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Climate Denial And Mis-Education From Mark Lynas

By Bill Henderson

03 April, 2015
Countercurrents.org

"We must reclaim the climate debate from the political extremes." In his latest Guardian Comment-is-free op-ed, part of the Guardian's esteemable Keep it in the Ground climate series, Mark Lynas submits a howling clanger, commits a serious mistake that will surely come back to haunt him and diminish his hard earned credibility as climate pundit extraordinaire.

The author of the insightful must-read SIX DEGREES clearly articulates the present consensus on climate change danger but then goes on a political witchhunt.  Lynas clearly articulates the danger and then, deep in both his particular bias and implicatory denial, he rails against already marginalized hippies instead of the real villains, shouting out against Change Everything instead of leading in recognizing the real problem which is neither left nor right.

The fundamental problem that makes climate change now an emergency isn't extreme politics but the impossibility of needed systemic change in a world made safe and stable for business, for business in a global economy. Politics has been put in a golden straightjacket to protect long term investment and economic growth. Our 'it's the economy, stupid' focus and resulting blinkered myopia keeps us in implicatory denial and solution aversion about the scale of emission reduction now required.

Lynas attacks Naomi Klein and the anti-GMO and nuclear activists who have always been against the unfettering of the global economy. He does not lead in detailing how rational-comprehensive planning to achieve needed emission reduction must now trump market-based governance if this particular political economy, civilization, or even humanity itself are to survive,

First of all, what Lynas gets right:

"The science – as articulated by the IPCC – says the warming of the climate system is “unequivocal”, that the last 30 years were probably the warmest for the last 1,500 years, and that it is “extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century”.

Moreover, if current emissions trends continue, warming of 4C or even 6C becomes a possibility this century. No exaggeration is needed to illustrate the gravity of the threat – warming of this magnitude would destabilise major ice sheets, lead to catastrophic shifts in weather patterns, and cause havoc with ecosystems and human societies. The planet's temperature, along with CO2 levels, would be higher than for tens of millions of years."

He then goes on to say that "(w)e should all be able to agree on this. But we can't, because this scientific narrative seems to have been captured by one, rather extreme, end of the political spectrum" and then launches into his attack on Klein and the eco-Malthusians who (amongst many, many other things) demonize GMOs and nuclear energy which he believes are scientifically tenable and should be part of the solution.

(Personally, I find Naomi Klein informed, informing and inspirational but I mostly agree with him about Klein as leftist global economy adversary and GMOs and nuclear as not inherently evil but possibly useful technologies, but this is a red herring comparable with 'I'm not a scientist' or 'the climate has always been changing' - totally beside the point and as good as paid denial in wrongfooting publics about what should be happening. Klein and the hippies are not the problem.) 

After shouting out Klein and the eco-Malthusians, Lynas compounds his mistake by advocating for incrementalism within continuing political and economic business as usual (BAU), within a market-based governance without (the presently heretical) strong governmental intervention and regulation.       

The burgeoning carbon budget science from Meinshausen to McGlade and Ekins - not just AndersonBows that Klein cites in her book - seems to have not entered Lynas' universe. Consider this graph:

 Source: 4degrees and beyond conference


This slide from Prof. H.J. Schellnhuber illustrates the emerging brutal logic of needed emission reduction to stay under 2C: if you have a 20 tonne per capita annual carbon footprint - like the US, Canada and Australia - and a fair global deal would mean a per capita budget of around two tonnes, then every year of delay you are using up a decade of your budget. Immediate steep emission reduction is the only path to staying safely under 2°C. (Not surprisingly, most would dismiss Schellnhuber's insight as impossible, but this is denial not disproof of his carbon budget science.)

B.C. activist and author Guy Dauncey has just published The 2040 Climate Imperative, which does the carbon budget math for B.C. but can be used by anybody to calculate the carbon math for the US, China, Britain, etc. Doing the carbon math it is clear that the Obama Administration brave leadership in committing to a 26-28% emission reduction from 2005 levels by 2025, while at the limits of what is now possible in BAU, remains but a fraction of the emission reduction needed by the US in the next crucial decade.

While committing to reducing emissions by a third in ten short years is finally US leadership on climate change, after at least two wasted decades it is not enough, and in some ways could be seen as quietly giving up on 2C and any hope of staying safe from dangerous climate change.

Emergency powers government regulation could make emission reduction of a scale necessary practical in the US and elsewhere but instead we remain like the celebrated frog in boiling water seemingly in denial of reality.

Strong government action could stabilize the patient so that a hefty carbon tax as scalpel could quickly reduce emissions. Strong government action could shift subsidies to renewables. Strong government action could enforce a schedule for winding down fossil fuel production and use.

While tearing into Klein and the hippies, Lynas does mention the flatearth denial of the political right but not paid denial by the fossil fuel corporations which has been effective in wasting two precious decades, nor the present implicatory denial of puny, insufficient carbon pricing as part of market-based solution messaging from neoliberal groups like Canada's laughable Ecofiscal Commission.

Nor does he detail how the anti-government ideology of groups like the American Tea Party has made it difficult to even propose a strong government regulation framework for emission reduction. Lynas does not inform about how political pressure against governmental regulation from not so extreme groups like Chambers of Commerce, trade and industry representatives and other corporate lobbyists has limited emission reduction options during the wasted decades when meeting our emission reduction responsibility could have been accomplished within BAU. Mr. Lynas does not offer a 'balanced' attack on political extremism.

"Humankind's greatest crisis coincides with the rise of an ideology that makes it impossible to address. By the late 1980s, when it became clear that man-made climate change endangered the living planet and its people, the world was in the grip of an extreme political doctrine whose tenets forbid the kind of intervention required to arrest it. "  George Monbiot

Finally, Mr. Lynas recommends hope shoehorned into BAU:

"Humanity will therefore double or triple energy consumption overall by 2050. Our challenge is to develop and deploy the technology to deliver this energy in as low-carbon a way as possible, probably using some combination of efficiency, renewables, next-generation nuclear and carbon capture. We need to pour vastly more resources into R&D, and put a significant international price on carbon."

In other words let's keep building car/sprall/mall BAU globally and ignore MacKay and Smil (and the carbon budget science 2040 imperative in favour of discredited Kyoto 2050 timelines and emission ownership) and with a technofix, we'll be all right Jack. No strong government thanks.

And as far as Lomborgian crocodile tears for people in the developing world: the richest 500 million contribute half of all emissions whereas the bottom three billion contribute essentially nothing. It is the rich middle class globally that must substantially reduce their emissions to close to zero quickly to allow equitable development.

How could Mr. Lynas shout out the lefty hippies in order to protect a Business As Usual where effective emission reduction isn't possible?

Implicatory denial: Lynas doesn't question the climate danger but he won't allow himself the psychological, political or moral implications that conventionally follow. Hence the clanging mistake of his op-ed when only strong governmental action - not left or right extremism, not socialism, but rational comprehensive planning and regulation - can keep fossil fuels in the ground till they can be exploited without increasing climate danger.

It is still possible - hopefully - to stay safe from dangerous climate change but we must urgently escape BAU and act. Before Paris, everybody must understand with unblinkered eyes wide open that deep systemic changes will be necessary to stay under 2C. No exaggeration is needed to illustrate the gravity of the threat.

Bill Henderson is a frequent contributor to Countercurrents on Climate Change





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