Twenty two years ago, on this day, January 17, 2001, Energy gouger “Enron” engineered some blackouts in California to… gouge. It’s what they did. It was their “corporate DNA”…
As the FERC report concluded, market manipulation was only possible as a result of the complex market design produced by the process of partial deregulation. Manipulation strategies were known to energy traders under names such as “Fat Boy”, “Death Star“, “Forney Perpetual Loop”, “Wheel Out”, “Ricochet”, “Ping Pong”, “Black Widow”, “Big Foot”, “Red Congo”, “Cong Catcher” and “Get Shorty”.[10]
In a letter sent from David Fabian to Senator Boxer in 2002, it was alleged that:
“There is a single connection between northern and southern California’s power grids. I heard that Enron traders purposely overbooked that line, then caused others to need it. Next, by California’s free-market rules, Enron was allowed to price-gouge at will.”[11]
But we are not supposed to remember this sort of behaviour. It doesn’t get institutionally remembered (included in textbooks, mentioned by mainstream commentators and columnists). That would be ‘impolite, or ‘political’ or even ‘unAmerican’ or ‘conspiracy theorising’.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 375ppm. As of 2023 it is 419.
The context was that the free market was providing opportunities. As per Adam Smith, author of the Wealth of Nations –‘People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices’.
What I think we can learn from this
That the “normal” workings of infrastructure are intensely political. They are literally games of power.
That if we don’t remember the history, it will be repeated.
What happened next
Enron went under. And the shenanigans were forgotten,or dismissed as an aberration.
The trust between consumers/citizens and providers that would be needed for some kind of ‘energy transition’? Not helped.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
Twenty years ago, on this day, January 16 2003, a “milestone” was reached. Oh yes.
CHICAGO, IL – Efforts to develop market-based solutions to global warming reach a milestone today as leading U.S. and international companies and the City of Chicago announce they will be the Founding Members of Chicago Climate Exchange (CCX®), a voluntary cap-and-trade program for reducing and trading greenhouse gas emissions. In an unprecedented voluntary action, these entities have made a legally binding commitment to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases by four percent below the average of their 1998-2001 baseline by 2006, the last year of the pilot program.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 375.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 419.
The context was that a bunch of people thought – or chose to pretend they thought – that we could trade our way out of trouble, and that those who were early and/or quick could make a killing, and be doing well by doing good.
Carbon trading as a substitute for actual action… Because, you know, it would be cheaper that way…
What I think we can learn from this
That trading schemes are going to cause a feeding frenzy for banks and legal consultancies, and keen-to-burnish-image customer-facing businesses. Smart people take a breath and try to separate the hype and froth from what is actually being proposed.
What happened next
Turns out it didn’t work.
“CCX ceased trading carbon credits at the end of 2010 due to inactivity in the U.S. carbon markets,” (wikipedia)
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
Here’s the weekly update about what is coming up/has happened, both on this site, but also in what is left of the world.
Coming Up
Coming up this week on All Our Yesterdays: there’ll be posts from 1961 through to 2011, from South African mining disasters to carbon trading and everything in between.
Coming up in the real world
In the UK –
Online “National Climate Conference” on 18th January
And I made a video about “The Macmillan Manoeuvre”
"The Macmillan Manoeuvre" – a new short video. Not great, not terrible. Tell me what you think… Tips for improving general technique very welcome. pic.twitter.com/XXs9umj2D2
As ever, I want to hear from you, what use you are finding the posts, what else you’d like to see. And I would love to appear on your website, podcast, whatever… Do get in touch….
On this day, January 15, 1990, with a Federal Election looming, the Opposition leader and would-be Prime Minister Andrew Peacock and his shadow Environment Minister Chris Puplick, met with the boss of the Australian Conservation Foundation (ACF)… The political journalist Paul Kelly (not the same guy who sings the songs!) tells it thus.
Peacock and Puplick met the ACF’s Philip Toyne for lunch at an Italian restaurant in Melbourne. This discussion has passed into Liberal folklore as a great deception. Peacock and Puplick say that Toyne told them that the ACF would not be actively advocating a vote for either of the major parties in the House. It would be supporting the Democrats and minor parties in the Senate. Peacock and Publick left with a misplaced optimism. The political truth is that there was no way that Labor’s investment in the greens would be denied. The entire ALP was confident that it would have the green’s backing. It is idle to think that Toyne was unaware of these realities.
Kelly, P. (1992) The End of Certainty. p.543
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 353.8ppm. As of 2023 it is 419.
The context was that the Liberals were hoping to form the next government, and had some relatively bold proposals (or rather, targets!). They wanted the environment movement ‘bosses’ to “play dead” during the impending Federal Election campaign.
What I think we can learn from this
Personalities matter. Narratives of betrayal stick, and become ‘folklore’. (But also, this can be overplayed. The Libs and Nats were never going to become Chipko women. The idea that there is a path dependency from January 15 1990 is… heroic).
Ultimately, if you want to have a better future, then you need a broad-based and “uncontrollable” set of social movements that force politicians and businesses to face environmental and social realities. And I do not know how those movements would grow and sustain themselves and each other, in the context of super-wicked problems and the seductions of stale repertoires and the abyss… But maybe that’s just me.
What happened next
The Libs went anti-green, and have basically stayed there ever since. It is finally, in 2023, costing them electorally.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
Thirteen years ago, on this day, January 14, 2010 various investors met for the fourth meeting sponsored by the usual suspects, at the United Nations HQ in New York.
The Summit brought together more than 520 financial, corporate, and investor leaders with more than $22 trillion in combined assets. Speakers from the investment community, business, labor, and government highlighted the fact that private investment in climate change solutions is crucial for addressing the climate crisis and will not happen at the necessary scale without strong climate and energy policies that limit emissions and put a price on carbon.”
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 388.9ppm. As of 2023 it is 419. .
The context was – a “Bali Roadmap” had been agreed for negotiations to culminate in a post-Kyoto Protocol deal at the December 2009 climate conference in Copenhagen. This meeting of investors will have been put in everyone’s diary months earlier, in anticipation of sunny uplands and money-making opportunities. In the event, Copenhagen ended in farce, and so the mood was probably quite downbeat. So it goes.
What I think we can learn from this
The investors won’t save us. They will talk among themselves and cling on to the trappings of power, influence, intelligence, but none of it amounts to a bucket of warm spit. They have to delude themselves, but we don’t have to fall for the same delusions…
What happened next
They kept holding conferences. New buzzwords are invented, tossed around, age out, and are replaced by new buzzwords… Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide accumulates.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
Two years ago, on this day, January 13, 2021, Robert J Sternberg, an American academic who has been studying intelligence for decades, argues in a New Scientist article that, well
“We’ve got intelligence all wrong – and that’s endangering our future”
IMAGINE a world in which admission to the top universities – to Oxford or Cambridge, or to Harvard or Yale – were limited to people who were very tall. Very soon, tall people would conclude that it is the natural order of things for the taller to succeed and the shorter to fail.
This is the world we live in. Not with taller and smaller people (although taller people often are at an advantage). But there is one measure by which, in many places, we tend to decide who has access to the best opportunities and a seat at the top decision-making tables: what we call intelligence. After all, someone blessed with intelligence has, by definition, what it takes – don’t they?
We have things exactly the wrong way round. The lesson of research by myself and many others over decades is that, through historical accident, we have developed a conception of intelligence that is narrow, questionably scientific, self-serving and ultimately self-defeating.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 415.5ppm. As of 2023 it is 418. .
What I think we can learn from this
Robert Sternberg has produced so much useful work (on love, on creativity/intelligence).
The game is rigged, and those rigging it want to keep the game as it is. Basically, a bunch of extractivist violent arrogant planet-killers think they are God’s gift, because they made God in their image. And here we are.
What happened next
We keep relying on our “intelligence” to get us out of this.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
References
Sternberg. R. (2018) “Why Real-World Problems Go Unresolved and What We Can Do about It: Inferences from a Limited-Resource Model of Successful Intelligence”
NEW South Wales Minerals Council CEO Nikki Williams (later to head up the Australian Coal Association) called on the industry “to get on the front foot in selling its sustainability message.” (see here)
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 385.7ppm. As of 2023 it is 419.
The context was that Australia was in the grip of another awareness of its fragility and of serious trouble ahead. Mining companies were understandably looking to burnish their images with the usual bag of tricks – sponsorships of sports teams, tree planting and the like. Doing it as individual companies is expensive and open to easy sneering. Getting your trade association to do it helps you a) spread costs and b) gain more “respectability,” at least in the eyes who choose not to see what their eyes can see.
What I think we can learn from this
We live in a propaganda-ised society. A major function of trade associations is to pump out propaganda when it is needed, to deflect, slow or soften the actions of the state. See that Chomsky fella, or Alex Carey.
What happened next
Lots of propaganda. Lots of lobbying. The Rudd government spent two years faffing and selling its arse. Its “Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme” was a farce. Then the Gillard government had to try to pick up the pieces. Meanwhile, the emissions climbed and people got (rightly) cynical about how much politicians would prance and preen while doing nowt.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
This year All Our Yesterdays is going to have at least 52 interviews/guest posts, with at least half being of women, and at least one quarter being people of colour. The first guest post of the year was Jonathan Moylan, an Australian climate activist. Today, it’s a Canadian doctor, Peter Carter, of the Climate Emergency Institute.
1. When did you first become aware of climate change, as distinct from more general environmental issues, and how did you become aware?
It was 1980. Many of us in the peace/nuke disarmament movement were spending time on the global environmental threat to life. In the 80s there was a real general fear of stratospheric ozone pollution holes ending life. Then many of us realized greenhouse gas pollution could end life. Jimmy Carter’s 1988 Global 2000 report [https://www.cartercenter.org/resources/pdfs/pdf-archive/global2000reporttothepresident–enteringthe21stcentury-01011991.pdf] was great for building awareness and motivation; media covered it well in those early days….
Then in 1988, James Hansen, Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, testified before the US Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that the Earth was warmer than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements, and that the warming was already large enough to see the cause and effect relationship with the greenhouse effect. Talk about a wake-up call!
In the global warming early time, people were scared and people got engaged. But in 1997, corporations attacked with their Global Climate Coalition, making it even more important and challenging to get the truth out actively and clearly.
2. What specific “gap” was the Climate Emergency Institute (CEI) created to fill, and what actions has it taken that you are proudest of?
Scientists’ communication of the climate change science for the public has been poor to misleading. The Climate Emergency Institute analyzes and synthesizes climate change research for “lay” (nonscientific) audiences: the public, ENGO memberships, government bodies, etc.
CEI also helps the public understand the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) workings and their reports. For example: The IPCC disallows language such as dangerous, disastrous, etc. as well as specific best recommendations. Their economics has been badly biased, projecting “least cost.” The IPCC was projecting the very latest time for mitigation, with only a 50/50 chance of success. They’ve changed their goalposts and used their scenarios to mislead — they did not apply a worst case nor current emissions projections. They’ve described the future in terms of the huge range between best-case and worst-case scenarios. Their reliance on (computer) model projections excluded theoretical science predictions. The IPCC only projects to 2100 (despite the fact that things could still get much worse after 2100.) Their projections do not include any large feedback sources, nor any carbon sink decline. They only apply a single fixed sensitivity metric of 3ºC — so their entire assessment rules out risk. Between unanimity “consensus” of the scientists and then of the national policymakers, risk is ruled out and everything in the reports underestimated. For example, it was assumed that the Global North could ride out — even benefit from — climate change (by 2100) while Africa and low latitudes would suffer.
Then, on top of all that, the UN climate change conferences (COPs, or Conferences of the Parties) are set up for failure due to their de facto and ad hoc decision-making procedure, which is a unanimous vote — but which they call “consensus” (until that is inconvenient because one nation objects, at which time they switch to “consensus minus one”). This system effectively gives every powerful country in the world a veto over the other nations doing the right thing on climate change.
So there is a lot we’re trying to help the world to grasp.
3. Your book “_Unprecedented Crime: Climate Science Denial and Game Changers for Survival_” came out in 2018. What are the game changers for survival, and if you were writing the book now, what would you add?
The “game changers” section of our book (I co-authored it with Elizabeth Woodworth) included tax reform and an end to perverse subsidies; human rights-based legal challenges; market leadership; civil resistance strategies; and, of course, technological innovations in near-zero-carbon energy and transportation.
The agenda of SRM (solar radiation management) cannot prevent planetary catastrophe. The agenda of biomass burning (which is horrid) for carbon dioxide removal is certain catastrophe. Massive resources for Direct Air Capture are a must.
There’s nothing I would add, because we haven’t even taken the simplest step yet: ending the $5.9 trillion in direct and indirect subsidies that governments give (with our tax money) to fossil fuel corporations every year (according to the IMF).
4. Complete this sentence – “The main thing that those striving to help our species cope with climate change can learn from the last 30-plus years is … “
… that we have done practically everything wrong, based on our Euro-American Nature-conquering worldview and our perverse “money power” economics of oppression, exploitation, pollution, degradation and destruction — with future generations written off.
5. Anything else you’d like to say [upcoming events, campaigns, etc.]?
We’re gearing up for our latest mass mailout update on the most dire emergency. The way things are going, globally disastrous 1.5ºC will be reached by around 2030 (being denied by all but James Hansen) and planetarily catastrophic 2ºC by 2050.
We have just started prep for Phase 1: Civil Society ENGOs and Faith Groups. This will be an educational updating with the hope of getting endorsement for our lobbying for a powerful intervention by National Academies and Royal Societies of Science. A call for aggressive United campaign to stop all fossil fuel subsidies would be in the call The IPCC Sixth Assessment stated that global emissions must be put into immediate, rapid decline, but this is not out there. Science Academies and Royal Societies around the world must intervene by advising their governments of this most dire emergency and the urgent need for immediate emergency responses. They have not.
The 2022 InterAcademy Partnership’s Health in the Climate Emergency: A global perspective is by far the best assessment to date on climate change. Sadly, it’s coming too late.
Thirteen years ago, on this day, January 11, 2010 a report appeared about trees….
Contrary to scientists’ predictions that, as the Earth warms, the movement of trees into the Arctic will have only a local warming effect, UC Berkeley scientists modeling this scenario have found that replacing tundra with trees will melt sea ice and greatly enhance warming over the entire Arctic region.
Because trees are darker than the bare tundra, scientists previously have suggested that the northward expansion of trees might result in more absorption of sunlight and a consequent local warming.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 388.9ppm. As of 2023 it is 419.
.
The context was, well, this is a predictable and predicted outcome. Was it coming faster than expected (as many of the impacts have been)? Don’t know, and for my purposes, it doesn’t matter.
What I think we can learn from this
Blah blah albedo and feedback loops blah blah.
The world is changing, thanks to things we have started, are fully aware of and are so far unwilling/unable to stop. So it goes.
What happened next
Emissions kept climbing. Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide kept climbing. It kept getting warmer.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Do comment on this post.
References
Sanders, R. (2010) .Trees invading warming Arctic will cause warming over entire region, study shows . Berkeley News, January 11. https://news.berkeley.edu/2010/01/11/arctic_warming/
And this from 2022-The march of the Arctic trees and what it reveals about the climate crisis
A climate change website will deliver daily doses of climate history (including science, politics, protest and technology) over the coming year, with a focus on “so, what do we need to do differently?”
The site, All Our Yesterdays (1), has already been going for a year, and covered topics from environmental racism, to carbon capture and storage technology and also climate protests big and small.
Dr Marc Hudson, who established the site said
“This year there will be over 450 posts, covering years from 1661 to 2022, from Austria to Zimbabwe. These posts will be about ordinary people’s efforts to combat the damage, about shiny promises made – and broken- by politicians, about the hard work scientists have done to figure out what damage our fossil-fuel usage has done and will do.
“My dream is people learn about a tactic that has been used in the past, and then when they see the same tactic being used now by denialists or delayers they can say (and tweet!) “oh, this is just a re-tread of what they did [twenty five/thirty years] ago. ” Or that people use the site to think – on their own and with the friends and colleagues – about how protest groups around climate have tended to go up like a rocket and come tumbling down like a stick.”
Although topics have been chosen for all the days of the year (including Christmas Day), Dr Hudson is keen to hear from anyone who has suggestions for events to be covered.
There is also a Twitter account – @our_yesterdays
Notes for editors
(1) The title is a reference to a line in Shakespeare’s play Macbeth – “all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death.“
(2) Dr Marc Hudson is currently a Research Fellow at a UK university. This project is his own personal project. He recently had an article about Extinction Rebellion’s “We Quit” statement on the Conversation website.
.