Big heat, big shrug?

[imomus]

Last night I watched Al Gore's documentary about global warming, An Inconvenient Truth. I found it beautifully presented, thoroughly convincing and deeply moving. It is, I think, the major issue of our time, and the basic observation that the climate is changing would be undeniable even if there were no scientific data at all. Spring comes earlier, summer gets hotter, storms and typhoons hit harder.



The scientific evidence is now overwhelming. Scientists' stark warning on reality of warmer world was a headline story in yesterday's Guardian. And news stories don't come much bigger than this one. "Hundreds of millions may be put at risk... The world's scientists yesterday issued a grim forecast for life on earth when they published their latest assessment of the impacts of climate change. A warming world will place hundreds of millions of extra people at greater risk of food and water shortages and threaten the survival of thousands of species of plants and animals, they said. Floods, heatwaves, storms and droughts are all expected to increase, with people in poorer countries suffering the worst effects... Complaints of political interference with findings."



The question is, who needs to see this film? Who needs enviro-consciousness raising? The answer is, of course, everyone, but particularly Americans. Al Gore is pretty downbeat in the film about whether his nation is listening. "I've failed to get the message across," he says, tracking his disillusionment with congressional committees over the last twenty years. He's also aware that even when the message does get across, people may well pass directly from denial to despair.

Is Gore right that Americans aren't listening? Almost everyone in advanced nations -- 91% of Americans, and 99% of Japanese, as opposed to only 12% of Pakistanis -- has heard of global warming as a news story. That doesn't mean they accept it as a serious problem, though. Gore shows how near-unanimity in the scientific community turns, in the US press, into misleading "balance" -- with more than half of all American press reports saying that global warming may not be happening, and may not be hazardous. That's not balance, at this point: it's obfuscation.

According to the 2006 Pew Global Attitudes Survey, there's a big gap between the amount Americans are concerned by global warming and the amount others are. The highest percentage of those "a great deal" concerned by the issue is 66%, and that's in Japan. The least "greatly concerned" nations are the US, China and Britain, at 19%, 20% and 26% respectively. These also happen to be some of the biggest polluters, and the nations where stringent emissions legislation could make the biggest difference. The US not only hasn't signed up to the Kyoto agreement, but has actually plotted to undermine European support for the emissions trading scheme.

Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, outlines why Americans may be hearing but not listening to the global warming message in his book America Against the World: How we are different and why we are disliked. Americans tend to be more optimistic than others, says Kohut, extrapolating from five years of Pew attitudes surveys. They put more faith in technology, and more faith in God than any other advanced nation. Their attitudes to God and religion are closer to those in the Muslim world than to those in other advanced nations. "This pattern recurs time and again," says Kohut in the book. "Americans are different from Europeans, especially Western Europeans, but they are closer to people in developing countries on many key attitudes and values.” And people in developing countries, although they'll be hit harder by climate change than anyone else, at the moment haven't heard about it.

Kohut's attitudes surveys, summarized in his book (and in this very interesting hour-long video interview he gave Book TV) show why it's so hard to make the world's biggest CO2 emitters care about global warming. Americans are individualistic and differ from other industrialized states in that they don't want government to play a big role. They don't think government schemes should save individuals (social safety nets) or the planet (emissions trading schemes). People, in the American view, prosper by their own efforts, and thanks to God, with capitalism as a "hidden hand". The trouble is that when it comes to global warming, only concerned and united government-level action can even make an effort to save the planet.

Last week's supreme court decision that the EPA must regulate carbon emissions signals the start of regulation via a domino effect of law suits against polluters. And global warming will be a big issue at the next US election. "There are multiple climate change bills before Congress," says Donald MacKenzie, who gives the Kyoto emissions trading structure a big thumbs up in this week's London Review of Books. "The most high profile is co-authored by John McCain, with sponsors including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Although capping carbon has been an idea more strongly welcomed by the Democrats, Republican strategists will have noted that the announcement of the Californian scheme gave Governor Schwarzenegger’s poll ratings a healthy boost, helping him do better in November’s elections than many of his fellow Republicans. Large sectors of industry in the US would much prefer a nationwide carbon market with uniform, stable rules to a patchwork of incompatible, unpredictable state markets, so it’s not impossible that a new president prepared to lead on the issue would find significant industrial support."

For MacKenzie, turning emissions into an economic cost makes it capitalism's problem, and unleashes capitalism's resourcefulness on the problem. After all, capitalism is pretty flexible when local labour costs too much, shipping its operations over to the other side of the planet. Why not give it a good reason to respond equally radically to environmental costs? Why not force that hidden hand?

Comments

[xishimarux.livejournal.com]

Americans are not going do anything until it effects there buying habits and WalMartMcDonaldsHummerSuburbandream.


GO SPORTSHDTVDRINKABEER!

[qscrisp.livejournal.com]

Here's an e-mail I received recently, if anyone's interested. I have no idea how much this kind of petitioning helps, but at least it can't hurt:

We are nearing the tipping point.

Take action today:
http://action.environmentaldefense.org/campaign/tell_EPA_act/8geid3zhx5tdt7

*************************************

Dear Quentin,

It's time to act!

A grim report warns we are nearing a global warming tipping
point where dangerous impacts become unavoidable.

Take action today:
http://action.environmentaldefense.org/campaign/tell_EPA_act/8geid3zhx5tdt7

This report comes on the heels of a historic Supreme Court
decision authorizing the EPA to fight global warming.

It's not too late, but it's time for action!

Send an email today. Tell EPA Administrator Johnson to do his
job to fight global warming:
http://action.environmentaldefense.org/campaign/tell_EPA_act/8geid3zhx5tdt7

In an opinion written by Justice John Paul Stevens, the Court
took the EPA to task for dodging the global warming issue:

"EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to
decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate
change."

It is an outrage and a tragedy that our nation's principal
guardian of the environment has been an active obstacle in the
fight to stop global warming. In the wake of the Supreme Court's
sweeping decision, EPA is out of excuses.

Please join us and tell Administrator Johnson to get moving:
http://action.environmentaldefense.org/campaign/tell_EPA_act/8geid3zhx5tdt7

With today's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, a
worldwide panel of climate scientists has issued the most
serious findings to date about global warming's dire
consequences.

Without immediate action, the report warns we may begin to lose
control over run-away global warming.

Yet, even in the face of an ironclad consensus that the crisis
is real and already upon us, early indications from the White
House are not encouraging.

Here's how one White House spokesperson spun the Supreme Court
decision:

"...we're going to have to let EPA take a good look at it, and
they're going to have to analyze it and think about what it
means for any future policy decisions."

This is unacceptable. The hemming and hawing must stop.

Tell the EPA to do its job!
http://action.environmentaldefense.org/campaign/tell_EPA_act/8geid3zhx5tdt7

Ultimately Congress will need to pass an economy-wide cap on our
nation's global warming pollution to establish the laws
necessary to set America on a new course.

Meanwhile, our environmental guardians at the EPA should uphold
their public trust and take action today:
http://action.environmentaldefense.org/campaign/tell_EPA_act/8geid3zhx5tdt7

Sincerely,

The Global Warming Team at Environmental Defense
--------------------------------------------------

You can update your email address, set your message frequency,
and unsubscribe from messages by adjusting your subscription
options.

http://action.environmentaldefense.org/EDF_Action_Network/smp.tcl?nkey=8geid3zhx5tdt7&

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[grimgrim.livejournal.com]

The least "greatly concerned" nations are the US, China and Britain, at 19%, 20% and 26% respectively.

You miss out Egypt at 24%.

[(Anonymous)]

spring was late late late... not early
didn't arrive till january.

[(Anonymous)]

Its interesting how balance gets planted in so many news stories in the US. Symbolic balance replaces investigative reporting and real debate.

Global warming gets balanced against naysayers (in 5 minute segments of debate)
Evolution is balanced against Intelligent Design
Atheists get balanced by psychics (a CNN debate two months ago)

The supposive balances frame the debate till its basically meaningless. And truth and more importantly truthful debate is pushed to the margins.

[cap-scaleman.livejournal.com]

It is so hard to understand why some people can't just realize that we simply need to do something about this. You can't walk around forever discussing wether the world is flat or round!

The worst thing is supposedly this (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw).

[electricwitch.livejournal.com]

They´re just making up research to appease a global need for information on the subject: in reality, the fact that metrological research has only been carried out from the 18th century onwards means that we basically know fuck all about climate change since any real changes take place over thousands of years or more.

It is true, however, that it provides a handy excuse to make environmental concerns hip again, and effect some necessary changes, but I wish they wouldn´t need something as stupid as a WATERY APOCALYPSE to make people listen.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

There was a documentary on channel 4 called "The Great Global Warming Swindle" that pretty much stated that through-out history, temperatures have risen and fallen (at one point in the middle-ages, Britian was hot enough to grow vineyards) and that carbon-dioxide in the atmosphere raises as the temperature rises, meaning that the "higher CO2 = higher temperatures" theory could be the other way round. As for why the temperature is rising and falling, they gave numerous theories related to sunspots and the like...

I really dont know what to believe anymore. Sure, lots of scientists agree global warming caused by humans is fact, but their careers and their incomes depend on there being this need to combat global warming -- governments pump millions of pounds into this issue. And politicians now have an excuse to tax us under the guise of "green policy" like these new flight taxes.

I agree with recycling because we dont have infinite space for waste disposal, and of course, burning fuel creates pollution that affects the enviroment on more levels than just global warming; I'm not saying people should just think "fuck it" and throw their coke cans on the floor and polute... I'm just suprised how easily people latch onto this human global warming issue like they even have a fucking clue about the science behind it.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

in reality, the fact that metrological research has only been carried out from the 18th century onwards means that we basically know fuck all about climate change since any real changes take place over thousands of years or more.

Antarctic ice contains a meteorological record that you can trace back 65,000 years.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Cast your eye down this list of articles (http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/science/topics/globalwarming/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier) if you think there's still any doubt. And see Gore's film -- he shows how the current rise is faster and more extreme than any of the natural variations that have occurred over the last 65,000 years.

[(Anonymous)]

Your skepticism makes a welcome change from the unquestioning head-nodding that invariably accompanies this closed and dead debate, Kumakouji. Whilst there is no denying that global warming is taking place I take issue with the lack of scientific evidence to back the theory that human activity is wholly responsible for it. I am sure belching carbon into the atmosphere does nothing to augment these changes but even the most cursory examination of geological history is indicative of the fact that climate is in constant flux and the anomaly of recent climatic has been it's remarkable stability over the past 100,000 years.
There are very evidently several more factors involved in the complex process that leads to the oscillations in global temperature that the paleo-geological record bears witness to.
The politicisation of the global warming issue is so far only serving to the detriment, based on misinformation and continous media scare-mongering by reactionary, career-enviro, guerrillas such as George Monbiot governments are seeking to impose carbon emisssion reducing measures which I think are small beer in relation to their miniscule effect on climate change. Instead of utilising human ingenuity to combat the challenges posed by rising sea levels and temperatures we have a self-limiting, luddite, flagellate cult of anti-humanists waving 'The End Is Nigh 'placards at a situation which can only be dealt with by human resourcefulness not by the piddling, tokenist, carbon reduction that is being prescribed - it is like utilising arnica to treat leukaemia.
Regards- Thomas Scott.

[(Anonymous)]

I think 65,000 years is in fairness a rather brief segment in the planets geological history. Life on earth began over 3.5 billion years ago.
Thomas S.

[(Anonymous)]

The paleo-geological record accounts for nothing then does it?
Al - who of course has no vested political interest - in theorising within accepted orthodoxy is basing his postulations on a period of - as I remarked below - unusually stable planetary climate.
It a little like discarding the paleontological evidence for the existence of dinosaurs.
Thomas S.

[no-type.livejournal.com]

Well I, for one, believe 100%. The evidence is all around us, and it's increasingly difficult to argue otherwise. I just think there needs to be more pressure on big business, auto companies, oil industry, technology sector etc. because sadly the average American is too easily influenced by these. We put faith in advertising, the media, political leaders and have basically become a society defined by what we own or who we trust. If it's attractive we'll buy it. And it's difficult to convince us otherwise because we're so cut off from the natural world that many people in the US no longer seem to appreciate it.

There's a wonderful program on Discovery Channel right now - Planet Earth. As beautiful and compelling as it all is, they've made little mention of global warming... at least not enough in my opinion. I wish more people would watch it though. Sadly I've mentioned it to quite a few who showed little interest because they think "nature shows are boring".

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Far from "closed and dead", the debate is at its peak right now, with congress rebuffing Bush by telling the EPA that they must regulate carbon emissions as part of air pollution, industry actually demanding to be regulated more tightly on environmental issues, and the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issuing its haunting report.

Unless you mean the debate is dead in the sense that everyone is on the same page now?

[(Anonymous)]

Matter cannot be destroyed, so even if all life on the planet dies, there is no real loss. It's just a recycling of elements. Many people express the opinion that humans are no more important than animals. I say that humans, animals and plants are no more important than rocks, dust, and gas.

[mme-furiosa.livejournal.com]

Dear Momus,
while I always relish your pithy pieces about design, culture, commercialism etc, I thank you profusely for your interest in this subject that is so dear to my own heart.

The "debate" should, for all practical purposes, be over. The only people still debating are cro-mag assholes who either want to make money on some shamefully irresponsible trash documentary such as "The Great Global Warming Swindle" (whom I resent for so blatantly ripping off the Sex Pistols documentary title--anything to appeal to the uneducated "school of hip" crowd, I guess)or NON SCIENTISTS. Ahem, I mean scientists not employed by big oil or industry. Those whores will say anything to keep the $$ rolling in.

I have spent my last week in Washington DC lobbying for global climate change legislation for the National Wildlife Federation, and I am happy to report that this organization has embraced global climate change as the most important issue faced by this generation.

Furthermore, this organization has broad support on both the Dem and Rep sides of the fence. It is made up of hunters and anglers, in addition to your typical "greenies."

Last week I sat in a room of hundreds, and heard men and women who have been hunting/fishing/birding for over 50 years describe in vivid, heartbreaking detail the changes they have seen in the past few years in the natural places they frequent.

These changes are the harbingers of much bigger, scarier things to come. The mail bills on the floor right now are the Climate Stewardship Act and the Safe Climate Act. Anyone who gives a whit and has aminute should write me, I can furnish more information, and then they should write thier Senators and Congressmen. This is SO important, and these people listen if the voices are loud enough.

I'm tired of this being political. This is a human issue, and politics have the power to make changes. Everyone should raise their voices on this one.

[thunderbox.livejournal.com]

RealClimate (http://www.realclimate.org) (which is a must-read if you're even slightly interested in this subject), did quite a good job of addressing the claims (http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/swindled/) of C4's 'documentary'.

those silly Americans

[zzberlin.livejournal.com]

<< Americans tend to be more optimistic than others, says Kohut, extrapolating from five years of Pew attitudes surveys. They put more faith in technology, and more faith in God than any other advanced nation >>

I don't know about God, but I'm a U.S. American, and I am optimistic that we (someone n the global community) will figure out how to fix the global warming problem. I think we will be able to fix the environmental problems, in the next fifty years perhaps, if we don't take ourselves out in other ways

For example, take recycling. It's hugely inefficient to try to accomplish saving re-usable materials at the individual level. We try to do it anyway, in many cities in the U.S., but having seen what is in people's recycling bins, on the curb, makes me realize that more separation must happen when the materials are dropped off, because we (Americans) aren't very good at getting only the proper materials into our recycling bins. If more processing (separation) is needed on the other end, why do we even bother to separate out the correct materials at the individual level? My feeling is it's just a matter of time till someone figures out how to put a few square yards of trash through a conveyance that will lift/drop the reusable materials away from the non-reusable

With global warming, there is just so much money to be made by figuring out how to fix the the environmental problems it causes that I think it's just a matter of time till some motivated, money-driven American comes up with a solution

And if we can't figure out a solution, then we'll figure out how to get off the planet. So yeah I guess I'm a big American capitalistic optimist, because we love using technology to enable us to be even more wasteful, because there's money in it

Elections have consequences

[cheapsurrealist.livejournal.com]

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[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

The majority of scientists agree that human activity is "most likely" driving the rise in temperature... again, so what? Science of the majority isnt always right, and global warming is an imensely complicated issue with a lot of politics and agendas driving its research. My point is, there's way too much controversy surrounding this issue for me to pick a side as totally true. The truth is, I just don't know.

I'll bang the drum for recycling/responsible waste disposal because I can see for myself that we dont have infinite space, and burying rubbish and dumping waste in the seas polutes our enviroment and enters our food chain at some level or another...

Global warming isnt that cut and dry, and anyone who's gonna swallow whatever they happen to read -- more fool them.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I'm impressed by your commitment! Things do really seem to be shifting at the level of organisations and institutions now, and not before time!

[foaming-love.livejournal.com]

I agree with the majority of climate scientists in the theory that humans are causing global warming. There are some things in which we have to defer to the experts. But I've heard an awful lot of optimism here and elsewhere that we need to 'do something.'

What is it, exactly, that we can do? Reduce our CO2 emissions? Drive electric cars? Where is all this power going to come from? Solar panels take gobs of energy to produce and end up being a relative wash when it comes to energy produced vs. energy required to produce them. Wind power cannot ever account for all of our energy. Even if we wholly switched to nuclear our uranium would be gone in under 100 years.

I think very few people realize how truly dire the energy problem is. There is no free lunch, and unless we come up with some magic solution really quickly, we're headed back to the middle ages with a huge population die off.

I haven't seen the movie yet, and I need to, but I can't help but be terrified for the future in a way that no politician can assuage.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's perhaps more telling if you add the "A great deal" and "a fair amount" columns together in the Pew Global Warming Concerns table to get brutally simple pictures of how many people in each country care or don't care about the issue presently (or in 2006). The "cares" are the first figure, the "don't cares" the second, In descenging order, it goes:

Japan 93 to 7
France 87 to 14
Spain 85 to 14
GB 67 to 32
Russia 65 to 34
Germ 64 to 36
China 61 to 37
US 53 to 47

Seen that way, the US still has the lowest percentage of people who care, but it's still a majority of the population. They narrowly outweigh the don't cares. It's tempting to see it as a purely political red state, blue state thing.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

The "debate" should, for all practical purposes, be over. The only people still debating are cro-mag assholes who either want to make money on some shamefully irresponsible trash documentary such as "The Great Global Warming Swindle" (whom I resent for so blatantly ripping off the Sex Pistols documentary title--anything to appeal to the uneducated "school of hip" crowd, I guess)or NON SCIENTISTS. Ahem, I mean scientists not employed by big oil or industry. Those whores will say anything to keep the $$ rolling in.


How much scientific research have you personally done on this issue? Spewing popularist science you havent got a fucking clue about in practice doesn't prove shit. I know what youre thinking -- I could argue against any well-established scientific theory (people used to believe the world was flat for example), but the difference between global warming and the majority of mainstream science is that theres a huge amount of money, power and political gain at stake in this issue, making it very hard to really know what's true. thats why admitting "I just dont know" is a very legitimate option. Calling people "cro-mag assholes" and "non-scientisits" when you havent got a fucking clue on an independant scientifcic level makes you sound about as eloquent as a fundamentalist christian or a hard-core atheist trying and argue their corner ie. a giant blubbering cock.

I'm tierd of you arrogant, liberal hippy fucks with your thinnly-veiled anti-capitalist bullshit -- you were lame back in the 70's and you still are today. Fucking give it up and go back to lobbying for the legalisation of pot.