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.