Fossil Fools
As climate change gorillas run wild and things get real. | Issue 11, April 1, 2019
ONE-MINUTE TAKEAWAY: Under-20 Swedish climate change cause celebre Greta Thunberg ends her climate strike on April 1! (Hmmm…) | The wealthiest people on Earth are responsible for a majority of the world's carbon emissions. | Meanwhile, the poorest people on Earth are already paying the price of climate change. | A judge frees pipeline protesters (among them Al Gore’s daughter) on grounds the climate crisis made it necessary to commit civil disobedience. | And the three percent of climate scientists who deny climate change produce faulty research. | And a cartoon. But you’ll have to scroll down to see that.
ONE | Catching Up With Greta
39 seconds of Greta Thunberg: “By panic, I mean stepping out of our comfort zones.”
It’s April’s Fool’s Day, and 16-year-old climate cause celebre Greta Thunberg trolls the go-slow-or-not-at-all adult politicians she has been addressing the past year with a tweet today. Or should we say (and, please steal this phrase) the “fossil fools”:
Thunberg is memorably described in this German newspaper profile of the #FridaysForFuture student strike protest movement she kicked off worldwide as “a kind of ecological Pippi Longstocking.” To sum up, says the profile author: ‘Why bother to learn for the future, if there isn't going to be one?’
TWO | Man, that’s rich
The 800-pound gorilla of climate change is well-to-do.| Photo by Jose Chomali, unsplash.com
A key point in addressing the 800-pound gorilla of climate change is who the gorilla is. That gorilla — belching noxious emissions into an overloaded environment heading toward runaway climate meltdown — is a well-to-do mammal. The point is that the richest people, not the poorest, are where to look to find the world’s worst carbon emissions. A 03.28.19 article in The Conversation, titled “Emissions Inequality: There is a gulf between global rich and poor” makes the point, minus gorillas:
“… Being rich, especially ultra-rich, means being directly responsible, either through consumption or control, for the majority of the world’s carbon emissions. For instance, the charity Oxfam has found that the richest 10% of people produce half of the world’s carbon emissions, while the poorest half contribute just 10%.
Rolling in dough has perks. These include outsize political sway over addressing things such as climate change:
“It means funding political parties and campaigns, having access to law makers and lobbyists. And it means control over major corporations, and thus power over the businesses and industries which produce most of the carbon emissions.
Speaking of April Fool’s Day, I think the article is only half-joking in concluding that rather than blaming all of humanity we might better address climate change by “eating the rich”.
THREE | Paying the price of climate change
Aid groups believe the Mozambique death toll will be far higher than the official figure. | CNN article photo
Meanwhile, for some of the Earth’s poorest folk climate change is not a political football, protest sign or hard conversation. Two weeks ago, Cyclone Idai destroyed most of the city of Beira, Mozambique, the country’s fourth largest. It flooded an area so vast it could be seen from space, according to a 04.01.19 CNN article.
Beira will go down in history as being "90% wiped out" by global warming, said Graça Machel, a former Mozambican freedom fighter, politician and deputy chair of The Elders... "This is one of the poorest places in the world, which is paying the price of climate change provoked mostly, not only but mostly, by the developed world," the 73-year-old added.
The domino effects of climate disasters ripple across regions and the globe. An estimated half a million people are affected by Idai, filling humanitarian camps with tens of thousands. These numbers will only be repeated for low-lying cities in poor and middle-income countries, creating climate refugees. The article emphasizes climate change is “a problem of the present. Not just the future.”
FOUR | OK to Be Civilly Disobedient on Climate Change
Following climate change on Twitter is a regular exercise in finding fresh pockets and communities of resistance, popping up like spring flowers. I was delighted to discover the group “Jews For Climate Action” (“Encouraging Jewish Community response to Sustainable Development Goals”), which linked to a 03.27.19 Independent article about what may be a significant climate protest legal development.
More than a dozen protesters who dropped into holes dug for a high pressure gas pipeline were found not responsible by a judge. The argument? They felt stopping climate change was a legal “necessity”. Among the protesters was Karenna Gore, daughter of former Vice President Al Gore and director of the Centre for Earth Ethics at Union Theological Seminary. Environmental movement godfather Bill McKibben, who was to appear as a defense witness, punched the point home on Twitter:
“Good golly! A few minutes ago a Boston judge acquitted 13 pipeline protesters on the grounds that the climate crisis made it necessary for them to commit civil disobedience. This may be a first in America.”
FIVE | Who’s the Audience for Climate Change Denial?
This is an old quote — 2008! — about climate denialism. But it’s as true as ever, even as climate denialism has shifted to climate-we-need-more-study-ism:
"The target audience of denialism is the lay audience, not scientists. It’s made up to look like science, but it’s PR."~ David Archer
Speaking of which, comedian John Oliver is famous for hosting, on his 05.12.14 “Last Night Tonight” show, a “statistically representative climate change debate,” featuring Bill Nye the Science Guy and a team of 96 climate scientists against three deniers.
But even those three-percenters produced faulty research, as determined by a 2017 review in this climate journal. The researchers tried to replicate the results of those 3% of papers (a common way to test studies) and found biased, faulty results.
Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist at Texas Tech University, worked with a team of researchers to look at the 38 papers published in peer-reviewed journals in the last decade that denied anthropogenic global warming. “Every single one of those analyses had an error—in their assumptions, methodology, or analysis—that, when corrected, brought their results into line with the scientific consensus,” Hayhoe wrote in a Facebook post
PS | You Promised Cartoons!
I did. If this free newsletter was forwarded to you, please subscribe (and read past issues) at: changingclimatetimes.substack.com Be well | Changing Climate Times Concierge and Curator Douglas John Imbrogno | douglasjohnmartin AT icloud.com
