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We
can fix climate change, but only if we refuse to abandon hope
Zoe Williams
Monday 14 November
2016 06.00 GMT
New discoveries are
being made and solutions found, and each hopeful action will help
stop the planet burning. Let’s defy the pessimists and the deniers
When it looked like
the news couldn’t get any worse, it did: worse in a way that
dwarfed our petty elections and clueless, pendulum analyses, worse in
a way that dusted the present with the irrelevance of history. In the
journal Science Advances, five of the world’s most eminent
climatologists warned of the possibility that warming may be
significantly worse than we thought. Previous consensus was that the
Earth’s average temperature would go up by between 2.6C -
life-altering but manageable - and 4.8C - cataclysmic. Now, the range
suggested by one projection goes up to 7.4C, which is “game over”
by the 22nd century.
It relates to the US
because their incoming president has promised actively, determinedly
to bring about the worst-case scenario, acting on the now familiar,
pre-enlightenment logic that because it’s beyond the limits of his
intellect to comprehend it, climate change doesn’t exist. But it
relates to, or rather clarifies, things on a deeper level.
Rational American
citizens are, post-Trump, going through the same grief trajectory as
many of us did after Brexit: the debate is all fierce conjecture
about how they lost, whom they failed to listen to, whose anger had
been ignored and by which people for how many decades. But underneath
that is a profound crisis of civic engagement – a deep, agonising
question: what is the point? If reason doesn’t matter, if truth
doesn’t, if solidarity is for wimps, if experts are charlatans,
what’s the point of getting involved in this circus?
Paul Krugman
identifies it as a creed of quietism, conceding: “It’s definitely
tempting to conclude that the world is going to hell, but that
there’s nothing you can do about it, so why not just make your own
garden grow?” Ultimately, he chooses engagement to save the soul:
“I don’t see how you can hang on to your own self-respect unless
you’re willing to stand up for the truth.” The American
journalist Nancy LeTourneau took it one step further and tried to
find a positive in the powerlessness, via Gandhi: “Whatever you do
in life will be insignificant, but it’s very important that you do
it.”
Patriotism,
self-respect, for the sake of your neighbours, for the good of your
children: these are all credible and decent reasons to carry on
fighting the hard right even when it knocks over your strongest
arguments with a casual breath. But the urgency of the climate crisis
is a better one. Authoritarians, “strongmen”, fascists: whatever
you call the figureheads of the new right, you know one thing; they
are never good stewards of the Earth. To accept this political order
as a desperately sad but immovable new normal means accepting that
the Earth will burn and there’s nothing we can do. This cannot be
borne.
In practical terms,
this means picking winnable fights, showing solidarity, and being
visible. I can’t do very much about a country not my own and its
adherence to the Paris treaty, but I can join a 10:10 action on the
UK government’s stance on wind energy. You can’t do very much
about oil exploration in Alaska, but you possibly can do something
about keeping the gas in the rocks of the Ribble Valley. Capitalise
on victory: there is no more buoying story I can think of than that
the Balcolmbe fracking protest turned into a green-lit solar farm.
When the world gets its first solar-powered transport network
(Santiago), when a country runs for four days entirely on renewables
(Portugal), celebrate. If there’s a synchronised global march for
the climate, go to it: there has always been a tendency to write mass
environmental protests off as self-indulgence, pointless by
definition because their participants will go back the very next day
to their fossil-fuelled lives. Intolerance of imperfection is fatally
corrosive to any movement, but to environmentalism most of all. It is
not possible to be perfectly green, yet you can be a vivid green by
turning up.
This has been the
year the liberals lost every argument. Explanations range from “they
lost because they were wrong all along” to “the right always
prospers from economic hardship”, but there is a growing consensus
around one thing. We remain quite good at interpreting data, pointing
out incoherence, making sarcastic remarks. But we lost the ability to
make a bold, ambitious, sincere and plausible case for a better
future, settling instead for a future that wasn’t worse. This has
been the case across Europe and the US. It cannot be blamed on
British politicians, singly or en masse. Its global scope has led
many to look for the cause in global trends: financialisation,
corporate greed – things that, for brevity, we class as
neoliberalism.
Optimism accrues
around each hopeful action, each small victory, until it becomes
obvious that it is the driving force
I wonder whether the
answer is something much simpler: we stopped making the case for hope
when we stopped feeling hopeful. The spectre of climate change, much
more influential on the left than on even the sensible right, loomed
so large that we - reasonably enough - began to fear the future, at
the same time losing confidence in our collective ability to do
anything but mess stuff up. The pessimism infected our political
language, left it pale and limp. But it didn’t actually halt
progress: discoveries were made and solutions found. We have, in
likelihood, the technical expertise to halt emissions forever.
Between electric cars and solar glass, between wind power and
cross-continental supergrids, we have amassed enough sheer ingenuity
to fix the unfixable. The only obstacle – granted, it’s a
significant one – is a post-truth politics that would prefer to
pretend there’s nothing to fix.
Optimism is not
something you can decide to rediscover; nor can you fake it with
rhetoric. It’s not something one really good leader can bestow. It
accrues around each hopeful action, each small victory, until it
becomes obvious that it is the driving force.
Many of us frame our
interest in the environment as a care for our children or
grandchildren, as if a visceral love of nature had to have a
self-interested root to make sense. It doesn’t. Senselessness would
be to try to live and find meaning elsewhere, having put the
preciousness of our habitat to one side.
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Trump
could reverse 'dramatic' progress on clean energy, experts fear
With
solar capacity up 577% since 2011 and wind energy surging, Trump’s
pledges to abolish clean energy measures could have ‘major
consequences’
Oliver Milman
Monday 14 November
2016 18.56 GMT
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/nov/14/clean-energy-donald-trump-climate-policies-reversals
A huge shift to
clean energy is under way in the US but the election of Donald Trump
as president means progress could be reversed unless cities and
states do more, energy experts have warned.
Installed wind
capacity has grown by more than 40% in the US since 2011, according
to the Georgetown Climate Center, with solar capacity ballooning by
577%.
The US Energy
Information Agency has said new coal-fired power plants are “not
economically competitive with renewables and other generation
sources”, with existing facilities soon to come under pressure from
clean energy.
Trump’s victory,
however, threatens this trend, with the president-elect promising to
abolish the Clean Power Plan, cancel all federal money for clean
energy development and “unleash an energy revolution” by opening
large areas to coal, oil and gas interests.
“Elections matter
and who Donald Trump appoints to key positions at the Environmental
Protection Agency and Department of Energy, as well as the future of
incentive programs, will have major consequences,” said Vicki
Arroyo, executive director of the Georgetown Climate Center.
“When George W
Bush took the White House we saw California and mid-Atlantic and New
England states step up and create cap-and-trade systems and reduce
emissions.
“It’s important
to have federal policy but we may well be back into the cycle of
states and cities, who see the consequences of climate change every
day, stepping up to take leadership.”
Analysis of 19
states by the Georgetown Climate Center found there was a “dramatic
shift” to clean energy under way, driven by concerns over climate
change or simple economics.
While California has
imposed a cap-and-trade system for greenhouse gases along with steep
emissions-reduction targets, more conservative states are also
embracing a shift to renewable energy.
Tennessee has
slashed its emissions from electricity by 34% since 2005 and has
spent millions of dollars expanding clean energy and battery storage
to state buildings and low-income households.
Louisiana, a hub for
the petrochemical industry, has cut its emissions and provided tax
breaks for renewable energy projects. Iowa, South Dakota and Kansas
are the three largest generators of wind energy in the union.
Renewable energy has
been spurred by federal tax incentives for wind and solar as well as
the plummeting cost of turbines and solar panels. Global market
forces, which have hurt the coal and oil industries, have also opened
the way for natural gas and, to a lesser degree, renewables.
The Energy
Information Administration’s projected North American share of
energy generation from renewable and nuclear sources. Photograph: US
Energy Information Administration, Annual Energy Outlook 2016
Reference case, International Energy Outlook 2016
Despite these
trends, Trump has called for “American energy independence” and
the elimination of clean energy programs that have no “measurable
effect on the Earth’s climate”.
The next president
has questioned the reality of human-caused global warming and is
considering a number of fossil fuel executives and climate change
deniers for key administration posts.
The US is already on
track to miss its emission-reduction targets. However, renewable
energy advocates believe the sector has momentum that may not be
completely reversed.
“There are red
states and blue states prioritizing renewables, sometimes for climate
change and sometimes around job creation,” said Arroyo.
“Federal policy
has catalyzed action and market stability is important. It’s easier
to tear things down than build policy but many people are wondering
how those coal jobs will return given the market changes already
under way.”
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