Robert Tulip wrote:Such statements are often cynically ignored as platitudes or meaningless political protocol, and yet the indigenous welcome has major value on several levels. Matilda’s concept of mother earth is highly religious, but has been excluded from traditional patriarchal Christianity and from science, in a pathology that illustrates the dangerous alienation of western imperialism from the earth.

I mention these broad philosophical ideas in the context of the apocalyptic framework of climate change to illustrate the principle that the solution to a problem cannot be found within the thinking that gave rise to the problem in the first place.

An indigenous epistemology will be needed to provide the real strategic framework for the ethics of transformation, recognising that the modern epistemologies of western technology are hellbent on a path to destruction, and that only a shift of paradigm to see care and nurture as central can save us.

Many people find such language embarrassing and meaningless, but to me it illustrates the centrality and scale of the paradigm shift involved in developing a compelling story of respect and concern for the future of life on our planet. The challenge is to integrate rival traditions, the scientific valuing of evidence and logic together with the human reverence and awe for the grandeur of the natural creation.

Be that as it may, Dr Hewson shows the value of seeing understanding of the primacy of climate change as entirely compatible with capitalist economics, and that action to achieve climate stability does not require anything like a communist revolution, even if that is sometimes the more messianic yearning from some on the left.

Robert, I wonder if you could address what I see as, if not a true contradiction, then at least an extremely difficult reconciling of philosophies of life. You'll see what I mean by the two passages I've quoted. I have always associated adopting an ethic of nurturing and care with turning away from, not embracing, the emphases of capitalism, specifically that we are committed to economic growth fueled by consumption. The alternative doesn't need to be labeled socialism or communism, but it would certainly be a downsizing in terms of resources and energy used and the growth rate of the human population. If it turns out not to be be within the capacity of our nature to voluntarily step down, then our only response to climate change can be adaptation to its effects, which won't "work," but will temporarily address some of the problems.

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Your Children’s Yellowstone Will Be Radically Different



nytimes.com/interactive/2018/11/15/clim ... rming.html

Fortunately more than a handful of climate catastrophic Nostradamean predictions never came to pass, or were significantly off the mark.

Back in 2007 IPCC officials admitted a "mistake" regarding specific forecasts related to Himalayan glaciers. The much broader conclusions remain unaffected.
It turns out the study had not been scrutinized by peer review.


Today's forecasts are consistently broad in scope. Naturally, being so helps to save face when scrutinized decades later.


https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... rs-mistake

ant wrote:Today's forecasts are consistently broad in scope. Naturally, being so helps to save face when scrutinized decades later.

To be fair, the forecasts are broad in scope because they're trying to be honest. It's hard or nearly impossible to make specific predictions. It's not about saving face in the decades to come. It's about trying to give the most truthful prediction possible. Are you sitting there biting your nails waiting for something specific to disprove?

You're being unfair to the character of these scientists.

Robert Tulip wrote:

Harry Marks wrote:My sense is that the vast majority have not given [climate change] enough thought to be said to have "made up their mind." It is still a badge of belonging for a lot of people to take one position or another.

It is astounding to me that a primary planetary existential risk can be regarded with such indifference, and so clearly subordinated to partisan politics without effort to find cross-partisan solutions.

Newt Gingrich seems to have recognized that when the Berlin Wall came down, the old basis for cooperative, bi-partisan politics was gone. (He may have had even larger narratives in mind, such as that the threat of communism had been the only real restraint on the rapaciousness of the rich, but I would rather not explore those possibilities.)

To those who see life as being all about scaling the closest ladder to status, which is a good description of the ethos of most capital cities, "issues" are just content-generation for the scrum of appearances within the game of partisan politics. They have almost no real impact on the lives of real people, and even if they did, such an impact could always be outmaneuvered rhetorically, so real-life impacts are not taken seriously. Levers for freeing up campaign finance, on the other hand, are their daily preoccupation and they don't have the luxury of looking past those.

So divisiveness is in, and realism is out, and for the irrelevant 10% who still think people's lives are the point of politics, a pat on the head will do.

Robert Tulip wrote:People will trot out Schultz and Baker to suggest carbon taxes are non-partisan, but I don’t think it is so simple. Even so, I am changing my views on the merits of carbon tax, since it is important to threaten with a bludgeon when fossil fuel industries so manifestly fail to support the public interest.

You left out Milton Friedman, whose bestseller and hit TV show was called "Free to Choose." Carbon taxes are not a bludgeon of any sort - they are a recognition of the reality of external costs, without which organized economic activity will continue to ignore those costs. With such a recognition, the inventiveness of human ingenuity will go to work on ways to minimize those costs.

Your late conversion to the recognition that the fossil fuel industry cares nothing for the public interest strikes this observer as astonishingly naive.

Robert Tulip wrote:Tests of political identity operate as psychological myths, in the sense of mythology as a tribal story that gives meaning and direction to our life. The actual proposals for carbon removal are viewed mainly through the prism of an interconnected group of ideas, and people give tactical and strategic inferences just as much weight as the actual scientific content of the proposal. The inference that carbon removal might reduce political pressure on the fossil fuel industry has far greater weight in many circles than the question of whether carbon removal could provide a practical path to climate stability.

You will find that getting monetary incentives involved moves the discussion away from mythology and symbolism with an astonishing rapidity. More on the political pressure on the fossil fuel industry below.

Robert Tulip wrote:On incentives, Australia’s Emissions Reduction Fund is actually designed to enable incentives for carbon removal, through reverse auctions for least cost abatement, but is generally condemned by the political left as a corrupt alliance between government and the fossil fuel industry to deflect focus on emission reduction. More on that later.

I'm not familiar with the ERF, but it sounds promising. Like "carbon offsets" it at least gets some process in place for assessing baselines and activating search for low-cost approaches. It also sounds like it is the result of a corrupt alliance, but since it moves in the direction of actual incentives, that strikes me as a foolish reason to oppose it.

Robert Tulip wrote:I have been thinking a lot about your point on the corruption of the fossil fuel industries. A good article this week from Business Insider says the largest oil companies spend just 1% of their budget on green energy. I have been astounded by the scale of lying associated with fracking, especially how the fugitive emissions of methane are ignored in the common claims that the shift to gas has cut emissions in the USA.

They have bought entire geology departments at major universities. Your astonishment is somewhat astonishing.

Robert Tulip wrote:My attitude on this has been driven by the question of what is the most practical way to stabilise the climate. Fomenting political conflict in order to decarbonise the economy seems unlikely to work, in view of the imbalance of power, whereas collaborating with the fossil fuel to engage their resources, skills and networks on carbon removal just might work. Part of the problem is that corporations have a mindless short-term mercantile view, failing to see how their own interests could be served by a more evidence-based approach to climate change.

They are also engaged in commercial competition, with relatively thin margins, so no company has any incentive to voluntarily help the public. BP has made some genuine sacrifices, but it is always a fragile initiative, pitting the humanity of a few executives who have decided to care about their children against the mindlessness of market search for returns. If government changes the rules, the play will respond.

Robert Tulip wrote:

Harry Marks wrote: The ostrich vote is being deliberately stoked by Big Oil and Big Coal. Is there any reason not to hold them accountable for this fraud?

Asking how to hold fossil industry accountable requires a practical strategy to maintain energy security and move toward climate security, while opening a discussion about why it is in the commercial and political interests of the fossil fuel industry to invest in carbon removal, beyond the highly dubious method of injecting CO2 into empty wells.

Ask yourself this. How would sponsoring iron enrichment of the seas enrich a corporation? With abatement (or NET) incentives, the answer is obvious. Without them, the answer is just as obviously that there is none.

The accountability to which I refer is to attach dollar figures to the amount and kind of their "free speech" and make the public aware of who has been saying what, so as the s**t keeps hitting the fan the public will know who to hold accountable.

Robert Tulip wrote:While the extreme anti fossil fuel campaigns may result in forcing the companies to discuss the problems in a more realistic way, there is also the risk that campaigning to disinvest could have perverse impacts, increasing political polarization and energy prices while reducing potential for cooperation. The useful article linked above from Business Insider shows how Big Oil has used renewable investment as a public relations activity.

Disinvestment is a pea-shooter. There are practical, dollars-and-cents costs involved, as any large insurance company will freely verify. Without incentives to respond to carbon's costs, those costs will just continue to mount and the stored wrath in the atmosphere will continue to portend even higher impacts in the future.

Even a small carbon tax would make an enormous impact. The difference in response between 1/10 of the true cost and zero would be astonishing.

Robert Tulip wrote: My concerns are that incentives are too slow, small, uncertain, risky and complex in the face of the real scale of the climate problem, and therefore are just one arrow in a broad quiver of responses.

Somehow that doesn't strike me as a reason to prefer "zero." Even "complex," a downside which has actual costs associated with it, is not a real disadvantage because any realistic response to the externality will mean paying attention to the specifics. So "complex" is part of the deal and we might as well get familiar with grappling with it.

I am hoping that geo-engineering and NET will make the kind of impact you are expecting. In fact I am hoping for it so much that I advocate incentives for corporations to pursue it.

Robert Tulip wrote:The IPCC is a compromise body. It therefore systematically understates the real risk that 2° of warming is already committed by past emissions, and that this committed warming will cause major disruption and conflict. I support the use of tax incentives to cut emissions, but tax is really only a tiny part of the climate solution.

The IPCC is only relevant because we are looking at a global public good. It's still the job of leaders, and in a democracy, voters and the press, to focus on the truth of the matter and get the job done. The fact that they can point to major disruption and conflict already as a result of the warming we have already seen is secondary to the project of getting down to the business of acting in the public interest.

Robert Tulip wrote:What we really need is a global Manhattan Apollo project, delivering major public private partnership to research and develop methods to remove carbon from the air at scale, while also deploying solar radiation management systems to prevent the climate suddenly tipping over to a point of no return.

That's fine with me. Either way, no, both ways, we are talking about government action. So it's time for advocates of various paths to quit sniping at each other as though they were Bolsheviks eliminating the threat from the Mensheviks.

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Well, there ain't no use in cryin'
'Cause it will only, only drive you mad.
Does it hurt to hear them lyin'?
Was this the only world you had?
— James Patrick (Jimmy) Page, Robert Plant

DWill wrote:

Robert Tulip wrote:...the indigenous welcome has major value on several levels. Matilda’s concept of mother earth is highly religious, but has been excluded from traditional patriarchal Christianity and from science, in a pathology that illustrates the dangerous alienation of western imperialism from the earth...

...climate change as entirely compatible with capitalist economics...

Robert, I wonder if you could address what I see as, if not a true contradiction, then at least an extremely difficult reconciling of philosophies of life. You'll see what I mean by the two passages I've quoted. I have always associated adopting an ethic of nurturing and care with turning away from, not embracing, the emphases of capitalism, specifically that we are committed to economic growth fueled by consumption. The alternative doesn't need to be labeled socialism or communism, but it would certainly be a downsizing in terms of resources and energy used and the growth rate of the human population.

Thanks DWill, your comments raise a central problem in philosophy, politics and economics. One way to look at this problem is the tension between cooperation and competition as primary drivers of ethics, with implications for climate policy, and for social evolution more broadly.

Cooperation involves nurturing and care, recognising the unity of all life and the primacy of respect and empathy. These cooperative principles are central to ecological sustainability, protecting and stewarding the natural environment in a spirit of solidarity, recognising the broad damage caused by selfish and destructive actions.

This cooperative system of values is central to indigenous systems of spirituality, and to the whole idea of care for the earth that informs concern about our planetary future. The absence of cooperative values is a main cause of climate change, due to how modern culture has become alienated from nature.

Alienation is a dominant cultural syndrome arising from the history of western conquest with its self-serving apocalyptic pathology of the infinite providential frontier. A psychoanalytic philosophy can see how these cultural pathologies are present in much of the fantasy religion of the west, but how Christian traditions conceal a real potential for salvation from extinction beneath the supernatural veneer.

The downside of cooperation is seen in the socialist ideal of giving according to your ability and receiving only what you need, emphasising mutual equality over individual freedom. Enforced equality can become a way to prevent entrepreneurial risk, stifling individual innovation, motivation and creativity and producing conformity and stagnation.

The contrasting ethical value system grounded in competition stands in tension with these cooperative principles and problems, and is a primary driver of technological progress. Evolutionary processes of relentless competition for survival and reproduction generate ruthless efficiency, with only the most able and adaptive individuals and traits able to prosper, whether in nature or culture.

Competition promotes the market economics of capitalism, emphasising individual freedom rather than social equality, on the basis that freedom generates prosperity and opportunity. The task of integrating competitive values with the cooperative vision of climate restoration sees that climate restoration requires technological innovation, which can best achieve the required global scale and efficiency within a capitalist corporate framework, driven by private industry in cooperation with governments and scientists.

Human existence can rise above the fascistic Social Darwinism of colonial imperialism and its modern American versions that allow the weakest to fail in order to give incentive for the strong to improve and prosper. But finding the balance is complex, requiring public policy that resolves the tension between freedom and equality, integrating competition and cooperation as core values.

This tension between cooperation and competition appears strongly within Christianity, in what can be called the Matthew Paradox. Matthew 25 firstly promotes the ethic of competition, with Christ saying those who have much will be given even more. It then supports the contrasting ethic of cooperation, with Christ saying what we do to the least of the world we do to him. The resolution of this paradox is that only the abundance produced by competition can enable cooperative distribution of resources to meet the needs of all.

These principles underpin key debates in climate change. A broadly held communitarian view is that capitalist competition is destroying our planet, and only a fundamental shift of values to a simpler more equal and cooperative economy can reverse global warming. My view is that this focus on equality has important messages but is simplistic and misconceived in practice.

Efforts to decrease overall consumption face the immense barrier of popular democratic aspirations for improved standard of living. Even more importantly than this challenge of obtaining consent for a cooperative simplicity, the problem of destruction of the planet is not simply about the scale of human activity, but is also primarily about methods pf economic organisation. My view is that better management of the economy, within a capitalist framework, could actually increase real overall abundance while protecting ecology, for example by converting waste into resources, and especially by making use of the vast resources, energy and area available in the world oceans.

Solving the global warming problem requires a balance between shifting to less polluting lifestyles and cleaning up the mess we have made. Both these urgent objectives can best be achieved in my view through cooperation between governments and corporations to use the world ocean to convert the dangerous excess of carbon dioxide into valuable commodities.

DWill wrote:If it turns out not to be within the capacity of our nature to voluntarily step down, then our only response to climate change can be adaptation to its effects, which won't "work," but will temporarily address some of the problems.

I disagree that the only alternatives are adaptation or shrinkage of the economy. A third option, grounded in the ideas of negative emission technologies, is that methods to remove carbon from the air at sufficient scale could enable ongoing economic growth. My vision of the planetary future is high carbon, in the sense that we will work out simple methods to transform the carbon in CO2 into myriad useful products, such as plastics and textiles, which will then enable sustained productivity at scale.

For example, shifting carbon from the air into the soil through systems such as biochar has major potential to improve agriculture while also addressing global warming, as other NET Conference speakers discussed, of which more later.

A Seven F program can focus on fuel, food, feed, fabric, fertilizer, forests and fish as the primary carbon industries needed to save the planet.

Dr Clare Heyward, of the Institute of Advanced Sustainability Studies in Potsdam Germany, spoke at the Canberra Negative Emissions Technology Conference on challenges and opportunities of negative emission technologies, reflecting on moral debates in political philosophy around geoengineering.

Dr Heyward noted that this is a new area of discussion, with the Canberra meeting only the second ever conference on NETs, following the conference in Sweden in May 2018. She said the need to discuss both solar radiation management and greenhouse gas removal arises from recognition of the severe impacts of climate change as an existential crisis for our planet, and commented that failure to find ways to stop dangerous warming presents an ethical imperative to consider technology, aiming to adapt to a changed world, rectify impacts of past emissions and reduce future emissions.

My own view is that placing this existential moral crisis for our species in a cultural framework can usefully draw on religious metaphors for the apocalyptic risks of conflict, collapse and extinction caused by global warming, portraying the human situation as imperilled by the four horsemen of war, death, plague and famine.

Dr Heyward did not use such religious imagery, but said that morality is inherent in our response to global warming, putting NETs in the context of normative values, the philosophy of what we believe we should do. The dangerous threats raise moral problems around how we should respond, who should be responsible, what priorities should be considered and implications around timing.

Dr Heyward suggested a good reference is the 2009 book Why We Disagree About Climate Change by Dr Michael Hulme (link is to a 3 page synopsis). A key issue in this book is that values are not explicit, presenting a challenge to science, so a philosophical discussion on values, for example around the primacy of relationships over technology, can help to clarify strategic directions and priorities. In this short summary Dr Hulme explains some rather provocative views on how to think about climate change that align with my views. Here are some key points:

Michael Hulme wrote:Science may be solving the mysteries of climate, but it is not helping us discover the meaning of climate change... we must approach the idea of climate change as an imaginative resource around which our collective and personal identities and projects can and should take shape...The idea of climate change can provoke new ethical and theological thinking about our relationship with the future... Creative applications of the idea of climate change... may be hindered by the search for [global] agreement. "

Dr Heyward recommends not using the rubric of geoengineering, given how carbon dioxide removal NETs are overshadowed (pun) by solar radiation management. Instead, she says technology-specific discussions are needed on ethics and governance, aiming for what she termed an ‘integrationist’ perspective, addressing themes of distributive justice, vulnerability, resources, moral hazard, compensation, unforeseen impacts, conflict, biodiversity, hubris, land use, values and liabilities.

Questions arising through efforts to integrate climate change into a wholistic worldview include whether technology advocates have an inflated sense of ability to intervene in planetary systems, who decides and how, and whether technologies can be imposed on communities who oppose them. The seventeen Sustainable Development Goals of the United Nations present an example of efforts toward an Integrationist perspective, with linked goals addressing human rights. Some NETs affect goals under SDG 14 on oceans.

This philosophical perspective from Dr Heyward was welcome to me due to her effort to place the geoengineering discourse in the obvious and realistic strategic context that the dangers and costs of climate change are far greater than the risks of testing all options to prevent it.

Unfortunately that moral perspective of the balance of risks seems largely absent from public debates. Leaving aside the psychosis of climate denial, climate advocacy tends to be dominated by left wing fools who see climate change entirely through the class war opportunity of an attack on the fossil fuel industries, and who therefore automatically oppose all geoengineering efforts by invoking this class war narrative.

The moral imperative is to assess the impacts of options, and it is abundantly clear that the science shows that failure to geoengineer would definitely be catastrophic, whereas immediate testing of proposals offers some change of averting climate disaster.

I therefore disagreed with Dr Heyward’s opposition to geoengineering language. I argue in favour of geoengineering, and see questions of semantic framing as secondary. The concept of geoengineering has emerged from a technical mindset, among people who lack the capacity to frame the argument in political terms, even though the basic technical ideas are sound around the urgent need to cool the planet.

By contrast, the extremists who oppose geoengineering are more effective at political rhetoric, so have been effective in their unconscionable tactic of whipping up groundless fears. Preventing research on geoengineering perversely undermines the claimed objective of stopping global warming.

Tactical retreat on language may seem helpful in a toxic culture, but indicates weakness and a lack of certainty about strategy. The context here is a war for the future of the planet. In this dangerous situation it is worth considering the advice from the Emperor Napoleon, that in politics one should never retreat, never retract and never admit a mistake, even if not to that blank extent. The basic ideas of geoengineering are urgent, sound and essential. Refusing any concession to opponents is the best way to frame public debate to prevent dangerous warming.

The urgent geoengineering path is immediate solar radiation management to stop the impending crisis of cascading tipping points, accompanied by public private partnerships to develop methods to remove carbon from the air and sea, alongside the smaller task of cutting emissions. Taxing carbon is helpful for these efforts, but could prove marginal to the main agenda of devoting massive resources to stopping global warming as the primary security threat facing our planet.

An article in New York Times on 19 November on Climate Change Doom argues that a climate apocalypse is not inevitable. I fully agree, but find it very interesting that apocalyptic discussion today is so readily framed in the natural science context of climate change rather than imaginary supernatural terrors.

Carbon removal and other geoengineering options present a viable path to avoid apocalypse, but the subtext is that our current planetary trajectory is indeed apocalyptic, requiring a change in thinking. With a head in the sand attitude, and without major cultural and economic change, the prognosis for cataclysmic impacts of climate change is dire.

Worth noting in the NYT article the comment from Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University about scientific conservatism: “If they say something’s bad, you know it’s probably a lot worse than they said.”

The article also links to a book Climate Ideologies which offers the sarcastic comment that "The prior errors of prophecy proved that no one knew anything about anything; therefore, climate change was the merest hot air." The author William Vollmann cites the most widely accepted ready refutation of climate change - “Why should I concentrate on anything that stresses me out?”

Hi Robert. The title of Vollman's series is The Carbon Ideologies, the first volume of which was reviewed in a recent Atlantic, where it was billed as "the most honest look at climate change yet." Unfortunately, "honest" in this case means that Vollman offers scant hope of escaping catastrophe.