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<p><i><font size="+1"><b>November 21, 2020</b></font></i></p>
[clips from Bill McKibben article in the New Yorker]<br>
<b>When "Creatives" Turn Destructive: Image-Makers and the Climate
Crisis</b><br>
<br>
By Bill McKibben<br>
November 21, 2020...<br>
- -<br>
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...<br>
- -<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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.<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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.)<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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."<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/when-creatives-turn-destructive-image-makers-and-the-climate-crisis">https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/when-creatives-turn-destructive-image-makers-and-the-climate-crisis</a><br>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Summary video]<br>
<b>Arctic Warming: A Very Bad Positive Feedback Loop</b><br>
Nov 16, 2020<br>
TDC<br>
The oceans absorb 90% of the heat from greenhouse gasses, causing
evermore ice to melt.<br>
Watch the full conversation: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://tdc.video/programs/how-earths">https://tdc.video/programs/how-earths</a>...<br>
Dr. Jennifer A. Francis: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.jenniferafrancis.com/">https://www.jenniferafrancis.com/</a><br>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgZonRkM7jU">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgZonRkM7jU</a><br>
<br>
<p><br>
</p>
[warmth of alarmism]<br>
<b>Deep Frozen Arctic Microbes Are Waking Up</b><br>
Thawing permafrost is releasing microorganisms, with consequences
that are still largely unknown<br>
<br>
By Kimberley R. Miner, Arwyn Edwards, Charles Miller on November 20,
2020<br>
<br>
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.<br>
<br>
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...
<p>more at -
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/deep-frozen-arctic-microbes-are-waking-up/">https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/deep-frozen-arctic-microbes-are-waking-up/</a><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
[Digging back into the internet news archive]<br>
<font size="+1"><b>On this day in the history of global warming -
November 21, 2015 </b></font><br>
In a New York Times op-ed, Jeff Biggers observes:<br>
<blockquote> "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.<br>
<br>
<br>
"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.<br>
<br>
"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."<br>
</blockquote>
<a class="moz-txt-link-freetext"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/opinion/iowas-climate-change-wisdom.html?ref=opinion">http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/21/opinion/iowas-climate-change-wisdom.html?ref=opinion</a><br>
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