Author: drmarchudson

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Feb 13, 2015 – We refuse to divest ourselves of illusions

On this day, in 2015, global divestment hit the headlines (see press release here). Divestment was one of those flavour of the month style campaigns where you try to leverage one part of a broader system to cause bigger change, in this case, trying to get institutional investors to take their money out of fossil fuel stocks, and it feels good. It feels like you’re putting a face on where the money goes, to quote. Marge Piercy’s Vida “Keep naming the enemy: put faces on where the money goes.” 

Why this matters

But like any tactical demand, it after a while it gets stale, it gets predictable, it gets less attention in the media. And that means fewer people turn up next time, which means the media is even less interested. And you go into a death spiral. And then along comes a new tactic. And so it goes. And that is why I’m talking today about divestment. (Again, I’m not shitting on the people who poured their heart and soul into it. I just think we need to understand that it’s a tactic, and it has a shelf-life.) 

What happened next? 

People don’t talk about divestment so much anymore. For a while everyone started trying to get local authorities and governments to declare climate emergencies. Now that’s dying down. We’re waiting for the next big thing. The end of the day. We need this historical and sociological perspective. But we mustn’t let those perspectives demoralise us and give us an excuse for doing nothing.

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Ignored Warnings

Feb 12, 1958- the Unchained Goddess is unchained…

On this day in 1958, Frank Capra’sfourth and final science documentary “The Unchained Goddess” was released.  According to the infallible Wikipedia “The film was televised on February 12, 1958, with a disappointing audience share and many critical press reviews.”

This is the one where you may have seen a clip on the internet on YouTube, of people discussing the build-up of carbon dioxide and eventually people looking at Miami, in glass bottom boats.

There are some very good books about and articles about this series of documentaries.  See, for example, “Sonnets & Sunspots: Dr. Research Baxter & and the Bell Science Films” by Eric Niderostt.

There’s also an interesting and useful discussion of Unchained Goddess in Alice Bell’s, Our Biggest experiment. Beyond that it’s also worth noting that “Meteora” as the capricious fickle goddess was considered a bit sexist, even at the time.

But it’s also an example of how much we knew how early and how little we did one for the time capsule, one for the piece of evidence for the prosecution against humans, when there is the intergalactic court of rights.

References

Gilbert, James Burkhart (1997). “9. Almost a message from God himself”. Redeeming culture: American religion in an age of science. University of Chicago Press. pp. 199–224. ISBN 9780226293219.

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Environmental Racism, United States of America

 Feb 11, 1994 – President Clinton proclaims the end of environmental racism.  Yeah, right.

On this day, in 1994, Bill Clinton, the President of the United States, signed an Executive Order telling all government departments – not just the EPA – that they had to consider environmental racism. The clue is in the name – “Federal Actions To Address Environmental Justice in Minority Populations and Low-Income Populations.”

Now the crucial thing here is that these moments in history get put down as “Oh, enlightened leader leading,” but if you actually peel back, he’s (and it is usually a he) putting his name on something that is the result of years of tireless, dedicated campaigning by people whose names don’t appear in the history books. And there is always this bias towards the personality of an individual. This does not mean that the personality of individuals does not matter in specific moments. But for this sort of bread and butter (attempted) institutional change probably it doesn’t. 

Why this matters

We all need to understand that institutional racism isn’t something that’s only there with the Metropolitan Police – it is baked into society. 

What happened next? 

Well, is the USA less institutionally environmentally racist? Is it? [This is not to criticise the heroic efforts of countless people fighting for justice!]

See also – Dr Robert Bullard – Father of Environmental Justice

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Denial IPCC Netherlands

Feb 10, 2010 – Dutch scientists try to plug denialists’ holes in the dike

On this day, in 2010, 55 leading Dutch scientists wrote an open letter to the Dutch parliament, pointing out that although there were inaccuracies in the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report, that did not in fact invalidate the basic findings. The reason they needed to even do this was the so-called Climategate hack of late 2009. The theft of emails from a University of East Anglia server was, as the American right-wingers like to say, a “nothing” burger, but one that was briefly tasty to climate denialists. 

Why it matters

Toni Morrison’s astute comment about racism, and racist narratives being there to distract and to exhaust and to prevent you from doing the work that you want to do applies here; white progressives could learn a lot from reading people of colour, who have been putting up with character assassination and – checks notes – actual assassination four hundreds of years. 

The quote is this – 

“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”

Listen to Morrison’s 1975 speech, recently digitised, here.]

What happened next, 

The IPCC kept producing assessment reports, possibly with a little more care. The Dutch government got sued by Urgenda [see 2019 judgement] and the emissions kept climbing. And the climate denial people are now mostly doing predatory delay. And hyping the purported costs of transitioning, (not that the costs –  both financial and cognitive – are anything other than enormous).

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anti-reflexivity United Kingdom

Feb 9, 2014 –  A Farage-o of nonsense about climate change

On this day in 2014. Nigel Farage, then of the UK Independence Party, rubbished links between floods in Somerset, and climate change, and the need to do anything. Farage, that well-credentialed climate scientist, is fairly typical of a strand of what some sociologists call anti-reflexive thinking.

Most families have that uncle who refuses to accept what the science is clearly stating. Because it’s a “bunch of leftists complaining about industrialization.” Physics is apparently “woke.”  And if you look at Risk Society, by Ulrich Beck, this sort of thing is predicted. 

Why It Matters 

We need to have understanding if not necessarily compassion for these people, and where they come from and why they think like they do. I guess.

What happened next? 

Well, the emissions that contribute to the sorts of 1 in 100 year weather events happening every five years or so, have continued to climb. The total amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has continued to climb. Mr. Farage was able to intimidate David Cameron into a referendum on UK membership of the European Union. And I don’t need to tell you how that turned out. Rip Joe Cox.


Categories: Anti-reflexivity, United Kingdom

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Ignored Warnings United States of America

Feb 8, 1965- All the way with LBJ – first President to say “carbon dioxide is building up”

On this day in 1965 President Lyndon Baines Johnson gave a “Special Message to the Congress on Conservation and Restoration of Natural Beauty.” 

He said

“Air pollution is no longer confined to isolated places. This generation has altered the composition of the atmosphere on a global scale through radioactive materials and a steady increase in carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels. Entire regional airsheds, crop plant environments, and river basins are heavy with noxious materials. Motor vehicles and home heating plants, municipal dumps and factories continually hurl pollutants into the air we breathe. Each day almost 50,000 tons of unpleasant, and sometimes poisonous, sulfur dioxide are added to the atmosphere, and our automobiles produce almost 300,000 tons of other pollutants.”

Those words were written by – or at the very least based on the research of – Roger Revelle. Exactly 9 years earlier, on 8 February 1956  Revelle had given “Testimony before the House Committee on Appropriations.” And he’d told the Congressmen present

“There is still one more aspect of the oceanographic program which I thought you gentlemen would be interested in. This is a combination of meteorology and oceanography. Right now and during the past 50 years, we are burning, as you know, quite a bit of coal and oil and natural gas. The rate at which we are burning this is increasing very rapidly. This burning of these fuels which were accumulated in the earth over hundreds of millions of years, and which we are burning up in a few generations, is producing tremendous quantities of carbon dioxide in the air. Based on figures given out by the United Nations, I would estimate that by the year 2010, we will have added something like 70 percent of the present atmospheric carbon dioxide to the atmosphere. This is an enormous quantity. It is like 1,700 billion tons. Now, nobody knows what this will do. Lots of people have supposed that it might actually cause a warming up of the atmospheric temperature and it may, in fact, cause a remarkable change in climate. . . .”

And here we are.

Sources- 

REVELLE, ROGER, and PAUL S. SUTTER. “TESTIMONY BEFORE THE HOUSE COMMITTEE ON APPROPRIATIONS, FEBRUARY 8, 1956.” Making Climate Change History: Documents from Global Warming’s Past, edited by JOSHUA P. HOWE, University of Washington Press, 2017, pp. 60–63, http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvcwnkd5.13.

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Science Scientists

 Feb 7, 1861- 161 years ago, a scientist identifies carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas

On this day, in 1861, Irish scientist John Tyndall read his paper about carbon dioxide at the Royal Society at the annual Bakerian lecture. Tyndall was not, we now know, the first person to point out what he called carbonic acid had greenhouse water warming potential. That honour belongs to Eunice Foote in the United States a few years earlier. There’s an interesting and useful summary of this at the beginning of Alice Bell’s excellent 2021 book “Our Biggest Experiment.” And of course the idea that there must be something, some gas, keeping the planet warmer than it otherwise would be dates back to Fourier in 1824.

Tyndall did the research, reported it. It wasn’t for another 35 years that someone, Svante Arrhenius. said, “this is in fact going to be a thing (but not for centuries, and it will be a good thing.”. He was trying to distract himself from a messy divorce by doing laborious calculations, which your mobile phone could probably do in about three seconds now. 

Why this matters,

We’ve understood the science – this is 19th century physics – for a very long time. Unfortunately, we have not acted. And as I’ve said before, I will say again, that “we” first person plural pronoun is doing a lot of work in that sentence.

[On this question of ‘we’ see this 2018 piece by Genevieve Gunther – h/t Sam]

What happened next

The Tyndall Centre got set up in 2000.

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IPCC United States of America

February 6, 2001: ExxonMobil Lobbyist Calls on White House to Remove Certain Government Climate Scientists

On this day, in 2001, the oil company Exxon was throwing its weight around trying to get specific scientists pushed off the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

In a memo to the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), ExxonMobil lobbyist Randy Randol denounces esteemed climate scientist Robert Watson, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as someone “handpicked by Al Gore” who is using the media to get “coverage for his views.

He asks “Can Watson be replaced now at the request of the US?” In addition to Watson, Randol names other climate experts who he wants “removed from their positions of influence.” 

You can read the document here, on climate files.

And they succeeded. Bob Watson only served one term where the normal expectation was two. And this is because he was too independently minded and wasn’t going to waffle about technology saving us. 

This is not a new story. Historically scientists have come under ferocious attack, not just for their climate work, but also ozone hole, asbestos, you name it. There’s a lovely example in An Enemy of the People, the play by Henrik Ibsen, which by the way, inspired the movie, Jaws… but I digress. 

Why this matters

We need to remember that a lot of what we see and hear and take as accepted fact, is actually constructed for us actively or passively, and that critical voices have been removed. For the benefit of continued capital accumulation. This is Gramsci in action, people. This is how hegemony is constructed and maintained. 

What happened next

The IPCC kept producing reports and is producing another one. Meanwhile, the carbon dioxide accumulates thanks to the actions and inactions of people like you and me who have failed to build the kinds of movements that could have made a difference despite having freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of information. It might be a good idea for us to look ourselves in the mirror.

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Propaganda United States of America

Feb 5, 1974 – Energy security, meet anti-Arab sentiment #propaganda

On this day, February 5 1974, the American Electric Power (AEP) ran the first of its advertising, cartoon campaigns, with Arab sheikhs, holding the US to ransom (Sethi, 1977). 

This is of course, part of the first energy shock, as it’s known, which had started in late 1973. With basically a quadrupling of petroleum prices and actual shortages at petrol pumps in the developed world, because the energy producer cartel OPEC, decided to punish those countries who had supported Israel in the Yom Kippur War. (This is not to say that there had not been concerns about energy before late 73.) 

What’s interesting is that the oil companies were able to, or keen to shift the blame and tap into, frankly, long established anti-Arab sentiment in the United States. 

Why this matters 

We need to understand that issues around energy and energy security are visceral. And that those who are benefiting like to find someone else for the anger, fear, uncertainty to be pinned on. A bit like the tactic of the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket, who picks on one soldier as the scapegoat, as the lightning rod. 

What happened next? 

President Nixon announced Project Independence which was going to see a huge growth in domestic energy production, especially coal. Prices sort of stabilised, but then we had in the 70s stagflation, the collapse of the Bretton Woods global consensus, . And by the end of the 70s, thanks to the dedicated efforts of some think tanks and politicians, and good luck, (but they were in the right place at the right time, which isn’t always easy) we have the coming of what we now call neoliberalism. This is, of course, antithetical to any form of collective provision or planning, which is what you would have needed to deal with a collective action  problem like climate change, but here we are. This is not to say that the AAP advert is responsible for all of that, to the removal of any doubt

Btw, AEP kept going with their campaign.  See also this advert on 31st July 1974

An Unlikely 1970s-Era Environmentalist

References

“Feb 5 1974 first advert in AEP campaign with the two sheiks appears in the “New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and 69 dailies and 192 weeklies in the area served by American Electric Power System’s group of companies.” Sethi, S. 1977. Advocacy Advertising and Large Corporations: Social Conflict, Big Business Image, the News Media and Public Policy. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, p.115.

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Predatory delay United States of America

Feb 4, 2002- Global Climate Coalition calls it a day (“Mission accomplished”)

On this day in 2002, the Global Climate Coalition shut up shop, basically declaring mission accomplished. Well, they’d probably done it a few days earlier, but Imma use this – Anon. 2002. Global Climate Coalition Bows Out. Chemical Market Reporter, , Vol. 261, Issue 5, 4 February – as the marker.

The friendly sounding coalition – actually, an industry group dedicated to stopping action on climate change – had been formed in 1989, when it looks like serious action was possible and even probable, with new US President George HW Bush, having declared on the campaign trail, that those who were worried about the greenhouse effect should not discount the White House Effect.

Even then moves were  well afoot within Bush’s administration, especially under Chief of Staff, John Sununu, to make sure that the environmentally concerned people were sidelined. And that the whole issue just got kicked into the long grass. There were those who would cast active actual doubt on the science but usually, the Global Climate Coalition was a little bit more subtle. 

However, in 1995/6, it had gone too far, launching full throated vociferous attacks on the IPCC second assessment report. In 1997 Shell had pulled out because of the reputational risk. And this was followed later, by other groups, including Ford and GM. By February 2002 it was no longer needed. Because the administration of George HW Bush’s son, George W. Bush, was clearly not going to do anything on climate, having already pulled out of Kyoto. The Global Climate Coalition had therefore, lived as long as it needed to.

Why this matters

Don’t be fooled by names. When they say they’re something they are usually the opposite. They’re very determined. They’re very clever. They’re very well funded. They stick around, they do the work. They get what they want, usually, not always, but often. 

What happened next

Although the Global Climate Coalition was dead, individual companies continued to finance both outright denial and also predatory delay. And they’re still at it, of course. Full stop.