Refuse to be Paralyzed by our Reality

The discussion of climate change is dominated by reams of data, concepts, timelines, and dates. The complexity of the science can be overwhelming. Consider, though, the following four rather straightforward points; they provide a compelling summary of humanity's looming climate crisis:

1. The level of atmospheric carbon dioxide has now reached 400 parts per million, a level unknown for millennia; NASA's Global Climate Change site explains the significance: "Ancient air bubbles trapped in ice enable us to step back in time and see what Earth's atmosphere, and climate, were like in the distant past. They tell us that levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere are higher than they have been at any time in the past 400,000 years. During ice ages, CO2 levels were around 200 parts per million (ppm), and during the warmer interglacial periods, they hovered around 280 ppm. In 2013, CO2 levels surpassed 400 ppm for the first time in recorded history. This recent relentless rise in CO2 shows a remarkably constant relationship with fossil-fuel burning, and can be well accounted for based on the simple premise that about 60 percent of fossil-fuel emissions stay in the air."
2. A recent study shows that nearly half of 177 mammal species surveyed have lost 80% of their distribution between 1900 and 2015. As the study's authors say, "Dwindling population sizes and range shrinkages amount to a massive anthropogenic erosion of biodiversity and of the ecosystem services essential to civilization. This 'biological annihilation' underlines the seriousness for humanity of Earth’s ongoing sixth mass extinction event." To repeat, dear reader, we are now witness to the Sixth Mass Extinction - the last such comparable event occurred 66 million years ago.
3. As reported by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, in 2016 "24.2 million people were displaced by sudden onset disasters, three times as many as by conflict and violence." While these world-wide climate disasters went unreported in the U.S. (the epicentre of climate-denial), America has been transfixed by its own sudden onset disasters: "The disasters are arriving with greater frequency. Counting Harvey, [and now Irma], the U.S. this year has experienced 10 weather-related events each costing $1 billion or more. The country averaged fewer than six big-dollar storms, flood, fires and freezes a year between 1980 and 2016, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Between 2012 and 2016, however, weather catastrophes occurred almost twice as often. This year, the Trump administration rolled back Obama-era proposals on climate change and flood resilience."
4. The classical definition of climate (often understood as average weather) is 30 years. By that measure, our climate is changing, and changing dramatically. The last 30 years' temperature observations "make it clear the new normal will be systematically rising temperatures ... The fact that it will have been 30 years since a month was below average is an important measure that the climate has changed." This 30 year window is important in another vital respect - it was thirty  years ago that the fossil fuel industry confirmed the truth about anthropogenic climate change, and for all those thirty years, as its models have been proven correct, has aggressively and systematically denied that truth.

The well-orchestrated campaign of denial by the fossil fuel industry has had ample cover from ideological and donation-driven politicians. The unfolding crime against humanity that is the climate crisis is exemplified by Scott Pruitt's EPA, prompting Noam Chomsky recently to label the Republican Party "the most dangerous organization in human history."

• "I also said that its an extremely outrageous statement. But the question is whether its true. Has there ever been an organization in human history that is dedicated with such commitment to the destruction of organized human life on earth? Not that I'm aware of."

And its not just the current cabal of denialists in charge. How truly different in outcome are the benign platitudes of a Barack Obama or a Justin Trudeau, from the "America-first-to-hell-with-the-rest-of-you" ravings of a Donald Trump or a Scott Pruitt? In reality, we've lost 30 years of desperately needed remedial action to the unspeakable greed of the status quo. Even in a fully-compliant Paris Accord-world, were all its targets attained, we'll still have more floods, more droughts, more heat waves, rising sea levels, and continuing loss of biodiversity. 
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Industry and government are powerful allies in maintaining the relative tranquility of today's status quo over any concerted effort to protect our long-term survival, prompting Chris Hedges to say "If we were a sane culture, we would declare a national emergency over climate change." That no such declaration is forthcoming suggests these allies have colluded in the view that the worsening conditions are "manageable," allowing, of course, for what they've surely also determined to be acceptable levels of loss - some life, after all, is disposable.

Those among the great unwashed who appreciate the dangers are constrained, not just by the well-documented campaigns of misinformation and deception but - perhaps more significantly - by the decline in our collective literacy. As Carl Sagan warned 20 years ago in an ominously prescient commentary, we are seeing a return to an age of superstition and darkness:

• "I have a foreboding of an America in my children's or grandchildren's time - when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what's true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness..."

And the elite, too, have retreated from the truth, intent on acquiring as much wealth and luxury as possible, and desperate to outrun inevitability. We are, in essence, witness to the death-spiral of our civilization, as expressed by Chris Hedges, who said in a very important public lecture:

• Complex civilizations, as many anthropologists have observed, have a habit of ultimately destroying themselves. Joseph Tainter, in The Collapse of Complex Societies, Charles Redman, in Human Impact on Ancient Environments, and Ronald Wright in A Short History of Progress have laid out the familiar patterns that lead to systems breakdown. The difference is that when we go down this time, the whole planet will go with us. There will, with this final collapse, be no new lands to exploit, no new civilizations to conquer, no new peoples to subjugate, no new resources to plunder. Collapse occurs in complex societies not long after they reach their period of greatest power and prosperity. "One of the most pathetic aspects of human history is that every civilization expresses itself most pretentiously, compounds its partial and universal values most convincingly, and claims immortality for its finite existence, at the very moment when the decay which leads to death has already begun," Reinhold Niebuhr wrote.

In his lecture, Hedges also spoke of our need to resist when he referenced Clive Hamilton and his book Requiem for a Species, Why We Resist the Truth About Climate Change, in which Hamilton describes "a kind of dark relief that catastrophic climate change is virtually certain":

• "This obliteration of false hopes requires an intellectual knowledge and an emotional knowledge. The first is attainable. The second, because it means those we love, including our children, will face insecurity, misery and suffering within a few decades if not a few years, is much harder to acquire. To emotionally accept impending disaster, to attain the gut-level understanding that the power elite will not respond rationally to collapse, is as difficult to accept as our own mortality. The most daunting existential struggle of our time is to ingest this awful truth intellectually and emotionally, and yet rise up to resist the corporate forces that are destroying us."

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The damage done in these lost 30 years truly does represent a crime against humanity. Perhaps then, for its crimes, Big Carbon can be diminished through the courts, as Big Tobacco was in the 90s. And if time permits (and it may not) the emerging area of climate change litigation, based on the legal obligation of "duty to care," may present an opportunity to do so:

• "Climate litigation is already happening in other parts of the world. One of the most frequently cited cases involved an environmental group, Urgenda, which took the Netherlands to court over its allegedly lacklustre emissions reduction targets. In June 2015, a Dutch court ruled in favour of Urgenda and found that the government must do more to curb emissions because of “its duty of care to protect and improve the living environment.”"

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Even as climate litigation gains more traction, and "duty of care" becomes more widely understood, the rest of us must take responsibility for our survival. It should be clear that the elites won't save us and, as Chris Hedges says, we must summon the strength to refuse to be paralyzed by our reality:   

• "I do not know if we can build a better society. I do not even know if we will survive as a species. But I know these corporate forces have us by the throat, and they have my children by the throat. I do not fight fascists because I will win; I fight fascists because they are fascists. And this is a fight which, in the face of the overwhelming forces arrayed against us, requires us to embrace sublime madness, defined in acts of rebellion – the embers of life – an intrinsic meaning that lies outside the certainty of success. We must, at once, grasp our reality, and then refuse to allow that reality to paralyze us. We must make an absurd leap of faith. We must believe, despite the empirical evidence around us, that the good always draws to it the good. We do not know where acts of goodness go – the Buddhists call it ‘karma’ – but in these acts we make visible a better world. ... No matter how bleak things get, we always have a choice in life. We can choose to be rebels or slaves, and that choice is one the corporate state is powerless to take from us. And to rebel, even if we fail, is to succeed. We must become a threat to the security and surveillance state and its corporate overlords, and we cannot become a threat if we do not engage in actions that actively obstruct power."

It seems likely that only in the massing of ordinary people, in grass-roots movements of intense and sustained action, will national governments be forced to recognize and act upon their true duty of care. Without such a mobilization, national governments will continue their embrace of both the status quo and the industry-friendly strategies to ensure a graceful settling of catastrophe upon us, complete with the acceptable losses this implies.

To be clear, governments understand fully the coming catastrophe, and factor climate change models into their long-term calculations - even in the United States of America. The Pentagon is the most strategic organization in the world and the DoD routinely runs simulations on the effects of climate change. In the private sector as well, dominated as it is by the drive for profit and animated as it is by the risk to profit, climate change is not a topic of confusion - it is strategized for and modelled with great accuracy. Given the financial impacts already felt by insurers, and in anticipation of ever greater losses in the future, nowhere are the risks associated with climate change more thoroughly studied than in the community of actuarial science. Such sober actuarial assessments (as well as think-tank policy papers) put the lie to the fantasies of retail political discourse and the campaigns of misinformation by Big Carbon. Rather, they base their projections on the exacting, peer-reviewed data found in every climate study and site in 97 percent of the scientific world, as in the climate data cited in this assessment: 

• Global mean surface temperatures have risen by three@quarters of a degree Celsius (1.3 degrees Fahrenheit) over the last 100 years (1906–2005). Further, the rate of warming over the last 50 years is almost double that over the last 100 years.
• The 16 warmest years on record occurred in the 17@year period from 1995 to 2011.
• Land regions have warmed at a faster rate than the oceans, which is consistent with the known slower rate of heat absorption by seawater.
• Average Arctic temperatures increased at almost twice the global average rate in the past 100 years.
• The thickness and areal extent of Northern Hemisphere snow cover and Arctic sea ice has decreased steadily over the last 30 years, in response to this enhanced polar warming. The last decade (2002@2011) contains the 9 lowest recorded extents of annual minimum Arctic sea ice. 2012 is presently tracking at record low levels.  
• The area of glaciers has been decreasing worldwide since the 1960s, as has the thickness of the vast Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets over the past two decades.
• Global average sea level has been rising at a rate of approximately 3 mm (1/8”) per year over the past two decades. About half of this rise is due to the expanded volume of sea water under increased temperatures, and the other half to the melting of land ice.
• Regionally, changes in climate variables can be significantly higher or lower than the global average. To give two examples relating to sea@level rise (SLR): (1) in the Southwestern Pacific Ocean, home to numerous low@lying island communities, the rate of SLR is almost 4 times the global mean value; and (2) at two@thirds of measurement stations along the continental shores of the United States, SLR has led to a doubling in the annual risk of what were considered “once@in@a@century” or worse floods.
• Clear evidence has emerged that ecosystems are responding to strong regional warming, e.g., with leaf onset and fruit ripening shifting to earlier in the year and bird and insect populations shifting their ranges poleward.
• Over the past five decades, the frequency of abnormally warm nights has increased, and that of cold nights decreased, at most locations on land. Further, the fraction of global land area experiencing extremely hot summertime temperatures has increased approximately ten@fold over the same period.
• A significant increase in the frequency of heavy precipitation events has been observed in the majority of locations where data are available, and particularly in the eastern half of North America and Northern Europe, where there is a long record of observations.   

Again, to be clear, governments and industry understand fully the coming impacts of the climate crisis. Industry will continue to deceive as it squeezes every dollar of profit from the ground. Government will continue to ignore as it maintains the tranquility of the status quo. If we can shake off the futility of our reality, Trump's actions to take down the EPA climate site, and to spike the Climate Science Special Report (just two of many such examples) may be blunted, and we may yet reclaim our right to participate in a sane response to the climate crisis.

With wearying regularity, new reports emerge to remind us of our impending demise. The latest, released on November 13 by BioScience, titled "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity: A Second Notice", is signed by more than 15,000 scientists from 180 countries. It is itself a commentary on the first "World Scientists' Warning to Humanity", published in 1992 by The Union of Concerned Scientists. Twenty-five years after the original report, the BioScience statement notes,

• [H]umanity has failed to make sufficient progress in generally solving these foreseen environmental challenges, and alarmingly, most of them are getting far worse. Especially troubling is the current trajectory of potentially catastrophic climate change due to rising GHGs from burning fossil fuels, deforestation, and agricultural production - particularly from farming ruminants for meat consumption. Moreover, we have unleashed a mass extinction event, the sixth in roughly 540 million years, wherein many current life forms could be annihilated or at least committed to extinction by the end of this century.

​The Second Notice concludes by imploring humanity to "practice a more environmentally sustainable alternative to business as usual." That prescription, the Notice says, "was well articulated by the world's leading scientists 25 years ago," but not heeded. The report concludes, "Soon it will be too late to shift course away from our failing trajectory, and time is running out. We must recognize, in our day-to-day lives and in our governing institutions, that Earth with all its life is our only home."


On This Page
The remainder of this page is devoted to some key topics in climate change. The subject of climate litigation is of growing interest (assuming the ticking clock remains ticking), and we present one of many relevant posts on this emerging topic. Next, as Trump seeks - like the Pharaohs of ancient Egypt - to remove every vestige of his predecessor, including his domestic and global initiatives on climate, it is clear that America is but one of many bad actors on the climate file; a report from Climate Central reveals that Canada, the EU, Russia, Australia, the Amazon Basin, and Southeast Asia have all faltered in their commitments to take action on climate change, while India and China have emerged as global leaders.

The science of climate change presents such an airtight case that it seems superfluous to re-litigate the facts. But we couldn't resist including our transcription of Neil deGrasse Tyson's elegant discussion of it in his Cosmos TV series, in which he contrasts Earth with our planetary neighbour Venus. He describes how, while both started out with about the same amount of carbon, each was propelled along radically different paths. And he explains how carbon was the decisive factor in the outcome for each - whereas on Venus most of the carbon exists in the form of the gas CO2, on Earth the carbon exists mostly in solid form, and in this crucial difference lies the habitability of the one vs the other. As Dr. Tyson says, the rapid and demonstrable rise in CO2 is "unprecedented in human history" and notes, "the Earth has seen nothing like it in three million years." He continues, "By burning coal, oil and gas, our civilization is exhaling carbon dioxide much faster than the Earth can absorb it." He contends there is nothing controversial to a basic understanding of the greenhouse effect: "its basic physics - just bookkeeping of the energy flow." 

​The final three entries on this page deal with important aspects of climate denial. In her Washington Post report, Amanda Ericsson writes:

• Climate change denial is not incidental to a nationalist, populist agenda. It's central to it. And that's not a coincidence. Combating global warming requires international cooperation, multinational agreements and rules. Done right, no country is exceptional, and some might have to sacrifice for others. In other words, it strengthens the international order that Trump and his team are so assiduously trying to dismantle in the name of “America First.”

Ericsson notes that such nationalist views have a long tradition in the U.S., and the notion that fighting climate change is antithetical to American interests has seeped into mainstream Republican thinking. A post by Jonathan Marshall in Consortium News notes the mainstream media's complicity in the ignorance of the American public when he writes: 

• Yet in the midst of such frightening [climate] changes, and a national presidential campaign with enormous consequences for U.S. climate policy, the four major broadcast networks - ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News Sunday - significantly decreased their coverage of climate issues on evening and Sunday news programs, according to a new analysis by Media Matters. Television programs like these are the major source of news for 57 percent of adult Americans.

​As Marshall says, "In the long run, nothing the Trump administration does about health insurance, tax reform, or military spending - short of getting us into nuclear war - will matter nearly as much as its determined efforts to prevent global action on climate disruption."

​The final post on this page is a fascinating study by Jean-Daniel Collomb of the ideology in America of climate denial. The abstract is worth restating here:

• ​The concerted effort to discredit the scientific consensus over man-made global warming has been continuing for two decades in the United States, and shows no sign of weakening. It is very often described as an attempt on the part of corporate America, most notably the fossil fuel industries, to hinder governmental regulations on their activities. While emphasising this dimension of the U.S. climate denial movement, this article also aims to show the complexity of the movement, rather than the mere defence of the narrowly-defined and short-term economic interests of the oil and gas industries, by shedding light on two additional factors which have been instrumental in blocking strong climate action. First, climate denial stems from the strong ideological commitment of small-government conservatives and libertarians to laisser-faire and their strong opposition to regulation. Second, in order to disarm their opponents, U.S. climate deniers often rest their case on the defence of the American way of life, defined by high consumption and ever-expanding material prosperity. It is the contention of this article, therefore, that the U.S. climate denial movement is best understood as a combination of these three trends.

​We have also created four subpages that provide a deeper dive on critical aspects central to the climate crisis.
The first subpage is devoted to the widespread campaign of denial by Big Carbon. The deceptions of the Koch brothers are increasingly known, but Exxon's 30-year effort (in which the entire fossil fuel industry participated) to hide its own research proving anthropogenic climate change has put the world in a terrible remedial deficit. The critical expose of ExxonMobil by Inside Climate News, reproduced in full, prompted Bill McKibben to call this deception an "unparalleled evil." In "The Climate Deception Dossiers," also reproduced in full and on a separate page, a collection of internal industry documents reveals a coordinated campaign, underwritten by the world's major fossil fuel companies, to spread climate misinformation and block climate action. The documents build a case for why these companies must be held accountable for their share of responsibility for the climate crisis.

The second is devoted to a deeper understanding of the catastrophe that is the sixth mass extinction. A recent study, "Biological annihilation via the ongoing sixth mass extinction signalled by vertebrate population losses and declines," states in its abstract: 

• The population extinction pulse we describe here shows, from a quantitative viewpoint, that Earth’s sixth mass extinction is more severe than perceived when looking exclusively at species extinctions. Therefore, humanity needs to address anthropogenic population extirpation and decimation immediately.​ ... [W]e conclude that anthropogenic population extinctions amount to a massive erosion of the greatest biological diversity in the history of Earth and that population losses and declines are especially important, because it is populations of organisms that primarily supply the ecosystem services so critical to humanity at local and regional levels.

​The third subpage provides a complete transcript of a recent and very important study on the links between the climate crisis and national conflict, “Epicenters of Climate and Security: The New Geostrategic Landscape of the Anthropocene.” The editors describe it as:

• a multi-author, edited volume exploring a range of “epicenters” of climate and security and how they shape the geostrategic map of the 21st century. These epicenters are defined as “categories of systemic risk” driven by a changing climate interacting with other socio-political-economic dynamics.

This study describes how climate-related conflicts have the potential in this century to become a major dynamic in international relations.

​The final subpage is devoted to seminal writings on climate change. Like our website itself, this page is a work-in-progress. We begin the page with the James Hansen's 1988 report to congress. At a time when an industry-wide campaign to hide and discredit its own research into climate change had just begun, Dr. Hansen made this statement to the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources:

• I would like to draw three main conclusions. Number one, the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements. Number two, the global warming is now large enough that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect. And number three, our computer climate simulations indicate that the greenhouse effect is already large enough to begin to effect the probability of extreme events such as summer heat waves.

Dr. Hansen described a crisis even in 1988. The time lost over the intervening years to any concerted remedial action reaffirms Bill McKibben's characterization of the fossil industry's deceptions as an "unparalleled evil."
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Can we respond? Will a mass movement rise up to wrest control of our fate from governments and industry?
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The Dutch Climate Case: A New Era of Climate Litigation?

​by Dianne Saxe and Kirsten Mikadze...

​In an worldwide first, the Hague District Court has ordered the Dutch government to cut its greenhouse gas emissions (GHGs) by at least 25% compared to 1990 levels by the end of 2020. The decision, an English translation of which can be found here, has been widely reported and discussed (including in an interview on CBC Radio’s The Current with Dianne). It has rekindled hopes around the world that courts can spur governments into taking serious steps to deal with climate change.

Background:
The suit was brought against the Dutch government by Urgenda, a Dutch foundation dedicated to sustainability, and nearly 900 individuals.

The Plaintiffs argued that the Dutch government owes its citizens a duty of care to protect them from severe but avoidable harm. The Dutch government has already accepted the scientific findings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations Environmental Programme, and several Dutch agencies, that warming of more than 2° C above pre-industrial temperatures will likely entail catastrophic consequences for humans and the environment, including the Dutch. The Dutch government also accepts that its targets for reducing greenhouse gas (“GHG”) emission levels (about 17% below 1990 levels by 2020) would not proportionately contribute towards staying below this 2° C threshold. At an international meeting, Holland had signed a communiqué stating that cuts of at least 25% to 40% by 2020 were necessary.

Urgenda argued that the Dutch state had therefore breached a duty of care owed to them (and to Dutch society generally), had infringed their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights (“ECHR”), and had contravened various obligations under international law and the Dutch Constitution. The government argued that its commitments were fair compared with those made by other countries, and that the court had no legitimate right to dictate climate change and economic policy to a democratically elected government.
The Court undertook an exhaustive examination of the current science on climate change, which both sides accepted. It also reviewed the legal and policy frameworks developed at the national, European Union, and international levels, including the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (“UNFCCC”), the Kyoto Protocol, the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union (“TFEU”), and various customary principles of international environmental law, such as the “no harm” principle.

The Court concluded that the Dutch state “has a serious duty of care to take measures to prevent” catastrophic climate change (4.65) and to “mitigate as quickly and as much as possible” (4.73). This duty was not excused by the Netherland’s comparatively minor contribution to global GHG emissions (4.79), because its per capita emissions are high.

To satisfy its duty of care, the Dutch government had to act on its own international commitment, and to reduce emissions by 25% below 1990 levels.

In coming to this conclusion, the Court found that the Netherlands’s various international legal obligations (including under the ECHR, UNFCCC, and TFEU) did not create an enforceable legal obligation on the part of the state towards the Plaintiffs. However, these obligations were important in determining the scope of the State’s duty of care and whether or not it had been breached:

• [Firstly,] it can be derived from these rules what degree of discretionary power the State is entitled to in how it exercises the tasks and authorities given to it. Secondly, the objectives laid down in these regulations are relevant in determing [sic] the minimum degree of care the State is expected to observe (4.52) [emphasis added].

While it is up to the Dutch state to determine details of its national climate policy, (4.55) due to the nature of the hazard (a global cause) and the task to be realised accordingly (shared risk management of a global hazard that could result in an impaired living climate in the Netherlands), the objectives and principles, such as those laid down in the UN Climate Change Convention and the TFEU, should also be considered in determining the scope for policymaking and duty of care.

Implications for Canada and the rest of the world
The question on everyone’s lips following the Dutch victory is: could a comparable case find success elsewhere?
There is currently no shortage of climate litigation unfolding around the world,[1] and the success of the Dutch case will likely inspire additional attempts. Even before the decision came down, a Belgian NGO had filed a suit based on a similar premise against Belgium, and another is anticipated in Norway.[2]

Of course, it is by no means clear that the Dutch victory will be replicated elsewhere. As a relatively recent string of disappointing challenges against various utility and energy companies in the US demonstrates,[3] most courts have been loathe to interfere in complex economic policy based on complex probabilities that are themselves based on complex science. Most prefer to leave such matters to policy makers.

To date, all Canadian courts have ruled that climate change policy is “not justiciable”, i.e. not within their jurisdiction. Challenges to the Canadian government’s approach on climate change have therefore been rejected, including judicial review of the federal government’s failure to comply with the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, SC 2007, c 30,[4] and of its decision to withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol.[5]

That said, the time may now be ripe for courts to step in. In the years since these cases were argued, the science has become much clearer and the international consensus stronger: climate change is creating catastrophic risks. Moreover, from extreme weather events to shrinking shorelines, the effects of climate change have become more tangible and more immediate. As the threat builds, and the foreseeable harm multiplies, courts may feel more at ease to demand action.

While it would certainly be an uphill battle, a similar outcome is not unimaginable in Canada. While not a directly applicable precedent, of course, the Dutch decision demonstrates how the courts can effectively wade through the complex science data and apply these findings to basic principles of negligence. Likely, any Canadian challenge would similarly rely upon an assortment of legal principles and instruments, both international and domestic, including the Charter.

Finally, as the world gears up for December’s COP in Paris, the Dutch decision offers renewed support for the hope that, despite years of disappointing negotiations, multilateral obligations remain both relevant and important in the battle against climate change. The decision demonstrates how international commitments, instruments, and international environmental law principles, even if not directly enforceable, can be used by courts in conjunction with constitutional rights and private law obligations to give shape to the state’s obligation to take decisive action against climate change.

Written by Kirsten Mikadze and Dianne Saxe, first published in Shaw, Canada's Online Legal Magazine, July 26, 2015
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[1] The work of the Sabin Centre for Climate Change Law at Columbia Law School provides a glimpse of the scale and diversity of this activity, both in the U.S. and around the world: http://web.law.columbia.edu/climate-change/resources/us-climate-change-litigation-chart(for US) and http://web.law.columbia.edu/climate-change/non-us-climate-change-litigation-chart (elsewhere).
[2] http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/jun/24/hague-climate-change-judgement-could-inspire-a-global-civil-movement
[3] See e.g. Massachusetts v EPA, 549 US 497 (2007); Comer v Murphy Oil USA, 839 F Supp (2d) 849 (SD Miss 2012); Native Village of Kivalina v ExxonMobil Corp, 696 F 3d 849 (9th Cir 2012).
[4] Friends of the Earth v Canada (Governor in Council), 2008 FC 1184, aff’d 2009 FCA 297, leave to appeal to the SCC denied, [2009] SCCA 497.
[5] Turp v Canada, 2012 FC 893.
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India, China Become Climate Leaders While West Falters

​by John Upton...

Less than two years after world leaders signed off on a historic United Nations climate treaty in Paris in late 2015, and following three years of record-setting heat worldwide, climate policies are advancing in developing countries but stalling or regressing in richer ones.
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In the Western hemisphere, where centuries of polluting fossil fuel use have created comfortable lifestyles, the fight against warming has faltered largely due to the rise of far-right political groups and nationalist movements. As numerous rich countries have foundered, India and China have emerged as global leaders in tackling global warming.

Nowhere is backtracking more apparent than in the U.S., where President Trump is moving swiftly to dismantle environmental protections and reverse President Obama’s push for domestic and global solutions to global warming.
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The U.S. isn’t alone in its regression. European lawmakers are balking at far-reaching measures to tackle climate change. Australian climate policy is in tatters. International efforts to slow deforestation in tropical countries are failing.

While global emissions of heat-trapping pollution appear to be stabilizing, they have not shown any signs of decreasing, which would be necessary to slow climate change. Rising temperatures are worsening floods, storms and wildfires around the world.

“Right now, when you sum the actions of all countries, even under the Paris agreement, it’s insufficient to mitigate dangerous, human-caused climate change,” said Matto Mildenberger, a political scientist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “Different countries move forward on climate issues with their own rhythm in response to domestic political factors,” Mildenberger said. “It’s naive to think that pro-climate forces will be in power across the world at the same time.”

Here’s a trip around the world, assessing how pro-climate and anti-climate forces are faring in key nations and regions and showing how recent developments are affecting the languishing fight against global warming.

United States
Dire. Trump moving to end climate regulations, research and spending.

No country has turned as sharply as the U.S. Since President Trump’s inauguration, America has gone from being a champion of global climate action to aggressively pushing to end environmental regulations and throatily advocating for fossil fuels. Scott Pruitt, who had been one of the nation’s most fierce opponents of federal environmental regulations, now leads the EPA, the very agency charged with overseeing federal environmental rules.

Trump has moved to eliminate any spending on global climate programs and to roll back any regulations that hamper the fossil fuel sector, which is the main source of greenhouse gas pollution. Many uncertainties over the future of U.S. climate policy remain, including its potential role in United Nations climate talks, and whether supporters of climate action can slow the reversal of national policies.

“The momentum that came out of Paris is still there,” said Harvard economics professor Robert Stavins. “But it has to be admitted that because of the election of Mr. Trump in the U.S., the overall global pace of action is now, and likely will be for the next few years, less than it otherwise would have been.”

Democratic-run states, of which there are just a dozen or so, and environmental groups are fighting Trump’s deregulation drive in public campaigns and in the courts. Trump’s Republican Party has slim majorities in Congress, and some Republican lawmakers have begun voicing support for climate action, making it unlikely that the Clean Air Act will be amended to ease the legal requirement that the federal government must regulate greenhouse gases.

     Read more: We Just Breached the 410 Parts Per Million Threshold
                          Trump Order Targets Local Efforts to Adapt to Warming
                          New Posters Imagine National Parks in 2050; It’s Not Pretty

​Despite most Americans being supportive of climate action, recent Quinnipiac University polling showed half of Republican voters think Trump should remove climate regulations. It also showed that half of Republican voters think it’s a good idea for Trump to significantly fund research on the environment and climate change.

Canada
Concerning. Canada is moving to nationwide carbon pricing but is sending mixed messages on tar sands mining.

Canada flipped in late 2015 from refusing to act meaningfully to slow global warming under conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper to becoming an advocate for climate action after liberal Justin Trudeau’s party won the national election. But the prime minister has been sending deeply mixed messages about the future of the country’s heavily polluting tar sands oil industry.

Trudeau has moved to expand programs run by provinces that charge fees on climate pollution into a nationwide system. He has also said that Canada’s highly polluting practice of mining tar sands oil needs to be phased out. Then again, last month Trudeau said during a speech at an energy industry event that tar sands resources “will be developed. Our job is to ensure that this is done responsibly, safely, and sustainably.”

Trudeau released a federal budget last month that includes billions of dollars in spending on clean energy and climate programs, which Mike Wilson, executive director of the Canadian green economy think tank Smart Prosperity Institute, described as “a really positive development.” “For Canada to significantly reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and be economically competitive in a low carbon global economy, we need both a price on carbon and targeted investments and policy directed at stimulating clean innovation,” Wilson said.

European Union
Concerning. Key votes loom as opposition and antipathy toward climate action grows.

The European Union was the first wealthy region in the world to take global warming seriously, but it has recently been floundering in its commitment to climate action, distracted by refugee and other crises and rattled by a surge in far-right parties within some of its member states.

Crucial votes by European lawmakers are planned this year, which will shape its plan for fighting climate action from 2020 to 2030. They have already committed to reducing greenhouse gas pollution by 40 percent by 2030, compared with 1990 levels, which is similar but less aggressive to a commitment made by California, one of the world’s leaders in fighting warming.

“I expect that the EU will stick to its objective to reduce emissions in 2030 by 40 percent, but will not go beyond this,” said Louise van Schaik, chief of the sustainability center at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations. “The opposition by Poland, Hungary and others is quite strong at the moment.”

Australia
Dire. After dumping its carbon tax, Australia may subsidize a large coal mine.

Australia’s commitment to slowing global warming has fluctuated violently in recent years, and it’s currently near rock bottom among developed countries. With little federal leadership, states have been stepping up to introduce their own climate policies.

One of the first major actions by the country’s conservative party after it won power in 2013 was to dump a carbon tax, which had been helping to slow warming. Since then, the ruling conservative party has replaced hard-right prime minister Tony Abbott with the more moderate Malcolm Turnbull. The change in leader did little to bolster climate policy. Turnbull has been pushing for federal subsidies for a coal mine near the Great Barrier Reef, which is a major tourist draw and a breeding grounds for commercial fisheries that’s being destroyed by climate change — of which coal power is a major cause.

“There seems no political prospect under the present government for systematic climate policy instruments,” Australian National University professor Frank Jotzo, director of the Centre for Climate Economics and Policy, said. “At the right wing of the conservative government, there are those who would like to see a U.S.-style approach.”

Russia
Dire. After declaring climate change a crisis, President Vladimir V. Putin resumes his climate denialism.

Russia is one of the world’s biggest climate polluters, and it continues to rely on fossil fuel sales to Europe and other countries to underpin its economy. It appears to be preparing to ratify the Paris climate agreement, but that means little — Russia’s pledge under the agreement would not require it to take any meaningful steps to slow warming.

In 2015, Putin reversed his long practice of mocking and denying climate science, declaring that climate change “has become one of the gravest challenges humanity is facing.” After Trump won power in the U.S., however, Putin changed his tone again, saying climate change doubters “may not be at all silly” and that warming could boost Russia’s economy.

Vladimir Chuprov of Greenpeace Russia suspects Putin’s recent remarks were a “signal” to Trump, indicating that “we are the same” on climate and fossil fuel policies.

India
Positive. State and local governments boosting efforts to deploy clean energy.

India has developed one of the world’s most aggressive plans for installing solar panels, part of an effort by the large but low-income nation to provide electricity to the hundreds of millions of residents who currently lack regular access to it.

India’s ambitious clean power plans rely heavily on finance and aid from developed countries and experts expect they will be jeopardized by shifts in the U.S. and potentially elsewhere away from providing international assistance.

More recently, state governments in India have begun working aggressively to produce clean power and to help their residents adapt to the impacts of climate change. “This is the right approach, as impacts are understood better at local level,” said Harjeet Singh, a New Delhi-based climate policy lead for global nonprofit ActionAid.
“State governments as well as several local authorities are currently developing or implementing their plans,” Singh said. “A large part of money to carry the actions out will come from the national and sub-national governments, but international finance is also needed to boost these efforts.”

China
Positive. China views climate action as an economic opportunity.

China releases more heat-trapping carbon dioxide every year than any other country — a consequence of its large size and its role as a global manufacturing hub. Factories shifted away from the U.S. and other developed countries to China in recent decades to take advantage of its lax environmental laws and low wages.

China’s leaders have been toiling in recent years to reverse the policies that allowed wanton pollution of the water and the air, including greenhouse gas pollution. That shift has amplified recently as China has come to view clean technology as a major potential driver of its economy.

China aims to create 13 million clean energy jobs by 2020. In 2015 it overtook the U.S. as the largest market for electric vehicles. The country is delivering on its Paris climate goals far more quickly than it had anticipated, prompting some onlookers to speculate that it may boost its pledge during the years ahead.

“China is seeing climate change as an opportunity,” said Ranping Song, an expert on climate policies in developing countries with the nonprofit World Resources Institute. “China would be in a good position to boost its climate pledge, if the economic transition goes as planned.” 

Amazon
Concerning. Deforestation accelerated in 2015 and 2016 following a decade of gains.

After a decade of success by Brazil in slowing deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, largely by preventing the conversion of forest into agricultural land for beef and soy, the country reported spikes in forest loss in 2015 and again 2016.

Amazon deforestation increased by about a quarter in 2015 compared with 2014, and them jumped by more than that amount in 2016. Rachael Petersen of the World Resources Institute described the recent rise in Amazonian deforestation as “disturbing,” possibly caused by lax law enforcement of illegal logging and other factors. But she said it’s too soon to know if it was the start of a long-term trend or just a fluke. “The long-term trend is that it’s still downward.”

In nearby Paraguay, which shares a national border with Brazil and is home to a dryer type of tropical forest that’s not considered a part of the Amazon, Peterson described recent deforestation as “apocalyptic.”

Southeast Asia
Dire. The global hunger for palm oil is causing rampant deforestation in Indonesia.

Natural forests continue to be burned and cleared at astonishing rates to grow palms that produce palm oil in Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries. Land is also being cleared for timber throughout the region and to produce rubber in countries that include Cambodia.

This is despite a pledge by Indonesia to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by nearly a third by 2030. The country is one of the world’s biggest greenhouse gas polluters, largely because of deforestation. It’s also despite efforts by Unilever, Nestle, Mars and other global corporations to remove palm oil produced through deforestation from their supply chains.

Congo Basin
Dire. Deforestation is accelerating in Africa’s biggest tropical rainforest.

Deforestation has long been a major problem in the swampy Congo Basin in Africa, which traverses a number of poor countries and is home to one of the world’s greatest expanses of carbon-storing tropical forest. Timber is being harvested and trees are being cleared for mines, plantations and grazing.

The problem has recently been getting much worse, with “vast” new logging hotspots identified in an analysis of satellite images published in February in the journal Environmental Research Letters. Researchers found that the rate of deforestation more than doubled in the Democratic Republic of Congo 2011 and 2014.
“There are billions of tons of carbon locked up in those forests,” said Simon Counsell, executive director of the nonprofit Rainforest Foundation UK. “The threats are escalating.”
​
Norway and other countries have been committing hundreds of millions of dollars to help slow deforestation in the Congo, although the work has been criticized by Counsell’s group and other nonprofits for allowing and promoting commercial logging — something the international financiers regard as potentially sustainable.

Written by John Upton, First Published in Climate Central on April 24, 2017

---

The World Set Free

This graph, based on the comparison of atmospheric samples contained in ice cores and more recent direct measurements, provides evidence that atmospheric CO2 has increased since the Industrial Revolution. (Credit: Vostok ice core data/J.R. Petit et al.; NOAA Mauna Loa CO2 record.) Find out more about ice cores (external site).

The facts of global warming are unequivocal. The science of climate change, an unassailable body of knowledge, presents an airtight case. And yet, many people seem either unable, or unwilling, to accept and internalize the truly dire reality of the impending climate catastrophe. The "unwilling" merit a separate examination, but for those "unable", perhaps the failure is in the telling. In a segment of the 2014 series, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, the eminent scientist Neil deGrasse Tyson provides one of the most accessible discussions of the facts regarding the human species' impact on the accelerating trend to climate catastrophe. 

Dr. Tyson contrasts Earth with our planetary neighbour Venus and describes how, while both started out with about the same amount of carbon, each was propelled along radically different paths. He explains that carbon was the decisive factor in the outcome for each. Whereas on Venus most of the carbon exists in the form of the gas CO2, on Earth the carbon exists mostly in solid form, and in this crucial difference lies the habitability of the one vs the other. The example of Venus, however, also shows how our actions are trending to a disastrous outcome.  As Dr. Tyson says, the rapid and demonstrable rise in CO2 is "unprecedented in human history" and notes, "the Earth has seen nothing like it in three million years."     

In this segment of this excellent series, Dr. Tyson explains how the Earth breathes, and how the natural levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have been regulated for millennia by the forests of the northern hemisphere. But, as he says, "By burning coal, oil and gas, our civilization is exhaling carbon dioxide much faster than the Earth can absorb it." He contends that there is nothing controversial to a basic understanding of the greenhouse effect: "its basic physics - just bookkeeping of the energy flow."

Our transcribed text of the key portion of this Cosmos segment, written by Ann Druyan and presented by Dr. Tyson, follows below. The links embedded in the text are well worth the effort, and we strongly encourage you to view the entire series on Netflix, or purchase it through the usual sources.
​
​
​The World Set Free
 
​presented by Neil deGrasse Tyson...

Once there was a world. A world not so very different from our own. There were occasional natural catastrophes, massive volcanic eruptions, and every once in a while an asteroid would come barreling out of the blue to do some damage. But for the first billion years or so, it would have seemed like a paradise. This is what we think the planet Venus might have looked like when our solar system was young.

Then, things started to go horribly wrong.

The planet Venus, which once may have seemed like a heaven, turned into a kind of hell. The difference between the two can be a delicate balance, far more delicate than you might imagine. Once things began to unravel, there was no way back. This is what Venus, our nearest planetary neighbour, looks like today: its oceans are long gone, the surface is hotter than a broiling oven, hot enough to melt lead. Why? You might think its because Venus is 30 percent closer to the Sun than the Earth is, but that's not the reason.

Venus is completely covered by clouds of sulphuric acid that keep almost all the sunlight from reaching the surface. That ought to make Venus much colder than the Earth, so why is Venus scorching hot? Its because the small amount of sunlight that trickles in through the clouds to reach the surface can't get back out again. The flow of energy is blocked by a dense atmosphere of carbon dioxide. That carbon dioxide gas, or CO2, acts like a smothering blanket to keep the heat in. No one is burning coal or driving big gas-guzzlers on Venus - nature can destroy an environment without any help from intelligent life. Venus is in the grip of a runaway greenhouse affect.


     Venus and Earth started out with about the same amounts of carbon,
     but the two worlds were propelled along radically different paths,
​     and carbon was the decisive element in both stories.


In 1982, the scientists and engineers of what was then the Soviet Union successfully landed the Venera 13 spacecraft on Venus. They managed to keep it refrigerated for over two hours so it could photograph its surroundings and transmit the images back to Earth before the onboard electronics were fried. Venus and Earth started out with about the same amount of carbon, but the two worlds were propelled along radically different paths, and carbon was the decisive element in both stories. On Venus, its almost all in the form of gas, carbon dioxide, in the atmosphere. Most of the carbon on Earth has been stored for eons in solid vaults of carbon and rock - like the large chain that forms the celebrated White Cliffs of Dover, right on the English Channel. What titan built this wonder of the world? 

A creature a thousand times smaller than a pin head - trillions of them - a one-celled algae. Volcanoes supplied carbon dioxide to the atmosphere, and the oceans slowly absorbed it. Working over the course of millions of years, the microscopic algae harvested the carbon dioxide, and turned it into these tiny shells. They accumulated in thick deposits of chalk, or limestone, on the ocean floor. Later, the restless Earth pushed up the sea floor and carved out these massive cliffs.

Other marine creatures took in the carbon dioxide to build enormous reefs, and the oceans converted dissolved CO2 into limestone even without any help from life. As a result, only a trace amount was left as a gas in the Earth's atmosphere - not even 3/100s of one percent. Think of it, not even 3 molecules out of every ten thousand. And yet, it makes the critical difference between a barren wasteland and a garden of life on Earth.

With no CO2 at all, the Earth would be frozen. And with twice as many - we're still only talking about 6 molecules out of ten thousand - things would get uncomfortably hot, and cause us some serious problems. But never as hot as Venus - not even close. That planet lost its ocean to space billions of years ago. Without an ocean, it had no way to capture CO2 from the atmosphere and store it as a mineral. The CO2 from erupting volcanoes just continued to build up. Today that atmosphere is many times heavier than ours, almost all it is heat-trapping carbon dioxide. That's why Venus is such a ferocious inferno, so hostile to life.

The Earth, in stunning contrast, is alive, and breathes - but very slowly. A single breath takes a whole year. The forests contain most of Earth's life. Most forests are in the northern hemisphere. When spring comes to the north, the forests inhale carbon dioxide from the air, and grow, turning the land green. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere goes down. When fall comes, the plants drop their leaves and decay, exhaling carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. The same thing happens in the southern hemisphere, but at the opposite time of year. But the southern hemisphere is mostly ocean, so its the forests of the north that control the annual changes in the global CO2.


     In fact, the Earth has seen nothing like it for three million years.


The Earth has been breathing like this for tens of millions of years, but nobody noticed until 1958 when an oceanographer named Charles David Keeling devised a way to accurately measure the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Keeling discovered the Earth's exquisite respiration. But he also discovered something shocking - a rapid rise, unprecedented in human history, of the overall level of CO2, one that has continued ever since. Its a striking departure from the CO2 levels that prevailed during the rise of agriculture and civilization. In fact, the Earth has seen nothing like it for three million years. How can we be so sure? The evidence is written in water.

The Earth keeps a detailed diary, written in the snows of yesteryear. Climate scientists have drilled ice cores from the depths of glaciers in Greenland and Antarctica. The ice layers have ancient air trapped inside them. We can read the unbroken record of Earth's atmosphere that extends back over the last eight hundred thousand years. In all that time, the amount of carbon dioxide never rose above three hundredths of one percent, that is, until the turn of the twentieth century, and its been going up steadily and rapidly, ever since. Its now more than forty percent higher than before the industrial revolution. By burning coal, oil and gas, our civilization is exhaling carbon dioxide much faster than the Earth can absorb it. So, CO2 is building up in the atmosphere - the planet is heating up.

Every warm object radiates a kind of light we can't see with the naked eye - thermal infrared light. We all glow with invisible heat radiation, even in the dark. In the infrared, you can see the Earth's own body heat. Incoming light from the Sun hits the surface; the Earth absorbs much of that energy, which heats the planet up, and make the surface glow in infrared light. But the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere absorbs most of that outgoing heat radiation, sending much of it right back to the surface. This makes the planet even warmer. That's all there is to the greenhouse effect. Its basic physics - just bookkeeping of the energy flow. There is nothing controversial about it. If we didn't have any carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, the Earth would be a great big snowball, and we wouldn't be here.

So, a little greenhouse effect is a good thing, but a big one can destabilize our climate and wreck our way of life. Alright, but how do we know that we're the problem? Maybe the Earth itself is causing the rise in CO2. Maybe it has nothing to do with the coal and oil we burn. Maybe its those damn volcanoes! Every few years, Mount Etna in Sicily, blows its stack. Each big eruption sends millions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. Now, combine that with the output all the other volcanic activity on the planet; we'll take the largest scientific estimate, about five hundred million tonnes of volcanic CO2 entering the atmosphere every year. Sounds like a lot, right? That's no even two percent of the thirty billion tonnes that our civilization is cranking out every year! And, funny thing, the measured increase of CO2 in the atmosphere tallies with the known amount we're dumping there by burning coal, oil and gas.


     Unlucky for us, the main waste product of our civilization happens to be
​     the chief climate regulating gas of our global thermostat.


Volcanic CO2 has a distinct signature, that's slightly heavier than the kind produced by burning fossil fuels. We can tell the difference between the two when we examine them at the atomic level. Its clear that the increased CO2 in the air is not from volcanoes. What's more, the observed warming is as much as predicted from the measured increase in carbon dioxide. Its a pretty tight case, our fingerprints are all over this one. How much is thirty billion tonnes of CO2 per year? If you compressed it into solid form it would occupy about the same volume as the White Cliffs of Dover, and we're adding that much CO2 to the air every year, relentlessly, year after year. Unlucky for us, the main waste product of our civilization is not just any substance, it happens to be the chief climate regulating gas of our global thermostat.

Too bad CO2 is an invisible gas. If we could see all that carbon dioxide, perhaps then we would overcome the denial and grasp the magnitude of our impact on the atmosphere. But the evidence that the world is getting warmer is all around us. For starters, just check the thermometers. Weather stations around the world have been keeping reliable temperature records since the 1880s, and NASA has used the data to compile a map tracking the average temperatures around the world through time. The world is warmer than it was in the nineteenth century.

Once there was a world that was not too hot and not too cold. It was just right. Then, there came a time when the life it sustained began to notice our lovely planet was changing. And its not as if we didn't see it coming. As far back as 1896, the Swedish scientist, Svante Arrhenius, calculated that doubling the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere would melt the arctic ice ("the atmosphere acts like the glass of a hothouse"). In the 1930s, the American physicist E.O. Hulburt confirmed that result. So far, it was just theoretical. But then, the English engineer, Guy Callender, assembled the evidence to show that both the CO2 and the average temperature were actually increasing. Dr. Frank Baxter, in 1958, "Meteora - The Unchained Goddess":

• "Even now man may be unwittingly changing the world's climate through the waste products of his civilization, due to our release from our factories and automobiles every year of more than six billion tonnes of carbon dioxide, which helps air absorb heat from the sun, and our atmosphere seems to be getting warmer. Its been calculated that a few degrees rise in the Earth's temperature would melt the polar ice caps. 

And, from Scientific American, in 1959, an article by Gilbert N. Plass, titled, "Carbon Dioxide and Climate", in which "A current theory postulates that carbon dioxide regulates the temperature of the earth. This raises an interesting question: How do man's activities influence the climate of the future?" 


     Since Carl spoke those words, we've burdened our atmosphere with an
​     additional four hundred billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.


In 1960, Carl Sagan's PhD thesis included the first calculation on the runaway greenhouse affect on Venus. This was part of a career-long interest in the atmospheres of the planets, including our own. In the original Cosmos series in 1980, Carl Sagan warned:

• "We are releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide, increasing the greenhouse affect. It may not take much to destabilize the Earth's climate, to convert this heaven, our only home in the Cosmos, into a kind    of hell."

Since Carl spoke those words, we've burdened our atmosphere with an additional four hundred billion tonnes of carbon dioxide. If we don't change our ways, what will the planet be like in our children's future? Based on scientific projections, if we just keep on doing business as usual, our kids are in for a rough ride - killer heat waves, record droughts, rising sea levels, mass extinctions of species. We inherited a bountiful world made possible by a relatively stable climate. Agriculture and civilization flourished for thousands of years, and now our carelessness and greed put all of that at risk.

Ok, so if we scientists are so good at making these dire long-term predictions about the climate, how come we're so lousy about predicting the weather? Besides, this year we had a colder winter in my town. For all the scientists know, we could be in for global cooling! Here's the difference between weather and climate. Weather is what the climate does in the short-term, hour to hour, day to day. Weather is chaotic, which means that even a microscopic disturbance can lead to large-scale changes - that's why those 10 day weather forecasts are useless; a butterfly flaps its wings in Bali, and six weeks later your outdoor wedding in Maine is ruined. Climate is the long-term average of the weather over a number of years. Its shaped by global forces that alter the energy balance in the atmosphere, such as changes in the sun, tilt of the Earth's axis, the amount of sunlight the Earth reflects back to space, and, the concentration of greenhouse gases in the air. A change in any of them affects the climate in ways that are broadly predictable. We can't observe climate directly - all we see is the weather. The average weather over the course of years reveals a pattern - the long-term trend is climate. Weather is hard to predict, but climate is predictable. Climate has changed many times in the long history of the Earth, but always in response to a global force. The strongest force driving climate change right now is the increasing CO2 from burning fossil fuels, which is trapping more heat from the Sun.

All that additional energy has to go somewhere [Remember: Its basic physics - just bookkeeping of the energy flow.] Some of it warms the air. Most of it ends up in the oceans. All over the world the oceans are getting warmer. Its most obvious in the Arctic oceans and the land that surrounds it. Ok, so we're losing the summer sea ice, in a place where hardly anyone ever goes. What do I care if there's no ice around the North Pole? Ice is the brightest natural surface on the Earth and open ocean water is the darkest. Ice reflects incoming sunlight back to space; water absorbs sunlight and gets warmer, which melts even more ice, which exposes still more ocean surface to absorb even more sunlight. This is what we call a positive feedback loop. Its one of many natural mechanism that magnify any warming caused by CO2 alone.


     The world's permafrost stores enough carbon to more than double the CO2
     in the atmosphere. We might be tipping the climate past a point of no return.


We're at Drew Point, Alaska, on the edge of the Arctic Ocean. When I was born, the shoreline was a mile farther out, and it was breaking off a rate of about twenty feet per year. Now, its being eaten away at about 50 feet per year. The Arctic Ocean is warming, and at an increasing rate, so its ice free during more of the year. That leaves the shore here more exposed to erosion from storms, which are also getting more powerful, another affect of climate change. The northern reaches of Alaska, Siberia and Canada are mostly permafrost, ground that has been frozen year-round for millennia. It contains lots of organic matter - old leaves and roots from plants that grew here thousands of years ago. Because the Arctic regions are warming faster than anywhere else on Earth, the permafrost is thawing, and its contents are rotting, just like when you unplug the freezer. The thawing permafrost is releasing carbon dioxide and methane, an even more potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. This is making things even warmer, another example of a positive feedback mechanism. The world's permafrost stores enough carbon to more than double the CO2 in the atmosphere. At the rate we're going, global warming could release most of by the end of the century. We might be tipping the climate past a point of no return into an unpredictable slide.


     It is now clear beyond any reasonable doubt that we are changing the climate.


Ok, the air, the land and the water are all getting warmer, so global warming is really happening. But maybe its not our fault. Maybe its just nature - maybe its the Sun. No, its not the Sun. We've been monitoring the Sun very closely for decades and the solar energy output hasn't changed. What's more, the Earth is warming more at night than in daytime, and more in winter than in summer - that's exactly what we expect from greenhouse warming, but the opposite of what increased solar output would cause.

​It is now clear beyond any reasonable doubt that we are changing the climate. 

written by Ann Druyan, from Chapter 12 of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey".

Postscript to the Cosmos segment:
As Dr. Tyson says, while the sun has not caused the warming of the planet, it could certainly provide the solution to global warming. As early as 1878, at the Exposition Universelle in Paris, a practical harnessing of solar power was unveiled by a math teacher, Augustin Mouchot. He produced the world's first parabolic solar collector, a technique since refined in today's "concentrated solar power" arrays used to drive energy-generating turbines. Mouchot took home the gold medal from the fair, but the price of coal tumbled, becoming so cheap that there was no interest in solar energy - besides, no one understood back then what the true cost was of burning fossil fuel. Mouchot's research funding was cut off.

Thirty-five years later, in the early years of the 20th century, another door opened to an alternative future. It happened in Egypt on the banks of the Nile. Frank Shuman, an inventor from Philadelphia, led the team that designed and built an array of solar energy concentrators. The official inauguration of Shuman's solar power plant in 1913 was a dazzling success. He had invented a practical way to tap the Sun's energy on an industrial scale, making solar energy even cheaper than coal. The British and German governments both offered Shuman generous funding to develop his invention. It was the ideal source of abundant power in tropical regions, where imported coal was prohibitively expensive. But Shuman was dreaming even bigger. He had a grand plan to build a series of giant solar plants in the Sahara:

•  "You would only need 20,250 square miles [52,450 sq km] in the Sahara in order to supply the whole world with energy," he calculated. "One thing I know for sure. If mankind does not learn how to harness the power of the sun, he will ultimately fall back into barbary."

But it was not to be. The market for petroleum was exploding, and the start of World War I saw his plant broken up and the scrap metal recycled for use in the British munitions industry. Frank Shuman's dream of a solar powered civilization would have to wait another century before it was reborn.


     If we could harness a tiny fraction of all the available solar and wind power,
     we could supply all our energy needs forever, and without adding any carbon
     to the atmosphere.

​
There's another inexhaustible source of clean energy for the world. The winds themselves are solar powered because our star drives the winds, and the waves. Unlike solar collectors, wind farms take up very little land, and none at all if offshore, where the winds are strongest. If we could tap even one percent of their power, we'd have enough energy to run our civilization. More solar energy falls on Earth in one hour than all the energy our civilization consumes in an entire year. If we could harness a tiny fraction of all the available solar and wind power, we could supply all our energy needs forever, and without adding any carbon to the atmosphere.

There are no scientific or technological obstacles to protecting our world and the precious life it supports. It all depends on what we truly value, and if we can summon the will to act. 

From Chapter 12 of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey", written by Ann Druyan and presented by Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson

---

Climate Change and the International Order

​by Amanda Ericsson...

President Trump has done what he promised: kneecapping America's efforts to fight climate change. In a sweeping executive order Tuesday, the president rolled back rules limiting carbon emissions and regulating fossil fuel producers.

Trump explained this dramatic shift in economic terms, saying that he wants to put coal miners back to work and make manufacturing cheaper. His critics suggest financial motives, too, albeit more nefarious ones: that he's interested in little more than lining the pockets of his rich friends in the oil and gas industry. Really, though, Trump's policy reflects a deeper truth. Climate change denial is not incidental to a nationalist, populist agenda. It's central to it. And that's not a coincidence.

Combating global warming requires international cooperation, multinational agreements and rules. Done right, no country is exceptional, and some might have to sacrifice for others. In other words, it strengthens the international order that Trump and his team are so assiduously trying to dismantle in the name of “America First.”

As Andrew Norton, director of the International Institute for Environment and Development, explains:
“Climate change is a highly inconvenient truth for nationalism, as it is unsolvable at the national level and requires collective action between states and between different national and local communities. Populist nationalism therefore tends to reject the science of climate change however strong the evidence.”

That reality is reflected in populist platforms around the world. In France, for example, the far-right National Front traffics in climate change skepticism. They've rolled out a “patriotic” environmentalist platform that opposes international climate talks as a “communist project. “We don’t want a global agreement or global rule for the environment,” the party's Mireille d’Ornano told the Guardian.

In the past, the National Front has tied environmentalism to xenophobia even more explicitly, protesting the cruelty to animals in the preparation of halal and kosher meat specifically. In other countries, far right “environmentalists” have used ecological conservation to argue that immigration must be strictly capped.
As candidate and president, Trump has explicitly suggested that fighting climate change is at odds with nationalist priorities. In 2012, he tweeted, “the concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese to make U.S. manufacturing noncompetitive.” In 2016, he promised to pull out of the Paris and stop cut U.S. funding of U.N. global warming programs because they were “job-destroying.”

It's an attitude shared by many of his most fervent supporters, and it has a long history.

Flanked by cabinet members and coal miners, President Trump introduced and signed an executive order on March 28, that revokes Obama-era climate regulations and puts "an end to the war on coal,” he said.

At a 1992 conference, President George H.W. Bush and 177 other governments signed something called Agenda 21. It's a totally voluntary United Nations “action plan” that offers suggestions for the way local, state and national governments can combat poverty and pollution. It's fairly innocuous and, again, nonbinding.

But antigovernment conservatives such as Phyllis Schlafly and Tom DeWeese latched onto the measure as a symbol of a much broader U.N.-backed conspiracy take control of America. DeWeese, whose think tank focuses on “the United Nations and its effect on American national sovereignty,” has described Agenda 21 as a “blueprint to turn your community into a little soviet.”

The movement that sprung up around it left no hyperbole unused. In speeches, hysterical books and DVDs and interviews, anti-Agenda 21ers call it  “the most dangerous threat to American sovereignty”; “An anti-human document, which takes aim at Western culture, and the Judeo-Christian and Islamic religions,” that will bring “new Dark Ages of pain and misery yet unknown to mankind,” and “abolish golf courses, grazing pastures and paved roads,” in the name of creating a “one-world order.”

“It's taken to extremes that turn Agenda 21 into some sort of international scheme to take down the stars and stripes,” explains Ryan Lenz, as senior investigative reporter for the Southern Poverty Law Center who studies the groups that oppose to Agenda 21. “Nationalism is about protecting one's borders. Opposing Agenda 21 is just a way of saying other countries don't have a say.”

Though most people don't know what Agenda 21 is, this argument - that fighting climate change is antithetical to American interests - has seeped into mainstream Republican thinking.

In 2012, Newt Gingrich promised to “explicitly repudiate” the plan if elected president. Former Georgia Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers (R) “organized a four-hour, closed-door anti-Agenda briefing in October 2012" during which “attendees were told President Obama was using ‘mind control’ techniques to push land use planning, and that the U.N. planned to force Americans from suburbs into cities and also was implementing mandatory contraception to curb population growth,” according to the SPLC.

Trump's recent moves might be the movement's biggest victory yet. One article from Investment Watch Blog, which calls itself " pro-capitalism, pro-business, pro-market, truth seeker, and anti-MSM”, framed the president's proposal to shutter popular rural development agencies as “Trump Shutting Down Shadow Government Agencies That Implement Agenda 21.”
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“People see Trump's actions in regards to the environment as a positive indication that he's moving forward with removing the … dictates of some international order,” Lenz said.

​Written by Amanda Ericsson, First Published in the Washington Post, March 29, 2017

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The U.S. Media's Global Warming Denialism

Besides nuclear war, arguably the greatest threat to human civilization is global warming, but the U.S. news media virtually ignored the issue in 2016, bowing to economic and political pressures.

​by Jonathan Marshall...

Emperor Nero may (or may not) have fiddled while Rome burned, but commercial U.S. TV networks definitely fiddled last year on climate coverage while the Earth grew dangerously hot.

An annual climate report issued this month by the World Meteorological Organization confirms that average global temperatures and global sea levels continued their inexorable rise in 2016, setting new records. Global sea ice dropped to an “unprecedented” extent. Extreme weather conditions, probably aggravated by climate disruption, displaced hundreds of thousands of people, left millions hungry, and caused “severe economic damage.”

Yet in the midst of such frightening changes, and a national presidential campaign with enormous consequences for U.S. climate policy, the four major broadcast networks - ABC, CBS, NBC, and Fox News Sunday - significantly decreased their coverage of climate issues on evening and Sunday news programs, according to a new analysis by Media Matters. Television programs like these are the major source of news for 57 percent of adult Americans.

The four networks devoted a mere 50 minutes on their evening and Sunday news programs to climate change in all of 2016. That was a two-thirds drop from the meager time they gave to perhaps the most important issue of our time in 2015. (These figures reflect deliberate coverage by the networks, not incidental mentions of climate by talk show guests.)

Remarkably, ABC managed to beat even Fox for the least climate coverage last year — only six minutes (down from 13 in 2015). Fox provided a grand seven minutes of coverage. CBS topped the group with 27 minutes, but that was still a sharp drop from the 45 minutes it devoted in 2015.

The networks can hardly claim there was nothing of substance to cover. Audiences love news about political controversy, weather, and disasters — and the issue of climate disruption provided all three. The 2016 election, for example, offered a stark and highly controversial choice between Donald Trump, who dismissed global warming as a “hoax” and promised to revive dirty coal as a fuel of choice in the United States, and Hillary Clinton, who supported major new investments in clean energy.

Yet the major TV network news programs “did not air a single segment informing viewers of what to expect on climate change and climate-related policies or issues under a Trump or Clinton administration,” according to Media Matters.

Similarly, their reporters did not ask even one question about climate change during all of last year’s presidential and vice presidential debates. Instead, they waited until after the election to inform viewers about how the country’s vote for Trump would affect the future of climate policy.

Media Matters notes that plenty of other climate-related stories also cried out for attention last year, including, “extreme weather events tied to climate change, like Hurricane Matthew and the record-breaking rainfall and flooding in Louisiana (which the American Red Cross described as ‘the worst natural disaster to strike the United States since Superstorm Sandy’); the signing of the Paris climate agreement and the U.N. climate summit in Morocco; the official announcement from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that 2015 was the hottest year on record by far; and investigations by state attorneys general into whether ExxonMobil committed fraud by misleading the public on climate change.”

Ignoring Links
Yet not once last year did NBC or Fox report on the link between climate disruption and extreme weather, such as the record rainfall in Louisiana or the devastating wildfires that consumed more than 100,000 acres across seven states in the Southeast. ABC gave the topic only one news segment.

Fox News Sunday was the only show to address the climate context for the fight by Native American tribes to block construction of the Dakota Access oil pipeline. Several networks offered slightly more coverage of the climate issues surrounding the Keystone XL pipeline, which will transport heavy tar sands oil from Canada, but ABC managed to ignore that topic as well. (The State Department previously reportedthat completion of Keystone could increase annual greenhouse gas emissions by as much as 27 billion metric tons per year, the equivalent of adding several million passenger vehicles to the roads.)

The Sunday shows did not invite any scientists to discuss climate issues last year. And aside from NBC Nightly News, no commercial network covered the link between climate change and public health, including the spread of mosquito-borne diseases like the Zika virus.

PBS NewsHour crushed the competition in terms of the frequency, length, and seriousness of its climate coverage. It was the only show to inform voters about the policy impacts of a Trump or Clinton presidency beforethe election. It ran 18 segments on climate science, compared to 11 on all the other evening news shows combined. Perhaps not coincidentally, the Trump administration proposes eliminating funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports the NewsHour.

The coverage choices of America’s most-watched networks have great ramifications, starting with the election of climate denier Donald Trump. His choice as EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt, is a notorious climate denier, and is surrounding himself with former aides to Oklahoma Senator James Imhofe, an even more notorious denier. His Energy Secretary, Rick Perry, notoriously favored closing that agency altogether. President Trump issued executive orders reviving the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines. He eliminated references to global warming on the White House web site.

The Trump administration also proposes killing the EPA’s popular Energy Star program, which helps consumers save money by choosing more energy efficient appliances. His budget also would wipe out clean-tech research and development programs at the Department of Energy.

On Wednesday, President Trump plans to sign an executive order instructing the EPA to consider repealing the Clean Power Plan, which aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. His order reportedly will also encourage coal-mining leases on public lands, ease oil and gas drilling rules, and direct agencies to find ways to promote more energy production.

These actions not only fly in the face of science, they also run counter to his promises to create new jobs. A new Sierra Club analysis finds that across the nation, “clean energy jobs outnumber all fossil fuel jobs by over 2.5 to 1, and they exceed all jobs in coal and gas by 5 to 1.”

In the long run, nothing the Trump administration does about health insurance, tax reform, or military spending - short of getting us into nuclear war - will matter nearly as much as its determined efforts to prevent global action on climate disruption.

“We are moving into unchartered territory at a frightening speed,” warned Michel Jarraud, the secretary general of the World Meteorological Organization. “Every year we report a new record in greenhouse gas concentrations. Every year we say that time is running out. We have to act now to slash greenhouse gas emissions if we are to have a chance to keep the increase in temperatures to manageable levels.”

Jarraud issued that plea nearly a year and a half ago. Time is, indeed, running out.

​Written by Jonathan Marshall, first published on March 27, 2017 in Consortium News
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The Ideology of Climate Change Denial in the United States

by Jean-Daniel Collomb...

Abstract
The concerted effort to discredit the scientific consensus over man-made global warming has been continuing for two decades in the United States, and shows no sign of weakening. It is very often described as an attempt on the part of corporate America, most notably the fossil fuel industries, to hinder governmental regulations on their activities. While emphasising this dimension of the US climate denial movement, this article also aims to show the complexity of the movement, rather than the mere defence of the narrowly-defined and short-term economic interests of the oil and gas industries, by shedding light on two additional factors which have been instrumental in blocking strong climate action. First, climate denial stems from the strong ideological commitment of small-government conservatives and libertarians to laisser-faire and their strong opposition to regulation. Second, in order to disarm their opponents, US climate deniers often rest their case on the defence of the American way of life, defined by high consumption and ever-expanding material prosperity. It is the contention of this article, therefore, that the US climate denial movement is best understood as a combination of these three trends.

The ideological underpinning of climate change denial in the United States merits closer scrutiny than it has received to date. American opponents and critics of the scientific consensus over man-made global warming have been much more vocal and influential than their counterparts in continental Europe; in France several scientists and intellectuals1 do take issue with the positions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) but they tend to be rather isolated and marginal figures with little or no impact on public policy. By contrast, American climate change deniers have been remarkably successful in confusing public opinion and delaying decisive action. They receive considerable media attention and enjoy access to key Washington power brokers. Therefore, it is worth analyzing the origins of this powerful movement in order to see what really drives climate change denial in the United States. It is very often claimed, with good reason, that climate sceptics are beholden to powerful corporate interests such as those of the Koch brothers.2 Ties between corporations and conservative and libertarian think tanks3 have been well-documented. There is no denying that, in the short term, some industries, such as the coal industry, have a vested interest in averting any government plan to reduce carbon emissions.

It is my contention that the emphasis placed on the efforts of the fossil fuel industries to promote their short-term economic self-interests should be complemented by other important factors. First, there is an ideological dimension to the effort to counter climate action: the conservative movement appears to be committed to small government and free enterprise as ideological ends in themselves, irrespective of economic and environmental common sense. From the small-government perspective, therefore, discrediting calls for strong national and international climate action has become a matter of ideological survival. Second, another factor complicates the matter even further for Bill McKibben, Al Gore, and their followers: the defence of the American way of life defined as the dedication to permanently expanding economic prosperity and consumption has now become a highly convenient line of attack for climate change deniers. The American way of life is clearly an ideology all the more potent because it is not recognized as such by most Americans. In fact, enjoying a clean environment is high on the average voter’s wish list.4 Embracing high environmental standards out of principle is one thing, however, accepting subsequent far-reaching and significant lifestyle changes in the form of higher gas prices or reduced mobility, for instance, is quite another, a fact acknowledged by both climate change deniers and the Obama administration.

1. BACKGROUND 
The conservation of natural resources as a federal prerogative emerged during the Progressive era under the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (1901-1909): the US Reclamation Service (1902) and the US Forest Service (1905) became a blueprint for the creation of countless federal conservation agencies throughout the 20th century. The Forest Service, under the mindful direction of Gifford Pinchot, was given the mandate of managing the forest reserves, later renamed national forests, which had been set aside in the early 1890s. These developments constituted a major watershed in the role of the federal government in the management of the public domain. Hitherto, public officials had been eager to privatize the federally held lands as quickly as possible so that various special interest groups could improve and develop the land as they saw fit. Environmental destruction and waste on a large scale had convinced Theodore Roosevelt that the federal government needed to take an active role in managing natural resources.5 If the origins of American conservation date to the late 19th century, the modern environmental movement arose in the late 1960s and early 1970s when American environmentalists ceased to devote all of their attention and efforts to wilderness preservation and began to address quality-of-life issues.6 A flurry of environmental laws such as the Clean Air Act (1963),7 the Clean Water Act (1972),8 the Endangered Species Act (1973),9 the proclamation of an annual Earth Day (1970), as well as the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency (1972)10 to serve as a long awaited federal environmental watchdog, all bear witness to the public’s growing environmental awareness at the time. Most recently, concerns raised by the scientific community about the issue of global warming have led strong environmentalists such as Bill McKibben and Al Gore to seek new legislation to curtail its negative impacts on the planet. Meanwhile some conservatives such as James Inhofe and Joe Barton have been doing their utmost to counter the myriad of environmental regulations and safety standards passed by Congress during the 1960s and 1970s and future environmental legislation.11

2. A CASE OF LEGAL BRIBERY
In the 1970s eager to protect its activities from regulations and above all its profit margins, corporate America began to challenge the growing influence of environmental organizations and other advocacy groups who had been instrumental in ushering in this golden age of environmental legislation.12Corporate leaders drew their inspiration from the successful tactics of the tobacco industry to thwart any restrictions on their activities: Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway use the term “tobacco strategy” to explain how corporations set up or fund seemingly independent think tanks and hire experts and scientists in order to discredit scientific research and evidence likely to justify governmental regulations on their activities.13 Needlessly to say, this constitutes a complete perversion of the scientific process, as the goal results in the fact that no scientifically-based call for environmental or safety regulations go unanswered and doubt is cast on the consensus reached in peer-reviewed scientific research. The climate change denial movement is part and parcel of this larger corporate effort to hinder regulations.14

Since the 1990s critics of climate scepticism have been striving to draw the public’s attention to the seamy side of the movement: its incestuous connection with the fossil fuel industries whose overriding objective is, they claim, to forestall government action by confusing public perceptions of the scientific evidence at hand. In The Assault on Reason (2007) former Vice-President Al Gore accused powerful corporations like Exxon Mobil of being determined to skew and pervert the scientific process:

• Wealthy right-wing ideologues have joined with the most cynical and irresponsible companies in the oil, coal, and mining industries to contribute large sums of money to finance pseudoscientific front groups that specialize in sowing confusion in the public’s mind about global warming. They issue one misleading ‘report’ after another, pretending that there is a significant disagreement in the legitimate scientific community in areas where there is actually a broad-based consensus.15

Gore reiterated his critique in even harsher terms four years later in an article in Rolling Stone castigating the Senate for being “controlled lock, stock and barrel by the oil and coal industries,” making any hope of climate action a distant prospect.16 More recently Gore’s assessment has been echoed by the climate scientist Michael E. Mann17 whose book The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars questions the scientific integrity of Patrick J. Michaels and Fred Singer, two of the leading experts who attack the theory of man-made global warming: Mann points to the funds Michaels and Singer allegedly received from the energy sector.18

Allegations of corporate manoeuvres in an attempt to weaken environmental regulations are documented in the data collected by the Center for Responsive Politics. A peak in campaign contributions from the energy sector occurred in 2009 as Congress was considering passing a cap-and-trade19 bill which would have been a crucial and long-awaited first step towards an American commitment to serious climate action.20 The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE), a well-heeled advocacy group representing coal producers, among others, invested massively in the 2008 presidential election.21 Four years later, Republicans received a significantly larger amount of money from the fossil fuel industries than their Democratic colleagues:  Barack Obama received $710,277 in 2011-2012 while Mitt Romney’s campaign pocketed $4,763,934 during the same period.22 Needless to say, the contest between those industries and environmental organizations is uneven: in 2011, it is estimated that all oil and gas interests invested $149,169,677 in lobbying23 whilst overall contributions from US environmental organisations amounted to $18,125,119.24 It is also worth noting that fossil fuel money does not just go to elected officials and candidates. Oil and gas companies have been contributing lavish sums of money to conservative and libertarian think tanks for several decades with the two-fold goal of ensuring not only that elected officials and public figures remain sympathetic to the interests of the fossil fuel industries, but that they are provided with the expertise and the scientific evidence they need to be able to counter arguments by the proponents of environmental regulations as well. Hence, the conservative Washington think tanks such as the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation are among the biggest recipients of oil and gas money. Peter J. Jacques, Riley E. Dunlap, and Mark Freeman have also demonstrated that corporate interests are funding indirectly anti-environmental expertise by bankrolling conservative think tanks: of 141 environmentally-sceptic books written between 1972 and 2005, only 11 were not linked to corporate-funded conservative think tanks.25 It is therefore undeniable that the climate change denial movement stems from a concerted effort on the part of fossil fuel industries to protect their economic self-interests from government regulation. Yet there appears to be more to the climate change denial movement than the mere defence of economic self-interest.

3. A MATTER OF IDEOLOGICAL SURVIVAL
The climate change denial movement in the United States attracts small-government advocates as well as social conservatives and members of the so-called religious Right. The latter have assumed centre stage since the early 1980s, focusing on issues of morality: they have been instrumental in bringing about the so-called culture wars through their positions on a wide range of issues - abortion, same-sex marriage and, more recently, stem cell research. Although conservative activists sometimes find common ground among themselves, social conservatives ought not to be confused with their fiscal counterparts, also known as small-government conservatives, nor with libertarians whose main political aim is to reduce drastically the size and prominence of the federal government and give business a free rein. A few notable exceptions notwithstanding,26 the effort to question the validity of the theory of man-made global warming has been spearheaded largely by the admirers of Barry Goldwater and Jack Kemp rather than the disciples of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. The Heartland Institute, the Heritage Foundation and the Cato Institute, all conservative and libertarian think tanks, have also joined the fray in addition to the well-funded advocacy groups Americans for Prosperity and Americans for Tax Reform. Such a broad range of organizations suggests that the climate war is part of the larger campaign launched by fiscal conservatives in the 1970s to counter the environmental movement’s agenda.

Small-government advocates usually declare that they value the health of the land and support high environmental standards. They claim to disagree with the environmental community on the means, but not on the ends. They argue, in a counter-intuitive way, that the best way to protect the environment is by maximizing economic freedom and eliminating government. This can be achieved, they suggest, by the consolidation of private property rights which will foster good stewardship since private land owners have more incentives than do government bureaucrats to take care of the land they own.27 Jay Wesley Richards of the Heritage Foundation asserts that “sometimes environmental regulation is in order, but more often than not, there are market-based solutions that work better. For instance, strong private property laws are often the best ways to encourage people to act in environmentally friendly ways. We tend to act less responsibly when we are not directly affected by our actions.”28

Far from being a means to an end and a way to achieve the good society, the conservative movement’s commitment to small government and free markets seems to have become an end in itself and almost a secular religion. Over the last few years, no social movement has epitomized this attitude better than the Tea Parties, who came into being in the wake of the financial meltdown in 2008. It is undeniable that economic issues are much more central to Tea Party activism than social ones.29 In their Tea Party manifesto Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe express their aversion to government regulations in no uncertain terms: “For us, it is all about the rights of the individual over the collective.”30 The Tea Party movement’s discourse is in keeping with the long-standing American tradition of anti-government rhetoric going back all the way to the Anti-Federalists. It is no wonder that cap and trade quickly became one of their bêtes noires. Armey and Kibbe blasted this climate bill as a sly attempt on the part of the President and his party to “‘Europeanize’ the United States.”31 They give short shrift to the scientific consensus on man-made climate change because the notion that the federal government ought to step in so as to avert an environmental Armageddon threatens to undermine the entire intellectual edifice of the Tea Party movement. In order to grasp the stakes of the climate war, it is useful to consider the words of the prominent environmental philosopher J. Baird Callicott:

• It will not suffice … simply to encourage people individually and voluntarily to build green and drive hybrid. But what’s worse is the implication that that’s all we can do about it, that the ultimate responsibility for dampening the adverse effects of global climate change devolves to each of us as individuals. On the contrary, the only hope we have to temper global climate change is a collective sociocultural response in the form of policy, regulation, treaty, and law.32

The contrast between Dick Armey’s rabid fear of government and Callicott’s insistence on the need for a government-sponsored international concerted effort could not be starker.

Global warming poses a philosophical challenge to libertarians and small-government conservatives: their world view is premised on the idea that government power should always be held in check lest it destroy individual freedom while the world is faced with a crisis of global proportions that could only be averted by a strong and prolonged government action. The steps necessary to address the challenges posed by global warming would lay waste to the Tea Party’s ironclad faith in the free market as the ultimate problem-solver. As Naomi Oreskes states: “Accepting that by-products of industrial civilization were irreparably damaging the global environment was to accept the reality of market failure. It was to acknowledge the limits of free-market capitalism.”33 Given such circumstances, denial appears to be a more desirable strategy than a devastating reappraisal of one’s deeply held beliefs. In that regard, the climate denial movement clearly emerges as a case of ideological grandstanding. As a matter of fact, a significant number of American corporations, by definition dedicated to free-market economics, have already jumped on the global warming bandwagon. The US Climate Action Partnership, set up by several major corporations in cooperation with various environmental organisations in 2007, is a case in point.34 What is at stake are the intellectual underpinnings of libertarianism and small-government conservatism. Their most zealous proponents are not prepared to surrender without putting up a fight.

Michael Gerson, Washington Post columnist and former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, has pointed out that the political controversy over man-made global warming is the most recent front in the so-called culture wars.35 Whether correct or not, Gerson’s idea bears testimony to the vehement rhetoric deployed by climate change deniers against their detractors, and vice versa. The climate change denial movement sometimes appears as the extension of Cold War politics by other means. Deniers are prone to dismiss the theory of man-made global warming and all the attendant government schemes to mitigate it as a kind of socialist conspiracy hatched by the enemies of economic freedom. Michael Crichton’s novel State of Fear is a good example as it casts global warming as a ploy to impose strong government intervention on the American people and suppress free enterprise.36 Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, the most vocal climate change denier in the Upper House, asked Crichton to testify before the US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works in 2005.37 The idea of a statist conspiracy to stifle entrepreneurship combined with dire warnings about “environmental socialism” also resonates with the guests and anchors of right-wing talk shows like Rush Limbaugh’s and Glenn Beck’s. 

This being said, climate denial is not confined to popular culture: it has also been advocated by prominent conservative intellectuals. George F. Will, in a 2010 Washington Post column, derided the threat of global warming as a convenient strategy used by big-government liberals like Al Gore and Barack Obama to reinforce what he perceives as the pre-eminence of statism in American life and to drive the last nail in the coffin of economic freedom. He characterises public figures endeavouring to draw the public’s attention to the dangers posed by the warming of the planet as “those trying to stampede the world into a spasm of prophylactic statism.”38 The fear of socialism by stealth, which has been on the conservative fiscal agenda since the end of the Cold War, has been summarized laconically by the conservative lobbyist and zealous climate change denier Steve Milloy: “green is the new red.”39 In a more restrained manner, the influential conservative intellectual Charles Krauthammer offered a variation on the same theme in a 2008 Washington Post article: although he was careful to describe himself as a “global warming agnostic,” he was quick to cast suspicions on the motives behind the effort to avert climate change: “Just as the ash heap of history beckoned, the intellectual left was handed the ultimate salvation: environmentalism. Now the experts will regulate your life not in the name of the proletariat or Fabian socialism but - even better - in the name of Earth itself.”40 The fact that such prominent figures as George F. Will and Charles Krauthammer should have towed - albeit tentatively in Krauthammer’s case - the climate change denial line serves to suggest that this concerted effort cannot be dismissed as a fringe phenomenon.

Climate change deniers have been remarkably successful in shaping the position of the Republican Party with regards to global warming. During the 2012 presidential primary contest, each candidate had to pass a number of ideological litmus tests in order to prove his or her conservativeness on key issues like illegal immigration, abortion, and same-sex marriage. Curiously, denying man-made global warming or downplaying its consequences turned out to be one of the requirements foisted on the candidates. Mitt Romney, who eventually became the Republican nominee, remains a case in point. Neela Barnjee, reporter for the Los Angeles Times, has shown that, although Romney had been pro-active on climate policy at the beginning of his term as Governor of Massachusetts (2003-2007), he had no compunction about changing his position when he first decided to run for president in 2008.41 To take but one example, in 2005 he distanced himself from a regional compact known as the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (ReGGIe) created by New England states with a view to reducing carbon emissions in the region, a move all the more noteworthy as Romney had been instrumental in its initial development. Romney does not deny in his 2010 book No Apology that the Earth is warming but he claims to be uncertain about the extent of human responsibility in the warming and discards cap-and-trade legislation as a set of “feel-good policies” which will fail to make a difference, thereby echoing a theme already well-rehearsed in conservative and libertarian circles.42 Did Romney genuinely change his mind on the substantive matters involved in this issue or, is it more likely that his sudden change of heart reflects the difficulty of being an advocate of serious climate action inside the Republican Party? Once again, the climate controversy is just one arena of contention in the multifaceted effort to protect American corporations and business owners from government regulations.

Ronald Brownstein has noted over the last few decades, and especially since the triumph of Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America in 1994, that the Republican Party has become significantly more conservative and more ideologically homogeneous and therefore is less liable to strike compromises than in the decades that followed World War II.43 The growing emphasis on ideological purity in Republican primaries and among activists has made it possible for climate change deniers to wield a disproportionate influence within a party which routinely represents about half of the electorate. Meanwhile, moderate and middle-of-the-road Republicans willing to embrace necessary and desirable regulations on business activities are being sidelined as exemplified by Senator Richard Lugar’s downfall in an Indiana primary after a 30-year term in the Upper House of Congress. Ideological intransigence also prompted Maine Senator Olympia Snowe to not seek a fourth term in 2012. John McCain, who unavailingly had co-sponsored several climate bills in the Senate before winning the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, did not even mention global warming in his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention in Saint Paul, Minnesota. The rub for the Republican Party is that although market fundamentalism may play well during some Republican primaries across the country, it is unlikely to be a winner with the larger electorate in the general elections, which Mitt Romney found out in 2012. What may be more appealing to the general public, however, is the opposition to climate legislation in defence of the so-called American way of life.

4. THE AMERICAN WAY OF LIFE OR THE LAST REFUGE OF A CLIMATE CHANGE DENIER
The effort to undermine the credibility of scientific research on man-made global warming has continued since the early 1990s after the IPCC had started calling the alarm. Nevertheless because of mounting scientific evidence44 it is becoming increasingly untenable to deny reality, which has led conservative and libertarian think tanks to modify their tactics. Increasingly, to paraphrase James Hoggan, “nondenier deniers” are replacing “deniers”. These nondenier deniers are “people who put themselves forth as reasonable interpreters of the science, even as allies in the fight to bring climate change to the public’s attention. But then they throw in a variety of arguments that actually undermine the public appetite for action.”45 Libertarian and conservative climate experts increasingly recoil from denying the fact that the planet is warming, but they usually lose no time in qualifying their acceptance with two caveats. First, they assert that the negative repercussions of a global rise in temperatures are being grossly overstated in order to alarm the public and decision-makers into accepting the environmentalist agenda. Second, nondenier deniers argue that actions to mitigate the effects of global warming will be economically destructive and environmentally insignificant. Consider the testimony of Kenneth P. Green of the American Enterprise Institute before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming in December 2010: “It is time policymakers recognize that despite the claims of renewable energy and efficiency hucksters, we do not have the technologies needed to significantly curb greenhouse gas emissions without causing massive economic disruption.”46 Green goes on to demand additional deregulation so that the American people will face fewer obstacles as they adapt to the consequences of climate change. The commitment to adaptation rather than mitigation has been repeated endlessly in recent conservative and libertarian publications and statements on global warming.47

There is no question that, taken in isolation, various points made by climate change deniers are well taken and ought to be seriously heeded by the proponents of strong climate action. Consider, for example, their repeated claim that a unilateral approach to climate change by the American government would make no real difference, an argument often used to discredit efforts by Congress to impose mandatory reductions in greenhouse gas emissions across the nation. Sallie James argues that cap and trade is a losing proposition because it would have an insignificant impact on the earth’s temperatures while damaging the competitiveness of the American economy.48 Derrick Morgan raises similar objections49 about a national putative carbon tax, also warning that such a measure would blunt the benefits currently derived by the American economy from the shale gas boom.50 Moreover, Nicolas Loris and Brett D. Schaefer contend that placing the largest burden of reducing greenhouse gas emissions on developed countries like the United States makes less and less sense as developing countries, such as India or China, will soon overtake the United States as the world’s chief emitters of carbon dioxide.51

The fear that strong climate action might reduce American competitiveness with rising giants like China is undoubtedly one of the strongest reasons why the Senate refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. Senators Robert Byrd (West Virginia) and Chuck Hagel (Nebraska) issued a resolution blocking the ratification of the Kyoto protocol, invoking the same line of argument. In his scathing indictment of the 2009 Copenhagen Climate Change Summit, Steven Groves, of the Heritage Foundation, took exception to the fact that, under the terms of a Kyoto II climate change treaty, the United States would be required to help emerging economies, including China—its main economic rival, improve their environmental standards by sharing American findings in clean energy research.52 Groves reiterates his warning against American naiveté in climate negotiations: 

• Developing nations, including economic giants such as India and China, view climate change as a cash cow…and more. In addition to ‘milking’ developed nations for hundreds of billions of dollars in aid, they’ll receive, absolutely free, clean-energy technology worth untold billions more.53

Earlier in 2009 Derek Scissors also dismissed the notion that China would follow in the footsteps of the United States if only America took the lead, as “a climate change fable.”54 Needless to say, the hard-hitting stance of the Chinese delegation at the Copenhagen conference and their disrespectful treatment of President Barack Obama55 appear to have corroborated the warnings issued by the Heritage Foundation’s climate change experts. In the context of the economic difficulties faced by the American economy since 2008 and in light of the strong Chinese economy, it is at the very least problematic to require the United States to engage in serious measures concerning climate change action with no certainty that the Chinese will also be required to do their fair share.

Of particular concern to climate sceptics has also been the defence of American national sovereignty: they contend that an American commitment to a multilateral approach to the climate crisis would inevitably lead to a major loss of US autonomy. Steven Groves contends that under the terms of a Kyoto-style treaty, the United States would be marginalised and exploited by other nations: 

• A committee (or committees) of international experts—whose members may include representatives from overtly hostile nations—will have the final word on whether the US climate record is up to snuff. … Just as ‘developing world’ nations dominate other UN bodies such as the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council, so they will dominate the new international climate bureaucracy and enforcement committees.56

Steven Groves further argues the unconstitutionality of the ratification of the Copenhagen treaty by the US Senate.57 Although his judgement about the constitutionality of the potential ratification of the Copenhagen treaty seems unjustified, his concern about the pitfalls of climate multilateralism cannot be discarded in the same light. Were the US Senate to ratify a Kyoto-style treaty, it would have to ensure governmental protection of American interests.

Various objections raised by climate change sceptics are well-taken. It is not unreasonable, for example, to demand that emerging economies, and especially the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), not be exonerated from the tremendous efforts necessary to deal with climate change, although the priority of climate change deniers appears to be to find arguments to stall any measure to address climate change. While they are quick to point out the futility of unilateral action on the part of the United States, they are also reluctant to endorse multilateral action. Taken together, these two positions give one the impression that taking no action continues to be the best course of action. The reason for this is that in matters of environmental policy, American fiscal conservatives and libertarians have tended to subjugate land health and high environmental standards to the imperatives of economic growth.

Ari Fleischer, then spokesman for the George W. Bush White House, replied to a journalist who asked him in 2001 whether American people ought to make lifestyle adjustments in order to remedy energy challenges, that, to paraphrase George H.W. Bush, the American way of life was not negotiable:

• That's a big no. The President believes that it's an American way of life, and that it should be the goal of policy makers to protect the American way of life. The American way of life is a blessed one. And we have a bounty of resources in this country. What we need to do is make certain that we're able to get those resources in an efficient way, in a way that also emphasizes protecting the environment and conservation, into the hands of consumers so they can make the choices that they want to make as they live their lives day to day.58

In this case, the American way of life is clearly defined as the unlimited and ever expanding ability of all American citizens to indulge in material consumption. This is an aspect of the debate particularly embraced by climate change deniers because it allows them to stand for the creation of wealth and higher standards of living for the American middle class. Senator James Inhofe wrote that his mission was to protect the average consumer from higher prices and regulations in a 2011 article in Human Events.59 Three years earlier the well-heeled and highly influential free-market advocacy group Americans for Prosperity launched a No Climate Tax Pledge which described cap and trade as “a massive tax hike” and required elected officials who endorse it never to vote in favour of a bill creating a tax addressing global warming.60 Only a few days after Barack Obama won a second term, Republican Congressional leaders signed this pledge.61

Jean Isaac, a sociologist at the Heartland Institute, recently endeavoured to drive the point home by characterising cap and trade as “a huge tax on energy”62 in her book Roosters of the Apocalypse, claiming that the implementation of the environmental movement’s agenda would amount to “economic suicide.”63 She also charges American environmentalists with being hell-bent on curtailing high living standards and American prosperity rather than being genuinely willing to protect the environment.64 This theme also looms very large in Steve Milloy’s Green Hell. As far as Milloy is concerned, defeating the environmental movement’s agenda is not merely a way to protect individual freedom, but also a way to prevent environmentalists from liquidating the American way of life altogether: “If our energy supply were threatened, then all our comforts and conveniences that stem from it—in other words, the American way of life—would be endangered as well.”65 The proponents of small government appear to be unmoved by J. Baird Callicott’s caveat that “the human economy is a subset of ecology.”66 Their position is often predicated on the assumption that economic growth must always come first and that protecting the environment can only be ancillary to growth. Even though there is little doubt that such an approach will lead to a dead end, it does make political sense in the short term: branding themselves as the intransigent advocates of the American way of life allows climate deniers to attack their adversaries from a position of strength.

To complicate matters, high-profile advocates of climate action like Al Gore and Barack Obama have sometimes been unclear about the radical social and economic adjustments that addressing the challenges posed by global warming would require. In The Assault on Reason, Al Gore seems to imply that the American dedication to high consumption and economic growth will not need to be called into question, that quite the opposite holds true:

• The opportunity presented by the climate crisis is not only the opportunity for new and better jobs, new technologies, new opportunities for profit, and a higher quality of life. It gives us an opportunity to experience something that few generations ever have the privilege of knowing: a common purpose compelling enough to lift us above our limitations and motivate us to set aside some of the bickering to which as human beings we are naturally vulnerable.67

Barack Obama has also made several declarations to the same effect. Eric Pooley, author of The Climate War, begs to differ. Although he never claims that climate action would wreak economic havoc, he also makes it plain that such a policy would have far-reaching repercussions on the average citizen’s lifestyle, as suggested in his account of congressional debates over cap and trade: “On the day Waxman released his bill, the Senate passed another resolution 89-8, saying that any climate bill must achieve its goals ‘without increasing gasoline or energy prices’—in other words, the Senate was only in favor of a climate bill that didn’t do anything.”68Bill McKibben has also been straightforward about the profound change needed to make a difference:

• To reduce the amount of CO2 pouring into the atmosphere means dramatically reducing the amount of fossil fuel being consumed. Which means changing the underpinning of the planet’s entire economy and altering our most ingrained personal habits. Even under the best scenarios, this will involve something more like a revolution than a technical fix.69

Downplaying the impact of climate action on people’s lives undermines the case made by environmentalists and leaves them open to easy criticism from climate change deniers.

The reluctance to present the implications of a serious government policy on global warming in a more straightforward manner has a great deal to do with misgivings about the public’s response. Raising public awareness about global warming is one thing, and it is hard enough, but convincing the public to change its behavior in order to avert global warming is quite another. In his account of the climate wars, Eric Pooley noted that Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s Chief of Staff during his first two years in office, urged the president not to spend political capital on a climate bill because it did not appeal to the public and it would therefore be a nonstarter in the Senate.70 That is partly the reason why President Obama decided to throw his political weight behind healthcare reform rather than cap and trade in his first term. To be sure it would be unfair to state that President Obama did nothing to address the climate crisis. As Michael Grunwald has documented in his account of Barack Obama’s first term, the President allocated a considerable portion of stimulus money to invest in clean and renewable energies.71 The fact remains that the Obama administration shied away from actively supporting the Waxman-Markey Bill because it was afraid of becoming unpopular. This attitude goes a long way towards accounting for the climate change deniers’ emphasis on the putative costs of climate action. It also begs one crucial question: were Barack Obama and Rahm Emanuel right in thinking that the public would not have accepted the passage of a cap-and-trade bill?

Political scientist James Stimson appears to believe otherwise. Judging from the data collected regarding public attitudes towards environmental regulations, the American people tend to be less disinclined to support serious environmental measures despite their economic repercussions than Rahm Emanuel believes: “The public wanted and still wants environmental improvements, and it wanted it regardless of trade-offs. That’s what the data show.  Given a choice between doing more about the environment and anything else, the environment wins.”72 It should be noted that Stimson’s comment is a general one about American attitudes towards environmental policy, and not about global warming per se. Yet, there is no question that his analysis of public opinion in the United States seems to contradict the assumptions underpinning President Obama’s climate strategy. One may wonder whether Stimson’s evidence proves that the public is environmentally-friendly as a matter of principle but would be actually unwilling to live with the actual consequences of strong environmental regulations, or whether Rahm Emanuel was wrong in assuming that American voters would punish legislators for taking tough action in favor of protecting the climate. Whatever the case may be, in 2009 many members of Congress—both Republicans and Democrats—gave credence to Emanuel’s assessment of the state of public opinion. If in fact most Republicans were dead set against the Waxman-Markey Bill, a significant number of Democrats also proved lukewarm about the bill if not downright hostile to it. The 2012 campaign for re-election to the US Senate by Joe Manchin, a Democratic Senator from coal-rich West Virginia, is a case in point. He captured the attention of the commentariat with his campaign ad “Dead Aim” in which he expressed his rejection of climate legislation by shooting at a piece of paper bearing the inscription “cap and trade.”73 Such clear-cut stands make the possibility of decisive climate action in the next four years very unlikely.

5. CONCLUSION
It is worth bearing in mind that the origins and motives of the American climate change denial movement are highly complex and cannot be merely described as the upshot of an attempt on the part of the energy sector to ward off regulation—although this interpretation sheds light on a large part of the movement. Climate change deniers also illustrate the strong ideological forces that have been shaping Republican politics over the last few decades. The generally accepted scientific explanation for global warming significantly damages the soundness of the ideological pro-market position which the American conservative movement has been embracing since the Reagan era and the end of the Cold War. The central contribution of human activities to the warming of our planet does not destroy the case for a market economy per se; it does, however, put a dent in the validity of the American Right’s faith in the free market as the ultimate solution to all social, economic, and environmental problems. In effect, conceding defeat in the climate war would have devastating repercussions on the intellectual bearings of many conservative officials and activists. So far, for the most part, with a few notable exceptions like former Utah Governor Jon Huntsman and Arizona Senator John McCain, it has been a defeat too hard to swallow. While the scientific case of climate deniers has now been seriously discredited, their economic arguments will certainly continue to carry a lot of weight in American politics in the years to come.

Finally, the resilience of the climate change denial movement in the face of mounting scientific evidence also highlights the weaknesses of their proponents’ own ideology. Broadly defined, the ideology of the proponents of strong climate action points to a willingness to adapt to the limitations imposed on modern civilisations by ecosystems and the biosphere. Yet, their reluctance to be more straightforward about the major cultural and behavioural changes that would inevitably stem from more ecologically-sensitive climate policies demonstrates that the implications of the policies they advocate are not completely developed. In addition, their irenic 74perception of the international community and its potential for well-coordinated, effective climate-related action does not bode well for the future. When it comes to laying out international measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, US proponents of strong climate-related action place a disproportionate burden on developed countries like the United States. Although from a historical and moral perspective this approach may seem justified, global warming remains first and foremost a global problem impossible to solve without the full participation of all countries, including developing countries.

Written by Jean-Daniel Collomb, First Published in European Journal of American Studies, Spring 2014


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NOTES
1  Claude Allègre, L’imposture climatique ou la fausse écologie (Paris: Plon, 2010). Vincent Courtillot, Nouveau Voyage au centre de la Terre (Paris: Odile Jacob 2011).
2  The lobbying activities of the Koch brother (Charles G. Koch and David H. Koch) who own Koch Industries have received considerable media attention over the last few years. For several decades, they have been funding various free-market and libertarian advocacy groups with a view to shaping the decision-making process.
3  Among the most prominent think tanks involved in the climate change denial movement are the American Enterprise Institute, the George C. Marshall Institute, the Heartland Institute, the Cato Institute, and the Heritage Foundation. This list is far from exhaustive.
4 James A. Stimson, Tides of Consent: How Public Opinion Shapes American Politics(Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 45.
5 Craig W. Allin, The Politics of Wilderness Preservation (Fairbanks, AK: The University of Alaska Press, 2008), 3-24.
6  Robert Gottlieb, Forcing the Spring: The Transformation of the American Environmental Movement (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1993), 117-161.
7  See the EPA website for the complete text of the Clean Air Act: http://www.epa.gov/air/caa, last updated February 17, 2012. 
8  See the EPA website for the complete text of the Clean Water Act: http://www.epa.gov/lawsregs/laws/cwa.html, last updated April 16, 2013.
9  See the website of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for the complete text of the Endangered Species Act: http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/laws/esa/, last updated March 7, 2013.
10  See the EPA website for a summary of the history of the EPA: http://www2.epa.gov/aboutepa/epa-history, last updated May 1, 2013. 
11  It is noteworthy that the land management policies sought by the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation bear an uncanny resemblance to those of the era predating federal conservation: Gifford Pinchot and his followers set out to rationalize the way in which natural resources were exploited through scientifically-based management under federal supervision. Pinchot’s autobiography makes it clear that his goal had been to remedy the havoc wreaked by easy access to property, free enterprise, and unregulated use of natural resources. See Gifford Pinchot, Breaking New Ground (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1987), 509. Pinchot understood fully well that federal conservation hinged on extensive public ownership and a reversal of the privatizing process initiated by the Founding Fathers. As the bureaucratic apparatus of federal conservation was reinforced extensively in the 1960s and 1970s, Pinchot’s perspective, the anathema of small-government conservatives, remained the order of the day. According to the Heritage Foundation’s conservation experts, environmental regulations are just one aspect of “the insatiable growth of the regulatory state.” What is more, they argue, active public management of natural resources is bound to be self-defeating, inefficient and inferior to the outcomes produced by market mechanisms. See Romina Boccia, Jack Spencer, and Robert Gordon Jr., “Environmental Conservation Based on Individual Liberty and Economic Freedom,” The Heritage Foundation, Backgrounder n°2758 (January 8, 2013): 2, accessed April 4, 2013, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/01/environmental-conservation-based-on-individual-liberty-and-economic-freedom. Their experts claim that, except for Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks, the federal government would be well-advised to privatize the public domain completely (Ibid., 3). The libertarian Cato Institute has endorsed the same position (Taylor “Environmental Policy,” 463-464).
12  Chris Mooney, The Republican War on Science (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 30-32.
13  Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway, Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming(London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 6.
14  Ibid., 169-215.
15  Al Gore, The Assault on Reason (London: Bloomsbury, 2007), Kindle edition, 199.
16  Al Gore, “Climate of Denial,” Rolling Stone, June 22, 2011, accessed April 30, 2013, http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/climate-of-denial-20110622.
17 Mann has been the unfortunate target of vicious ad hominem attacks by climate change deniers who fault him for the “hockey-stick” graph which highlights the abnormal rise in temperatures in the last decades of the 20th century. See for example http://www.businessinsider.com/michael-mann-describes-life-as-a-target-2013-3, last updated March 27, 2013.
18  Michael E. Mann, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 3-4.
19  Cap and trade is defined as a market-based plan to reduce carbon emissions in which the government sets a cap to limit emissions and issues pollution credits which companies can buy and sell as they wish, the point being that those that pollute less can sell their extra credits to those that pollute more so that overall emissions do not rise above the cap. Ultimately the government imposes fines to companies who do not abide by this framework. Cap and trade was at the heart of the Waxman-Markey Bill that failed in Congress in 2009.
20  “Oil and Gas: Lobbying, 2012,” Center for Responsive Politics, accessed May 2, 2013, http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/lobbying.php?cycle=2012&ind=E01. 
21  Eric Pooley, The Climate Wars: True Believers, Power Brokers, and the Fight to Save the Earth (New York: Hyperion, 2010), 186.
22  “Influence and Lobbying: Oil and Gas,” Center for Responsive Politics, accessed May 2, 2013, http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/indus.php?ind=E01.
23  “Oil and Gas Lobbying, 2012.”
24  “Environment: Lobbying, 2012,” Center for Responsive Politics, accessed May 2, 2013, http://www.opensecrets.org/industries/lobbying.php?cycle=2012&ind=Q11. 
25  Peter J. Jacques, Riley E. Dunlap and Mark Freeman, “The Organization of Denial: Conservative Think Tanks and Environmental Scepticism,” Environmental Politics 17.3 (June 2008): 360.
26  Nick Wing, “John Shimkus, GOP Rep. Who Denies Climate Change on Religious Grounds, Could Lead House Environmental Policy,” The Huffington Post, November 13, 2010, accessed April 30, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/11/13/john-shimkus-climate-change_n_782664.html. “An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming,” Cornwall Alliance, accessed April 29, 2013, http://www.cornwallalliance.org/articles/read/an-evangelical-declaration-on-global-warming/.
27  Julie Borowski, “Earth Day Special: Private Property Protects the Environment,” Freedom Works, April 20, 2012, accessed April 4, 2013, http://www.freedomworks.org/blog/jborowski/private-property-protects-environment. Norton Dunlop, “Federalism and Free Markets: The Right Environmental Agenda,” The Heritage Foundation, March 9, 2006, accessed April 29, 2013, http://www.heritage.org/about/speeches/federalism-and-free-markets-the-right-environmental-agenda.
28  Jay Wesley Richards, “The Economy Hits Home: Energy and the Environment” (Washington: The Heritage Foundation, Undated), 14, accessed April 4, 2013, http://thf_media.s3.amazonaws.com/2009/pdf/EconHitsHome_Environment.pdf.
29  Kate Zernike, Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America (New York: Times Books, 2010), 37.
30  Dick Armey and Matt Kibbe, Give Us Liberty: A Tea Party Manifesto (New York: Harper Collins, 2010), 90-91.
31  Ibid., 95-96.
32  J. Baird Callicott, “From the Land Ethic to the Earth Ethic: Aldo Leopold and the Gaia Hypothesis,” in Gaia in Turmoil: Climate Change, Biodepletion, and Earth Ethics in an Age of Crisis, ed. Eileen Crist, H. Bruce Rinker, and Bill McKibben (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2009), 191.
33  Oreskes and Conway, Merchants, 238.
34  See the website of the United States Climate Action Partnership, http://www.us-cap.org/.
35  Michael Gerson, “Climate Change and the Culture War,” The Washington Post, January 17, 2012, accessed April 29, 2013, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/climate-and-the-culture-war/2012/01/16/gIQA6qH63P_story.html.
36  Michael Crichton, State of Fear (New York: Harper Collins, 2009).
37  Michael Crichton, “The Role of Science in Environmental Policy-Making,” US Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works Hearing Statements, October 28, 2005, accessed April 29, 2013, http://epw.senate.gov/hearing_statements.cfm?id=246766.
38  George F. Will, “Global Warming Advocates Ignore the Boulders,” The Washington Post, February 21, 2010, accessed April 30, 2013, http://newstrust.net/stories/853779/toolbar.
39 Steve Milloy, Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing Inc., 2009), 234.
40 Charles Krauthammer, “Carbon Chastity,” The Washington Post, May 30, 2008, accessed April 30, 2013, http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-05-30/opinions/36813249_1_socialism-carbon-chastity-co2into.
41 Neela Barnejee, “Mitt Romney Worked to Combat Climate Change as Governor,” The Los 
Angeles Times, June 13, 2012, accessed April 29, 2013, http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/13/nation/la-na-romney-energy-20120613.
42 Mitt Romney, No Apology: Believe in America (New York: Saint Martin’s Griffin, 2010), 243.
43  Ronald Brownstein, The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed 
Washington and Divided America (New York: Penguin, 2007), 11-13.
44  Naomi Oreskes, “Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” Science 306 (5702): 1686.
45 James Hoggan, Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming(Vancouver: Greystone Books, 2009), 118.
46 Kenneth P. Green, “Not Going Away: America’s Energy Security, Jobs and Climate Challenges,” Statement before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming, December 1, 2010, accessed April 29, 2013, http://www.aei.org/speech/energy-and-the-environment/climate-change/not-going-away-americas-energy-security-jobs-and-climate-challenges/.
47 Indur Goklany, “What to Do About Climate Change,” Cato Institute Policy Analysis609 (February 2008): 3, accessed April 4, 2013, http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa-609.pdf.Patrick J. Michaels, “Global Warming and Climate Change,” in Cato Handbook for Policymakers, 7thed.,ed. David Boaz (Washington, DC: Cato Institute, 2009), 475. Eric A. Posner and Cass R. Sumstein, “Global Warming and Social Justice,” Regulation 31.1 (Spring 2008): 19, accessed April 4, 2013, http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/regulation/2008/2/v31n1-3.pdf.
48  Sallie James, “A Harsh Climate for Trade: How Climate Change Proposals Threaten Global Commerce,” Trade Policy Analysis 41 (September 2009): 4, accessed April 4, 2013, http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/tpa-041.pdf.
49  Derrick Morgan, “A Carbon Tax Would Harm US Competitiveness and Low-Income Americans Without Helping the Environment,” The Heritage Foundation, Backgrounder n°2720 (August 21, 2012), 4, accessed July 23, 2013, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2012/08/a-carbon-tax-would-harm-us-competitiveness-and-low-income-americans-without-helping-the-environment. 
50  Ibid., 5.
51 Nicolas Loris and Brett D. Schaefer, “Climate Change: How the United States Should Lead,” The Heritage Foundation, Issue Brief n°3841 (January 24, 2013), accessed April 4, 2013, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/01/climate-change-how-the-us-should-lead.
52  Steven Groves, “The ‘Kyoto II’ Climate Change Treaty: Implications for American Sovereignty,” The Heritage Foundation, Copenhagen Consequences, Analysis of the 2009 Copenhagen UN Climate Change Conference n°5 (November 17, 2009), 3, accessed July 23, 2013, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/11/the-kyoto-ii-climate-change-treaty-implications-for-american-sovereignty. 
53  Steven Groves, “National Sovereignty May Melt at Climate Conference,” The Heritage Foundation, Commentary (December 4, 2009), accessed July 23, 2013, http://www.heritage.org/research/commentary/2009/12/national-sovereignty-may-melt-at-climate-conference. 
54  Derek Scissors, “China Will Follow the United States: A Climate Change Fable,” The Heritage Foundation, WebMemo n°2327 (March 5, 2009), 1, accessed July 23, 2013, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2009/03/china-will-follow-the-us-a-climate-change-fable. 
55  Pooley, Climate, 429-431.
56  Groves, “National Sovereignty”.
57  Steven Groves, “Why Does Sovereignty Matter to America?,” The Heritage Foundation, Understanding America, 2010, 7-8, accessed July 23, 2013, http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2010/12/why-does-sovereignty-matter-to-america. 
58  Ari Fleischer, “Press Briefing,” May 7, 2001, accessed April 29, 2013, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/briefings/20010507.html.
59 James Inhofe, “Energy Tax Prevention Act: The Only End to Cap and Trade,” Human Events, March 28, 2011, accessed April 29, 2013, http://www.humanevents.com/2011/03/28/energy-tax-prevention-act-the-only-end-to-cap-and-trade/.
60  “No Climate Tax,” Americans for Prosperity, accessed May 2, 2013, http://www.noclimatetax.com/. 
61 Ben Geman, “House GOP Leaders Pledge to Oppose Climate Tax,” The Hill, November 15, 2012, accessed April 29, 2013, http://thehill.com/blogs/e2-wire/e2-wire/268289-house-gop-leaders-pledge-to-oppose-climate-tax.
62  Rael Jean Isaac, Roosters of the Apocalypse (Chicago: The Heartland Institute, 2012), 26.
63  Ibid., 2.
64  Ibid., 41.
65  Milloy, Green Hell, 33.
66  J. Baird Callicott, “5 Questions,” in Sustainability Ethics, ed. Ryne Raffaelle, Wade Robinson, and Evan Selinger (Copenhagen: Automatic Press/VIP, 2010), 62.
67  Gore, Assault, 214.
68  Pooley, Climate, 349.
69  Bill McKibben, “Climate of Denial,” Mother Jones, May/June 2005, accessed April 30, 2013, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2005/05/climate-denial.
70  Pooley, Climate, 360.
71  Michael Grunwald, The New New Deal (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2012), 352-379.
72  Stimson, Tides, 44.
73  “Dead Aim: Joe Manchin for West Virginia,” accessed May 2, 2013, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIJORBRpOPM.

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