phased out as quickly as practicable
• (2) In the meantime forbid sales of fossil fuels
  without a permit for the GHG of the fuels sold,
  limit the permits issued and bring limit down
  rapidly, year on year
• (3) Ensure that the public shared the revenue
  from the sales of permits - in the interests of
  equity and helping the fuel poor
• (4) Develop a package of complementary policies
  to help the public/industry adjust - so that
  resistance did not build up against the
  tightening the cap.

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But an effective scheme was not what was wanted

• To solve the climate crisis means DRIVING THE
  CARBON ENERGY SECTOR OUT OF EXISTENCE ASAP
• Governments (incl. the EU) have lacked the
  political will to grasp that nettle instead
  they wanted a scheme that the carbon energy
  sector was prepared to accept in a consensual
  consultative policy design process but this
  process has involved surrender to the very
  companies whose short term interests have got to
  be sacrificed to achieve effective climate
  mitigation.

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EU ETS as an example of regulatory capture

• Polluter pays becomes pay the polluter
  giving a subsidy to the fossil fuel interest that
  renewables doesn't have access to
• Permit issue gamed so that too many issued and
  cap ineffective
• CDM get out clause again, no effective cap
• A special interest get out clause for every
  influential business interest across Europe a
  massively complex scheme.
• No consideration of social equity when the
  carbon price is high that hits the fuel poor no
  discussion of who the carbon permit revenues
  belonged to assumption it must be the companies
  (or the government....)

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Those few economists who take an interest in
climate

• Work in the interface between business and
  government are are themselves subjected to the
  same pressures that give rise to regulatory
  capture and consensus trance.
• Hence Stern's advocating stabilisation levels of
  500ppm CO2e which by any standards is a
  dangerous level setting an inadequate
  standard.....

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Glimmers of Hope Dis-illusionment and New
Beginnings

• The Collapse of Consumerism Peak Debt and Peak
  Oil leading to the collapse of the Culture of
  Facile Optimism
• New era of citizen sensitivity to community
  insecurity and a new emphasis on reduction of
  community risk and insecurity.
• Inability of state to control banks and bankers,
  tax havens and carbon control sensitises
  citizens to the need to deal with issues of
  regulatory capture and developing their own
  initiatives
• Era of the active citizen involved in eco-social
  entrepreneurship and a new relationship with the
  state and policy

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In conclusion

• Measured against the scale of the challenge,
  which appears to be growing all the time, current
  efforts are clearly inadequate
• Mobilising the public and politicians to accept
  the scale of the changes needed, including
  tackling the carbon energy vested interest
  appears not to be possible.....yet
• Growing insecurity may change this creating a
  culture of greater public political engagement
  and eco-social entrepreneurship at the local
  level.

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