Climate Change Denial

Guest blogger Roman Krznaric argues for a revolution in empathy to tackle climate change.

‘We seem to be suffering from an empathy deficit – our ability to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes, to see the world through those who are different from us.’ – Barack Obama

Occasionally – just occasionally – a mainstream politician says something that is both original and useful. This is the case with Barack Obama’s views on empathy. In a thousand speeches, and in his book The Audacity of Hope, he has put cultivating empathy – learning to see the world from the perspective of others – at the centre of his moral and political vision.

I am inclined to praise him because I believe we should view the problem of tackling climate change not as an environmental issue, or one concerning technology or social justice or markets, but primarily as a problem of empathy. We must learn to see the individuals behind the newspaper headlines about climate change, and imagine ourselves into the uniqueness of their lives, developing an understanding of their most important experiences, beliefs, fears and hopes.Sound far-fetched, wishy-washy or a little too sandals-and-carrot-juice for your liking? Let me explain myself.

The big question facing us is this: How can we close the gap between knowledge and action on climate change? Millions of people in rich countries know about the damaging effects of climate change and their own greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, yet relatively few are willing to make substantive changes to how they live. They might change a few light bulbs but they do not cut back on flying abroad for their holidays nor do they want to pay higher taxes to confront global warming.

So far economic, moral or other arguments have not been enough to spur sufficient action. This is because a fundamental approach has been missing: empathy.

Individuals, governments and companies are currently displaying an extraordinary lack of empathy on the issue of climate change, in two different ways. First, we are ignoring the plight of those whose livelihoods are being destroyed today by the consequences of our high emission levels, particularly distant strangers in developing countries who are affected by floods, droughts and other extreme weather events, such as flood refugees in the Indian state of Orissa. How many of us have made an effort to put ourselves in the shoes of
Annapurna Beheri, a woman from Orissa whose home and family shop selling biscuits and tobacco were washed away in 2007, and to imagine how her life has been affected by the realities of climate change? So, there is an absence of empathy across space.

Second, we are failing to take the perspective of future generations who will have to live with the detrimental effects of our continuing addiction to lifestyles that result in emissions beyond sustainable levels. Thus there is a lack of empathy through time. We would hardly treat our own family members with such callous disregard and continue acting in ways that we knew were harming them.

Generating empathy both across space and through time is one of the most powerful ways we have of closing the gap between knowledge and action, and for tackling the climate crisis. The problem is that, until now, empathy has been largely ignored by policymakers, non-governmental organisations and activists.

And although Obama talks fine words about empathy, he is yet to mention it in the context of climate change or to suggest concrete measures for creating the empathy needed to help reduce our emissions. It is time to recognise that empathy is not only an ethical guide to how we should lead our lives and treat other people, but is also an essential strategic guide to how we can bring about the social action required to confront global warming.

I would like empathy to become the watchword of a new era of policies, social movements, cultural projects and individual action on climate change. How can we encourage this empathetic revolution of human relationships? What exactly might it look like? Here are a few of my ideas for cultivating empathy across space and through time:

Climate Diaries
Small groups of individuals – for example members of a local neighbourhood association, work colleagues or some friends – could get together to create Climate Diaries. Each person chooses a developing country and for one month collects news clippings and other information about the effects of climate change in their country. They should focus on gathering materials of a personal nature, for instance interviews with drought-hit farmers. The group then reconvenes to discuss what they have learned, share insights and plan any practical action they may wish to take as a result of their researches. Climate Diaries is an idea that builds on recognised forms of grass-roots community action such as affinity groups, which have been used by innovative organisations such as the UK’s Climate Outreach and Information Network (COIN).

Climate Corps
The Peace Corps established as a federal agency in the US in the early 1960s has given hundreds of thousands of young people the opportunity to experience the realities of living in poverty in a developing country, especially in Latin America. I want the European Union to establish a similar programme called the Climate Corps. Young people would go on placements for a year to live with a community in a poor country hit by climate change. They would work on adaptation projects such as helping build flood defences, or engage in other work of use to their hosts, such as teaching English to village children. In EU countries with military service, Climate Corps should be offered as an alternative option. With the right marketing, joining the Climate Corps could become a rite of passage for young people as popular as back-backing for a year before university. One of the rules of Climate Corps is that you must travel to and from your destination without exceeding a carbon emission limit, which would force you to avoid travel by plane. Climate Corps would be a major boost to generating empathy across space.

The Climate Futures Museum
Without a time machine, it is impossible to give people direct experience of the future. But we can find ways to simulate the projected realities of everyday life a century from today. That is why every major city in the world should establish a Climate Futures Museum. The purpose of a Climate Futures Museum would be to provide experiential learning designed to develop our empathy with future generations who will have to live with the impacts of climate change if we fail to take concerted action in the present. The museum would not contain standard informational displays behind glass cases or on computer screens. Instead, it would house experiential exhibitions that allow visitors to understand in reality what it would be like to have their homes flooded, to be faced by drought, or to experience a hurricane. You might have to put on a life jacket and be tossed around in a dinghy in a wave machine. Creative minds would be needed to design an empathetic experience that would be etched in your memory for ever.

Tackling climate change requires adventurous thinking to invent projects that will bring about a revolution in human relationships where we learn to put ourselves in the shoes of others and see the consequences of global warming from their perspectives. If we fail to become empathetic revolutionaries, the gap between climate knowledge and action will never be closed. Each of us needs to carve into everything we do, the empathetic credo, ‘You are, therefore I am.’

This is an extract from Roman Krznaric’s essay ‘Empathy and Climate Change: Proposals for a Revolution of Human Relationships’, written for the University of Manchester workshops on ‘Future Ethics: Climate Change, Political Action and the Future of the Human’ link You can download the complete version from www.romankrznaric.com.

Roman Krznaric is the expert on Empathy at The School of Life in London. You can see a 6 minute video of Roman talking about empathy and climate change link..

Lucy Michaels, our guest blogger, gives an expert insiders view on the threat and the denial of climate change in Israel.

Greetings from our little corner of the Eastern Mediterranean.

I live in a small kibbutz, in a hyper-arid desert valley on the borders of Israel and Jordan near the Gulf of Eilat, where I am researching both the implications of climate change for the region and how its inhabitants are beginning to address the issue.

GROWING CLIMATE CHANGE IMPACTS

Climate change is beginning to make its presence felt here. In the last decade, local residents in our valley have seen significantly fewer rain events. We now have a miniscule 16 mm rainfall per annum. Local divers cannot fail to notice that the region’s most sensitive eco-system, the Red Sea coral, is bleaching.

The effects are also being felt in the centre of the country as the desert belt marches rapidly northwards encroaching on the Mediterranean biome. A temperature rise of 1.5°C is predicted to result in the desert moving between 300-500 km northwards with huge implications for the majority of the Israeli population which lives in this fertile region.

Climate change pays no attention to the fiercely fought over national boundaries in the region. A half metre rise in sea level will cause flooding in Tel Aviv’s residential areas and damage power plants and other coastal infrastructure. It will inundate the Gaza Strip and its already highly polluted groundwater aquifer and sole water source. And it will overwhelm the low-lying Nile Delta in Egypt causing around 1.5 million environmental refugees (IPCC/ Friends of the Earth Middle East figures).

Meanwhile, the impact of less predictable weather patterns will clearly affect farmers across the region  (2% of the Israeli population, but 17% of both the Palestinian and Jordanian populations).

Drinking water is also an urgent transboundary issue, and 2008 is another serious drought year in the region. All of Israel’s aquifers are at their red lines and Israel’s main freshwater reservoir, the Sea of Galilee, has fallen to a point beyond which pumping will threaten the ecological integrity of the lake. The Palestinian Authority is also sounding the alarm about a severe water crisis in the West Bank. Human rights organisation B’Tselem blames both the drought and Israel, which essentially controls the water supply in the West Bank, for this parlous situation. Meanwhile in Amman, Jordan, most households only have water in the taps one day a week.

CLIMATE CHANGE DENIAL IN ISRAEL

Considering all this, it is no surprise that climate change is described as a ‘threat multiplier’ in this already fragile region.  Frankly you can begin to understand why the battle-weary policymakers and the general public in Israel would rather not think about this new threat to the Promised Land.

To underline this, several months ago, at my university, eminent climatologist Pinhas Alpert presented his latest predictions for the Fertile Crescent region, the “cradle of civilization”, undertaken with the Meteorological Research Institute in Tsukuba, Japan. We watched as the geographical area, which stretches from the Nile to the Tigris and the Euphrates rivers, shriveled and disappeared with only a modest temperature rise of 2.6°C by the end of the century. However, the gathered hydrologists, agronomists and ecologists merely nodded sagely, asking technical questions about models rather than running from the room screaming which was perhaps a more appropriate response.

At the end of 2007, I undertook some preliminary survey research on Israeli perceptions of climate change. The results suggested that in fact Israelis from across the country, from sophisticated Tel Aviv to Arab villages in the Galilee, are aware of climate change. They are also concerned about it, although not quite yet concerned enough to do anything . The most common responses ranged from ‘Israel’s emissions are so small (the US emits as much in three days as Israel does in a whole year) what difference can we make’, to ‘We have more important urgent things to worry about’.

Much of Israel’s culture of climate denial comes from the intense way in which life is experienced here. Whilst proffering to love this country, Israeli concern for environmental issues and the environment in general are considered of relatively low importance due to the bigger distraction of the conflict.

Confronted with the more tangible sense of threat by a ‘terror’ attack or the incessant and somewhat obsessive discussion on the streets as to whether Ahmadnijad will drop the bomb and obliterate Israel altogether, it is perhaps understandable that the more diffuse and distant threat of climate change does not register highly on Israeli risk-o-meters.

Israelis are regularly bombarded by ‘disaster’ images. As has been found in research elsewhere, disaster imagery of climate change is most likely provokes feelings of powerlessness rather than the desire to take action. Compounded with this is the fact that Israelis are in general pretty fatalistic. An attitude widely heard in religious communities in both Israel and Palestine was that ‘If this is God’s will, so be it’.

A further aspect of Israeli climate denial, argued by Alpert and supported by my own research, is that there is a relatively high number of climate skeptics in Israel such as astrophysicist Nir Shaviv who still persists with his Cosmic Ray theory despite it being roundly rebutted by the scientific community. A personal friend at the Israel Meteorological Service is yet to be convinced of the anthropogenic causes. Alpert argues that climate skepticism in Israel represents a Jewish trait based on traditions of Jewish critical learning – to constantly dispute and find alternative explanations. This, I think, is a polite way of saying that Israelis in general are an argumentative and contrary bunch.

LITTLE AWARENESS OF EMISSIONS

In the public arena, most people appear to connect climate change with feel-good events such as Live Earth and Earth Hour, in which Tel Aviv participated. Such events may have begun to raise consciousness around energy efficiency in Israel, yet popular trends here still lag several years behind Europe and the USA. Apart from the religious community, post-materialist values are few and far between. This summer’s water crisis may go someway towards raising awareness about resource conservation. I was overjoyed yesterday to see a man rebuking his neighbour for watering his garden in the middle of the day. This simply never happens here.

The truth is that Israelis can make a difference. Israel ranks in the top 25 for per capita CO2 emissions – above most Western European countries – and this is linked to use of electrical appliances: a whopping 40% of total electricity output in summer is expended on the arctic blast of the air conditioners in pretty much every home, business or public building.  One Tel Aviv resident told me that air conditioners used to be few and far between. Today people have them on simply to drown out the constant hum of their neighbours’ units. The need for air-conditioning is also a function of poor building design and construction and cheap building materials.

Other culprits include high private transport use and, increasingly, the high energy cost of desalinating Mediterranean seawater as a means to allay the water crisis. Even if the government were willing to implement a carbon tax or other incentive to increase energy and water efficiency, it is clear that grassroots campaigns are necessary to shift Israeli self-perception from that of ‘consumers entitled to squander limitless resources’ to that of ‘responsible citizens averting ecological disaster both locally and regionally’.

Astoundingly Israel was classified as a non-Annex 1 country under the Kyoto Protocol. This means it has no obligation to reduce or even stabilise its emissions. The Israeli government had effectively ignored the issue with only the odd law to set standards for electrical appliances and laughable voluntary green building standards.

LOOKING TO THE CORPORATIONS FOR ACTION

A cursory glance at the Israeli media coverage of climate change actually shows that its main focus appears to be on Israeli scientists doing cutting edge research to find solutions and Israeli entrepreneurs promoting renewable energy.  Israel loves trumpeting its cutting edge scientists and entrepreneurs to the world, and this may also contribute to a more pronounced sense of optimism and faith in scientists to solve the problem than may be found elsewhere.

As a non-Annex 1 country, Israel’s biggest corporations have done very well as recipients of Clean Development Mechanism financing. This includes the bromide and magnesium factories partially responsible for destroying the Dead Sea as well as Israel’s sole cement works and paper mills

The rise in oil prices, the changing discourse in the US to address energy independence and Israeli entrepreneurs sensing a new market have certainly led to the business community waking up. When Al Gore addressed a renewable energy conference in Tel Aviv this May, all sorts of unlikely business leaders were turning up and it certainly wasn’t to worry about the coral reefs.

These include Shai Agassi, a Silicon Valley billionaire who wants Israel to be a testing ground for the electric car; the Israel Corporation, the huge chemicals multinational, which announced its intention to become an “ambitious and leading player in the alternative energy market”; and Israeli-born Arnold Goldman, whose company Luz II is developing a heliostat system for generating solar energy. Another company, Solel, is already building solar thermal power plants worldwide. These companies would dearly love to begin solar energy production in Israel, with its high levels of solar irradiance, but have faced a raft of bureaucratic delays and inadequate feed-in tariffs.

Thus it was no surprise that Binyamin Ben Eliezer, Minister of National Infrastructures, received an unenthusiastic reception at the same conference when he promised that, within the next 15-20 years, renewable energy would make up 20% of Israel’s energy mix. This may seem a fair amount but there are grounds for skepticism. Israel currently produces less than 0.2% from renewables and has already failed to meet its 2% renewable energy target for 2007.

Yet, at the same time, the minister approved a new coal-fired power station in Ashkelon to appease the powerful union of the Israel Electric Company (IEC), which has brought the country to a standstill on several occasions. The IEC, in its wisdom, has displayed a complete lack of vision and investment in renewable energy, mainly because of the low cost of imported coal from Colombia, Indonesia and Australia. At the public hearing about Ashkelon coal-fired plant a few months ago, it soon became clear that the IEC planned to go ahead whatever: it had already ordered the turbines.

Finally, to end on a more positive note, there is some political movement.  Some say that the Israeli government’s renewed interest in negotiating with its water-richer neighbour, Syria, could be connected with concern over water scarcity.

Israel has a burgeoning Permaculture movement, active student environmental groups and at least three Green Parties. The latest, the Green Movement, promotes a progressive environmental and social justice agenda and as a protest vote against Israel’s positively awful current crop of politicians, is likely to win seats at the next election.

For more information:

Climate for change, Haaretz, Lucy Michaels, May 25th 2008 link..

Climate Change: A New Threat to Middle East Security EcoPeace / Friends of the Earth Middle East link…

Arava Institute for Environmental Studies – A peace-building and environmental leadership programme for students from Israel, Palestine, Jordan and internationally which focuses on shared regional environmental problems. www.arava.org

Bustan Qaraaqa permaculture project (The Tortoise Garden) in Bethlehem is part of the Eco-Alternative Guesthouse project link..

George Marshall in short interview argues that we must stop refering to climate change as an environmental issue arguing that this provides a handy denial strategy for people to argue that it has nothing to do with them..

The original is on youtube at link…

For those with nothing better to do, there are more of these short pieces of George(me) talking about

Climate Change Denial …. link
People Don’t Care About Polar Bears…..link
End of the world? You decide! …..link

Review of The Deniers: The World-Renowned Scientists Who Stood Up Against Global Warming Hysteria, Political Persecution, and Fraud (and those who are too fearful to do so), Lawrence Solomon, Richard Vigilante Books, 2008

There’s a flood of cookbooks in the UK, (and climate change denial books too) so let’s start with a recipe for writing a popular book undermining climate science. Fancy a go?- this is what you do…

First of all, from all the thousands of papers published every year on climate change, cherry-pick a few isolated pieces of work that draw different conclusions from those presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Then, highlight the CV’s of their authors in glowing and virtuous terms. Just think of those paragraph-long descriptions of ingredients you get in pretentious restaurants: point out that these are not just carefully picked cherries; they are sun-dried organic fair trade cherries di Modena.

Then claim that the goal of your book is not to settle the science but merely to show that the debate is active. By this sleight of hand, you can claim that scientific process depends on constant challenge without allowing any debate about the studies you cite. This then allows you to draw superficial similarities between positions that contradict each other. Modena cherries in a Bolivian Chilli and Wild Alaskan Salmon confit? So what if they don’t go together, you can say, they’re top ingredients and they’re all red too.

Finally, so that you can adopt a populist questing tone, make it clear that you have no expertise in any of these areas and are just another perplexed joe public seeking the truth. “Ok”, you can admit coyly, “I can’t cook to save my life, but I’m a free thinker. After all, only conformists say that banana doesn’t go with cheese.”

And there you go: a nice recipe for any number of articles, think tank reports, leaders in the Sunday Telegraph, talks to the Adam Smith Institute, presentations to congress, Channel Four documentaries, or, as I hold it in front of me, a cooked book like ‘Deniers’.

I must admit that Lawrence Solomon is awfully good at this stuff. Like all the best climate skeptics he is a great communicator. His prose is tight and readable. He is ironic and amusing. His own credentials are impressive: whereas Bjorn Lomborg used to boast that he was once a Greenpeace activist (in fact he was just a member) ; Solomon is the acting head of a well-regarded environmental organisation.

But there is something curious going on, and it takes a while to spot it. The book purports to show that leading scientists, taking major personal risks, are prepared to ‘deny’ the stated consensus on climate change. The lengthy byline (added, one suspects, by some keen publicity person) is “the world-renowned scientists who stood up against global warming hysteria, political persecution and fraud”

And yet it slowly dawns on the reader that few of these ‘world renowned scientists’ disagree in any way that climate change is happening, is serious, and is primarily caused by human emissions. They are well funded career scientists who are not standing up for anything much other than a nice round of applause from the other hysterics.

The first witness for the prosecution is Dr. Richard Tol, a critic of the Stern Report, who, as the book admits, is in every other way “a central figure in the global warming establishment”. Then we hear from Dr Christopher Landsea who argues that hurricanes are not increasing due to climate change. He is also a contributing author to the second UN IPCC report and agrees fully with its main conclusions. The book tells us that Dr Edward Wegman, who challenges the statistical basis of the famous ‘hockey stick’ climate graph, “does not dispute that man made global warming was occurring’.

So, Solomon’s key witnesses are actually leading scientists who accept the core consensus but have some important and relevant reservations about the causes and impacts. By page 45 Solomon has admitted as much: “I noticed something striking about my growing cast of deniers. None of them were deniers”.

Solomon allows himself to make this self-deprecating admission because, whilst he wishes to lionize the careers of his ‘world renowned experts’, he is also prepared to be condescending about their judgment.

He argues that they are suffering from a delusion that the whole theory stands firm despite the evidence of that own specialist work. “Affirmers in general. Deniers in particular” crows Solomon. “Like other smart people, scientists accept the conventional wisdom in areas they know little about…We know from our daily lives that the consensus can be spectacularly wrong.” According to Solomon they are in denial about their denial and he is going to drag them out of the closet.

Solomon’s cavalier strategy of ‘outing’ climate deniers has already become spectacularly unstuck. In January 2007 he dedicated his regular Denier column in the Canadian National Post, which forms the basis for this book, to Dr Nigel Weiss. Weiss, he said “believes that the science is anything but settled except for one virtual certainty: the world is about to enter a cooling period”.

Dr Weiss responded immediately and did not mince his words link…“The article by Lawrence Solomon, which portrays me as a denier of global warming, is a slanderous fabrication. I have always maintained that the current episode of warming that we are experiencing is caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases, and that global temperatures will rise much further unless steps are taken to halt the burning of fossil fuel”. Unusually the rebuttle was accompanied by an official press release from the University of Cambridge.

Whilst the National Post issued a groveling apology, Solomon was not going to let his search for truth be derailed by accusations of slanderous fabrication. Astonishingly, the article still appears on his website without any qualification link. It has now spread all over the internet and has been repeated in the form of a faked interview in another book “Scared to Death” by skeptics and media pundits Christopher Booker and Richard North.

So let’s do some real ‘outing’. Solomon is not really an independent searcher after truth- he is a frontline communicator for a large and influential denial industry that aims to prevent political action and undermine public concern about climate change.

Start with the scientists in Denial. With each chapter, the legitimate questioning scientists I have just mentioned give way to the professional skeptics. There is Professor Richard Lindzen, who, according to the investigative journalist Ross Gelbspan, consults to oil and coal interests for $2,500 a day and whose trip to testify before a Senate committee on climate change was paid for by Western Fuels.

Lindzen, along with three of the other ‘world-renowned scientists’ in Denial, found time in their busy research schedule to appear in ‘The Great Global Warming Swindle’, a notorious British documentary that was denounced by the UK government’s chief scientific adviser, the Royal Society. One of the contributers threatened to sue the director for gross misrepresentation.

Six of the stars of Denial were among the the ‘A’ list of professional contrarians, lobbyists and conspiracy theorists who spoke at the New York International Conference on Climate Change in March this year. The sponsor was the Heartland Institute, a libertarian think tank which has received $781,000 in grants fron Exxon Mobil since 2000 for its campaign against the Kyoto Protocol.

Even if we assume that he started with pure intentions, Solomon has now fallen in with some very unsavoury people. In April this year his column for the National Post defends Fred Singer who, as usual, he calls ‘one of the world’s renowned scientists’. Singer has not had a peer reviewed paper published in 20 years and is linked to a string of oil and coal industry lobby groups. He has long operated as a hired gun for the tobacco industry giving ‘expert’ testimony that side stream smoke is not dangerous.

In June 2008 Solomon’s column praises a ludicrous and widely condemned paper on the beneficial effects of heightened carbon dioxide by the Oregan Insititute of Science and Medecine. The OISM, which has no affiliations to any recognised scientific body, is a far right fringe body that markets a home-schooling kit for “parents concerned about socialism in the public schools”.

And in April we find Solomon launching his book at an event organised by some of the most notorious anti-environmental campaigners in Washington. In his speech he congratulates his hosts; Myron Ebell, the Cooler Heads Coalition and the Competititve Enterprise Insitute (CEI) for “for the integrity and tenacity that he and they have shown during this entire global warming debate”.

For an environmental campaigner he has fallen into the worst crowd imaginable. It would be like Barack Obama speaking at a Ku Klux Klan meeting and praising them for their contribution to racial tolerance. Myron Ebell led aggressive lobby campaigns though a think tank called Frontiers of Freedom to gut the US Endangered Species Act. Ebell and the CEI ran a public campaign against higher fuel efficiency standards in cars arguing, among other things, that it would lead to more accidents. The Cooler Heads Coalition, formed by CEI, opposes any political action on climate change and brings together a host of libertarian and far right interest groups such as Americans for the Preservation of Liberty, the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise and Defenders of Property Rights.

Solomon gives them respect and credibility. They give him status in return, calling him ‘one of Canada’s leading environmentalists’ and an ‘internationally renowned environmentalist’. Maybe this expains how an environmental campaigner can become best buddies with the professional lobbyists who despise his own movement. Environmental campaigners are poorly paid and often vilified with few plaudits or rewards. On the other hand skeptics live in a self-congratulating world in which there are no also-rans. Everyone is a winner. Everyone is famous or world renowned. Anyone who is assertive and skilled with polemic can be a star.

If you are middle aged activist and wondering what you have really achieved in your life it must be very seductive. And dangerous.

Sources: www.sourcewatch.org, www.theheatisonline.org, www.realclimate.org, www.desmogblog.com

This review first appeared in a slightly different, referenced and edited form on the website China Dialogue.

These adverts are not greenwash or misinformation. They manage to use the images and language of climate change without in any way recognising the scale of the threat or their own responsibility for the problem. Innocent, cynical or deeply disturbed? What do you think?

Last year General Motors hit a smart way to market their notorious gas guzzling tank, the Hummer- they would encourage hummer owners to offer emergency relief in ‘natural’ disasters. Naomi Klein said about this idea: “it’s a bit like the Marlboro man doing grief counselling in a cancer ward”.

And then to top it all GM broadcast this ad. When I watch it don’t know whether to laugh, cry, or scream and I usually alternate insanely between them. Alison Wright, who sent it in, says: “The message is not only that a Hummer will help you survive the apocalypse, but drivers of Hummers are good, selfless people who will help others in need. Talk about irony….”

In the States NBC refused to show this ad- and no doubt GM was delighted to stir up a bit of publicity from that. By the way, that little “crooks and liars” at the end is the logo of the group that put it up on you-tube. This is a genuine ad.

A more recent Hummer ad glorifies the burning of electricity in a curious parody of energy saving ads. Link… I really do feel that there is some clever and deliberate marketing behind this.

In a previous posting we noted the ubiquitous practice of naming SUVs after murdered tortured and exterminated indigenous groups. Volkswagen’s excursion into the market is named the Touareg after an ancient nomadic tribe of the Southern Sahara which has been viciously repressed by the Niger government. Volkswagen have not only stolen their name but shoot most of the publicity for their car in sand dunes. Mark Bennett, who sent it in, writes: “It uses the name of a people traditionally living on minimal resources to suggest some sort of false connection between an enormous tank of a 4×4 and outdoor, rugged and adventurous living. The carbon emissions then increase global warming, adding to the gradual desertification of Sub Saharan Africa and more people living in deserts.”

The ironies run even deeper. In Niger the Touareg minority has started an armed rebellion to defend its lands against mining for uranium to fuel the reborn ‘zero carbon’ nuclear power industry. And back in Germany Volkswagen has tooled up the Toureg with a machine gun on top for sale as an military vehicle. LinkHow long before Touaregs are shooting down real Touaregs?

Marianne sent me a photo of this promitional can of Castlemain XXXX with “all this global warming is making me thirsty - thank xxxx for that” written on the side. She says “I was so stunned i had to take a picture much to the bemusement of the in-laws!” It’s another example of the ho ho macho ironic bring it on posturing we’ve seen before. The drought in Australia has become so sustained and serious that urban areas such as Sydney have been recycling the treated water from sewage plants. So, ho ho for global warming- a glorious future drinking piss. Got to be better than paying to get it in a tinnie.

Graham spotted this advert by South Africa airways of a plane flying over a disintegrating ice sheet. He says: “Once again it’s hard to believe there was any naivety behind the choice of image, it seems to me to be very much an “up-yours!”statement and the caption would seem to support this - the melting Arctic ice being a mere side show, an entertainment to be viewed from your window as you cruise past burning thousands of litres of aviation fuel”. The caption reads “For those occasions when there is a better show outside you can always pause the movie inside”.

And finally here’s one of my own. I was minding my own business coming out of a meeting at the University of Oxford Centre for Environment. I was accosted by enthusiastic hawkers at the gates who thrusted a free bag into my hands on behalf of those deeply green and globally concerned people at BP. Nice to know that they have found a way of blowing their immorally high profits. When I read the attached card my irritation passed into dumb astonishment. On the front was a picture of scorching desert with the caption “Ever wanted to go to one of the hottest places on earth?” and on the back was the BP logo with the heading “We’ll take you there, and beyond”.

The text is offering graduates a junket to Houston to experience the wonders of BP’s whizz bang headquarters and its “virtual reality 3-D imaging room that allows you to explore energy reserves….it’s a chance to see some really hot stuff- in a part of the world that does get a little warm at times”. Well clearly the writers are permanently locked into their virtual reality headsets if they can fail to see the bitter ironies in all this.

Many many thanks to everyone who sent these in. Please if you see a ludicrous advert sent it to me at george@coinet.org.uk. When I have enough I will post them up and the cream of the crop will be featured at some point in the Guardian newspaper.

Why do the websites of progressive civil society organisations pay virtually no attention to climate change?

Here’s an interesting experiment. You can measure how seriously an organisation takes an issue by finding how many times it mentions it on their websites. After all, a website will contain its entire public output: every report, press release and leaflet. You can do it easily on Google. All you have to do is type the word (or phrase in inverted commas) you want to search followed by the word “site” and a colon followed by the domain name.

Two years ago, out of curiosity I typed 
“climate change” site:www.amnesty.org
into Google. Absolutely nothing turned up. Amnesty International, the world’s most prestigious human rights organisation had not one single mention anywhere on its website of an issue that, a according to IPPC estimates will generate 150 million refugees by 2050 and, by the reckoning of the Pentagon and MoD, will become one of the key causes of future conflict.

The Human Rights Watch website mentioned climate change 16 times. This is slightly better until you consider the chances that any random phrase will appear on a large website. For the sake of comparison, I ran a wordsearch on two terms that have absolutely nothing to do with human rights; donkeys and ice cream. I must admit that I have had it in for donkeys ever since I discovered that the British Donkey Sanctuary raises a staggering £20 million a year to “rescue donkeys in distress”. It seems that Human Rights Watch also rates donkeys far above climate change- it mentioned them 67 times. And even ice cream received 25 mentions.

By now you see where I am going. I continued to run the same three wordsearches past a whole cluster of human rights and development organisations. The following all gave the phase “climate change” less than five mentions or less web attention that the two control terms:

Physicians for Human Rights, Oxfam US, CARE US, World Vision US, Save the Children UK, Survival International (the leading indigenous people’s campaign organisation), International Women’s Health Coalition, Womankind Worldwide, YWCA, European Council on Refugees and Exiles (the main umbrella body for refugee organisations) Refugees International, Family Health International.

Later that year I invited leading decision makers from the human rights and development sectors to explain what was going on. They came up with several cogent arguments for their lack of engagement- a belief that the issue was already being dealt with or that it was an ‘environmental issue and outside their mission; a fear of ‘mission creep’; and uncertainty about how they could usefully intervene.

But I think there were deeper reasons. The people who lead liberal organisations seem to find it just as difficult to accept climate change into their world view as people from the free market right. Their politics were molded by the issues of the 1970s and 1980s- social inequality, nuclear proliferation, neo-colonialism, gender issues, racism, homophobia. When they say that it is hard to see what their organisation can do, they are projecting their own confusion over how to absorb and respond to this vast new issue.

The end result is that progressive organisations do not merely sideline or underplay climate change: they actively censor all mention of it from their materials. Internally they argue that it is outside the area of issues relevant to their work. Publicly they do not deny the importance of climate change: they don’t say anything about it at all.

In doing this they are reflecting a wider social denial strategy, noted in several academic studies. The large majority of people, whilst noting that climate change is a serious issue, will admit to never talking about it in their daily life. They are managing the problem by actively excluding it from what sociologists call their ‘norms of attention’. Ironically this strategy mimics a common social response to human rights abuses: when asked, people admit that they heard the screams in the night or they noticed that people had disappeared, but, through  a socially negotiated compact, they never discussed what they know to be happening with each other.

Last week I repeated the wordsearch experiment. There are positive signs of change. Some major development organisations have broken ranks and are now giving climate change the attention it deserves. Oxfam UK, for example, gives it 1,700 mentions. Save the Children has finally got the message and has increased the number of mentions tenfold.

However the human rights organisations are still far from engaged. The Amnesty website now mentions “climate change” 57 times, but the control terms ‘ice cream’ and ‘donkey’ merit 71 and 141 mentions respectively.

In February, Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said that the issue of climate change is becoming of greater concern to his group, ‘particularly because of the refugee issue’ link… . But he refused to be drawn on when it might work on the issue. It is clear that the HRW website is still deliberately excluding mention of climate change. It now mentions climate change 32 times; ice cream is at 33 and donkeys are at 122. I could add that sweets are at 60 and chips are at 164.

Who knows, after another two years of climate disasters, front page news and apocalyptic research Human Rights Watch might pay more interest to the greatest threat to the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people than it does to confectionary, snack foods and cute animals with big brown eyes.

My original wordsearch, interviews and analysis can be found in my chapter ‘Asleep on their watch: where were the NGOs?’ in: David Cromwell and Mark Levene (eds) Surviving Climate Change: The Struggle to Avert Global Catastrophe, Pluto Press 2007.

Here’s a cracker image from the Calor Gas trade magazine - a polar bear supine in front of the technology that will exterminate it. Just to remind you: according to researchers at the University of Edmonton, the polar bear will most likely be extinct in the wild by the end of this century link… What WAS going through the heads of the staff at Calor Connection? One would like to think it is naivety, but seeing that a previous cover feature was ‘Patio Heaters setting the record straight’ I would say that it another example of the ’screw the hippies’ macho  posturing that we have found in ads before. A big pic is at link…

There has been a welcome burst of interest in this blog after the Guardian ran a feature on our regular postings of denial ads link… So just to show that I have no problem biting the band that feeds, here is a recent juxtaposition of ads from the Guardian Business web site. Fantastic- an Eco Media Player to take on my long haul flights. Hope it fits in my organic cotton ‘This is not a plastic bag’ bag.

Thank to ‘Anon employee’ for the Calor gas cover. Please keep sending me ads, posters, magazine covers that irritate you and nicely illustrate the confused and disturbed times we live in.  I will put them up when I get a good bunch together - George

Roman Krznaric is amazed that political activists are ignoring the world’s greatest social justice issue.

In the lobby of Congress House, home of Britain’s Trades Union Congress, there was a banner from the Cuba Solidarity Campaign with Che Guevara t-shirts for sale. A couple of Labour Members of Parliament, drinking tea out of plastic cups, were talking in loud voices about the great strides in social justice being made by President Hugo Chavez in Venezuela. Where was I? At ‘Latin America 2007’, an annual gathering in London of activists, researchers, politicians and thinkers from the Progressive Left.

The first extraordinary thing I noticed about the conference, held in December, was the number of people. Hundreds and hundreds had come to hear speeches and take part in workshops with regional experts and visiting political and community leaders from Latin America. I hadn’t seen such a big turnout at a Latin America event in Britain since the mid-1990s, when IMF-imposed neoliberal economic policies were wreaking havoc, and peace processes were being negotiated to end civil wars in Central America.

The second extraordinary thing I noticed was this: NOBODY MENTIONED CLIMATE CHANGE. Looking through the list of workshops, there were sessions on anti-poverty programmes in Venezuela, land reform in Bolivia, violence against trade unionists in Guatemala and the legacy of Che and the Cuban Revolution. But on climate change there was a deafening silence.

Clearly the organisers did not believe climate change warranted special attention, despite the mountain of evidence that it is having major effects on the region, and threatens to reverse the human development gains of the past three decades. Many of these effects and threats have recently been documented in the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Report 2007/8. Link…

With respect to water scarcity, the report points out that the ‘accelerated melting of tropical glaciers will threaten water supplies for urban populations, agriculture and hydroelectricity, especially in the Andean region’. Peru and Bolivia, two of the poorest countries in the region, face the prospect of a dramatic decline in water availability, especially in the dry season. Climate change is also likely to have major effects on food security across Latin America. The report states that: ‘In Latin America, smallholder agriculture is particularly vulnerable, partly because of limited access to irrigation and partly because maize, a staple across much of the region, is highly sensitive to climate.’ The latest models predict smallholder losses for maize yields averaging around 10 percent across the region, but rising to 25 percent for Brazil.

The most disheartening moment for me was when watching a documentary about Hugo Chavez made by Che Guevera’s daughter, Aleida. Chavez was boasting about how he was using oil revenues to finance the fight against poverty in Venezuela. And then he pointed out that the future looked bright, since the state oil company had the potential to increase oil production through its access to the Orinoco Petroleum Belt, which is estimated to be the world’s largest oil reserve.

I care deeply about wealth inequality in Latin America, and understand the argument that since rich Northern countries have had the privilege of fossil fuel-based development, then developing countries should not be denied the same privilege. But shouldn’t we be at least discussing the impacts of climate change and the alternatives to fossil fuel-based economic and social development at a conference with the professed aim of helping the struggle for social justice? I can’t help concluding that the Progressive Left doesn’t yet really believe in climate change.

What explains the absence of climate change on the agenda?

One factor concerns hope. For the first time in years there is a sense of hope about Latin America amongst the Progressive Left. Neoliberalism is in retreat and left-leaning governments are being elected throughout the region. Chavez is challenging the US and the multinationals, and having an impact on poverty reduction. Bolivia has its first indigenous President. But none of this, I believe, is an excuse for ignoring climate change.

A second factor is that many activists and policy-makers continue to keep human development issues separate from what they think of as ‘environmental’ issues. If you are interested in tackling poverty in the favelas of Rio, it is quite normal not even to consider that climate change is a related issue. I think there is a real need for development agencies and activists on the one hand, and environmentally-oriented organisations and campaigners on the other, to merge their thinking to create a new Ecological Humanism, so that climate change and social justice are considered interdependent issues.

A third, possibly deeper factor, is psychological denial. As individuals, we have an extraordinary capacity to shut our minds to the realities of issues that we think are frightening or insurmountable. Climate change is one of them. The good news is that people in rich countries are starting to overcome their denial and accept that climate change is not only happening, but will change their own lives, and that they have to adapt to and embrace the changes. The bad news is that most of them remain in denial when it comes to the world’s poorest countries. As a recent Oxfam report points out, the rich world is sorely lagging behind in its response to the need for developing countries to adapt to the impacts of climate change link..

The time has come for us to take our struggle against denial a stage further, and recognise that climate change is a reality not only for ourselves, but for the world’s poorest people in Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and other developing regions.

Go to Roman’s website, www.romankrznaric.com, for his latest reports on climate change written for the United Nations Development Programme’s ‘Human Development Report 2007/8’, and for his essays on the Art of Living.

The mustn’t-have 2007 Christmas gift is a ‘global-warming mug’ that shows the world slowly drowning under a one hundred metre sea level rise. This mug for mugs sums up many of the themes of this past years’ blog postings.

Let’s face it- this is an intriguing product. It is a map of the world when cold, but as soon as you fill it with hot water the poles start to shrink and low lying areas are lost to encroaching seas. You can see a video…

Cute? Well not really. No one would want a stocking filler that slowly revealed war zones, starving babies, or piles of bodies- and, to be honest, that is what I see when I see these coastlines retreat

Educational? No, not really. The figure of 100 metres was chosen by a graphic designer not a climate scientist. Even if all of Antarctica, Greenland ice sheet and the world’s glaciers melted it would still only add 80 metres to sea levels (more info…). This misinformation plays to a form of voyeuristic climate alarmism that the Institute of Public Policy Research calls ‘climate porn’ (see my posting…)

What is really interesting, though, is that the salespitch surrounding the mug on the novelty websites reflects many of the wider currents of public opinion that I have covered on this blog during the last year. Here are four examples:

1. Ironic black humour- what the IPPR calls ‘British comic nihilism”:

I wantoneofthose.com. “There’s nothing wrong with smiling in the face of adversity”.
Gizmodo UK “Watch Florida get swamped by the Atlantic [makes a change from it being blown away in hurricanes]. Guffaw loudly as valuable California real-estate imitates Atlantis and look on in horror as Central America drowns to become just a few islands”.

2. ‘Save the planet’ sloganeering (or ironic piss take of it):

Find-me-a-gift.co.uk. “You’ve got the whole world in your hands with the Global Warming Mug and you’re the only one that can save us from extinction! Slowly sip and watch each part of the map gradually grow smaller and smaller before the sea gobbles it all up! Or be a quick-sipper and restore the faith of the human race! Your planet needs you!”

3. marginalising personal action as an environmentalist sub cult:

Firebox.com “So unless you use renewable energy, cycle to work, recycle at home and spend your spare time planting trees, you’d better get ordering before our entire shipment melts away. It’s the end of the world as we know it! Pass the biscuits.”

4. Passive ‘it’s all easy’ self-deception.

Gizmodo UK “Once you’ve finished drinking that coffee, or if you just leave it sitting there to cool off, all goes back to normal, and all is right with the world.”

And if you don’t fancy a trite mug, how about one of the eco- gifts profiled in Dixon’s Greenshop (where, it tells us, we can ‘start making a difference today’): a wooden widescreen tv link….Apart from being framed in beech it uses just as much juice as any other model. Literally a green veneer on business as usual.

Happy Christmas everyone

ps with thanks to Alastair McIntosh and Chris Shaw for tipping me off about these.

Four more spectacularly idiotic adverts that will have future generations boggled eyed with astonishment.

Here’s a cracker: the two page promotional ad for the Indian Ford Endeavour which appears to have demolished the arctic single handed. Look closely and you will see the polar bears round the back stranded on a shrinking scrap of ice sheet

No doubt the sight of all that ice- well any ice actually- goes down well in India, but it is a remarkable piece of hubris to use the symbol of the international climate change campaign to publicise a gas guzzler SUV, especially given the legitimate concerns about the climate impact of India emissions if it follows a high carbon development path – such as gas guzzling status symbols

Manu Sharma, who lives in New Delhi, writes a long complaint about this ad in his excellent blog Orange Hues (link.. ).  He concludes that ‘it’s probably the work of an ignorant graphic designer approved by some equally dim executives at Ford’. I am not so sure. The choice of imagery is so inappropriate that it feels like a deliberate choice to me, especially as the byline of the ad, as it appeared in the Indian media, is ‘Freedom’. It either says ‘we don’t believe’ or it says ‘we know, we know, but we really don’t give a stuff’.

And here’s more of the same. After the melting arctic, the next best known poster images for climate change are the melting mountain snow caps. So what better backdrop for the Ford Freelander? We know that Kilamanjaro is heading to be snow free and the British Mount Snowdon will be Snowgone by 2030. This mountain looks like Mount Fuji to me. I have no idea what is happening to Fuji’s snow cover, but I understand was snow free all last winter. Of course this need not be climate change – it could be a sign that it is about to blow. What a great place to park your tank.

By the way, that little ‘offset’ logo in the corner says that its emissions have been ‘offset’ for the first 45,000 miles. Oh good. That’s all alright then

Which leads nicely into this UK ad that is meant to make us all feel good about solutions to climate change. The small text reads “Save energy while you sleep. You don’t have to be an eco-warrior to help the environment. It can be easy”.

Apparently the Sky digital boxes don’t sit around on standby but turn themselves off at night. All well and good. But the amount of energy saved is extremely small in the overall context of what we need to do. This is another of those ‘it’s easy peasy’ denial strategies I whinge about regularly (see my 18th September posting).

 Any emissions that are saved are far outweighed by the damage caused by this kind of advert: It’s a kind of reverse offset. It sends a double-page spread message through the lifestyle magazines that climate change is trivial, the solutions are ‘easy’ and that ‘sexy people’ (as the readers no doubt aspire to be) can legitimately sleep through it all.

And finally, the abject horror of this pro-coal propaganda ad by General Electric that uses anorexic models to sex up the world’s filthiest and most dangerous industry.

Well, it’s meant to be sexy but it looks to me like the poor skinny waifs are being worked to death. And how sexy can coal be? I’ll bet that whoever made this ‘ironic’ ad has never been any closer to a coal pit than his electric toaster. My grandfather worked his whole life down a pit until his back was broken in a roof collapse. His lungs rattled with phlegm and coal dust all the way to his premature death . Now that would make a sexy ad.

This is a hard core denial ad. It’s aim is to undermine environmental concerns. Its core message is: “don’t believe those whingeing (ugly) greenies- coal is great and will never be banned’’.

Did not General Electric and Ford also endorse a ‘Global Roundtable on Climate Change position that stated “climate change, caused by the burning of fossil fuels,  is an urgent problem that requires global action”? No contradictions there.