[TheClimate.Vote] November 21, 2020 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/*November 21, 2020*/

[clips from Bill McKibben article in the New Yorker]
*When "Creatives" Turn Destructive: Image-Makers and the Climate Crisis*

By Bill McKibben
November 21, 2020...
- -
What's interesting about many of the current P.R. campaigns is that they 
don't involve classic climate denial. Outside of the Trump 
Administration and the right wing of the Republican Party, that's now a 
dead letter. You could no more persuade a Madison Avenue agency to argue 
that carbon dioxide is harmless than you could persuade it to argue that 
Black lives don't matter. Instead, these campaigns often look for ways 
to leverage people's environmental concern in service of precisely the 
companies that are causing the trouble...
- -
Did the people making the ads understand the real goal? The account 
executives I asked, in e-mails, didn't respond. (B.B.D.O declined to 
comment for this story.) At Porter Novelli, my queries were answered by 
Maggie Graham, the company's global chief of staff. "As more is learned 
about natural gas," she wrote, "the industry is adapting and our role is 
to help consumers know about natural gas as it pertains to their 
priorities, including environmental issues. As a firm, we continually 
assess new research and findings relevant to our clients, so that we can 
integrate it into our work." On Thursday, the company announced that it 
had finished that assessment, saying, in a statement, "Porter Novelli is 
committed to regularly assessing evolving issues, the science that 
guides them and their impact on diverse, global audiences. As such, we 
have determined our work with the American Public Gas Association is 
incongruous with our increased focus and priority on addressing climate 
justice--we will no longer support that work beyond 2020." The A.P.G.A. 
declined to comment.

That decision is a big deal--and it makes sense. The statement of ethics 
of the American Marketing Association instructs, "Do no harm. This means 
consciously avoiding harmful actions or omissions by embodying high 
ethical standards." According to the Public Relations Society of 
America's code of ethics, "We adhere to the highest standards of 
accuracy and truth in advancing the interests of those we represent and 
in communicating with the public." The standards of practice of the 
American Association of Advertising Agencies states, "We will not 
knowingly create advertising that contains . . . false or misleading 
statements or exaggerations, visual or verbal." At this point, it's 
practically impossible to represent the fossil-fuel industry without 
violating these canons.
And other people in this class of creatives are starting to recognize 
that the situation places new demands on them. In June of last year, 
Extinction Rebellion activists, mostly from France and Sweden, were 
arrested outside the Cannes Lions annual advertising gathering. "We are 
coming back here next year with ten thousand people," an organizer said. 
The coronavirus pandemic cancelled that plan, but, a few months later, 
more than twenty small agencies signed a pledge to disclose work with 
the fossil-fuel industry as a first step toward divesting from those 
clients. Solitaire Townsend, the founder of the Futerra agency, which 
organized the pledge, said, in an interview, that three hundred firms 
have now promised to produce "climate disclosure reports," detailing how 
much of their business comes from oil and gas firms. "Most of the big 
agencies are pushing back, hard," Townsend told me, this month. "But 
every copywriter, ideator, designer, and strategist will have to pick a 
side. Creativity isn't neutral."

Townsend added that she's heard every possible justification. "The worst 
one is 'We need to put our own house in order first,' from multinational 
ad agencies raking in millions of dollars but with a sustainability 
strategy appropriate for a kindergarten. That leads to meetings held in 
renewably powered offices, with recycled coffee cups and organic 
snacks," even as the agencies work on "briefs to extend the influence 
and producing capacity of the fossil-fuel industry." She went on, "And 
don't get me started on Davos events, with ad execs announcing new 
creative partnerships to 'inspire young people to climate action.' The 
irony is staggering when you think about it: agencies who won't even 
disclose if they work for fossil-fuel clients purporting to motivate the 
young people already out on our streets striking for climate action." 
(This same dynamic is playing out in the legal profession, where law 
students at top schools have come together to rank the nation's top law 
firms, and more than six hundred of them have pledged not to work for 
firms that represent fossil-fuel companies. Last winter, students 
disrupted recruiting events for Paul, Weiss, which represents Exxon, at 
Harvard, Yale, and New York University.)

Before the pandemic began, the growing opposition to banks and asset 
managers funding fossil fuels led to civil disobedience and protests. (I 
was part of a group arrested at a Chase bank branch in Washington, D.C., 
in January.) If next year sees an adequately distributed vaccine, it may 
also see that kind of nonviolent action at ad agencies. A newly launched 
project, Clean Creatives, is designed to "target precisely the voices 
who rent themselves out to the industry," Duncan Meisel, of the N.G.O. 
Fossil Free Media, said. (I have volunteered with Meisel in the past, 
opposing oil pipelines.) He added, "We know it won't be an easy 
fight--they've literally made their careers spinning bad stuff into good 
stuff, so we'll have to be on our toes. But every fire and every flood 
makes clearer precisely what they're doing--physics simply can't be spun."

Even with that kind of aggressive campaigning, success may depend mostly 
on whether the talent itself decides that it wants to keep working for 
an industry that's on the wrong side of the century's most urgent issue. 
"I very much hope our great-grandkids look back with benign bemusement 
on how any creative person could have wasted their talent on an industry 
about to become irrelevant. That would be the best possible outcome, as 
it presupposes we overcome this monster," Townsend said. "The appalling 
alternative would be the creatives of today being considered craven 
propagandists for the most destructive industry in human history."

Bill McKibben is a founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org 
and a contributing writer to The New Yorker. He writes The Climate 
Crisis, The New Yorker's newsletter on the environment.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/when-creatives-turn-destructive-image-makers-and-the-climate-crisis



[Summary video]
*Arctic Warming: A Very Bad Positive Feedback Loop*
Nov 16, 2020
TDC
The oceans absorb 90% of the heat from greenhouse gasses, causing 
evermore ice to melt.
Watch the full conversation: https://tdc.video/programs/how-earths...
Dr. Jennifer A. Francis: https://www.jenniferafrancis.com/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgZonRkM7jU


[warmth of alarmism]
*Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up*
Thawing permafrost is releasing microorganisms, with consequences that 
are still largely unknown

By Kimberley R. Miner, Arwyn Edwards, Charles Miller on November 20, 2020

In August 2019, Iceland held a funeral for the Okjökull Glacier, the 
first Icelandic glacier lost to climate change. The community 
commemorated the event with a plaque in recognition of this irreversible 
change and the grave impacts it represents. Globally, glacier melt rates 
have nearly doubled in the last five years, with an average loss of 832 
mmw.e. (millimeters water equivalent) in 2015, increasing to 1,243 
mmw.e. in 2020 (WGMS). This high rate of loss decreases glacial stores 
of freshwater and changes the structure of the surrounding ecosystem.

In the last 10 years, warming in the Arctic has outpaced projections so 
rapidly that scientists are now suggesting that the poles are warming 
four times faster than the rest of the globe. This has led to glacier 
melt and permafrost thaw levels that weren't forecast to happen until 
2050 or later. In Siberia and northern Canada, this abrupt thaw has 
created sunken landforms, known as thermokarst, where the oldest and 
deepest permafrost is exposed to the warm air for the first time in 
hundreds or even thousands of years...

more at - 
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/deep-frozen-arctic-microbes-are-waking-up/



[Digging back into the internet news archive]
*On this day in the history of global warming - November 21, 2015 *
In a New York Times op-ed, Jeff Biggers observes:

    "Negotiators en route to the United Nations conference on climate
    change in Paris, scheduled to begin later this month, should take a
    detour on rural roads here in Johnson County. A new climate
    narrative is emerging among farmers in the American heartland that
    transcends a lot of the old story lines of denial and cynicism, and
    offers an updated tale of climate hope.


    "Recent polls show that 60 percent of Iowans, now facing flooding
    and erosion, believe global warming is happening. From Winneshiek
    County to Washington County, you can count more solar panels on
    barns than on urban roofs or in suburban parking lots. The state's
    first major solar farm is not in an urban area like Des Moines or
    Iowa City, but in rural Frytown, initiated by the Farmers Electric
    Cooperative.

    "In the meantime, any lingering traces of cynicism will vanish in
    the town of Crawfordsville, where children in the Waco school
    district will eventually turn on computers and study under lights
    powered 90 percent by solar energy. Inspired by local farmers, who
    now use solar energy to help power some of their operations, the
    district's move to solar energy will not only cut carbon emissions
    but also result in enough savings to keep open the town's once
    financially threatened school doors."

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/opinion/iowas-climate-change-wisdom.html?ref=opinion

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