Feb 8th 2011, 20:03 by E.G. | AUSTIN
FIRST of all, I apologise for the slightly inflammatory headline of this post. The fact is that a majority of Americans (58%) do think climate change is a serious problem, according to the January 2011Rasmussen Energy Update, and fully one-third, 33%, "see it as a Very Serious problem." Still, the United States is less exercised about climate change than a lot of countries, and it's one of the few places where you can turn on the television and catch a debate between mainstream figures about whether climate change is even real. Over the weekend, for example, Charles Krauthammer suggested that a belief in global warming has the same epistemological status as a religious belief.
I've been wanting to take a step back and think about why America is a laggard in the fight against climate change. I would posit a handful of explanations:
Psychological: The consequences of climate change are too awful to contemplate. Therefore, we're denying the issue, as we used to deny monsters in the room by hiding under the blanket. If you don't look at it, it can't look at you.
Economic: The costs of a large-scale effort to fight global warming are too steep to bear. Therefore, we're trying to ignore the issue, or pretending it doesn't exist, or we believe that the economy (including development) is more important.
Political: The fact that Democrats are always hammering on about climate change and Republicans aren't suggests that this is a political issue, not a scientific one. This creates a feedback loop: if climate change were real, why is it so polarising? Because it's so polarising, it must be slightly suspicious.
Epistemological: Why should we believe in climate change? Where's the evidence? All we know is what scientists say, and scientists are sometimes wrong. And don't even get me started on Al Gore.
Metaphysical: God isn't going to let millions of people die in an epic drought.
I suspect the metaphysical denial is quite rare—but given the comparative religiosity of American culture and the stereotypes thereof, it gets a lot of air time. It is also the least valid of the reasons for denial (partly because in the given system, God obviously does let people die). The other explanations are more common. In the Rasmussen poll, for example, a plurality of respondents said that "there is a conflict between environmental protection and economic growth."
I would add here that America's recalcitrance relative to the rest of the rich world reflects two things about the United States. The first is that America consumes a lot of the world's resources. That means America would incur heavier costs than a small European state from a large-scale effort to fight climate change; disproportionate to its size, but proportionate to its (disproportionate) energy use. The second is that America is big enough that its agreement is probably necessary and perhaps even sufficient for a serious climate fight. In a sense, some international environmental rhetoric could be free riding on American inaction. Neither of these are excuses, just explanatory factors.
The political and epistemological reasons are pronounced in America and are interrelated. Again, in keeping with the perception that a lot of Americans are religious whackos, there is a perception that this is a country that doesn't believe in science. But the R&D spending would suggest otherwise. It may be that Americans are unusually willing to break rank with scientific authority—as seen in the occasional flare-ups of vaccine scepticism—but it's not a thoroughgoing animus. (Have dinner with a pregnant woman sometime, and see what I mean.) Similarly, there's not some kind of secret American campaign against the environment. In the 1960s the United States played a leading role in starting the modern environmental movement. It was America, in fact, that saved a lot of whales.
Today, however, there seems to be a particular hostility to climate scientists among a large minority of Americans. The polarisation around the issue, which tends to fall on partisan lines, creates a feedback loop: "If this is a Very Serious problem, why are people still arguing about it?" a Republican would ask. A Democrat, fielding that question, would feel simultaneously condescending and embattled. And they dig their holes a little deeper.
So this is yet another of those cases where America needs to build some ladders to help everyone climb out. How to go about this? A somewhat constructivist approach to building public concern would be to build up the issue-linkage between climate change and the search for renewable-energy sources. This would help mitigate the economic and psychological concerns (the latter because it's easier to accept a problem exists if you have a way of addressing it.) And renewable energy doesn't have the political or epistemological baggage of climate change. As my colleague
said yesterday, "The idea that sustainable-resource use and renewable energy is some kind of socialist hippy hobby is incredibly naive and frivolous, and extremely damaging to the American economy." I agree, and this is an area where M.S. could make common cause with conservatives. Even people who don't believe in climate change, even here in Darkest Texas, believe in renewable-energy companies. Nearly two-thirds, again according to Rasmussen, say that renewables are a better investment for America than fossil fuels.
(Photo credit: AFP)
Feb 9th 2011, 22:18 by E.M. | WASHINGTON, DC
MY COLLEAGUES have been discussing climate change, and it's worth noting that global warming used to be the subject of genuine political debate in Washington as well. Al Gore made a movie about it. Barack Obama vowed to put a stop to it (indeed, he claimed that he had begun to lower sea levels simply by being nominated for the presidency). Congress pored over a series of detailed laws designed to tackle it. The House of Representatives even passed one.
No longer. The bill the House passed made no headway in the Senate, even with a filibuster-proof Democratic majority. Now that the Democrats have lost the House and seen their majority shrink in the Senate, the chances of an emissions-cutting measure getting through Congress are nil. Indeed, Republicans want to move in the opposite direction, and strip the EPA of its authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. But the chances of that succeeding are also close to zero, since the president has promised to veto any such move.
It should be of little surprise, then, that the hearing held today by the House’s Energy and Commerce Committee on reining in the EPA was more about grandstanding than about legislating. A series of Republicans asked Lisa Jackson (pictured), the head of the EPA, whether she was aware of how many jobs she was killing by raising energy prices and whether she was happy about it. A series of Democrats asked Mrs Jackson whether she was aware of how many lives she was saving by fighting pollution, and whether it would be a good idea to let those people die. Mrs Jackson, the supposed star witness, had only a minor role in it all.
Committee hearings are always like this. After smarmy exchanges about how delighted they are to be speaking to one another, congressmen ask grotesquely biased “Gotcha!” questions that the witnesses, usually harried officials, do their best not to respond to in a meaningful fashion. There are a lot of requests, almost always ignored, for yes or no answers. Mrs Jackson, for example, expended considerable time and effort not saying that greenhouse-gas regulation would raise energy prices and thus harm the economy.
Sometimes, the pretence of give-and-take is abandoned altogether. This morning, Joe “Sorry BP” Barton, a Republican from Texas, asked a laughably leading question, requested a yes or no answer, and then—before receiving one—told Mrs Jackson, “The answer is no.” When she asked, with faux naivety, whether Mr Barton wanted her to answer the question herself or comment on his remarks, he replied with admirable honesty that he didn’t.
What was surprising, given how long Congress has debated this subject, is how incompetent the grandstanding was. I’m reconciled to the fact that America’s congressmen are not all silver-tongued Ciceros. Indeed, most of them seem to have trouble following a train of thought, finishing a sentence or getting noun and verb to agree. Several appeared not to know that the heinous acts they were complaining about were committed not by Mrs Jackson and her staff, but by the courts, or by the administration of George W. Bush. One confused cap-and-trade schemes to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions with the more rigid administrative approach used by the EPA, giving Mrs Jackson a let-out from an otherwise awkward question. Another did not seem to know that Congress had the power to overturn executive regulations. A third proudly declared the he was an engineer, and so knew a thing or two about science, only to have Mrs Jackson retort that she too was an engineer (oops!), and so knew the importance of deferring to experts in a given field. A fourth made a fart joke, and then proudly declared, “That’s humour!”
But in addition to garbled syntax, muddled arguments and childish behaviour, the Republican attack-dogs were surprisingly off-message (the Democrats shared all these faults too, but this wasn’t their show). Some argued that global warming wasn’t proven, others that the EPA was misinterpreting the Clean Air Act (something the Supreme Court has cleared it of) and yet others that all the EPA’s efforts to control pollution of any sort since its creation in 1970 had placed an intolerable burden on business. A representative from Oregon starting banging on about the treatment of wood-based biomass in a bill that has already been shelved. Another Republican seemed to be arguing that the EPA should adopt more stringent regulations than it has proposed—not a popular idea within the party.
Amid all this confusion, the Republicans’ best argument—that the costs of regulating greenhouse gases are likely to outweigh the benefits in the short term, at least—got lost. The White House is said to be contemplating postponing the EPA’s regulatory drive until after next year’s election, for fear that the Republicans will denounce it as “job-killing” on the campaign trail. And so, doubtless, they will. But if today’s hearing is anything to go by, they are also likely to sully that message with a lot of extreme—and extremely puerile—talk.
(Photo credit: Bloomberg News)
LA ESCRITORA DEL MOVIMIENTO ANTIGLOBALIZACION
Autora de diversos libros que cuestionan el sistema económico capitalista, criticó ayer en el Foro Social Mundial de Dakar las soluciones tecnológicas al calentamiento global.
Por Benoit Cros
Desde Dakar
A pesar del escepticismo inicial, el cambio climático causado por los gases invernaderos es hoy una realidad reconocida por la mayoría de la población mundial. Tan así es, que para los antiglobalización el problema no es convencer a la gente sino ofrecer soluciones alternativas para impedirlo. Naomi Klein, autora de diversos libros que cuestionan el sistema económico capitalista, criticó ayer en el Foro Social Mundial de Dakar las soluciones tecnológicas al calentamiento global que se han ido proponiendo a lo largo de los últimos años.
La escritora canadiense considera que se debe acabar con la idea de que la tecnología puede solucionar todo. “Existe la creencia de que podemos dominar la naturaleza y superar cualquier límite”, apuntó. Klein se refirió específicamente a tecnologías como la geoingeniería. Esta especialidad propone diversos dispositivos, como “sombrillas solares”, para limitar la radiación solar, o tecnologías que modifican las nubes para que reflejen más rayos solares hacia el espacio. “La geoingeniería es espantosa”, dijo. “Los científicos que abogan por la geoingeniería no saben hacia dónde nos lleva esto”. “Aunque parezca ciencia-ficción, no lo es, está pasando realmente”, señaló Klein, quien también consideró que se notó cierta “aceleración” de este tipo de ideas desde la cumbre climática de Copenhague, en 2009. “Hay una relación entre el fracaso político de esta cumbre y esta aceleración”, añadió.
El año pasado, los firmantes del Convenio sobre la Diversidad Biológica acordaron establecer una moratoria sobre este tipo de tecnologías “hasta que haya una base científica sobre la cual justificar tales actividades”. Sin embargo, los Estados Unidos son el único país que no ha ratificado todavía este convenio. Naomi Klein se refirió al american way of life que se extendió por todo el mundo a través de la globalización y que está basado en la idea de que “siempre habrá más”. Explicó el mito de la frontera en Estados Unidos. “Pero el mundo no es una frontera sin fin”, aseveró.
Klein explicó que no nos encontramos solamente en una crisis económica y ecológica, sino también en una “crisis del relato”. “Nos cuentan siempre las mismas historias sobre nuestra capacidad de salvar el planeta, nos dicen que no tenemos que lidiar con las consecuencias de nuestros actos ya que siempre habrá una solución”, dijo la activista canadiense. Es la razón por la cual “cuando cuestionamos estas tecnologías, también cuestionamos las estructuras de la sociedad occidental”.
La escritora altermundialista quiso también tener un discurso esperanzador y señaló el ejemplo de Bolivia, “el único país que se opuso al resto durante la Cumbre de Cancún”. Bolivia “ha construido un relato sobre los derechos de la naturaleza”, remarcó Klein. “Nosotros tenemos que reemplazar el relato lineal por un relato circular”, argumentó.
La intervención de Naomi Klein tuvo lugar durante un taller sobre los desafíos presentados por la próxima Conferencia de las Naciones Unidas sobre el desarrollo sostenible, que se hará en Río de Janeiro en 2012, veinte años después de la Cumbre de la Tierra de 1992, que había sido celebrada también en la metrópolis brasileña.
Esta cita seguirá hoy en el centro de atención de los altermundialistas, ya que será objeto de una “asamblea de convergencia”. En estas reuniones se encuentran diversas organizaciones alrededor de un tema con el objetivo de establecer un calendario de movilizaciones. Unas cuarenta asambleas de convergencia están previstas y servirán de preparación a la última asamblea de movimientos sociales que tendrá lugar el último día del Foro.
Durante el taller, Naomi Klein confirmó que está preparando un nuevo libro sobre lo que llama “el acaparamiento de la Tierra”, una manera de ampliar el concepto de “acaparamiento de tierras” practicado por multinacionales en diversas zonas de Africa y América latina. La autora canadiense es conocida por sus dos obras anteriores; No Logo, un ensayo que trata de analizar la influencia de las marcas en la sociedad actual, y La doctrina del shock, donde analiza las condiciones en que el neoliberalismo pudo ser implementado gracias al impacto psicológico causado por desastres naturales o dictaduras militares
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