[TheClimate.Vote] January 24, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest
Richard Pauli
richard at theclimate.vote
Fri Jan 24 07:16:32 EST 2020
/*January 24, 2020*/
[Tic toc]
*Doomsday clock lurches to 100 seconds to midnight - closest to
catastrophe yet*
It is 100 seconds to midnight
Science and Security Board
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
*2020 Doomsday Clock Statement*
Editor, John Mecklin
[T]his year, we move the Clock 20 seconds closer to midnight not
just because trends in our major areas of concern--nuclear weapons
and climate change--have failed to improve significantly over the
last two years. We move the Clock toward midnight because the means
by which political leaders had previously managed these potentially
civilization-ending dangers are themselves being dismantled or
undermined, without a realistic effort to replace them with new or
better management regimes. In effect, the international political
infrastructure for controlling existential risk is degrading,
leaving the world in a situation of high and rising threat. Global
leaders are not responding appropriately to reduce this threat level
and counteract the hollowing-out of international political
institutions, negotiations, and agreements that aim to contain it.
The result is a heightened and growing risk of disaster.
https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/
https://thebulletin.org/climate-change/
https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/
[from the Guardian - edited version of a speech given by Greta Thunberg
at Davos this week]
*'Our house is on fire': Greta Thunberg, 16, urges leaders to act on
climate*
Greta Thunberg
Our house is on fire. I am here to say, our house is on fire.
According to the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), we
are less than 12 years away from not being able to undo our mistakes. In
that time, unprecedented changes in all aspects of society need to have
taken place, including a reduction of our CO2 emissions by at least 50%.
And please note that those numbers do not include the aspect of equity,
which is absolutely necessary to make the Paris agreement work on a
global scale. Nor does it include tipping points or feedback loops like
the extremely powerful methane gas released from the thawing Arctic
permafrost.
At places like Davos, people like to tell success stories. But their
financial success has come with an unthinkable price tag. And on climate
change, we have to acknowledge we have failed. All political movements
in their present form have done so, and the media has failed to create
broad public awareness.
But Homo sapiens have not yet failed.
Yes, we are failing, but there is still time to turn everything around.
We can still fix this. We still have everything in our own hands. But
unless we recognise the overall failures of our current systems, we most
probably don't stand a chance.
We are facing a disaster of unspoken sufferings for enormous amounts of
people. And now is not the time for speaking politely or focusing on
what we can or cannot say. Now is the time to speak clearly.
Solving the climate crisis is the greatest and most complex challenge
that Homo sapiens have ever faced. The main solution, however, is so
simple that even a small child can understand it. We have to stop our
emissions of greenhouse gases.
Either we do that or we don't.
You say nothing in life is black or white. But that is a lie. A very
dangerous lie. Either we prevent 1.5C of warming or we don't. Either we
avoid setting off that irreversible chain reaction beyond human control
or we don't.
Either we choose to go on as a civilisation or we don't. That is as
black or white as it gets. There are no grey areas when it comes to
survival.
We all have a choice. We can create transformational action that will
safeguard the living conditions for future generations. Or we can
continue with our business as usual and fail.
That is up to you and me.
Some say we should not engage in activism. Instead we should leave
everything to our politicians and just vote for a change instead. But
what do we do when there is no political will? What do we do when the
politics needed are nowhere in sight?
Here in Davos - just like everywhere else - everyone is talking about
money. It seems money and growth are our only main concerns.
And since the climate crisis has never once been treated as a crisis,
people are simply not aware of the full consequences on our everyday
life. People are not aware that there is such a thing as a carbon
budget, and just how incredibly small that remaining carbon budget is.
That needs to change today.
No other current challenge can match the importance of establishing a
wide, public awareness and understanding of our rapidly disappearing
carbon budget, that should and must become our new global currency and
the very heart of our future and present economics.
We are at a time in history where everyone with any insight of the
climate crisis that threatens our civilisation - and the entire
biosphere - must speak out in clear language, no matter how
uncomfortable and unprofitable that may be.
We must change almost everything in our current societies. The bigger
your carbon footprint, the bigger your moral duty. The bigger your
platform, the bigger your responsibility.
Adults keep saying: "We owe it to the young people to give them hope."
But I don't want your hope. I don't want you to be hopeful. I want you
to panic. I want you to feel the fear I feel every day. And then I want
you to act.
I want you to act as you would in a crisis. I want you to act as if our
house is on fire. Because it is.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/jan/25/our-house-is-on-fire-greta-thunberg16-urges-leaders-to-act-on-climate
[paying attention to money]
*Climate Change Could Blow Up the Economy. Banks Aren't Ready.*
Like other central banks, the E.C.B. [European Central Bank], which met
on Thursday, is scrambling to prepare for what a report warns could be a
coming economic upheaval...
- - -
The book-length report, published by the Bank for International
Settlements, in Basel, Switzerland, signals what could be the overriding
theme for central banks in the decade to come.
"Climate change poses unprecedented challenges to human societies, and
our community of central banks and supervisors cannot consider itself
immune to the risks ahead of us," François Villeroy de Galhau, governor
of the Banque de France, said in the report...
- - -
This new attention to the financial consequences of a hotter earth comes
as central banks are contending with another new challenge: technologies
that threaten their monopoly on issuing money and their power to combat
a financial crisis...
- - -
Ms. Lagarde acknowledged that some members of the Governing Council
question whether fighting climate change is a central bank's job.
"I'm aware of all that," Ms. Lagarde said. "I'm also aware of the danger
of doing nothing."...
- - -
It's complicated, though.
As with cash, people can use digital currencies to pay other people
directly, without a bank in the middle. But unlike cash, digital
currencies allow person-to-person transactions to take place online.
Such a system could be more efficient, but also risky, said a report
issued on Wednesday by the World Economic Forum, the organization that
stages the annual conclave in Davos, Switzerland.
Commercial banks might become superfluous and fail, leaving central
banks to become, in effect, giant retail banks. But they have no
experience dealing with millions of individual customers and could be
overwhelmed. If a central bank collapsed, so would the monetary system.
Climate change also takes central banks into uncharted territory. Think
the subprime crisis in 2008 was bad? Imagine a real estate crisis caused
by rising sea levels and coastal flooding that renders thousands of
square miles of land uninhabitable or useless for farming.
By some estimates, global gross domestic product could plunge by nearly
a quarter by the end of the century because of the effects of climate
change. Central banks have enough trouble dealing with mild recessions,
and would not be powerful enough to combat an economic downturn of that
scale.
"In the worst case scenario, central banks may have to intervene as
climate rescuers of last resort or as some sort of collective insurer
for climate damages," said the Bank for International Settlements report.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/23/business/climate-change-central-banks.html
[Know our CO2]
*Australian bushfires to contribute to huge annual increase in global
carbon dioxide*
Atmospheric concentration of major greenhouse gas forecast to hit 417
parts per million in May with bushfires contributing 2% of increase
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jan/24/australian-bushfires-to-contribute-to-huge-annual-increase-in-global-carbon-dioxide
- -
[Check regularly]
*Earth's CO2 Home Page*
https://www.co2.earth/
[Activism health]
*How To Be An Effective Climate Activist, According To Psychology*
- - -
For any activist hoping to change the world, their audience must first
accept that change is necessary, and also feel motivated and empowered
to achieve that change. Psychology is of course key to all this, and
numerous studies are being done in this area.
When it comes to that first point -- accepting the need for change --
Nadia Bashir at the University of Toronto and colleagues wondered
whether people might resist it in some cases not because (or not just
because) they have problems with the message, but rather because they're
not keen on the messenger.
In an online study involving 140 US participants, published in 2013, the
researchers found that environmentalist activists were perceived as
being unappealingly eccentric and militant. Not only did the
participants perceive them as having unappealing traits, but they didn't
want to affiliate with such people, either. Their "seemingly zealous
dedication to a social cause may backfire and elicit unfavourable
reactions from others," Bashir and her colleagues wrote. "The very
individuals who are most actively engaged in promoting social change may
inadvertently alienate members of the public and reduce pro-change
motivation."...
- - -
What about emotion? Should activists display it, or not? The great Roman
orator and statesman Cicero advised speakers to prefer emotion to
reason. And emotion-based marketing is known to be more effective than
fact-based approaches. Some people do find all-out outrage off-putting.
But perhaps our society needs to encourage a more positive view of it,
argue a trio of psychologists from Penn State and Harvard. In one
experiment, published in 2018, they reported that feelings of outrage
were more effective at driving participation in a project to address an
injustice than feelings of hope that such a project might work. Moral
outrage is a "critical force for collective action," they concluded.
Teenagers are renowned for doing outrage pretty well. They're also
well-connected via social media, and also have other activist
advantages, argued Albert Bandura at Stanford University and Lynne
Cherry of the organisation Young Voices for the Planet, in a 2019 paper
in American Psychologist. "Climate scientists have been sounding
increasingly urgent alarms about the catastrophic consequences of
climate change," the pair wrote. And yet, "twenty annual UN Summits
provided no international commitment to reduce emissions of
heat-trapping gases". So it's important to look at who might be best
placed to really make a difference -- and they believe the answer lies
in young activists.
Young people are in a better position to catalyse action on climate
change than most adults, think Bandura and Cherry. Young people are
effective messengers, they write, because without change, they will
suffer far more than the adults around today. And they can occupy the
moral high ground, because the audience knows that they are not beholden
to special interests (like making money or winning elections).
Thunberg has achieved truly global fame, but Bandura and Cherry point to
other examples of hugely influential young activists, such as German
environmentalist Felix Finkbeiner, who, after learning as a boy that
trees absorb carbon dioxide, set up a project that has led to more than
a million trees being planted worldwide. Think back to the second part
of what's needed for change (feeling motivated and empowered to achieve
that change) -- Finkbeiner presented a problem, and also a practical way
for people to help, even in the smallest way, to address it. There are
many other examples of child environmental activists bringing about
meaningful change, they note.
There is evidence that even in the US, record numbers of people are
worried about climate change. According to the results of a nationally
representative survey, published in 2019, 73 per cent think it's
happening, 69 per cent are worried about it and 29 per cent are very
worried. "After a year of devastating extreme events, dire scientific
reports, and growing media coverage of climate change, a record number
of Americans are convinced that human-caused global warming is
happening, are increasingly worried, and say the issue is personally
important to them," said lead researcher Anthony Leiserowitz of Yale
University.
Climate activists like Thunberg may, then, increasingly be preaching to
the converted, and be less likely to be viewed as "unappealingly
eccentric and militant" than might have been the case only five years ago.
But when it comes to persuading other people to make necessary changes,
it's worth bearing in mind the potential power of humour, as well as
fear, argues Jeff Niederdeppe at Cornell University's Center for a
Sustainable Future.
In 2018, he and a PhD student, Christofer Skurka, worked with a theatre
group to create a series of videos featuring a weathercaster making
forecasts about extreme weather patterns caused by climate change. One,
the "ominous" version, highlighted the severity of climate change and
its impacts. In another "humorously" silly version, the weathercaster
seemed clueless as he struggled to understand the signs of climate
change. A third was designed to be neutral in tone.
The "ominous" video, designed to inspire fear, was effective across the
full age range of 18 to 30 years. But the humorous one worked well for
the 18- to 24-year-olds, too. "The people who found it funny were more
likely to want to plan or partake in activism, recycle more and believe
climate change is risky," Skurka reported.
Some people may mock Thunberg. Others may applaud her, though make no
changes in their lives. Yet others will take her message to heart. It's
purely anecdotal evidence, of course, but the week after that particular
UN address, someone on the Google mailing group for my own street, and a
group of streets around mine, put out a message saying that they were
concerned about climate change, and asking anyone who felt the same way
to get in touch, to meet, to discuss what we as a small community can
do. I've lost count of how many people have reacted to the thread. It's
true that I would have predicted that my particular neighbourhood would
respond in that way. Around here, she was preaching to the converted --
but those who needed an extra nudge.
Still, as so many studies, from those run by the Yale Program on Climate
Change Communication to the extreme weather videos experiments have
shown, we're different, and surely no one type of activism or activist
will appeal to everyone. All kinds of voices will be needed to truly
make a difference in 2020, and beyond.
Emma Young (@EmmaELYoung) is a staff writer at BPS Research Digest
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2020/01/20/how-to-be-an-effective-climate-activist-according-to-psychology/
[video discussion]
*Is California's Climate Progress Going Up in Smoke?*
Climate One - Jan 23-2020
California has been at the forefront of America's climate fight since
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the country's first major climate
law in 2006. The state's suite of policies for decarbonizing the economy
survived industry-funded attacks in court and at the ballot box, and
remained largely consistent under Democratic and Republican governors.
But the state may not really be the climate leader it is perceived to
be. Savage wildfires are releasing massive amounts of carbon stored in
forests and erasing much of the state's gains. A recent report by Next
10, an independent think tank, indicates the state will meet its 2030
goals 30 years late. That dents one of the country's most positive and
enduring carbon narratives.
Is California really the climate leader it's purported to be? Join us
for a conversation with Rachel Becker, environmental reporter with
CalMatters, Kate Gordon, climate advisor to Governor Newsom, and Noel
Perry, founder of Next 10, for a conversation on how California can
reach its carbon goals as the federal government doubles down on fossil
fuels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76xW_HBqP5s
[video statement]*
* *Greta and George, the best short video of 2019*
Dec 31, 2019
https://youtu.be/aUCD_24cygQ
[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - January 24, 2007 *
"CBS Evening News" provides a sneak preview of the 4th IPCC report.
http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/climate-change-cause-effect/
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