"Conspiracy" Science: Mass Media and the Conservative Backlash on Global Warming

by Anthony DiMaggio
MRzine

On March 2, the New York Times ran a story informing readers of recent "controversies" related to global warming. The story chronicled the efforts of scientists affiliated with the United Nations Climate Panel and other major research institutions to answer the claims of conservatives who suggest there is a conspiracy to hide the "debate" over climate change. The Times' story attempted to "objectively" report the controversy, highlighting on one side the efforts of climate scientists to "assert the legitimacy of the vast body of climate science" which states that global warming is real, and climate deniers on the other side seeking to expose scientists who "propagandize for shoddy science."

Global warming graduated in the last few years to the status of one of the great enduring political issues of our time. Unfortunately, public discourse is taking a dramatic step backward in light of corporate media's attacks on the scientific community. Scientific studies are greatly furthering our understanding of climate change, but establishment journalism is largely erasing the gains in public knowledge made over the last three years.

Read the full article here.

The Climate Movement is Dead… Long Live the Climate Movement!

Rising Tide North America is pleased to announce the release of our latest publication: The Climate Movement is Dead… Long Live the Climate Movement!

In the aftermath of the COP15 talks in Copenhagen, the inability of the Big Greens, governments, and market approaches to find genuine and sustainable solutions to climate change is undeniable. As author Naomi Klein so aptly observed at the end of COP15 talks, “A particular model of dealing with climate change is dying.”

In the same uncompromising spirit as Rising Tide publications such as Deal or No Deal, and Hoodwinked in the Hothouse, CMID:LLCM delivers a timely critique of the failures of this “particular model” as exemplified by the mainstream NGOs who have grown all too cozy with corporations and the political establishment. It explores the ways in which “green” capitalism,electoral politics, and market mechanisms, far from solving the climate crisis, are some of the climate movement’s biggest obstacles.

Not content with mere polemic, CMID:LLCM charts a course that diverges from the dominant discourse of the mainstream climate movement. The essay lays out a strategy of supporting and escalating frontline struggles againstdirty energy while building a new global climate movement from the ground up, based around core principles of climate justice, grassroots power, solidarity, and direct action.

The Climate Movement Is Dead: Long Live the Climate Movement is a must-read for anyone left disenchanted by the mainstream climate movement, and all who are ready to step it up and fight for climate justice.


climatemovement longlive

The 2010 People's Summit: Building a Movement for a Just World

Basic Principles of the People's Summit

The 2010 G8/G20 Summit, set to take place in Toronto, Ontario (June 25-27, 2010) presents Canadian civil society organizations and groups with an opportunity to strengthen our collective voice and lend cohesion to our efforts on the environment, poverty, human rights and social justice.

The actions and policies of the G8 and its member-states have significant impact on millions of lives the world over, and with this, comes an opportunity for us - a diverse civil society, including community-based organizations, non-governmental organizations, public, media and other groups – to work together to educate, empower and ignite positive change we would like to see in our world.

We converge in Toronto from June 18th – 25th to create a space where our diverse movements can democratically organize to advocate and educate on behalf of global justice. The People’s Summit is happening from June 18th-20th, and will be followed by a week of autonomous actions throughout Toronto in the lead up to the arrival of the G20 Leaders on June 25th.

You can be involved in creating the summit and surrounding actions! Contact us at coordinator@peoplessummit2010.ca  and stay tuned for meetings and events.

The People's Summit Website 
The People's Summit on Facebook

Warmest, driest winter in Canadian history

From the balmy Arctic, to the open water of the St. Lawrence and snowless western fields, this winter has been the warmest and driest in Canadian record books.

Environment Canada scientists report that the winter of 2009-10 has been 4 C above normal, making it the warmest since nationwide records were first kept in 1948. It was also the driest winter on the 63-year record, with precipitation 22 per cent below normal nationally, and down 60 per cent in parts of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario.

"It's beyond shocking," said David Phillips, a senior climatologist with Environment Canada. He also warned that "the winter that wasn't" may have set the stage for potentially "horrific" water shortages, insect infestations and wildfires this summer.

As much of Asia, Europe and the U.S. shivered through and shovelled out of freak winter storms, Phillips says Canada was left on the sidelines.

Temperatures across Canada, except for a small area over the southern Prairies, were above normal, with some parts of Nunavut and northern Quebec more than six degrees above normal, he and his colleagues report.

Phillips said the weather appears to be tied to several factors, chief among them El Niño, a shift in the winds and ocean currents in the Pacific Ocean, and thinning, retreating Arctic ice.

Might it be called global warming or climate change? - NYC

Canada Urged to Ban Nuclear Weapons from Arctic

by ArcticSecurity.org in Canada

Ban Nuclear Weapons from Arctic, Increase Security Cooperation: Report

Arctic and nuclear weapon states need to work together to rid the Arctic region of nuclear weapons, finds a new report by security analysts Michael Wallace and Steven Staples.

“Ridding the Arctic of Nuclear Weapons: A Task Long Overdue” was released today by the Rideau Institute and the Canadian Pugwash Group, the national affiliate of the Nobel Peace Prize winning Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs.

“Cold War-era nuclear weapon policies and practices in the Arctic, such as nuclear submarine patrols and over-flights by bombers, pose an environmental risk to the region, and an unnecessary security threat to the international community,” said Steven Staples, President of the Rideau Institute.

The report proposes greater security cooperation among the circumpolar states, including nuclear weapons states United States and Russia, with the ultimate goal of creating an Arctic Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone. Six similar de-nuclearization agreements now cover much of the South Pacific, Latin America, Africa and parts of Asia.

“No one can deny that these treaties have been an important part of efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons,” said Michael Wallace, Professor Emeritus of the University of British Columbia. “The Russian Federation might be persuaded to give up its Arctic-based nuclear forces if the United States was prepared to enter a significant, new arms strategic control treaty.”

In the meanwhile, there are steps that Canada could take right away. “The Canadian government could prohibit the transit of nuclear weapons through the Northwest Passage, and work with other Arctic non-nuclear-weapon states to create a regional agreement to be free of nuclear weapons north of the Arctic Circle,” noted Adele Buckley, environmental scientist and member of the international Pugwash Council.

The sponsor organizations will be encouraging the Canadian government when it meets with representatives of Arctic and G8 states in the coming months.

The report is available from ArcticSecurity.org

Humanity, Society and Ecology: Global Warming and the Ecosocialist Alternative

Humanity_ Society and Ecology Global Warming and the Ecosocialist

Green, Inc.

Why have big environmental groups sold out the environment? Follow the money! (as usual)

Reviewed by Keith Goetzma

The highly paid leaders of big environmental organizations are compromising themselves and the planet by cutting deals—as well as wining, dining, and scuba diving—with corporate executives whose firms pollute and plunder resources. That’s the rather damning case laid out in Green, Inc. by environmental journalist Christine MacDonald, who challenges green groups to wean themselves from these tainted corporate donations and relationships, which range from apparent conflicts of interest to out-and-out scandal.

As an environmentalist, MacDonald is acutely aware of the interconnectedness of all things, and she touches on a constellation of related issues: greenwashing, green certification, dicey political alliances, indigenous rights, out-of-control logging and mining, even human rights and slavery. Green, Inc. doesn’t contain enough fresh enterprise reporting to be deemed a full-blown exposé, but the book ties together enough data, anecdotes, and previously reported material to be taken seriously as a critique of the business of environmentalism.

MacDonald singles out three organizations for her harshest criticism: the Nature Conservancy, the World Wildlife Fund, and Conservation International, where she briefly worked and thus attained “insider” status. She also notes improprieties and ethical lapses at other groups, and to be fair widens the circle of accountability to include all consumers: “Demanding to know where the products we purchase came from and how they were made is maybe the most important thing we can do to press corporations to clean up their operations and supply chains.”

This review was originally published in the January-February 2009 issue of Utne.

The Explosion of the Climate Change Movement

The (Un)frozen North

By Liz Stanton
Public Goods: The economics of climate, equity and shared prosperity

The deeper the understanding that scientists gain about climate change, the more “feedback” processes they uncover. In other words, the more they realize how climate change leads to yet more climate change. This is one of the biggest areas of uncertainty in projecting future climate impacts. Average and best-case-scenario damage estimates are well understood, but hidden feedback processes can mean surprisingly high and difficult-to-estimate worst-case scenarios. Here’s one example:

Within a few decades, climate change will have rendered the Arctic unrecognizable to anyone who had seen it in centuries past. Arctic ice and snow are melting as temperatures rise. Without these vast white (and highly reflective) expanses, global warming will occur at a much faster rate. (This is called the “albedo effect”: The sun’s rays bounce off of snow and ice, but are absorbed by the newly exposed dark ground.)

Permafrost – land “permanently” frozen solid before climate change – is thawing, too, and it releases methane, a very powerful greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere as it softens. New research reveals that the permafrost surface under the Arctic ocean is already thawing and releasing methane – a factor unaccounted for in current models of projected future climate change.

Last week, the Pew Trusts released a study led by economist Eban Goodstein that estimates the global cost of this additional warming from the melting Arctic at $2.4 trillion to $24 trillion, total, by 2050. (Note that one of the reasons for this wide range of forecasts is the wide range of social cost of carbon estimates used in the study: $13 to $798 per ton. For more on this see my critique of the EPA’s much-lower range.) According to Goodstein’s calculations, today’s Arctic warming is equivalent in effect to two-fifths of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions; by 2100, this will have doubled to four-fifths of today’s U.S. emissions.

Tomorrow I head to Ottawa to share my findings so far on the economics of climate change in Canada with other researchers also working on this topic. The “frozen North” is a new area of study for me, and my research on Canada’s coastal zones is already proving fascinating. It will be the topic of many future blog postings.

A recent posting on the RealClimate.org blog offers a helpful explanation of the relative importance of methane emissions.

Climate change and capitalism's ecological fix in Latin America

By Eduardo Gudyna
Critical Currents

The issue of climate change has recently acquired great promiunence in Latin America. It has received considerable coverage in the mainstream media, been the object of many citizen-led campaigns and has at least been discursively acknowledged by governments and some companies. Yet despite this growing presence in public debate, the question is whether the proposals that have been circulated so far are really aimed at devising effective measures to tackle climate change.

The analysis in the present text shows that the discourses of all South American governments today, while not denying the challenge of climate change, present it in a distorted way. Climate change is thus rendered as functional for a process of commodification of nature and a reorientation of environmental policy. Even under leftwing governments, South America is witnessing the redeployment of variations on the theme of faith in progress through the appropriation of nature, thus preventing the substantive agreements that would be necessary to confront climate change.

Read this article here.

Conservative Budget Promotes “Head In Oil Sands” Approach to Climate Change

by Christine
350 or Bust

As the Globe and Mail’s Shawn McCarthy points out, the budget announced by Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty yesterday puts climate action on ice:

"The Harper government has taken a pause in financing federal action on climate change.

In his budget speech Thursday, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty was literally silent on the issue – climate change was not mentioned, though the government has in the past described it as one of the major challenges of the age.

Rather than provide new spending for programs to reduce Canada’s greenhouse-gas emissions, the government is standing pat as it prepares to regulate emission reductions in transportation, electricity and industrial sectors."

Graham Saul, Executive Director of Climate Action Network Canada responded to Flaherty’s budget as follows:

“Just when we thought that it couldn’t get any worse, today’s budget is a monumental failure of this government to do what it takes to address climate change in a meaningful way.

We are falling behind in the race for the clean energy jobs of the 21st century; the U.S. continues to outspend us embarrassingly 14:1 per capita on renewable energy. We have also failed to commit to our fair share in supporting poorer countries as they adapt to climate change."

Tim Weis, Director of Renewable Energy and Efficiency Policy at the Calgary-based Pembina Institute, points out on his renewable energy blog that in this budget Canada has hit rock bottom on investments in the environment. The resulting lag in innovation and green jobs will haunt Canada in the years to come:

"Yesterday’s Speech from the Throne committed Canada to becoming a “leader in green job creation”, but today’s budget does not walk the talk. With the Federal renewable energy investment program officially out of money, this budget’s void effectively means the federal government is walking away from renewable power. In spite of studies that have shown investments in renewable power actually generate a net financial gain for the government, it appears that this government still believes that taking action to protect the environment is at odds with building a strong economy. (In fact, Pembina’s analysis shows that we can take strong action to address climate change while growing our economy and creating nearly two million net new jobs.) "

Perhaps that perception is in part why Canada ranked 14th out of 17 countries for innovation, according to a recent report card from the Conference Board of Canada. Without strong federal leadership, Canadians will continue to lag behind as other countries take the lead in the emerging clean-energy market. (The U.S., for instance, set aside $98 billion for environmental and sustainable energy projects in last year’s economic stimulus package, outspending Canada 14:1 )

It seems that Harper’s Conservatives are leading Canada on a charge to nowhere but down economically and environmentally. The writing is on the wall - the carbon economy is the past, not the future. Former World Bank Chief Economist Lord Stern has estimated that to keep heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions below levels that would cause catastrophic climate change would cost up to two per cent of global GDP. Lord Stern initially predicted that failure to act on climate change could cost from five to 20 per cent of global GDP, but recently revised that, saying the cost of inaction would be “50 per cent or more higher” than his previous highest estimate – meaning it could cost a third of the world’s wealth.

As scientist Richard Gammon, speaking on the steps of the U.S. Congress in 1999 said:

"If you think mitigated climate change is expensive, try unmitigated."

If you haven’t already contacted your Member of Parliament as well as Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Minister of the Environment Jim Prentice, do so now. Tell them it’s time for the Conservatives to get their heads out of the oil sands and take decisive action on climate change.

Click here and here to find out what else you can do to fight climate change.

Socialism in the 21st Century: A Model with Changeable Pieces

What does 21st-century socialism consist of? Is it only a slogan or a dream that can be turned into a reality? Last century’s socialism has bequeathed this new one a logbook, with certain qualities that 21st-century socialism must acknowledge, embracing some, correcting others, and avoiding still others completely. The fast-changing times we live in today will necessarily make this model a puzzle we can put together and take apart.

By Juan Carlos Monedero

According to the logbook bequeathed to 21st-century socialism, last century’s predecessor had four main qualities: efficiency, heroism, barbarity and ingenuousness. The efficiency had to do with its capacity to bring a considerable amount of humanity—feudal Russia, imperial China and the depressed areas of Central Europe, Africa and Asia—into the modern era. The barbarity is what makes up the black book of the often unfairly called “real socialism,” and had to do with the Gulags, Walls, purges, political prisoners, lack of representative democracy, creation of enemies of the people, elimination of dissidence and the like.

Twentieth-century socialism also demands that we remember its heroism—often purposefully silenced—in stopping the spread of Nazism during the Second World War (of the 50 million dead, 20 million were Soviet citizens) and those who died or were imprisoned and tortured in the struggles against dictatorships and for democracy. Less talked about was socialism’s ingenuousness in the past century, by which we mean simple, even simplified, albeit well meaning, solutions to complex problems that aren’t resolved by changing the analysis of human nature.

Five main reasons 20th-century socialism was ingenuous

First, it was naïve for believing that assaulting the state apparatus was enough to change the social system. This naiveté is found in Marx himself, a man so convinced that a harmonious reign would follow the fall of capitalism that he didn’t stop to develop a theory of transition, justice or the State to match the challenges that were to come. Once power was won all else was improvisation. That was why Lenin decided to interpret each moment in the unfolding process, even as other Marxists reproached him for his rush and his unwillingness to adjust to the pace laid out by Marx, by then considered an oracle.

Two, it was naïve for believing that creating a single party ruled by democratic centralism (i.e. information flowing from bottom to top and orders from top to bottom) was enough to regulate society, respond to evolutionary changes and join together different volitions. Only if one believes that there’s such a thing as a single truth can one propose the creation of a single party.

Three, it was naïve for believing that nationalizing the means of production and controlling them through the State would satisfy social needs more effectively and abundantly than capitalism. Nationalizing the means of production does not mean socializing them.

Four, it was naïve for believing that what worked well in Russia would work equally well in other countries with different experiences, histories and worldviews. This was behind the bitterness of Peru’s Mariátegui, who warned orthodox Marxists that Latin America needed a Marxism that was “neither an imitation nor a copy” of the Soviet model.

And five, it was naïve for believing that uninterrupted growth would bring a reign of abundance that would end all human and social problems, ignoring humans’ need for deeper meaning, the depletion of the planet’s resources and the problems of modern productivity. Likewise for incorporating the idea of “the end of history” without understanding that socialism itself is a part of history and therefore must change with the societies and remain open to incorporating new needs, such as ecological sensitivity.

Twenty-first century socialism must rectify these errors and do a more complex analysis than the simple one that led to political actions in the past century now considered contrary to commonly accepted emancipating practices. Twenty-first century socialism will keep its substance. It is socialist because it clearly and definitively situates itself in opposition to capitalism and the exploitation capitalism entails. In addition to class domination, socialism now must incorporate any other type of domination—gender, racial, environmental, sexual and generational—into its social transformation. In this sense, socialism maintains its role as party pooper to capitalism’s promised orgy.

How can we envision socialism in the 21st century? I imagine it with these characteristics.

Twenty-first century socialism must rethink the definition of human nature

This definition must not be based on false assumptions about good and evil. We are neither angels nor devils. Both selfishness and altruism are part of our biological makeup. Which one is emphasized depends upon the social structure. Socialism committed the error, a legacy of the Enlightenment, of thinking that human beings were not only “good” but “perfectible.” On the other hand, Hobbes’ statement that man is “the wolf among men” is also incorrect. Humans have a strong survival instinct that leads them to both individualistic and group behaviors.

We now know that the new circumstances do more for any transformation than the supposedly “new man” who constantly reverted to old vices during the 20th century. Social conditions can even lead to genetic modifications. People who live from planting rice in wetlands have developed alleles that make them immune to malaria. All this explains the social nature of human beings.