A suit for the emperor/The World Bank’s gross hypocrisy on climate change

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A suit for the emperor

by Craig K. Comstock, originally published by The Huffington Post  | TODAY

In a recent iconoclastic talk at the University of Bristol, a leading British climate scientist invoked the lad in Hans Christian Andersen's story of the emperor's new clothes. In the story, swindlers have offered to make a new suit for the emperor, of magic fabric that they announce can't be seen by people who are stupid or "unfit" for their positions. Although the swindlers weave nothing, everyone in the court has been afraid to expose the fraud until the vain emperor, wearing his new invisible outfit, goes on parade and a child shouts that he's naked.

In alluding to this story, Kevin Anderson begins a talk that, in its tone, could be described as the passion of a rational man, casting himself as the truth-telling child, the world's political leaders as the emperor, and scientific policy advisers as the weavers, or rather, as people who (for whatever reasons) tell less than the whole truth about climate change.

Well-informed by other scientists and engineers, Anderson is deputy director of the UK's leading climate science consortium, called the Tyndall Centre. His claim in the talk is that, far from exaggerating the danger, some scientists close to policy-makers acquiesce while politicians and their helpers describe the situation as being less dangerous and less immediate than it is. To the extent this is true, politicians (and their constituents) are less than fully informed of what changes are necessary, and how urgent is the need.

In particular, Anderson points to the goal of a two degree (centigrade) rise in global mean surface temperature, a mantra accepted at international conferences including Copenhagen, and by his own government in the UK. According to Anderson, this goal is unmeetable unless we take extreme measures, and yet it has brought about no adequate action to date. Instead, we are on track, he says, for a four degree rise or worse. It's as if prudent governance is paralyzed.

To nearly all non-scientists, a four degree rise sounds acceptable. After all, we deal with extreme variations in temperature between night and day, winter and summer. But to a climate scientist, four degrees is a calamity. The reasons are many. Four degrees is an average over the whole globe, most of which is relatively cool water; and some land areas will be more affected than others. Second, climate change will mean that some areas have disastrous floods, while others, including agricultural lands, suffer drought along with temperature increases. Third, the oceans will rise, imperiling coastal cities such as New York and hundreds of others around the world. Fourth, tropical diseases will migrate north.

In the British transcript of Anderson's talk, apart from the stark conclusions, the most haunting word is just a noise made by the speaker, transcribed repeatedly as "hmm." It's hard to know what this sound means. Is the speaker wondering how to convey the urgency of what he's seen? Is one fact tumbling over another? Is the speaker musing over what will possibly break through the good-natured resistance of people whom he feels are thinking, "this can't possibly be happening"?

Anderson's prophetic voice is directed at the place where climate science and politics meet. According to him, we are sleepwalking in a fantasy land where we pretend that a two degree rise is no big thing, while, he says, keeping the rise that small would actually require heroic measures starting now. In his talk, he points out that what counts is not the gases emitted in some far-off year, when we say they will finally be low, but the cumulative emissions from now until that point.

He knows that purveyors of doom are not welcomed, so, near the end of his talk, as of a recent paper that he wrote, he asks what can be done. In one graph he imagines a deliberate ten percent reduction in emissions each year, but he observes that even when Russia's economy collapsed in the 1990s, the annual reduction was only five percent. In short, the situation is as extreme as a global war.

It seems impossible that something as beneficial as fossil fuels could hurt us, could through its emissions at worst take the advanced world back to the time before the Industrial Revolution and then much further. Meanwhile, we tend to deny, temporize, or try to adapt. Even if this year's U.S. drought and the East Coast hurricane were not caused by global warming, or even worsened, they demonstrated to some degree what nature might do. And they are the kind of events scientists predict will be affected by warming.

Anderson has a conclusion that is simple: (a) Emissions are caused not equally by seven billion people, soon to be nine, but most of it by just 10 percent (or even 1 percent) of global population, and (b) emissions need not be a long-term problem but the transition to a low-carbon economy must happen soon. So, what he advises is a short-term change, quite big, focused on the rich countries.

In Anderson's analysis, the solution lies in the world's richest people using less energy and thus becoming less prosperous, or to put it another way, less rich. This cuts against people's desire to have as much as we can manage, and cuts too against the myth of progress. Why shouldn't we always have more as measured by GDP?

The field of economics has flourished in a world in which, apart from wars and the pauses called recessions, consumption grew. The financial system, we are being told, works only in this condition, because loans have to be repaid with interest. The American dream, which is now also a Chinese dream, assumes that each generation, on average, will be more prosperous than the last.

But prosperity depends on energy. Energy now is mainly carbon-based. Carbon endangers the climate. Politicians talk as if a return to growth will solve our problems, by creating jobs, increasing discretionary income, producing tax revenues. When we grow, we're happy.

Two problems with this: As the easy energy is used up, the cost of extraction rises or "peaks." Even to the extent we can afford this energy, it produces emissions that, at best, impose enormous costs, and at worst imperil our future.

One response is to call these facts a hoax and to pirate emails that suggest that scientists are cudgeling their brains to get the rest of society to take seriously what they know. Another is solemnly to agree on an impossible task: to keep global mean surface temperature rise to 2 degrees (C) and then do nothing to reduce emissions except have a recession and export manufacturing processes that emit greenhouse gases.

The merit of Anderson's position is that he says what would be necessary, even if it seems "politically impossible." It is not up to him, as a scientist, to say how the necessary can be done. Likewise, we cannot reliably expect leadership from those who face election and fear backing an unpopular course.

We are now on track for desperate attempts to adapt to new conditions (expensive projects such as seawalls for New York), followed by desperate attempts at global atmospheric engineering

This challenge is difficult in that it's not as obvious as a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The cause is invisible gases. The accumulation is gradual. The gases are caused by activities whose benefits are obvious, and even taken for granted. We have built our way of life around these benefits. The fossil fuels are supplied by giant firms with a cash flow that can easily pay for dis-information ads, "campaign contributions," and lobbying to defend their economic interests. The energy substitutes require a huge new infrastructure, and might not provide as much energy as the fossil fuels. Effective action require collective or governmental steps, not just voluntary personal "consumer" decisions. Nobody wants to be put at an economic disadvantage by taking steps while others gain market share by continuing to pollute. Above all, who wants to pay more for energy?

Anderson's talk formed the basis for an episode produced by the admirable Alex Smith's Ecoshock Radio (be patient while the audio loads), and is now available in the form of a video edited, and a transcript prepared, by the Cabot Institute at Bristol. Recently, Anderson has also introduced these themes in the leading chapter of a collection on climate change and in an interview with Rob Hopkins, founder of the Transition Town movement.

http://www.resilience.org/stories/2012-11-27/a-suit-for-the-emperor

Posted on November 27, 2012

The World Bank’s gross hypocrisy on climate change

The World Bank, which says emissions must be cut quickly to prevent catastrophic global warming, is a major investor in fossil fuel projects that are turning the heat up.

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by Simon Butler
Green Left Weekly 

The World Bank delivered a brutal warning about the dangers of runaway climate change and called for rapid action to cut greenhouse gas emissions in a recent report. But don’t expect the bank to take its own advice.

The bank released its Turn Down the Heat (pdf) report on climate change on November 18. Subtitled “Why a 4 degree warmer world must be avoided,” the report said the world is headed for a 4°C average temperature rise by the end of the century, and possibly as soon as 2060.

On today’s trends, a 4°C world is almost certain — even if all nations were to meet their current targets to cut emissions. That is, the existing pledges to cut emissions made at recent international climate talks are not enough to make a difference.

The report makes clear that a 4°C world would be a global calamity. The World Bank said a 4°C temperature rise would lead to average summer temperatures about 6°C higher in North Africa, the Mediterranean, the Middle East and North America.

The higher temperatures will also mean “a dramatic increase in the intensity and frequency of high temperature extremes.” These extremes, such the unprecedented Russian heatwave of 2010, would become “the new normal summer.” The Russian heatwave caused more than 10,000 deaths and wiped close to $15 billion off the country’s GDP.

The big rise in CO2 levels would also cause a 150% rise in ocean acidification by 2100, something probably “unparalleled in Earth’s history.” This would spell the end for the world’s coral reefs but also wipe out global fish stocks, which the WWF says are due to collapse anyway by mid-century from overfishing. Today, about 1 billion people worldwide rely on fish as their main protein source.

Sea level rise will be an enduring crisis in a 4 degree world. The World Bank estimates sea levels would rise by up to a metre by 2100. But even a 2°C temperature rise could cause a 4 metre sea level rise by 2300. In 2010, the World Ocean Review estimated that “more than 200 million people live on coastlines less than 5 metres above sea level.” It said that figure will rise to at least 400 million by 2100.

A 4°C temperature rise would also signify a species extinction crisis, “surpassing habitat destruction as the greatest threat to biodiversity.”

The report noted new research rules out hopes that a warmer world could lead to greater food production. Instead, the “results suggest instead a rapidly rising risk of crop yield reductions as the world warms.”

The World Bank report also warned that these predictions very likely understate the dangers. Climate change does not affect the planet in a linear, straightforward way. Its impacts are nonlinear — the gradual build up of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can cause abrupt changes to the Earth’s ecosystems.

This year’s summer Arctic ice melt, in which more than 2 million square kilometres of sea ice vanished, is an example of nonlinear climate change in action. In turn, the melting of the Arctic ice opens the door to the passing of other climate tipping points, such as the melting of the Greenland ice sheet or the release of huge reserves of methane frozen on the Arctic seabed.

The World Bank said as global warming approaches and passes 2°C of warming, “the risk of crossing thresholds of nonlinear tipping elements in the Earth system, with abrupt climate change impacts and unprecedented high-temperature climate regimes, increases.”

It said one of these critical tipping points was “the disintegration of the West Antarctic ice sheet,” which would lead to “more rapid sea-level rise than projected in this analysis.”

Another tipping point would be a “large-scale Amazon dieback drastically affecting ecosystems, rivers, agriculture, energy production, and livelihoods in an almost continental scale,” which would add “substantially to 21st-century global warming.”

The Turn Down the Heat report concluded: “The projected 4°C warming simply must not be allowed to occur — the heat must be turned down.” Yet strangely, it offered no suggestions or proposals for how this could be done, other than a call for “early, cooperative, international actions.”

In practice, World Bank investments in fossil fuels around the world are turning the heat up.

For example, the bank is funding a new brown coal-fired plant in Kosovo. Brown coal is the most polluting fossil fuel.

In 2010, the World Bank loaned $3.75 billion to build a giant 4.8 gigawatt coal-fired power plant — one of world’s biggest — in South Africa. That year, the Bank Information Centre said the World Bank’s funding of coal hit “a record high of $4.4 billion.”

NGO Christian Aid said the bank’s funding of coal had increased 40-fold over the previous 5 years.

A July report by the NGO coalition Jubilee South Asia Pacific Movement on Debt and Development said the World Bank was “tainted by a history of financing projects that produce or heavily use fossil fuels.” The bank has financed 745 such projects over 61 years in the Asia Pacific region, at a cost of $70 billion. About $20 billion of this was invested in the past 10 years.

Last month, the World Bank announced it would provide insurance for a new project in North Africa: a huge expansion of Egypt’s oil and gas sector.

The bank is also spending billions helping agribusinesses buy up farmland across the global South. Because this replaces climate-friendly small scale farming with fossil fuel-reliant industrial agriculture, the bank is helping create new sources of greenhouse gas emissions.

Given its continued financing of polluting industries, there is no reason to think “the World Bank has found common cause with Greenpeace,” as The Guardian reporter John Vidal said on November 25.

Rather than an indication it will change its ways, the bank’s Turn Down the Heat report has more to do with a public relations drive in the context of the new round of United Nations climate talks, which began in Doha, Qatar, on November 26.

Two years ago, the Cancun UN climate conference appointed the World Bank as “interim trustee” of the multi-billion dollar Green Climate Fund, meant to help fund sustainable, low emissions development — especially in the global South. The details of the fund will come under higher-than-usual scrutiny during the conference.

A permanent trustee for the fund won’t be appointed until 2015, but there is little doubt that the World Bank will put its hand out for the prize. To do this smoothly, it needs to bolster its green credentials to counter the opposition of climate action groups worldwide.

In 2010, more than 90 NGOs and activist groups sent an open letter to UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, protesting the World Bank’s role in the Green Climate Fund. The groups said:

“In spite of the climate and economic crises, the World Bank continues to finance fossil fuel projects at an alarming rate, promote false solutions to the climate crisis, and use funding instruments that increase the indebtedness of developing countries.

“Thus, the World Bank is not suited to advise in the design of a fund that must ensure fair and effective long-term financing based on the principles of environmental integrity, equity, sustainable development, and democracy.”

 

Related articles… (auto-generated)

• James Hansen: Climate change has arrived,
  and it’s worse than predicted (posted on August 7, 2012)
• The World Bank’s role in fueling catastrophic climate change (posted on June 11, 2011)
• Gov’t Report: Climate change already affects U.S. (posted on June 17, 2009)
• G8 Moves Backward on Climate Change (posted on July 10, 2008)
• Climate Change and the Muslim World (posted on July 18, 2007)
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Category: Books & Reports, Climate Change, Featured | Tagged: Simon Butler

 http://climateandcapitalism.com/2012/11/27/the-world-banks-gross-hypocrisy-on-climate-change/