Climate
skeptics feel the chill in Paris
Summit
negotiators say they’re ignoring the doubters. That’s a change
from the past.
By SARA STEFANINI
AND ANDREW RESTUCCIA 12/8/15, 5:30 AM CET Updated 12/8/15, 6:37 AM
CET
LE BOURGET, France —
It’s not easy being a climate skeptic in Paris these days.
Even countries where
climate change doubters traditionally sat in the upper echelons of
government — Canada, Australia, the United States, Russia —
diplomats have moved beyond questioning global warming to debating
what, and how much, to do about it.
That leaves little
interest in the remaining outliers at the COP21 summit, which is due
to end later this week.
America’s
conservative Heartland Institute drew a crowd of no more than a few
dozen to a Monday event dubbed, “bringing climate realism to
Paris.” Republican Senator Jim Inhofe, the most vocal climate
denier in the U.S. Congress, isn’t expected to attend this year,
after jetting to a string of past United Nation climate summits to
taunt delegates and preach his gospel that global warming is a hoax.
Even the businesses
trying to get in on the climate change action, by touting natural gas
or Saudi Arabian solar power, have been relegated to a separate tent
about a 15-minute walk from the Blue Zone where negotiations are
taking place.
“I don’t know
anyone who is taking them seriously,” Alden Meyer, director of
strategy and policy for the Union of Concerned Scientists and a
long-time COP observer, said of skeptics and deniers.
It’s one thing to
come to the COP21 to debate the way countries make and meet their
voluntary emissions reduction pledges, or whether they adopt carbon
pricing or nuclear energy or other possible solutions, Meyer added.
“But if you want
to come here and deny the problem, you’re not going to get anyone
to hear you out. There’s no delegation here that is denying that
this problem is here and we need to take action,” he said.
That hasn’t
stopped some of the most prominent outliers from dropping by.
Among them is Bjorn
Lomborg, who calls himself a “climate policy skeptic,” rather
than outright denier. Lomborg, a Danish academic, says that global
warming is happening, but argues that the world’s strategy of
reducing greenhouse gas emissions will fail to make a dent, and will
come at a crippling economic cost.
He is a divisive
figure, whose very mention on Twitter draws fierce attacks from
climate and environmental advocates who point to the long list of
studies discrediting his research.
But Lomborg didn’t
come to Paris to influence the negotiations directly. His focus is on
public opinion.
“I meet with a lot
of people that you’d probably think would hate me,” he told
POLITICO, naming a few well-known NGO leaders.
“Of course, my
main point for being here is exactly to make sure that we don’t
just hear the standard, sanitized version of what the climate
negotiations are. So my main purpose is to meet with journalists,”
he said.
Asked if he planned
to meet with government negotiators, he said: “I’ve said hi to
some of them,” and added that their priority is to get an
agreement, regardless of what it says.
“So in some ways
my advice to them would be phenomenally unhelpful inside the
negotiating halls, but it’s phenomenally useful for everyone else
to be reminded ‘Oh, wait, are we actually going down the right
track?’”
‘What the science
says’
A recurring theme
before and during this year’s COP21 summit is that climate change
is irrefutable — and that record-setting heat waves, cyclones,
droughts and floods prove it is already inflicting serious damage.
The U.K.’s Met
Office announced in November that the global temperature had reached
1 degree Celsius above pre-industrial levels this year, for the first
time. Governments agreed at the 2010 summit in Cancun to keep the
temperature rise “to a maximum” of 2 degrees, and adjusted the
goal to “no more than 2 degrees” a year later in Durban.
“Nobody questions
what the science says,” Miguel Arias Cañete, the European Union’s
climate action and energy commissioner, told reporters on Monday. “If
we don’t question what the science says, why don’t we follow the
pathway science gives us?”
That’s a change
from previous COPs. Just before the start of the 2009 Copenhagen
summit, a group of climate change skeptics seized on emails leaked
from the University of East Anglia, which they interpreted as
indicating that scientists were lying about global warming and trying
to cover up a drop in world temperatures. The fuss caused disarray at
the Copenhagen COP, but the claims were later disproved by a number
of scientific organizations.
Still, at the time
the hackers weren’t alone in dismissing the science on global
warming.
Australia’s Tony
Abbott called it “crap” during the first few days of the
Copenhagen summit, before he became prime minister in 2013. Canada’s
former Prime Minister Stephen Harper acknowledged that climate change
was a problem but questioned whether it was caused by carbon dioxide
emissions. Both lost their posts earlier this year to opponents who
are more predisposed to a farther-reaching emissions deal.
Negotiators in Paris
say they’re not paying any attention to the skeptics.
“You will still
have climate deniers. But that number is shrinking in the face of
overwhelming scientific and physical evidence and that’s a good
thing,” James Fletcher, Saint Lucia’s minister for sustainable
development, energy, science and technology, said in an interview. “I
think it’s difficult for these climate skeptics to claim any
legitimacy.”
Wanted: Climate
criminals
Legitimacy was what
the Heartland Institute was looking for on Monday.
While tens of
thousands of government delegates, reporters and observers traveled
to this suburb north of Paris for the eighth day of COP21
negotiations, the institute held its “Day of Examining the Data”
conference in the city center, featuring talks from a string of
climate skeptics and premiering a documentary hosted by one of the
most prominent ones, Marc Morano, a former senior aide to Inhofe.
“People are very
annoyed that we’re even here,” Morano, who has been attending
U.N. climate summits for more than a decade, said in an interview.
“They see us as the turd in the punch bowl. That’s the bottom
line.”
Activists have even
been petitioning to get his COP21 credentials revoked, he said.
Indeed, the campaign group Avaaz has been hanging “Wanted”
posters all over the city, bashing “the seven most insidious fossil
fuel lobbyists in Paris,” including Morano and Lomborg.
But Morano seems to
relish his role. “People are sort of just stunned,” he said of
his presence.
Lomborg, likewise,
sees himself as the lone voice of reason in a throng of people
barreling in the wrong direction, but acknowledges that his message
may be inconvenient.
“I’m the guy
who’s saying, when we’re all going to the North Pole, maybe we
should’ve gone to Spain instead,” he said.
Critics, however,
are unmoved by the skeptics’ arguments.
“I think what
Senator Inhofe did in the past worked tactically,” Brian Schatz,
who was part of a delegation of 10 Democratic senators visiting
Paris, told POLITICO. “But the idea that one U.S. senator could
come here and hold a news conference and stop global momentum, I
think is pretty far-fetched at this point.”
Inhofe — famous
for tossing a snowball across the Senate floor and declaring climate
change “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated against the American
people” — has not entirely ruled out a last-minute visit,
according to his spokeswoman.
Like Lomborg,
however, his presence may not make much of a splash in the final days
of negotiations.
“I really haven’t
experienced their presence at all here,” said Meyer. “I don’t
even know if they’re in the building.”
This article was
first published on POLITICO Pro.
Authors:
Sara Stefanini and
Andrew Restuccia
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