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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>June 9, 2020</b></font></i></p>
[first and last line of article in the Washington Post]<br>
Capital Weather Gang<br>
<b>New bill would prohibit the president from nuking a hurricane</b><br>
The measure is a direct response to President Trump's reported
suggestion of using nuclear bombs to defuse Atlantic tropical
cyclones...<br>
- - <br>
"If we have a leader who would contemplate using a nuclear weapon on
a hurricane," he said, "we have a much more extensive and serious
problem than could be covered by a specific bill like this one."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/06/08/new-bill-would-prohibit-president-nuking-hurricane/">https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2020/06/08/new-bill-would-prohibit-president-nuking-hurricane/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[watch the money]<br>
<b>Borrowed time: Climate change threatens U.S. mortgage market</b><br>
"Everyone is exposed" as taxpayer-backed loans and insurance face a
coming storm.<br>
U.S. taxpayers could be on the hook for billions of dollars in
climate-related property losses as the government backs a growing
number of mortgages on homes in the path of floods, fires and
extreme weather.<br>
<br>
Violent storms and sunny-day flooding are on the rise, and more
houses are being built on at-risk land. But fewer people are buying
federally backed flood insurance despite requirements that
homeowners in flood plains be insured if their mortgage is backed by
taxpayers.<br>
In short, the government's biggest housing subsidies -- mortgage
guarantees and flood insurance -- are on course to hit taxpayers and
the housing market as the effects of climate change worsen, a
POLITICO analysis finds. A series of disasters in a single region
could trigger a full-blown housing crash.<br>
<br>
"Where catastrophe happens and physical climate really manifests
itself, the public tab will end up carrying this," said Ivan
Frishberg, vice president for sustainability banking with
Amalgamated Bank. "Everyone is exposed in this. I've had
conversations with all of the big banks and we are kind of all aware
of this."<br>
<br>
That scenario has a growing collection of finance experts,
progressives and congressional Democrats pressuring financial
institutions and their regulators to give more weight to the
systemic risks of climate change.<br>
To understand the risk, consider Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the
government-sponsored, taxpayer-backed enterprises that stand behind
roughly half of the nation's $11 trillion in residential mortgages.
For decades, the companies have bought and guaranteed home loans in
floodplains and other places vulnerable to natural disasters.<br>
<br>
To reduce risk, the companies rely on another government enterprise,
the National Flood Insurance Program, to cover the cost of flood
damage to homes with Fannie and Freddie mortgages. But the flood
insurance program itself is insolvent after years of paying out more
than it collects. When Congress tried to fix the program in 2012, it
was forced to backtrack after flood insurance premiums billed to
homeowners spiked.<br>
<br>
Despite public reassurances that the risk of climate-related loss
was minimal and insured, Fannie Mae sounded an alarm at least as
early as 2017, according to a confidential document obtained by
POLITICO...<br>
- -<br>
And if floods do wallop Fannie- and Freddie-backed loans, it would
be difficult for the companies to divine which among the millions of
loans they guarantee have flood insurance and which don't, Ouazad
said.<br>
<br>
"You can imagine the administrative cost," Ouazad said. "It's like
taking a carpet and trying to remove every single thread."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/08/borrowed-time-climate-changemortgage-market-304130">https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/08/borrowed-time-climate-changemortgage-market-304130</a><br>
More about Fannie Mae -
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000172-86b3-d4f1-adf3-87b7f1300000">https://www.politico.com/f/?id=00000172-86b3-d4f1-adf3-87b7f1300000</a><br>
More about Freddie Mac -
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.freddiemac.com/research/insight/20160426_lifes_a_beach.page">http://www.freddiemac.com/research/insight/20160426_lifes_a_beach.page</a><br>
- - -<br>
<b>Renewable energy is taking off -- but not in bank boardrooms</b><br>
When it comes to investing in a sustainable future, do we really
have to pick between fossil fuels and renewable energy?<br>
<br>
Well, yes. But many of the world's top banking executives and
directors haven't gotten the memo. At least, that's what a new
analysis from Bloomberg suggests: Entanglements with major emitters
are surprisingly prevalent in the boardrooms of 20 major U.S. and
European banks. And even if those banks have publicly announced
significant climate commitments, they are also "the most active
financiers" for nonrenewable energy projects. The biggest banks, the
authors noted, have backed big oil and gas companies with nearly
$1.4 trillion in loans since the Paris Agreement was negotiated at
the end of 2015.<br>
<br>
Bloomberg's report, released last week, focused on these banks'
leadership, analyzing current and former professional affiliations
for more than 600 bank executives and board members. It found that
at least 73 had once held positions with big corporate emitters
around the globe, including fossil fuel companies, manufacturers,
utilities, retailers, and other companies with sizable carbon
footprints. In contrast, Bloomberg found only four connections
between banks' leadership and green energy companies.<br>
<br>
Among the banks with significant emitter connections was JPMorgan
Chase & Co., whose board has included former ExxonMobil CEO Lee
Raymond for more than 30 years. Over the past five years, JPMorgan
has raised $228 billion in bonds and loans for the fossil fuel
industry, by Bloomberg's count...<br>
- - <br>
Climate savvy has yet to make its way into these banks' boardrooms,
but it will be urgently needed in the coming years --even a green
"mindset" could help, according to Dieter Wemmer, one of the few
executives found to have green energy bona fides. "It is the right
time to focus on a green future," he told Bloomberg. Hopefully, that
mindset will eventually oust some oilmen and funnel more dollars
into the renewable energy sector.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://grist.org/climate/renewable-energy-is-taking-off-but-not-in-bank-boardrooms/">https://grist.org/climate/renewable-energy-is-taking-off-but-not-in-bank-boardrooms/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[an important research paper]<br>
<b>Learning to rebel</b><br>
Elsie Luna & Andrew Mearman <br>
Sustainable Earth volume 3, Article number: 4 (2020) Cite this
article<br>
Abstract<br>
Background<br>
<blockquote>As a response to collective failure to move adequately
towards sustainability, youth movements have grown. This article
explores the experiences of one young climate activist, Elsie
Luna. The article is the product of conversations between the
co-authors, augmented by written material by Elsie Luna. The
article seeks to avoid adultism, that is, the power that adults
have over children; hence it is written principally using Elsie's
own words, with minimal translation or interpretation. The article
reflects on three key recent events in Elsie Luna's activism: her
approach to the London headquarters of several oil companies; her
'dying' symbolically at the BBC in Berlin; and her recent
involvement in the large Extinction Rebellion actions in London.<br>
</blockquote>
more at - <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://rdcu.be/b4IR4">https://rdcu.be/b4IR4</a> or at<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://sustainableearth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s42055-020-00028-z">https://sustainableearth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s42055-020-00028-z</a><br>
<p> - - -</p>
[quick tips]<br>
<b>6 tips for becoming a youth activist (as told by a youth
activist)</b><br>
By Rachel Ramirez on Jun 2, 2020<br>
<br>
Back in 2017, Jamie Margolin, a Seattle high school student,
founded an organization called Future Voters for 350ppm. ("Future
voters" meaning young people who can't vote yet, and "350 ppm"
referring to a safe level of atmospheric carbon dioxide that the
world blew past long ago). But things didn't go as planned, and the
group ended up being short-lived.<br>
<br>
"Keep failing and failing until you get it right," Margolin writes
in her book Youth To Power, released on June 2. "My failure with
that organization was the precursor to starting Zero Hour. So it all
paid off." Soon afterward, Margolin co-founded Zero Hour, a
youth-led nonprofit that advocates for climate action and
environmental justice and organized the Youth Climate March in
Washington, D.C., in 2018.<br>
<br>
Her new book serves as a step-by-step guide to becoming a youth
activist for any cause. Margolin, now 18, discusses how to lobby,
volunteer for a campaign, manage a nonprofit, write press releases,
and more. Margolin interviews a diverse field of youth activists
advocating for different causes -- such as Black Lives Matter,
indigenous rights, disability rights, and ending gun violence -- to
get their advice on how to be a successful youth activist.<br>
<br>
Young people, Margolin writes, have fresh energy and possess a
profound power to create change. She explains how they have played a
major role in sparking political change throughout American history,
from the civil rights movement in the 1960s to the Standing Rock
protests that started in 2016. Last year was momentous for young
climate activists -- and as another crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic,
wreaks havoc on the planet, the youth are still finding ways to keep
the momentum going through virtual platforms.<br>
<br>
Youth to Power includes a foreword by Greta Thunberg, the
17-year-old climate activist who sparked a worldwide youth climate
movement by skipping school every Friday to protest outside the
Swedish Parliament building. "This book is your toolbox," Thunberg
writes. Here are some of the book's best tips.<br>
<blockquote><b>Find your "why." </b>The first step to your activism
journey may involve some soul-searching. According to Margolin,
your why isn't exactly a specific goal, but rather the core,
driving reason you're taking action. She became a climate justice
activist, for instance, to protect her Pacific Northwest home and
future generations from climate change.<br>
<br>
<b>Find your allies. </b>Joining an organization, a community
group, or political campaign that fights for the same cause as you
will help you learn more about an issue and see how these kinds of
organizations are run. "Share the workload, share the burden,"
said Pidgeon Pagonis, 33, an LGBTQ+ rights advocate and one of the
activists Margolin talked to. "The best work happens when you're
doing it in solidarity with community."<br>
<br>
<b>Be loud. </b>Sara Jado, an 18-year-old Black Lives Matter
activist, told Margolin, "If someone tells you you're too loud,
tell them, 'Well, you're not being loud enough about these
issues.'" Join protests, be outspoken, and raise awareness in
physical spaces or online platforms. You don't need a big platform
to make changes, she says. "Organizing isn't about the followers
you get, it's about the change you make in the community."<br>
<br>
<b>Be creative and tell a story.</b> Think outside the box. If
you're an artist, use your art to send a message. When lobbying,
tell a compelling story or narrative instead of simply stating
facts and numbers, Margolin writes. For rallies, get creative with
signs, come up with clever slogans, or write a song. "If you
authentically convey your message in art, people will gravitate to
what you're making," Sofya Wang, a 21-year-old queer Asian
advocate, told Margolin.<br>
<br>
<b>Make time.</b> Fitting activism into your busy life with
school, friends, and family can be a challenge. "It's not about
having time, it's about making time," Margolin writes. She also
advises not to multitask and to be fully present in whatever
you're doing.<br>
<br>
<b>Search for healthy escapes</b>. Activism can take a toll on
your mental health, and burnout is real. When you're tired, take a
breather. It's important to stay healthy, because you are needed
in this fight, Margolin writes. "If you keep moving fast, you're
going to become depressed and burn out," Malia Hulleman, 24, a
Kānaka Maoli environmental defender, told Margolin. Hulleman says
to take it day by day, as her elders advise, and know that you're
not alone.<br>
</blockquote>
"This is the manifesto of the youth revolution," Margolin writes in
the introduction of her book. "Dog-ear it, write in it, read it out
of order, highlight what you want, rip out pages and tape them to
your bedroom wall. Keep reading, and we can be scrappy activists
together." <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://grist.org/justice/6-tips-for-becoming-a-youth-activist-jamie-margolin/">https://grist.org/justice/6-tips-for-becoming-a-youth-activist-jamie-margolin/</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[where there's heat, where there's drought -- there's fire]<br>
<b>Wildfire Season Is Here</b><br>
Brian Kahn<b><br>
</b>Over the past few months, the U.S. has been buffeted by a
pandemic, protests over racist police violence, and two tropical
storms. Add wildfires to the list as well, as the West prepares to
start the week with tinderbox conditions.<br>
<br>
An area from California to the Texas Panhandle is under a red flag
warning on Monday. Relative humidity could plummet into the single
digits, and you don't need to be a fire scientist to know that's not
a good sign. With dry air and fuels, all it will take is an errant
spark to start a fire. High temperatures and gusty winds are in turn
expected to fan flames of already-burning fires and could spread new
ones.<br>
<br>
Arizona is home to the largest fire in the U.S. right now, according
to data from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC). The
Sawtooth Fire began last week in the Superstition Wilderness area to
the east of Phoenix and has burned through nearly 25,000 acres.
Though it's mostly contained at this point, fires burning elsewhere
in the state are out of control. That includes the Blue River Fire,
which was up to 18,000 acres as of Sunday, and the Bighorn Fire near
Tucson, which stood at 1,000 acres and was largely uncontained...<br>
- - <br>
Climate change has increased the odds more destructive, larger
fires, as well as lengthened fire season as a whole. The season now
stretches 105 days longer, largely due to rising temperatures that
melt snowpack sooner and can keep blazes burning later into the
year. Humans have also moved into harm's way, and decades of forest
fire policy have left forests with more fuel to burn. We've seen the
impact in the form of town-consuming fires and policy responses like
California's preemptive blackouts. The coronavirus is throwing yet
another stressor on top of fire season, by both forcing people who
evacuate into close contact and unleashing plumes of smoke that can
agitate the respiratory system, potentially making people more
vulnerable to respiratory illness like covid-19. If you were hoping
from a break from calamity and heartbreak, it's probably not coming
anytime soon.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://earther.gizmodo.com/wildfire-season-is-here-1843951271">https://earther.gizmodo.com/wildfire-season-is-here-1843951271</a><br>
<p>- - <br>
</p>
[disease trumps fire]<br>
<b>California Was Set To Spend Over $1 Billion to Prevent Wildfires.
Then Came COVID-19</b><br>
With the coronavirus pandemic eroding state budgets across the
country, many communities risk having this disaster make them less
prepared for looming climate-driven disasters...<br>
- - <br>
The wildfire funding left in California's budget this year will
likely go to firefighting and emergency response.<br>
"We're staring down the barrel of another intense wildfire season
given how dry it was this winter," says Wade Crowfoot, California's
Secretary for Natural Resources. "So we are anticipating actually
having to juggle disaster response from different disasters."<br>
<br>
Supporters of the resiliency initiatives say spending money to
prepare for disasters in advance is substantially more economical
than waiting for them to hit.<br>
<br>
"A dollar spent today saves you about six dollars in future
emergencies," says Kate Gordon, director of California's Office of
Planning and Research. "And if you think about that, it's really
logical. The cost of emergency response is enormous. Look at
Paradise -- rebuilding an entire town and relocating folks."<br>
<br>
State officials say they're looking for other ways to fund climate
preparation in hopes of preserving momentum after the recent
disasters.<br>
<br>
"We are retooling in real time to really continue to drive forward
those same priorities, particularly climate resilience, in a more
constrained fiscal environment," says Crowfoot. "Our residents get
it. Californians want us actually to do more to protect communities
from impacts."<br>
<br>
California, like many states, is looking to federal stimulus funding
to fill in the gaps, since climate-related projects could qualify as
infrastructure spending. They're also looking at partnerships with
private industry.<br>
<br>
"There is a moment at which this kind of economic disaster creates
opportunity for thinking differently about how to build forward,"
says Gordon. "Not to bounce back, but bounce forward."<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.npr.org/2020/06/07/867395353/california-was-set-to-spend-over-1-billion-to-prevent-wildfires-then-came-covid">https://www.npr.org/2020/06/07/867395353/california-was-set-to-spend-over-1-billion-to-prevent-wildfires-then-came-covid</a>-<br>
<p><br>
</p>
<br>
[History]<br>
<b>Book Review: Industrial Strength Denial</b><br>
Industrial-Strength Denial author Barbra Freese calls for increased
corporate responsibility, but we need to think much bigger if we're
going to survive the climate crisis. <br>
<br>
The climate crisis writ large has been called a "problem from hell"
and the description is accurate. The litany of roadblocks to
effective climate action is as well-known as it is long: the
economic self-interest of nations and the "imperative" of economic
growth, the necessity of international cooperation, the challenge of
motivating individuals around a long-term issue whose consequences
are too devastating for any one of us to grasp in their entirety. <br>
<br>
The current state of climate politics in the US, however, is the
product of a deliberate, decades-long campaign--orchestrated
largely, but not exclusively, by the fossil fuel industry--of
misinformation, misrepresentation, and the outright denial of
scientific facts. As the focus of the climate movement has
increasingly pivoted from a focus on individual responsibility
(finally, we recognize that recycling our yogurt cups won't save the
planet) to the need for systemic change, there has been a concurrent
surge of interest from journalists and academics--from Naomi Oreskes
and Erik Conway's classic Merchants of Doubt to Amy Westervelt's
climate-denial-as-true-crime podcast Drilled--in documenting and
exposing the roots of contemporary narratives of climate denial.<br>
<br>
Barbara Freese's <u>Industrial-Strength Denial</u>, as the title
suggests, joins this chorus, investigating a series of historical
examples in which corporate interests ran counter to health, safety
and/or ethics, and the processes by which those industries were
brought to heel. Though they can be gruesome in their gritty detail,
none of her case studies are particularly new or surprising. Across
eight chapters, Freese explores the phenomenon of denialism
vis-a-vis slavery; radium; "that wonderful stimulant"; car design
and safety; leaded gasoline; chloroflourocarbons (CFCs); tobacco;
the financial crisis of 2008-10; and, last but not least, climate
change. Climate denialists are, in Freese's book, people with "an
unshakeable belief that climate change is simply no big deal and
there is no reason to go out of our way to prevent more of it." This
definition, as she notes in an aside, creates a problematic
grey-zone when it comes to companies like ExxonMobil. Though Exxon
believes that climate change is both real and a problem--which, by
Freese's definition, would mean it does not fall into the 'denier'
category--as a company, it continues to fund people and
organizations that do deny the reality of the climate crisis.
Moreover, Exxon's purported acceptance of the science has not led it
to, say, cut production in the way one might expect from a company
that truly internalized the gravity of the crisis we face.
Considering the timeline we're working with, inaction or
insufficient action on climate is climate denial and it matters that
we be able to call it out as such. <br>
<br>
Freese has spent her career as an environmental lawyer and energy
policy analyst and it is the climate crisis--and, more specifically,
the deeply-rooted skepticism of climate science that she has
encountered in her work--that motivated this book. She is, in
effect, searching for an answer to a question we've all asked
ourselves: "What is wrong with these people? How could they be so
impervious to the mountains of evidence and so willing to expose the
world to truly catastrophic risk?" The most immediate answer that
comes to mind is "economic self-interest," but while Freese
acknowledges this, her interest lies in attempting to understand the
messier psychological motivations of the individuals who comprise
the corporations, from the lowly sales rep to the CEO, and the
relationship of corporate conduct to social norms. She seeks to set
her analysis apart from other accounts of corporate malfeasance and
denial by focusing on the "social context within which these denials
take place" rather than on recounting the manipulation and
misrepresentation of scientific facts themselves. <br>
<br>
The human ability to rationalize knowledge that is inconvenient,
uncomfortable, or otherwise contradictory to deeply-held beliefs is
well-recognized. As Freese sees it, it is this ability that is at
the root of corporate denialism. She identifies a cornucopia of
denial's manifests, from the more straightforward kind of
self-deception exhibited by makers and advertisers of radium-laced
products and the powerful conviction that one's products are,
regardless of their potential harms, on the whole for the good of
society. Perhaps the most striking example of the power of
self-deception comes in the chapter on radium, in which the same men
responsible for promoting radium as a health tonic and denying its
devastating effects often themselves died of radium poisoning. Long
forgotten, the saga of radium-poisoned factory girls in the US is
was brought again to the forefront of public consciousness by of the
2018 movie Radium Girls, which, ironically, received the Alfred P.
Sloan Foundation Feature Film Award (in a subsequent chapter on GM's
resistance to safer car design, Freese writes of Sloan, a former GM
executive that "despite his evident interest in social welfare and
alleged interest in auto safety, with his corporate hat on, [he]
defined his responsibility so narrowly that it did not include
trying [to reduce] thousands of deaths every year.") <br>
<br>
Other "blame shelters," as Freese calls them in a phrase meant to
evoke tax shelters, include the well-trodden "I was just following
orders"; it's "not my job"--Sloan's excuse; ignorance ("No one could
have known the consequences, therefore we are not responsible"); and
the distinct but related "side effects" rationalization--that any
harm caused was unintended and therefore also not something for
which a company or an individual need feel responsible. Compounding
the perils of self-deception are other human tendencies: a
propensity for tribalism and a penchant for aggressively
doubling-down to defend oneself or one's group from "outside"
criticism; and a congenital predilection to "underestimate dangers
that are hard to conceive of." All of these factors are at play in
climate denialism, along with the more mundane reason of profit.
Moreover, as Freese demonstrates, many of the tactics of denial
currently deployed by climate denialists--the sowing of doubt and
misinformation; the blaming the consumer and claiming the the
futility of trying to do anything differently; the portrayal of
critics as zealots or crusaders, and the assumption that one's
opponents are themselves motivated by self-interest--were part of
the arsenal of corporate denial long before the climate crisis
appeared on our radars. <br>
<br>
It is one thing to investigate how corporate denialism operates--the
mental gymnastics industry representatives perform to reconcile
themselves to the harm of their work--but it is another thing
entirely to investigate why, and it is not always clear in
Industrial Strength Denial which set of questions Freese is trying
to answer. Her grasp on her thesis seems to slip when it comes time
to connect her broader narrative to corporate denialism on climate
in particular, perhaps because she is trying to tell a story that is
still unfolding. The critical issue when it comes to corporate
climate denialism, though, is not why individuals deeply invested in
industries that rely on or benefit from the extractive status quo
would support the continuation of that status quo, but rather how
fossil fuel corporations in particular have been so overwhelmingly
successful at turning scientific facts into a question of partisan
politics--and what climate activists can do to change this.<br>
<br>
What is clear from the last thirty years is that more information,
more science, is not a panacea. We are far beyond the point where a
climate version of an Unsafe at Any Speed or a Silent Spring could
galvanize public sentiment on climate change in the way that those
books did for auto safety and environmental pollution--indeed, the
last decade or so has witnessed a relative avalanche of
"game-changing" books on the climate crisis, from Nathaniel Rich's
Losing Earth and Bill McKibben's Falter to David Wallace-Wells's The
Uninhabitable Earth, all published in 2019. The problem is not and
has never been a lack of information. The problem is that
corporations with a massive amount of money and, by extension,
power, are deeply and irreversibly invested in the extraction of
fossil fuels. <br>
<br>
What, then, might be drawn from her analysis of what underlies an
individual's defense of bad practices? It is commonly said that the
simplest explanations are the truest, and in many of her chapters,
it is often the case that the people responsible for the relevant
human destruction simply don't believe that the problem is a
problem. If anything, the last four years of US history ought to
have taught us this: the fungibility of reality and truth. Another
key factor at play is the structure of the corporation itself, which
is, in Freese's view, perfectly engineered to undermine people's
"moral instincts" and her simple, clear-sighted explanation of how,
exactly, that happens is perhaps the most compelling single section
of the book. The "corporate form," with its many narrowly defined
roles, its steep hierarchy, its "independent legal existence,"
limited liability and the existence of shareholders, and the
constant external demands of competition, innovation, and profit,
combine to create a environment that excels at detaching any sense
of personal responsibility for the consequences of one's work. <br>
<br>
Freese clearly sees, also, the methods by which corporations accused
of doing harm will respond: "They will deny causal links between
their actions and the harm in question, express baseless confidence
in their future exoneration, exaggerate any shred of doubt to
maintain the status quo, minimize the alleged harm, shift blame for
it to other causes, and/or find ways to justify the harm by viewing
it as unavoidable or surely better than the alternatives." The
corporate interest left to itself is not and has never been aligned
with the public interest, because the profit motive is not aligned
with the public interest, regardless of what Charles Wilson said.
Yet the idea that profit and public interest could be aligned--that
corporate denialism is an aberration rather than a completely
predictable and necessary result of institutional incentives--is a
crucial premise of this book. Corporate responsibility, as Freese
defines it, is the idea that companies have "some responsibility
beyond increasing profits"--that "corporate leaders" ought to
"expand their hori- zon of responsibility to consider the welfare of
the economy and community broadly." The problem with corporate
social responsibility, however, is that it is essentially
self-regulating. Corporate accountability, on the other hand, which
requires us to build power in a way that corporate responsibility
does not, means having control over policy such that standards for
corporate behaviour can be monitored, regulated, and enforced if and
when companies cause harm. <br>
<br>
What might, in Industrial Strength Denial, be a full-throated call
for corporate accountability, given the long and sordid history of
corporate denial, is instead somewhat of a meek bleating that we
should "try to imagine how [social norms] might be shifted to
advance the greater good." "The exact nature of a corporation's
social responsibility will always be hard to define," she writes,
"but it surely helps if executives at least accept that they have
some responsibility beyond increasing profits." She mentions that
her search to understand the motivations behind corporate denialism
does not mean "abandoning the push for accountability," but also
seems to bring to the table a basic faith in the goodness of
businessmen's hearts--that they would do "the right thing" if only
the corporate cultural context rewarded it--on which we cannot rely.
In addition, throughout Industrial Strength Denial, there is a
marked absence of attention to and analysis of power structures
within the industries she discusses, particularly when it comes to
the oil and gas companies. Freese's cast of characters consists
primarily of white-collar executives, scientists, lawyers, and
government officials, but an executive at BP and an offshore oil rig
worker in Lousiana do not share the same set of material
calculations when it comes to investing in climate denial and, as
Trish Kahle, Kate Aronoff, Alyssa Battistoni and others have argued,
labor and the climate movement can, should and must be allies.
Building such an alliance is complicated, but analyzing the
psychology of the bosses doesn't get us very far when it comes to
understanding the needs and motivations of their workers. Yes, we
need to change social norms. But the immediacy of the crisis that we
are in demands that we first amass the power to change the rules of
the game, and let the norms follow suit. <br>
<br>
The fundamental weakness of the book, though, is that the
existential threat of the climate crisis is not really akin to the
dangers of smoking, much as we might have to learn about the tactics
of corporate ad campaigns from Big Tobacco, and even though the
chlorofluorocarbons that ate away at the ozone layer could have
constituted a planetary threat, the author herself admits that "the
companies that made CFCs…merely faced losing one of their many
products and might profitably sell substitutes." Fossil fuel
companies, on the other hand, "[face] the prospect of the world
mobilizing against the product at the core of their corporate
existence…[the agreement to phase out CFCs] is not a good historical
analogy for climate denial, because the stakes for the industry were
so much lower." The abolition of slavery, insofar as it constituted
a direct attack on an established world order, is perhaps the
closest analogy to the scale of the current fight. Freese ends her
book with a call to revamp corporations, but this is not enough. We
can't just daydream about a shift in norms that would make corporate
social responsibility the new normal; we need more--much more--than
corporate social responsibility in order to begin adequately
addressing the climate crisis. We need a radical restructuring of
production, consumption, and mobility, and we need corporate
accountability more than we need corporate responsibility. It is
well and good for corporations to behave benevolently because we
succeed in changing the social norms and expectations around
corporate behavior, but we cannot entrust the future of our planet
to good intentions. <br>
<br>
Emma Herman is a graduate of the University of Chicago, where she
studied history and philosophy. She is interested in the
intersection of racial and environmental justice, with a particular
focus on security and urban policy. She tweets @e_lherman. <br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.the-trouble.com/content/2020/6/6/book-review-industrial-strength-denial">https://www.the-trouble.com/content/2020/6/6/book-review-industrial-strength-denial</a><br>
<p> </p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Alarming graphic to accompany the article - interactive choose a
scenario]<br>
<b>CLIMATE CLOCK<br>
</b>ADDING THE METRIC OF TIME TO THE GLOBAL WARMING CONVERSATION<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://climateclock.net/">https://climateclock.net/</a><br>
<br>
<br>
[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
June 9, 2008 </b></font><br>
June 9, 2008: <br>
Deputy EPA administrator Jason Burnett resigns; he later claims that
he did so after repeated interference from the White House on issues
related to carbon pollution.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.sfgate.com/green/article/Ex-EPA-aide-tells-of-White-House-censorship-3205205.php">https://www.sfgate.com/green/article/Ex-EPA-aide-tells-of-White-House-censorship-3205205.php</a>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-07-09/news/36799342_1_climate-change-epa-deputy-associate-administrator-congressional-testimony">http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2008-07-09/news/36799342_1_climate-change-epa-deputy-associate-administrator-congressional-testimony</a>
<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://youtu.be/IPjyauzrrv0">http://youtu.be/IPjyauzrrv0</a> <br>
<br>
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