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An Open Letter To The Guardian On Climate Change

By Bill Henderson

29 October, 2015
Countercurrents.org

(The following e-mail with the subject line 'Keep it in the ground was bang on, decarbonization is denial' was sent to Guardian Weekly letters, Keep it in the ground@The Guardian, Alan Rusbridger and James Randerson on Oct 26, 2015. There has been no reply. The hyperlinks have been added to assist the reader.)

Hello,

As a climate activist and long time GuardianWeekly subscriber I was ecstatic earlier in the year when The Guardian started Keep it in the ground but James Randerson's 'The dawn of hope' and the GW editorial 'Reasons to be cheerful' returns me to despair over the mainstream press's depiction of both climate change and what mitigation must mean today.

Mr. Randerson writes that The Guardian will now focus on stories of hope but there has been no gain in fossil fuels kept in the ground yet. He focuses upon renewable energy which has become the new climate denial. The editorial seems happy that pledges to COP at Paris will supposedly limit warming to only 2.7C??? Anybody knowledgeable about the climate science would despair.

New improvements in solar and other renewable technologies are very hopeful - if indeed there was regulation limiting new fossil fuel infrastructure and a firm schedule winding down fossil fuel production, dirtiest first. But presently decarbonization is denial because increasing renewable capacity occurs alongside increasing fossil fuel production.

If you do the carbon budget math we need immediate and deep emission reduction - not replacing fossil fuels with renewables by 2050. Continuing to use substantial fossil fuels until renewables can out compete fossil fuels is not serious emission reduction. This is decarbonization as denial. This is not acting with due diligence to future generations. We benefit greatly by the production and use of fossil fuels while the worst consequences of the build up of greenhouse gases will fall on innocents in the future.

Do we need a plan for a slow transition to renewables or a plan to get off fossil fuels as urgently as possible? Building renewable capacity is not emission reduction if there is no regulated reduction of fossil fuels. Rules for power generation that do not include regulated reduction of fossil fuels just displace fossil fuel use to other jurisdictions.

To accent hope while quietly giving up on actually keeping fossil fuels in the ground is unconscionable. To mis-educate about this present decarbonation as hopeful is not leadership, it is cowardice: 'peace in our time', and The Guardian will lose credibility badly when decarbonization as denial is found out to have been just a waste of precious time as the window of opportunity closes on keeping a safe climate.

For The Guardian to now shift from keeping fossil fuels in the ground to hope through renewables profoundly mis-educates Guardian readers: 'all Hitler wants is a small piece of Czechoslovakia and then there will be peace'. This is denial, today's denial. The climate science facts are not denied or re-interpreted, but instead "the psychological, political or moral implications that conventionally follow" from those facts are denied or ignored (Kari Norgaard's implicatory denial). People accept  that climate change will bring about an inevitable calamity but live as if this reality did not exist, by disavowing the obligations and consequences that such acceptance entails (Rowson's stealth denial). We would all love to solve climate change by just tweaking BAU.

It is still possible to stay under a 2C rise in temperature but it will require urgent international agreement to actually keep fossil fuels in the ground - The Guardian was dead on right. We have to be responsible and this is what must happen to protect our descendants future. Get out of denial. Educate your readers and the world about the carbon budget science and decarbonization as denial. Admit your mistake at this crucial time and lead.

Bill  Gibsons, BC

Reality check:

Source: 4degrees and beyond conference

Do we need a plan for a slow transition to renewables or a plan to keep fossil fuels in the ground?

Bill Henderson is a frequent contributor to Countercurrents on climate change.

 



 

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