cliamte change – RI Future

December 13, 2015December 14, 2015

Paris agreement: COPout21

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COP21: Victoria Barrett, the teen suing Obama over climate change

The “final draft” for the COP21 climate deal in Paris is in and the Twitter spin machine is working overtime:

The strong Paris agreement on climate means a safer, more secure world for our kids. A perfect example of what American leadership can do.

— President Obama (@POTUS44) December 12, 2015

Another gushing tweet:

Today's #ParisAgreement to curb global #emissions is a major victory for our #climate, our oceans & our kids https://t.co/5q1H7Esx8H #COP21

— Sheldon Whitehouse (@SenWhitehouse) December 12, 2015

Never mind that last month a court in Washington issued a groundbreaking ruling in a case of eight youth petitioners who requested that the Washington Department of Ecology write a carbon emissions rule that protects the atmosphere for their generation and those to come. The court validated the claim that the “scientific evidence is clear that the current rates of reduction mandated by Washington law … cannot ensure the survival of an environment in which [youth] can grow to adulthood safely.”

James Hansen has been involved in this Atmospheric Trust Litigation for years. In contrast with Senator Whitehouse, Hansen is not funded by National Grid and he explains in an interview with the Guardian why he disagrees with our “leaders:”

It’s a fraud really, a fake. It’s just bullshit for them to say: “We’ll have a 2C warming target and then try to do a little better every five years.” It’s just worthless words. There is no action, just promises. As long as fossil fuels appear to be the cheapest fuels out there, they will be continued to be burned.

Self-congratulation of our politicians cannot cover up that fracked-gas boosters— such as President Obama, Senator Whitehouse and Governor Raimondo—continue to support an energy policy that ignores that in the anthropocene, when humanity has become the geological driving force, the pertinent time scale is a decade.

Climate change used to happen over the course of thousands of years. These days, it only takes a couple of decades. Here, once again, is Hansen:

Global warming is already affecting people. The Texas, Oklahoma, Mexico heatwave and drought last year [read 2011], Moscow the year before and Europe in 2003, were all exceptional events, more than three standard deviations outside the norm [fewer than 3 in 1000]. Fifty years ago, such anomalies covered only two- to three-tenths of one percent of the land area. In recent years, because of global warming, they now cover about ten percent—an increase by a factor of 25 to 50.

This month, scientists of the International Cryosphere Initiative published a report Thresholds and closing windows—risks of irreversible cryosphere climate change.

Some of these cryosphere changes have actually already begun. Scientists widely accept that even if we could magically halt warming today, committed and irreversible sea-level rise from glaciers, ice sheets and the natural expansion of warming waters is 1 meter (3 feet), though this new normal will not be reached for about two hundred years. Most scientists also agree that the West Antarctic ice sheet has been so destabilized by warming to-date that it likely cannot be halted without a very rapid stabilization of temperatures, and perhaps not even then. At best, we might only delay the resulting ice sheet collapse, and the associated 3–4 meters of additional sea-level rise, by some hundreds of years.

How much worse things get – how many other irreversible triggers are tripped – is up to us. Unfortunately, this report’s analysis of current Paris climate commitments indicates that they will fail to prevent many, if not most of these irreversible cryosphere processes from beginning.

“Never has a single generation held the future of so many coming generations, species and ecosystems in its hands,” as the report states, and yet we keep building fossil fuel infrastructure that will haunt us for the next fifty years. This energy policy ignores health and climate implications discussed at great length in this Compendium of scientific, medical, and media findings demonstrating risks and harms of fracking (unconventional gas and oil extraction.

If for some reason you do not have time to read the full 151-page report, you might want to look at this handy two-page summary of the “blessings” fracked gas brought to us by our corporately owned federal and state governments.

Our Orwellian #CleanPowerPlan seems to have been written by the fracked-gas lobby. Indeed, if you follow the money, you won’t be surprised that Senator Whitehouse never responded to my open letter of June 23 of this year nor found time to visit Burrillville to explain his support for the destruction he supports.

December 8, 2014December 8, 2014

The world dies while we shop: this week in climate change

We briefly interrupt the holiday shopping season to remind you of American carbon profligacy. Buy more at Walmart and export carbon pollution to China! It’s genocide and ultimately ecocide. As we shop, people in the Philippines are dying.

Whatever good all of this buying is supposed to do for the economy, it’s time to stop the climate disruption. It’s time to buy less and to share more.

Maybe the events listed below will shed light on the question whether our corrupt political system will be able to correct itself. I doubt it, and think that the transformation of consciousness required to change everything will come from the People.

Please click on the links for time and place of the following events:

Pricing Carbon Pollution:

A Presentation on a National Carbon Fee and Dividend Study
Regional Economic Models (REMI) and Synapse Energy Economics recently examined the impacts of a national tax on the carbon-dioxide content of fossil fuels.
A Resilient South County:

Join us in discussing the impact of climate change in the South County community as we work towards implementing the recently passed Resilient RI Act. Come and have your voice heard!
Staying afloat:

“Adapting Waterfront Businesses to Rising Seas and Extreme Storms” will feature three speakers discussing the challenges of rising sea levels for waterfront businesses and how businesses can implement strategies to prevent or minimize damage.

September 21, 2014September 21, 2014

NY Climate Convergence conference attacks roots of climate struggle

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Jill Stein speaks to attendees at the Converge for Climate conference, St. Peter's church, NYC — Jill Stein speaks to attendees at the Converge for Climate conference, St. Peter’s church, NYC

With a display of the full-throated, unabashedly leftist critique usually absent from American policy discussions, the NYC Climate Convergence conference kicked off last night at St. Peter’s Church in Midtown Manhattan with a diverse lineup of speakers who all sought to reframe climate change as a social justice issue. Through the two hours of talks — which often prompted prolonged applause from the more than 300 attendees in the hall and a video overflow room — ran a deceptively simple theme: “System change, not climate change.”

“We need to connect the dots,” said Jill Stein, the 2012 Green Party presidential candidate, who served as emcee and introduced the five speakers. It is impossible, Stein argued, to address climate change within a context of neoliberal capitalism and unfettered corporate self-interest, but that through building a collective, human-focussed movement change is possible. “The moment we get together we are an unstoppable force. The name of the game is coming together and overcoming this framing of divide and conquer.”

That’s the aim of Climate Convergence, which has leveraged the People’s Climate March on Saturday to bring together hundreds of scholars, unionists, artists and activists from around the world for a two-day series or talks and workshops exploring how communities around the world are building transformative alternatives and, according to their web site [convergeforclimate.org], to “build and strengthen an environmental movement that addresses the root causes of the climate crisis.”

The evening began with an introduction by the Indigenous Environmental Network and a blessing delivered by water walker Josephine Mandamin, who focused on the link between the water she ceremonially carries and the health of the Earth. “One day, the earth will be clean,” she said. “This is the work that has been left for us to do.” The climate comprises every drop of water, and, “That little droplet of water unites us all.”

Ann Petermann of the Global Justice Ecology Project stepped through the history of failed efforts of previous United Nations conferences to achieve meaningful international agreements. Outside pressure, she argued, was the only way to push for change. “I’m very excited about what’s going to be happening this week around the UN Summit,” she said, citing the Flood Wall Street action planned for Monday. “Direct action is the antidote for despair.”

Hip-hop artist Immortal Technique (Felipe Coronel) talked about his personal journey from Peru to Harlem, and the critical need to be “proactive in our progressiveness” across all the intersectional oppressions that contribute to climate change. “We are human beings who have been conditioned to believe in a non-sustainable system,” he said, “The people who are ruining our planet are not going to be the people who fix it.” He closed with a devastating rap, “Sign of the Times.”

Erica Violet Lee of Idle No More stressed the very direct threat to indigenous people from tar sands work in Canada. “To get to the oil-rich lands, they need to move our families out of the way,” she said. “The intent of Idle No More is to draw awareness to the legacy of colonial and paternalistic policies.”

Nastaran Mohit, a New York labor organizer, challenged attendees to move beyond conferences and marches, and drew pointed illustrations from her work with the people of the Rockaways, an 11-mile long peninsula in Queens devastated by Hurricane Sandy. “Some of the poorest neighborhoods in New York City had the roofs ripped off them,” she said. “Sandy was the first time that Occupy activists had the opportunity to connect with low-income and marginalized communities. As beautiful a movement as Occupy was, it lacked that connection.” She described the difficult, sometimes painful work that volunteers had to do.

“As a labor organizer,” she said, “I look at unions. The New York State Nurses Association sent out hundreds of volunteers, canvassed hi-rise buildings, met some of the most frightened residents. What those nurses came back from that experience knowing, they saw first-hand how frightening it is when a climate catastrophe hits New York.”

“What did you do to help?” She asked attendees; not, she said, to induce guilt, but to prompt consideration of what meaningful action requires. “Am I willing to be uncomfortable? Am I willing to really go out and connect with these folks who are on the front lines of climate change?”

The evening’s final speaker, Oscar Olivera, talked about the work which won him the 2001 Goldman Environmental Prize: building a coalition which successfully overturned the privatization of water distribution in Cochabamba, Bolivia’s third-largest city. He drew a parallel to the United States: “Cochabamba is in Detroit right now.”

There are two interlinked challenges, Olivera said, communication and organization. “When the water was privatized,” he said, “There was a law, there was a contract, and the people did not understand anything. Our biggest challenge was how do we make this technical economic language simple for people to grasp.” Second, he said, “We have to have new means of organizing against that whole cadre of business that are threatening our environment. The only way to prove to those in power that we exist, the only way they will understand us is by mobilizing.”

In Cochabamba, he said, “We didn’t just recover water as a public good, we recovered politics, and for us, politics means our collective capacity to make decisions for today and the future.”

He urged attendees to recognize their responsibility, as people from the North who maintain the largest military, the largest transnational corporations, and the highest consumption. He closed by asking attendees to “Commit not only to resist, but to re-exist.” “We pledge to be like water, transparent and in movement,” he said. “We promise to be like children, joyful and creative. We promise to believe that the power is within us — without leaders, without parties, without bosses. Hasta la victoria.”

After the event, a group from FloodWallStreet.org conducted a training outside the church for a group of about 30 activist volunteers for a direct action that will take place on Monday morning at the New York Stock Exchange. Aiming to spotlight the threat to Lower Manhattan from climate change, the group plans to dress in blue and mimic the flooding that crippled the area in the wake of Sandy. Watching the volunteers “Surge and sit” offered an eerie, powerful echo of Olivera’s call to “be like water.”

Flood Wall Street activists train volunteers outside the Converge for Climate Conference

May 5, 2014

The limits of debating anti-science cranks

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In February, Bill Nye the Science Guy, from the PBS science show, debated Ken Ham, a fundamentalist preacher who runs the creationist museum in Kentucky on the topic of Creationism versus Evolution. Bill Nye saw this as an opportunity to defend science against the sillier ideas of biblical creationists who believe the universe is only 6000 years old. Ken Ham saw this as an opportunity to spread his religious beliefs and make bushels of money.

Before the debate, many wondered why Nye decided to participate. Ken Ham’s creationist views are not real scientific theories. His ideas are steeped in mythology so weak that few educated persons in Ancient Greece would have taken them seriously. Ham’s views are anti-scientific nonsense, and for a real scientist to treat them with any degree of seriousness at all seemed like a gigantic waste of time.Worse, it was argued that entering into a debate with Ham was a losing proposition from the get go, because being taken seriously by a scientist gives the appearance that Ham’s religious views are in some way equal to science.

Standing on that stage, Ken Ham finally felt that the world was taking his backwards ideas seriously. No scientific point Bill Nye made during the debate mattered because in the minds of Ken Ham and his followers, the fundamentalist preacher was treated as a serious threat to the scientific method and common sense.

Ham won everything he wanted to win before the debate even started. As Michael Schulson writes on The Daily Beast:

You don’t need to be Sun Tzu to realize that, when it comes to guys like Ken Ham, you can’t really win. If you refuse to debate them, they claim to be censored. If you agree to debate them, you give them a public platform on which to argue that, yep, they’re being censored. Better not to engage at all, at least directly. Nye may be the last to understand a point that seems to be circulating more widely these days: creationism is a political issue, not a scientific one, and throwing around scientific facts won’t dissuade those who don’t accept scientific authority in the first place.

This came into my mind Saturday morning as I read “‘Noble Lies’ are damaging environmentalism” an op-ed by Tom Harris in the Providence Journal. Harris is executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition, which denies the reality and devastating future impact of climate change. Harris’s group is political, not scientific in nature. As Cameron Spitzer points out, in a comment on the piece:

The International Climate Science Coalition is “the Heartland Institute wearing a party mask. Heartland is one of the “think tank” public relations (PR) and lobbying firms working to undermine public confidence in science. The project began when epidemiologists linked smoking to cancer, and the tobacco companies hired PR firms to smear them. Then it was lead in paint and gasoline, toxicologists. Then clearcut logging, population biologists. Nowadays the smear is aimed at climate scientists. Various PR firms have been involved over the years and some of the biggest have been there for the whole run.

Harris accomplishes everything he sets out to do just by having his anti-science and frankly idiotic views published in the newspaper. The point of Harris’s piece is not to debate the science but to debate science itself. Just being presented as a serious alternative is a win: the objective is to obfuscate, not educate. Harris does not give two shits about truth, he cares about undermining our confidence in the best tool we have to understand the world, science, so that he and his group can prevent any kind of action on climate change until it is too late.

I’ve written about this before, in response to a similarly idiotic piece in in the ProJo by Steve Goreham, who also heads a science denying institute funded by Heartland. ProJo editor Ed Achorn seems to revel in printing such drivel in his paper, not because they represent good science, critical thinking or facts, but because they reflect his biased, strongly held religious views about Libertarian economics and politics.

How do you answer this kind of junk polemics? What answer can you give to anti-science, anti-human cranks like Achorn and Harris?

The unfortunate answer is: none. Religion, whether it’s centered on God or the Invisible Hand, can’t be countered with rational, scientific and logical thought. Whereas a reasonable, intelligent and honest person sees science as a tool for determining the truth, science deniers like Harris and Achorn see science as an inconvenience when it stands in their way and as a weapon when it favors their views.

Those who routinely hate and deride science that goes against their worldview, are con artists. They are not out to discover and share the truth, they merely seek to deceive as a first step in taking away something precious.

That debating cranks merely empowers them was demonstrated in April, when the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity, a libertarian economic think tank reputedly funded by the Koch Brothers held “The Great Ocean State Debate” at the University of Rhode Island.

Tom Sgouros and Sam Bell debated Stephen Moore from the Heritage Foundation, yet another Libertarian think tank concerned with spreading the Good News about Ayn Rand. Debating with Moore led Sgouros to the following revelation:

…there is a moral dimension to lobbying. Lives are ruined and people die because of bad decisions made at the state house. Advocates have a responsibility to test their hypotheses in an intellectually honest fashion… A responsible advocate will examine as many possibilities as seem reasonable before insisting on a solution. But I didn’t see any of that curiosity on display Saturday.

This is because Moore was not representing an honest, scientific opinion. He was representing a religious, Libertarian point of view that is as immune to facts as Creationism, Astrology or Bigfootery. Justin Katz, writing on his blog, was annoyed by Sgouros’s spot-on analysis, writing:

It’s nearly breathtaking, Tom Sgouros’s audacity in manipulating facts in order to enable his condescending manner of promoting a downright bizarre version of Rhode Island’s political and policy landscape. Ever the gracious adversary, he takes to RIFuture, today, to insult both his debate opponent on Saturday, Stephen Moore, as well as the organization that put the debate together and gave him a platform for his own point of view.

Katz has framed the debate so as to cast the Center for Freedom and Prosperity as the mainstream and Sgouros as the outsider. This makes sense. Institutions represent power and society, and the RI Center for Freedom and Prosperity bills itself as the state’s “leading free-enterprise public policy think tank.” They held their debate at the University of Rhode Island in an attempt to add an academic gloss to their show. The Center is all flash and theater. As Phil Eil pointed out in the Providence Phoenix:

If you’re picturing some kind of imposing home for the Rhode Island Center for Freedom and Prosperity — a glass cube in Middletown, say, or a concrete bunker in Smithfield with Hulk Hogan’s “I Am a Real American” theme song blasting from outdoor speakers — think again. There is actually is no proper headquarters for the RICFP. The CEO, research director, and outreach coordinator do most of their work from home.

The Center and their guests, Stephen Moore of the Heritage Foundation and Don Watkins of the Ayn Rand institute, represent the fringiest of fringe economics and the economics they routinely espouse is not even classifiable as science in any meaningful way. Though Moore, the Heritage Foundation and the RI Center for Freedom and Prosperity avoid the term, they are all serving up some form of Austrian libertarianism or outright objectivism. As John Case points out, “although [the Austrian School] calls itself economics, [it] is better termed a Utopian philosophy…. Instead of paying any attention to data, it accepts as given from God (or nature) the transcendental ‘organizing’ power of the market price mechanism.”

You can’t scientifically debate ideas that are by their nature not scientific. It is a waste of time, and worse, by pretending these ideas are in some way worthy of serious consideration, you give these crank ideas an undeserved veneer of respectability and importance. It is this undeserved sense of importance that Katz evoked in his criticism of Sgouros. Never mind that Sgouros was better informed than his opponent, Sgouros insulted the Center, and if the Center isn’t an institution worthy of respect, why did Sgouros bother showing up? (Sgouros says he got paid to be there.)

I want to end by getting back to the Bill Nye and Ken Ham debate. Long before the debate, after Ken Ham built his creationist museum in Kentucky, Ham announced that he was going to build a life sized replica of Noah’s Ark. Unfortunately for Ken Ham, this silly project stalled indefinitely due to the preacher’s inability to gather enough funds. It stalled, that is, until the Bill Nye debate. Publicity for the debate generated all the media attention Ken Ham needed to find people willing to fund his project to completion.

Nye said that he was “heartbroken and sickened for the Commonwealth of Kentucky,” continuing, “If [Ken Ham] builds that ark, it’s my strong opinion [that] it’s bad for the commonwealth of Kentucky and bad for scientists based in Kentucky and bad for the US, and, I’m not joking, bad for the world.”

Bill Nye may be right, but the damage done will not be the fault of Ken Ham alone. Part of that damage done must be owned by the Science Guy, who thought he could fight nonsense with logic when he should have just ignored the nonsense. This is the price we pay for condescending to debate the ideas of cranks. We give them false legitimacy. We give them undeserved power, time, money and status even as we ultimately give up our own.

We need a better plan. We have to learn, like the computer at the end of Matthew Broderick’s War Games, that “The only winning move is not to play.”

April 28, 2014April 28, 2014

Democrats discuss governor’s role in climate change

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The four Democrats running for governor – but neither of the two Republicans – took advantage of an opportunity to express their views on climate change last week at a forum hosted by EcoRI and the Environmental Council of RI.

Clay Pell said he would start a green infrastructure program, Angel Taveras a state composting program and Gina Raimondo wants a revolving loan fund. Todd Giroux called himself the “homegrown, organic candidate.” Taveras cited his record as mayor of Providence. Raimondo said protecting the environment is part of being a Rhode Islander. And Pell was the only one to call attention to Republican intransigence on the issue.

“Absolutely the governor plays an essential role,” said Pell. “And I intend to make this state a real model for our efforts to address climate change.”

Here’s how he said he would do that:

You can watch his full comments here:

Taveras touted his record as mayor, saying he appointed good people to implement several programs with long term objectives.

You can watch his full comments here:

Raimondo also touted previous experience, saying pension reform was about sustainability and that the she would lead the effort to address climate change like she lead the effort to address pensions.

Watch her full remarks here:

Outsider and long shot Todd Giroux said the base of his campaign platform is a revolving fund for green jobs:

His full remarks:

The forum started with addresses by John King, a URI oceanography professor, and Timmons Roberts, an environmental studies professor at Brown. You can watch their portions here:

Or you can watch the entire forum here:

January 9, 2014January 10, 2014

Response to the BRWCT: Can we afford public subsidies to protect coastal real estate?

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Greg Gerritt

Yesterday I attended a State House presentation coordinated by the RI Bays, Rivers, and Watersheds Coordination Team reviewing the shoreline special area management plan, the Beach SAMP. The speakers, primarily from government agencies, spoke on climate change induced sea level rise and what it means for Rhode Island.

All well and good, but it was infused with a great deal of magical thinking about keeping intact our shoreline communities with private control of access to the shore while expecting public subsidy in order to safely keep them there. There was a stunned silence after I finished my question about magical thinking, though eventually the speaker representing the real estate industry mouthed some platitudes.

In this age of austerity, in an age of shrinking livelihoods for many Americans, in an age where the rich demand that we cut their taxes and kowtow to their every whim, while they suck up all the money and insist that free enterprise is the way to the future, we need to call out the hypocrisy of the owners of the shore line when they demand that we publicly fund the infrastructure they need to maintain their houses and lifestyles and allow them to violate environmental rules and common sense, while they fund climate deniers and demand that the poor be abandoned.

The sea is coming. The issue is not how long can we hold it back for the benefit of home owners, it is how do we adapt to rising sea levels and the slow disintegration of our economy as the climate creates disaster after disaster. We can not allow rebuilding along the cost, we need to engineer a retreat while we create much larger coastal ecological buffers that will reduce our carbon footprint, and improve our food security.

Recycling the materials in coastal properties, especially the copper, before it falls into the sea is much better for all of us than waiting for the next storm. If the rich insist on waiting it out until the sea comes for them, they should pay the cost of their own stupidity and not expect the rest of us to rescue them and bail them out.