Hi everyone, I want to hear from you! This is about doing what’s necessary NOT what’s doable. Let’s pretend you’re the final decision maker at COP26. You have full authority. You have access to trillions of dollars. You’re being guided by the science and not fossil fuel companies or billionaires. Promises of future technology are great but there needs to be an immediate reduction in emissions in order to buy time to
I've been communicating with a Facebook group about the emerging field of climate change education. It came to my attention that a resource published by a prominent Alberta environmental education group ends with logos and statements from six or seven oil companies, and suggests getting students busy "acting" on climate change, as (they claim) clearly decades of trying to give people knowledge hasn't worked to get them to reduce their carbon footprints. Some more digging found three other educational groups with direct oil funding, RBC funding or industry-related inputs. I also became aware that the term "fossil fuels" is absent from any teaching "framing." Sidestep to the latest IPCC science report (AR6, August 2021), where the words "fossil fuels" are not used in the Summary for Policymakers (SPM), which makes it impossible to refer to any sectors - or even economies - that use them. Fossil fuels is not the subject of any sentence to describe the current climate crisis. Only "emissions" and "gases" and "pollutants" are blamed, all of them simply produced by non-categoriezed "humans." Aha! We're not allowed to say "fossil fuels" in education as they aren't at the COP! And the oil companies are moving in on the new field of climate change education to rally the troops, sound sympathetic and (now) in agreement with the scientific consensus, and deflect everyone's guilty attention to his or her "carbon footprint" onto personal action. Meanwhile, we hear (https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/worlds-governments-must-wind-down-fossil-fuel-production-6-year) we must drastically reduce/get off fossil fuels to have a change at staying below 2C. Interesting that no one is teaching the kids that fact. That's the one that needs to be avoided at all cost by the world's biggest and richest industry, it appears. We need to say "fossil fuels" of we're going to be able to tackle this problem together. This is worth writing about. (The same IPCC Science AR6 "full report" puts fossil fuels as being responsible for 86% (plus or minus 14 points) of the last decade's warming. Not mentioned to the policymakers.)
I'm not sure how blue-sky or entirely plausible you wanted the answers to be, so take this with a grain of salt:
The ideas of a carbon tax or cap and trade were flawed from the outset as they allowed industries to game the systems and because they focussed on the carbon rather than the means by which the carbon was being created. The focus needs to instead be on the resources being depleted that lead to greenhouse gas emissions, as well as water tables and biodiversity. Assign a value to all those externalities that polluting corporations have used or impacted without paying, both inputs and outputs, from the water table and fuel inputs to carbon and pollutant outputs, as well as the on-flow effects of these.
Unite all of the national and international bodies that currently give due weight to climate change (and that includes the US military*) and, with them, demand that all of the world's natural resources be assigned governing bodies with full legally binding power under international law. The role of these bodies is to charge companies for resource use, commensurate with the impact of that resource's depletion and the resultant greenhouse gas emissions. Industries with long lead times will have time to divest and diversify, but much of the R&D has been done and been suppressed or is within current capabilities. Industries with higher impact will have much higher costs associated with failure to change.
In the case of the oil industry, for example, set an ambitious but realistic target for change to the extraction of minerals associated with battery technology and/or the manufacture of hydrogen and other alternative fuels and/or carbon capture and sequestration technologies, and facilitate this transition by assigning costs to failure:
Are you still extracting oil at that well at the end of this year? $1 million fine.
Are you still extracting oil at that well at the end of next year? $1 billion fine.
And the year after that? $10 billion fine.
Once there is an actual cost associated with the use of natural resources, rather than a theorized, some way off in the future cost to other people, then the cost-benefit analysis tips markedly in the favour of increased R&D and rapid deployment.
These bodies should also be tasked with actually facilitating the changes required. They can do this by working with these companies and corporations, providing current research and the individuals that can apply that research.
To note: the idea is to have these bodies focussing on small enough resources or regions that they are manageable and that there are enough such bodies that 'capture' by vested interests is not possible. So, for example, in a given region, there would be separate bodies for the water table, biodiversity, local human health and well-being and so on.
I had planned to sit down and write this over the weekend, but have just sat down and done it now, over the space of 20 minutes or so, so please excuse the scattered nature of the above.
Add to the behaviour change for companies and corporations (your ideas) and create education programmes that reach every individual on planet earth so that we, the people, are all aware of what we use and why we use it and how we can potentially use much less!! End result? Blue skies for all people and the planet as a whole, all round!!!
Unfortunately, human psychology doesn't support that utopian view. There is a relatively small percentage of people that will actively make notable changes to their lifestyle to reduce their climate impact. Everyone else needs to be incentivized, either by access to technologies that make their lives easier, by being rewarded for making the change or by becoming aware that everyone else is doing it and they are the odd ones out. It will be up to the activists for quite some time to come, I'm afraid.
Oh, absolutely. At a personal level, talking about and exhibiting better behaviour is crucial, I'm just saying that, at an institutional level, there are better tactics and strategies to deploy.
Hi Alan, thanks for sharing your thoughts. Yes...it's blue sky but that's OK...it beats the drivel we get from every government on the planet. We need real solutions that put an end to climate destroying activities now. There's no upside to avoiding the truth.
Here is a link to something positive that is happening right now - lasting all week. World conference on solutions!!! So...... Time to stop moaning about the problem and do something. Hope you like it xxx First half hour looks AMAZING!!! https://hopin.com/events/daring-cities-2021
A whole New System is what is needed!! And it can be found in Doughnut Economics!! Look it up!! Spread the word!! ASAP!!! Some (very advanced?? very brave?? very sensible??) places are considering it: Amsterdam; Costa Rica; parts of Berlin; parts of England; New Zealand is looking. Loads of people have heard of it and if you read the book or watch some videos, you will find technical details about why we have had GDP (leading to the 0.0001% and Capitalism etc) for so long and why even 'they' would be able and maybe even willing to change. Here is a short link to a video clip (6 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ziw-wK03TSw&t=134s and here is a longer one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_WPzDVpKvw. Here is a solution rather than just plain criticism. Spread the word. Please. ASAP!!! Here is a tool we can use to challenge COP26!! It may well work!!!
Doughnut economics is a wonderful idea and if we could implement it the world would be much much better BUT isn't this system just placed on top of the foundation of the broken capitalist system?
Not sure but - I just see it as a solution rather than just another moan. It's very flexible too so could be a fresh start whatever it stands on top of.
You say "A culture [of capitalism] that tells us that government is wasteful and corrupt and that you cannot trust them with your money." As a Canadian, perhaps you don't understand how absolutely true this statement is. You mention Musk and other technologists. All are on your list and all buy politicians. Like many of us you see the manipulations on the right by giant corporations. Don't miss the same thing on the left. Who do you think is pushing Biden to put the high tech agenda into his infrastructure bills - a couple trillion to that set of billionaires.
You can't trust corporate America or the US financial system manipulators. But even less trustworthy are the US politicians that they buy.
So sorry, you don't have a viable option at this stage. Bought and paid for governments will NOT be helping us.
See the viable option above (Doughnut Economics - two video clips). The book is fantastic too. And loads of places are realising it so - it just needs us, the people, to spread the word - and the actions, too xxx Meanwhile, watch where you put your money. If all the people stopped buying McDonalds and Coca Cola and Nestle products and if people only put their money into banks that have ethical policies, we would create change!! We do actually have some people power!! We just have to get educated and take action!!
It's not that easy to stop using a particular brand...and even if you do the next brand is just as bad...check out this chart! https://imgur.com/wN8Vhfr
Also - funny, I just checked the link: I've been fighting Nestle for 50 years (after I heard they were dropping powdered milk on African countries knowing that the people would use rubbish water to mix it. Last week saw a prog on Coca Cola saying that one of the South American countries is totally addicted to their poison. Why is that allowed? Gosh so many things are wrong but - if one person can avoid it all (you do have to ckeck every label etc) then everyone can. We just have to educate teh folks!! My policy - the one that I share and teach is "When shoppping, if it has a label, put it back"!! All those corporations on that link - we could put them out of business!!
It's not that easy? Why not? I'm in the UK so for me, for example, I noticed Tesco was out of order so I stopped going there. I haven't stepped in a Tesco for over 30 years!! The same with McDonalds. Never drink coke or any other fizzy drink. As for supermarkets, you could say that other supermarkets are as bad but actually, they are not. And, when I realised that M&S contribute towards weapons in Israel, I stopped going there too. In fact, as time goes by, I have vegetables delivered from Oddbox (who buy veg that would be ploughed back into the land) and not much else! No wheat, no dairy, meat only occasionally, (from conscious caring farmers) etc.You can choose (and I do) to use a bank that is known to be ethically great. It's a way of life adn actually, once you start on the path, it IS easy! Maybe try it and see. If only loads of people did it we really could make a diference!!
I could, but I think we each need to do the exercise of looking at the corruption in people that tend to agree with us. It's easy for those of us who are educated liberals to see the corruption on the big business right.
I challenge EVERY reader here to look for the corruption and influence peddling that goes on among the political and business people you agree with. Do the exercise!
Just an example of NOT full disclosure. See if you can find the amount of electricity used by FB server farms or the electrical usage of your favorite bitcoin... Then see if you can find if any of that power comes from non-carbon sources.
An I'll add that our local environment here in SW WI is about to be destroyed by a utility putting a huge interstate transmission line through farms and wildlife areas. They pretend this will take "green" power from MN/IA to IL. However, right now they are moving fossil fuel power. AND, the area they are trying to destroy (for a guaranteed 10% return) has plenty of local green power (wind and sun). When WI elected a Dem gov, we locals expected the project to be denied. The Democrats went forward with it. Wonder who bought them? Maybe the utilities getting a 10% return on an unneeded investment?
Look for the influence peddlers EVERYWHERE (at least in the US).
I've been communicating with a Facebook group about the emerging field of climate change education. It came to my attention that a resource published by a prominent Alberta environmental education group ends with logos and statements from six or seven oil companies, and suggests getting students busy "acting" on climate change, as (they claim) clearly decades of trying to give people knowledge hasn't worked to get them to reduce their carbon footprints. Some more digging found three other educational groups with direct oil funding, RBC funding or industry-related inputs. I also became aware that the term "fossil fuels" is absent from any teaching "framing." Sidestep to the latest IPCC science report (AR6, August 2021), where the words "fossil fuels" are not used in the Summary for Policymakers (SPM), which makes it impossible to refer to any sectors - or even economies - that use them. Fossil fuels is not the subject of any sentence to describe the current climate crisis. Only "emissions" and "gases" and "pollutants" are blamed, all of them simply produced by non-categoriezed "humans." Aha! We're not allowed to say "fossil fuels" in education as they aren't at the COP! And the oil companies are moving in on the new field of climate change education to rally the troops, sound sympathetic and (now) in agreement with the scientific consensus, and deflect everyone's guilty attention to his or her "carbon footprint" onto personal action. Meanwhile, we hear (https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/press-release/worlds-governments-must-wind-down-fossil-fuel-production-6-year) we must drastically reduce/get off fossil fuels to have a change at staying below 2C. Interesting that no one is teaching the kids that fact. That's the one that needs to be avoided at all cost by the world's biggest and richest industry, it appears. We need to say "fossil fuels" of we're going to be able to tackle this problem together. This is worth writing about. (The same IPCC Science AR6 "full report" puts fossil fuels as being responsible for 86% (plus or minus 14 points) of the last decade's warming. Not mentioned to the policymakers.)
I'm not sure how blue-sky or entirely plausible you wanted the answers to be, so take this with a grain of salt:
The ideas of a carbon tax or cap and trade were flawed from the outset as they allowed industries to game the systems and because they focussed on the carbon rather than the means by which the carbon was being created. The focus needs to instead be on the resources being depleted that lead to greenhouse gas emissions, as well as water tables and biodiversity. Assign a value to all those externalities that polluting corporations have used or impacted without paying, both inputs and outputs, from the water table and fuel inputs to carbon and pollutant outputs, as well as the on-flow effects of these.
Unite all of the national and international bodies that currently give due weight to climate change (and that includes the US military*) and, with them, demand that all of the world's natural resources be assigned governing bodies with full legally binding power under international law. The role of these bodies is to charge companies for resource use, commensurate with the impact of that resource's depletion and the resultant greenhouse gas emissions. Industries with long lead times will have time to divest and diversify, but much of the R&D has been done and been suppressed or is within current capabilities. Industries with higher impact will have much higher costs associated with failure to change.
In the case of the oil industry, for example, set an ambitious but realistic target for change to the extraction of minerals associated with battery technology and/or the manufacture of hydrogen and other alternative fuels and/or carbon capture and sequestration technologies, and facilitate this transition by assigning costs to failure:
Are you still extracting oil at that well at the end of this year? $1 million fine.
Are you still extracting oil at that well at the end of next year? $1 billion fine.
And the year after that? $10 billion fine.
Once there is an actual cost associated with the use of natural resources, rather than a theorized, some way off in the future cost to other people, then the cost-benefit analysis tips markedly in the favour of increased R&D and rapid deployment.
These bodies should also be tasked with actually facilitating the changes required. They can do this by working with these companies and corporations, providing current research and the individuals that can apply that research.
To note: the idea is to have these bodies focussing on small enough resources or regions that they are manageable and that there are enough such bodies that 'capture' by vested interests is not possible. So, for example, in a given region, there would be separate bodies for the water table, biodiversity, local human health and well-being and so on.
I had planned to sit down and write this over the weekend, but have just sat down and done it now, over the space of 20 minutes or so, so please excuse the scattered nature of the above.
*https://www.defensenews.com/pentagon/2021/01/27/climate-change-is-now-a-national-security-priority-for-the-pentagon/
Add to the behaviour change for companies and corporations (your ideas) and create education programmes that reach every individual on planet earth so that we, the people, are all aware of what we use and why we use it and how we can potentially use much less!! End result? Blue skies for all people and the planet as a whole, all round!!!
Unfortunately, human psychology doesn't support that utopian view. There is a relatively small percentage of people that will actively make notable changes to their lifestyle to reduce their climate impact. Everyone else needs to be incentivized, either by access to technologies that make their lives easier, by being rewarded for making the change or by becoming aware that everyone else is doing it and they are the odd ones out. It will be up to the activists for quite some time to come, I'm afraid.
Probably true but - I'll keep faith and keep doing it anyway while - educating anyone who crosses my path to become aware as the first step?
Oh, absolutely. At a personal level, talking about and exhibiting better behaviour is crucial, I'm just saying that, at an institutional level, there are better tactics and strategies to deploy.
Hi Alan, thanks for sharing your thoughts. Yes...it's blue sky but that's OK...it beats the drivel we get from every government on the planet. We need real solutions that put an end to climate destroying activities now. There's no upside to avoiding the truth.
Here is a link to something positive that is happening right now - lasting all week. World conference on solutions!!! So...... Time to stop moaning about the problem and do something. Hope you like it xxx First half hour looks AMAZING!!! https://hopin.com/events/daring-cities-2021
A whole New System is what is needed!! And it can be found in Doughnut Economics!! Look it up!! Spread the word!! ASAP!!! Some (very advanced?? very brave?? very sensible??) places are considering it: Amsterdam; Costa Rica; parts of Berlin; parts of England; New Zealand is looking. Loads of people have heard of it and if you read the book or watch some videos, you will find technical details about why we have had GDP (leading to the 0.0001% and Capitalism etc) for so long and why even 'they' would be able and maybe even willing to change. Here is a short link to a video clip (6 minutes) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ziw-wK03TSw&t=134s and here is a longer one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_WPzDVpKvw. Here is a solution rather than just plain criticism. Spread the word. Please. ASAP!!! Here is a tool we can use to challenge COP26!! It may well work!!!
Doughnut economics is a wonderful idea and if we could implement it the world would be much much better BUT isn't this system just placed on top of the foundation of the broken capitalist system?
Not sure but - I just see it as a solution rather than just another moan. It's very flexible too so could be a fresh start whatever it stands on top of.
You say "A culture [of capitalism] that tells us that government is wasteful and corrupt and that you cannot trust them with your money." As a Canadian, perhaps you don't understand how absolutely true this statement is. You mention Musk and other technologists. All are on your list and all buy politicians. Like many of us you see the manipulations on the right by giant corporations. Don't miss the same thing on the left. Who do you think is pushing Biden to put the high tech agenda into his infrastructure bills - a couple trillion to that set of billionaires.
You can't trust corporate America or the US financial system manipulators. But even less trustworthy are the US politicians that they buy.
So sorry, you don't have a viable option at this stage. Bought and paid for governments will NOT be helping us.
See the viable option above (Doughnut Economics - two video clips). The book is fantastic too. And loads of places are realising it so - it just needs us, the people, to spread the word - and the actions, too xxx Meanwhile, watch where you put your money. If all the people stopped buying McDonalds and Coca Cola and Nestle products and if people only put their money into banks that have ethical policies, we would create change!! We do actually have some people power!! We just have to get educated and take action!!
It's not that easy to stop using a particular brand...and even if you do the next brand is just as bad...check out this chart! https://imgur.com/wN8Vhfr
Also - funny, I just checked the link: I've been fighting Nestle for 50 years (after I heard they were dropping powdered milk on African countries knowing that the people would use rubbish water to mix it. Last week saw a prog on Coca Cola saying that one of the South American countries is totally addicted to their poison. Why is that allowed? Gosh so many things are wrong but - if one person can avoid it all (you do have to ckeck every label etc) then everyone can. We just have to educate teh folks!! My policy - the one that I share and teach is "When shoppping, if it has a label, put it back"!! All those corporations on that link - we could put them out of business!!
It's not that easy? Why not? I'm in the UK so for me, for example, I noticed Tesco was out of order so I stopped going there. I haven't stepped in a Tesco for over 30 years!! The same with McDonalds. Never drink coke or any other fizzy drink. As for supermarkets, you could say that other supermarkets are as bad but actually, they are not. And, when I realised that M&S contribute towards weapons in Israel, I stopped going there too. In fact, as time goes by, I have vegetables delivered from Oddbox (who buy veg that would be ploughed back into the land) and not much else! No wheat, no dairy, meat only occasionally, (from conscious caring farmers) etc.You can choose (and I do) to use a bank that is known to be ethically great. It's a way of life adn actually, once you start on the path, it IS easy! Maybe try it and see. If only loads of people did it we really could make a diference!!
Barbara, thanks for sharing your thoughts. Could you please elaborate who you're referring to on the left?
I could, but I think we each need to do the exercise of looking at the corruption in people that tend to agree with us. It's easy for those of us who are educated liberals to see the corruption on the big business right.
I challenge EVERY reader here to look for the corruption and influence peddling that goes on among the political and business people you agree with. Do the exercise!
Just an example of NOT full disclosure. See if you can find the amount of electricity used by FB server farms or the electrical usage of your favorite bitcoin... Then see if you can find if any of that power comes from non-carbon sources.
An I'll add that our local environment here in SW WI is about to be destroyed by a utility putting a huge interstate transmission line through farms and wildlife areas. They pretend this will take "green" power from MN/IA to IL. However, right now they are moving fossil fuel power. AND, the area they are trying to destroy (for a guaranteed 10% return) has plenty of local green power (wind and sun). When WI elected a Dem gov, we locals expected the project to be denied. The Democrats went forward with it. Wonder who bought them? Maybe the utilities getting a 10% return on an unneeded investment?
Look for the influence peddlers EVERYWHERE (at least in the US).
I agree with you!! It's the system itself that's all wrong!! (And the humans who perpetuate the system are not so cool either!!)