Category: Climate change

On 1st November, nominations open for The Earthshot Prize, “the most prestigious global environment prize in history” according to its website. The competition is open to a wide range of evidence-based solutions to our biggest environmental problems. It aims to “turn the current pessimism surrounding environmental issues into optimism that we can rise to the biggest challenges of our time”.

Grand words. Here’s my entry: everyone holds the key and everyone can learn how to use it.

Unintended consequence

But if we are told that the key is in Big Ideas Out There, then we assume we don’t possess it ourselves and take no action. This is the unintended consequence of unfettered belief in technology. As experts have been pointing out to our Prime Minister – reported by Roger Harrabin a few days ago – technology is not a “silver bullet”.

Or, more accurately, it probably isn’t. Maybe we will see miraculous developments, in nuclear fusion or carbon capture, say. Or maybe not.

We seem to be programmed to take sensible risk precautions as individuals but not as a group. Imagine you are walking near a cliff-edge in the most technologically advanced footwear, advertised as having the best grip ever. It starts to rain and become very slippery. Will you carry on walking precariously near the drop, trusting the technology; or will you move further away, even if in so doing you take longer to reach your destination?

Very few people would rely solely on their footwear. So why are we reluctant to apply similar prudence with respect to our lifestyle in the face of climate change?

Everyone can learn how to use it

Education, both formal and informal, provides the means for understanding what we can do and, apropos the above question, what stops us from doing it. There is nothing more important to learn nowadays, not even how to spell the word glacier or how to count the number of endangered species. And many of us, including – on the basis of the news at least – both our Prime Minister and SUV-driving leader of the opposition, do not appear to have been fully educated.

Teaching ourselves if needs be, we can learn about our innate ability to adapt; that we have no divine right to this or that particular way of life (and nature does not care if we think otherwise); that blame is useless; that it is never too late to change; though maybe it is cutting it fine to spend time arguing whether 98% or 99% of climate scientists believe in global warming, rather than simply going with the majority expert opinion.

Some might say that education requires time, which we don’t have, so we need to support technological solutions. I would say that windfarms and solar panels, even if we go hell for leather, will take several years to build up the necessary market share; while nuclear, hydrogen and/or carbon capture will take decades. Whereas, whatever our income level, most of us can adapt our lifestyle – diet, travel, heating, holidays, clothes, other purchases, and so on and so forth – straightaway and without having to carry the burden of an irretrievable, albeit indefinite, commitment. We do not have time not to.

So my optimistic idea – apologies for its offbeat nature but the Committee does stress they are open to a wide range of suggestions – is that everyone learns how to use the key we all share. In addition to finding Big Ideas, of course. We need all measures. Because otherwise, Earthshot Committee, the earth really will be shot.

Here’s a worrying story, posted on Sunday on the BBC’s website. Over the last 40 years, oil companies have suppressed evidence of man-made climate change and deliberately spread doubt as to its existence. They have succeeded in delaying action to limit it with devastating consequences.

On BBC Sounds, there is a series of podcasts with the above title. The general theme is that the energy industry – with a focus on American oil – has cynically employed a strategy first introduced by tobacco companies in the 1950s. Pay experts who are willing to say in public that your product is not harmful, confuse the debate, and thus forestall any social and political response that might be bad for your business.

A plausible thesis

It is a plausible thesis. In both cases, authoritative-sounding and independent-seeming think tanks such as the George C Marshall Institute and the Information Council on the Environment (ICE) were set up to argue on behalf of vested interests. Some of the main sceptics were the same people in both cases: Frederick Seitz, Fred Singer, Bill Nierenberg, … respected scientists in other fields who for whatever reason were happy to oblige. The industrial players stumped up the cash and remained in the background as much as they could.

The media, loving a fierce debate and keen to present “two sides” to every argument, gave the sceptics plenty of airtime. The presenter of the podcast series, Peter Pomerantsev, makes the point well that a debate is not balanced by having “two sides” if only one side is trying to be objective.

Most worrying of all has been the successful politicisation of science. As evidence of anthropogenic global warming has increased, belief in it amongst U.S. Republican supporters has decreased. Apparently only around 15% of Trump supporters believe human activity is warming the planet. To many of them, a climate scientist is by definition a socialist – a term of abuse in their lexicon – not to be liked, let alone trusted.

Seduced by rhetoric

The BBC series does get a little carried away with its whistle-blower zeal; and consequently gets things out of proportion in relation to Public Enemy Number One, the oil companies. For instance, there are several references to the amount of money that ExxonMobil spent supporting think tanks to discredit climate science: $7m between 2003 and 2007 apparently. That certainly sounds like a lot, more than $1m per annum on average in that period.

But context is helpful. ExxonMobil’s annual revenue is around $280,000m; and while it fluctuates with the price of oil, we are talking 1 followed by eleven zeros, order of magnitude. So, on the basis of the podcast’s figure, ExxonMobil’s funding of dubious think tanks, at the height of its nefarious activity, was around 0.001% of its revenue. There is little doubt that ExxonMobil has spent tens or hundreds as much in the development of low carbon energy alternatives to oil.

That said, the small amount – relative to income – that ExxonMobil and others spent on biased think tanks masquerading as independent has arguably had a huge impact. Did they know they would be so successful? Not sure. And, were we to apportion blame, to what extent does society as a whole need to take a share for not asking the question: if there is a risk here, albeit a contested one, isn’t the wise course of action to change course?

The first podcast introduces Martin Hoffert, a computer geek who was working for Exxon in 1981 when he developed a model that predicted serious climate change in the coming decades. Looking back today, the series claims his predictions were “spot on” which means that the ExxonMobil team “saw the future clearly”. Alas, such a claim is as misleading as the disinformation campaign which the podcasts helpfully expose. Forecasters often make correct predictions without being sure of their subject matter, like one of Mark Lawrenson’s guest football pundits. With climate science, the devil is in the detail and in numerical quantification. In 1981, not even the well-funded research teams of oil majors “knew the facts” about climate change, whatever Greenpeace might say. Even in 2020, we don’t know how much the world is going to heat up, though we might now state with confidence we’re making it hotter.

There is plenty of naivety throughout the series. Jerry Taylor, a television sceptic in the 1990s, is eventually persuaded to actually read the work of one of his main targets, the climate scientist Jim Hansen. He is amazed to discover that Hansen produced more than one scenario, the one that he has been criticising in public as unrealistic doom-mongering. Jerry has a Damascene conversion, which is great but does leave you wondering why he didn’t check the basis of his feisty television performances earlier on.

Naivety extends to Pomerantsev himself, who has his “breath taken away” to discover that the oil (tobacco) industry could find scientists prepared to argue that burning fossil fuels does not cause dangerous climate change (smoking does not cause cancer). Is it not inevitable that businesses will spend money to present themselves in a good light, and be able to hire skilled external advocates, especially if the case is complex? (Indeed, is it wrong in principle, as long as the process is transparent? Doesn’t our legal system work like this?) Similarly, we as individuals might not want to believe that our Caribbean holiday, diet, or consumption habits, have anything to do with climate change. And we’ll find all sorts of ways to rationalise our behaviour (we’re too small to matter, only politicians can effect change, moving away from fossil fuels will cause more hardship than benefit, etc.), just as we do whenever we fail to heed unwelcome advice.

Acting despite doubt

The podcast series eventually recognises that doubt is at the very heart of scientific endeavour. A good hypothesis, by Popper’s definition, is one that can be readily disproved if conflicting evidence comes to light in the future. Scientific theories are rarely provable in a mathematical sense.

But of course we should not have to wait for certainty. Just as responsible science proceeds with the best hypothesis – as if it is true, until it is ever shown to be otherwise – so a responsible society should take action on the basis that climate change is very dangerous – and probably should have done so decades earlier.

Let’s avoid the language of vilification. We are all complicit and there is no point in casting blame. “They” are not the bad guys and “we” are not the good guys. We all need to work together – involving the expertise and resources of oil companies in the battle against climate change – and all doing what we can individually as well as corporately and indirectly via government.

Maybe, just maybe, it will be discovered in decades to come that climate change is not nearly as bad as it currently seems. But in the meantime let’s work with the best hypothesis we have: that man-made global warming endangers life on earth, requires urgent and significant changes in human activity, and we can all do something about it.