Daily Quick Read - October 14, 2019

Is Anybody Going to Jail For This?

In the 1980’s the fossil fuel industry quietly buried its own internal studies that concluded that the burning of fossil fuels was resulting in increased atmospheric CO2.  These studies also described many of the potential outcomes that would result from the world’s continued reliance on fossil fuels. They suppressed their findings and collectively worked to ignore or deflect any questions regarding the impact of fossil fuels.  But, by the 1990’s climate science was becoming mainstream and the danger of our reliance on fossil fuels was becoming a broadly discussed topic.  So, the industry did exactly what you would expect.  They got together and developed a plan to attack climate science and the scientist who were raising the alarm.  The goal wasn’t just to refute the science, but to create uncertainty around the methods, motives and conclusion of the scientist who were raising the alarm.

In 1998 a public relations consultant called Joe Walker wrote to the American Petroleum Institute (API), a trade association representing major fossil fuel companies, with a proposed solution to a big problem.

…A series of strategic goals was elaborated. It said “victory will be achieved when … recognition of uncertainties becomes part of the conventional wisdom” and “those promoting the Kyoto treaty on the basis of extant science appear to be out of touch with reality”.

Climate campaigners such as Greenpeace say they believe a highly organised effort by the fossil fuel industry to question climate science, involving scientists and some think tanks in receipt of fossil fuel industry funding, nevertheless succeeded in the following years in shifting public opinion away from urgent action.

In 2010 the American sociologists Riley Dunlap and Aaron McCright identified conservative thinktanks, along with US conservative politicians, media and fossil fuel corporations, as crucial components in a “denial machine” that emerged in the 1990s.

Warren is Right — Break Up Giant Tech Companies

It’s not just the fossil fuel companies that fund the climate denialist.  Companies like Google are happy to fund even the most radical of climate denial organizations as long as those organizations also work to support the broad deregulation agenda Google also favours.  

Among hundreds of groups the company has listed on its website as beneficiaries of its political giving are more than a dozen organisations that have campaigned against climate legislation, questioned the need for action, or actively sought to roll back Obama-era environmental protections.

The list includes the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), a conservative policy group that was instrumental in convincing the Trump administration to abandon the Paris agreement and has criticised the White House for not dismantling more environmental rules.

Google is also listed as a sponsor for an upcoming annual meeting of the State Policy Network (SPN), an umbrella organisation that supports conservative groups including the Heartland Institute, a radical anti-science group that has chided the teenage activist Greta Thunberg for “climate delusion hysterics”.

Google, Facebook and Microsoft all talk a good game regarding climate change, but they all are quite happy to join with the Heartland Institute and other Koch funded climate deniers when they organize their denial-fests.

All three tech companies were sponsors of LibertyCon, the annual convention of the libertarian group Students for Liberty, which took place in Washington, DC.

Among the most notable was the CO2 Coalition, a group founded in 2015 to spread the “good news” about a greenhouse gas whose increase in the atmosphere is linked to potentially catastrophic climate change. The coalition is funded by conservative foundations that have backed other climate change denial efforts. These include the Mercer Family Foundation, which in recent years has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to right-wing think tanks engaged in climate change denialism, and the Charles Koch Institute, the charitable arm of one of the brothers behind Koch Industries, the oil and gas behemoth.

Citizens’ Assemblies

The School of Athens                                                           Raffael Sanzio

Citizens’ assemblies have been used to create public policy in many democratic countries including Canada, Ireland and Australia. In Great Britain, Extinction Rebellion is calling for the use of this tool to take the process of developing climate policy away from politicians who are often more beholden to corporate interests than the public good. Extinction Rebellion has three areas where they believe that a citizens’ assembly could generate more enlightened public policy such as the initiation of  a formal “climate emergency” declaration, implementing government commitments to carbon neutrality by 2025 and…

Their third demand is for the public to drive climate policy through a citizens' assembly. Because parliamentary democracy — under pressure from lobbyists and fearful of big trade-offs — has proven unfit for such challenges, says Linda Doyle of Extinction Rebellion.

The activists want an assembly that dives deep into climate science and questions of environmental and social justice, before focusing in on areas such as transport, agriculture and housing. And they want any decision reached with a two-thirds majority to be binding on governments.  

Extinction Rebellion is convinced that, properly informed and given time to deliberate, randomly selected citizens "will understand the sense of urgency that everybody in Extinction Rebellion feels," Doyle says. "Then it will be just a matter of trying to figure out the best way to deal with this situation."

Maybe it’s time we recognize the our current political structures are not capable of dealing with the climate crisis.

Finger in the Dike

As I said above, our politics continue to demonstrate that any real climate change policies are going to be tempered by corporate interests.  Even in the most progressive states, the most significant efforts are often no more than tokens. Not that I don’t think this is a good idea, but it’s not going to save the planet.

California hotels with more than 50 rooms will be banned from dispensing plastic bottles of soap, shampoo or conditioner beginning in 2023 under a new law signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom. The ban applies to all hotels, regardless of size, in 2024.

Assemblyman Ash Kalra, D-San Jose, who sponsored the bill, said it law will force hotels to explore more sustainable alternatives and curb plastic consumption.

“Single-use products like those tiny plastic bottles commonly provided in hotels rooms represent a sizable amount of waste that can be easily eliminated through more cost-effective and environmentally friendly alternatives,” Kalra said in prepared remarks.

California is the first state in the nation to ban those bottles, according to Kalra’s office.

Maybe Turn to Drinking

In the craft been industry’s heartland, a vodka distilling start-up has figured out how to lower their carbon footprint with every bottle by using bakery goods that would normally end up in landfill.  

Instead of looking at these products (baked goods) as simply “food” or “waste,” Rigali and Chereskin looked at them through a distiller’s lens and saw what they were made of starches and sugars, which are the building blocks to making all alcoholic beverages. That realization was the lightbulb moment that led Misadventure to being the first distillery in the world to make high quality vodka from excess baked goods.

“An environmental impact study conducted by the University of Michigan concluded that by using surplus food as our input, we offset more carbon than it takes to produce our vodka,” Rigali said. “That means we are the first carbon negative spirit in the world, which also means that when someone sips on Misadventure vodka they are actually lowering their carbon footprint.”

I'll drink to that!