Neoliberalism is a powerful force for organisation, rationality and economic development. It is championed by world elites and has become the ruling ideology of globalisation and 21st Century governance. Throughout it’s implentation it has also caused much distrust, exploitation and environmental degration as discussed in Parts 1 and 2 of this series.

As it is both everywhere and nowhere, a process and a rationality that makes itself felt through an invisible hand that guides and an invisible foot that kicks, fighting it in any traditional sense has proved incredibly problematic.

However, although it may prove ironic for the proponents of neoliberalism, the greatest challenge to their hegemony may be made possible by the very working of neoliberalism itself – as in it’s doctrine of state dismantlement is the decentralisation of political decision making to local government and their communities.

The people vs neoliberalism
For many years politics in Bolivia was ruled by a neoliberal elite, who were favourably viewed by the US government who turned a blind eye to the growing disparity in incomes, the oppression of indigenous Bolivian communities trapped in poverty and instead encouraged the opening up of the Bolivian market to international ends.

However, in Bolivia neoliberalisation eventually met with locally organised resistance and ultimately political change in the form of Evo Morales’ unification of cocaleros, workers and indigenous groups. As Perrault and Geddes have noted, this political change was made possible in many ways by the governmental decentralisation that resulted from the neoliberal policies that preceded it.

The same policies are also part of David Cameron’s ‘Big Society’.

It’s also interesting and important to note that decentralisation was at the heart of the work of E.F Schumacher as well. An environmentalist very much ahead of his time and who championed the agency of change through lots of small actions by lots of people in the context of their locality, over and above a few big moves by those in the political centre. Although neoliberalism may have many detrimental impacts on the environmental movement, it would seem from Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful, that decentralisation does not have to be one of them – if utilised by environmentalists as well as business. The idea of localisation is not new to the environmental movement (think Transition Towns, Local Agenda 21, bioregionalism etc), in fact it is at it’s core, but this has always been in counter to centralised power. Decentralisation therefore potentially hands the political means to such groups to better achieve their aims – as long as they are well organised and ready for the challenge, which many no doubt are.

And if they are are not, growing strain across many other interest groups may lead to more people joining forces in their communities to fight for change. At the present moment, the impact of the credit crunch, global recession and austerity based cuts to social services are causing much anger in the general public to the neoliberal agenda, albeit that their challenge is not couched in such specific terms. So although it appears hegemonic and monolithic, neoliberalism is not without its weaknesses or criticism and it is important to remember that it has faltered many times before, even though within its writing of history it would suggest otherwise.

Since the end of the Cold War, capitalism has been without direct contrast, which has led to its own arrogant proclamation of the end of history. However, the failure of the markets in 2008/09, climate change, peak oil and increasing global inequalities show that the foundation that supports the status quo is changing in a profound manner whether anyone likes it or not. It is in many ways only held together by the confidence and desperation of the grossly affluent whose system it is and the compliance of those of us who don’t even notice it going on.

This merely displays one of the greatest powers behind neoliberalism and capitalism as a whole, or any other powerful hegemonic ideology for that matter, which is to make people think that there is no other way things can be, that the status quo is immutable.

But as history is keen to show us, this happens time and time again, with each purportedly immutable way of the world replacing another.

With this in mind, decentralisation should be seized upon by communities to make change happen for themselves, to lead the way from the bottom-up. What this necessitates though, is empowerment, self-education and the courage to do it for ourselves. In a politics of apathy and low voter turnout, there will need to be those who take up the challenge and encourage those around them to get involved, which is no easy task but no change can result without the support of the people. It is a huge task to take an idea and lead it through to a cultural tipping point.

But as Margaret Mead allegedly once said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

References for Parts 1, 2 and 3:
Bakker, K. 2007. ‘The “Commons” Versus the “Commodity”: Alter-globalization, Anti-privatization and the Human Right to Water in the Global South’ in Antipode, Volume 9, Issue 3, pp. 430-455.

Wolford, W. 2005. `Agrarian moral economies and neoliberalism in Brazil: competing worldviews and the state in the struggle for land’ in Environment and Planning A, Volume 37, pp. 241-261.

There is obvious utility to this reductionist rationality, a formulaic approach that enables calculation and the predominance of economic though. But what a dull and lifeless summation of the human condition. Albeit useful for marketers, advertisers and anyone wanting to sell more and more crap to us, or as a tool in some behavioural structure of biopower, this is a narrow and deluded concept of the individual, which provides an unnatural focus that is used to determine so many hugely important choices that shape all our lives.

Humans have struggled for thousands of years to capture the human condition through art and we are still going. An neoliberal economist, it would seem, is happy to continue with a robust formula and continued economic growth. If only it were so simple.

Within this overly-rational perspective, society is nothing more than an abundance of individuals all guided by their own self-interest within the governing framework of the market. This is the dream of Ayn Rand, Tea Party members and the conservative right. It reflects the generalization of market principles to all of human life resulting from neoliberalism’s near worship of what Karl Polanyi called the “self-regulating market”, which he also deemed a myth.

For proponents of neoliberalism, the market is seen not only as the governing mechanism for allocating all goods and services but also as a way of understanding the organisation and evaluation of institutional performance, necessitating the commodification of everything. Hence the continuing press for more, through phase after phase of neoliberalisation until the state is a distant memory and your vote is made not through ballots but banknotes and if you don’t have enough of them that’s your fault, not the system’s.

Nature vs neoliberalism

But there is a flaw in this scheme and it begins to get noticed at the macro level, only after decades of its development.

It is flawed because it overlooks externalities, the dumping of the economy’s waste and other negative effects onto nature as well as the commodification of nature itself. Nature was not designed as a commodity and therefore will not behave like one. Despite the best efforts of the economy, nature will raise its voice regardless of whether anyone is listening or not. This is because neoliberalism’s flaw is encompassed within the deluded and misguided notion that the environment is a subsystem of the economy rather than the other way round. This concept is key to the shift in thought necessary to transition to a low-carbon economy and sustainable development. A truth long denied or ignored by those of a neoliberal agenda, but a truth nonetheless.

We are therefore faced with a clash between economic and ecological rationalities as a result of our consumptive habits and tolerance of political powers. However, this clash is indicative of a great irony at the heart of neoliberalism. This is due to the fact that although it may make good commercial sense for firms to externalise production costs, such a practice is ecologically irrational and highly destructive. The externalities created by production, pass the environmental costs onto society and the biophysical world, creating an ecological contradiction that sees neoliberal capitalism gnawing away at the resource base that supports it.This is the ecological paradox of neoliberal capitalism: it will destroy that which makes itself possible – nature.

In terms of CO2 as an externality, its proliferation brings climatic changes that could bring about water shortages, resource wars, disease and ultimately loss of life, bringing neoliberal economies crashing down. Hence, it is argued, that without sufficient self-regulation by firms or states, capitalist societies will continue to create ecological crises. It is therefore politically, economically, socially and ecologically of interest to tackle. This is the task at the true heart of sustainable development, not the quest for ‘sustainable growth’ (i.e. business as usual with more efficient lightbulbs) but questioning how we continue to prosper whilst addressing the implications of our current actions.

The key element to acknowledge is that there are too many perforations within our current system that precipitate destructive consequences, which erode our social and ecological foundations and need addressing now, not in some distant, ever-promised future.This can only come about by manipulating another element of the neoliberal agenda, localisation.

With this in mind, I’ll be looking at how people can beat neoliberalism at its own game in Part 3.

(UPDATE: as I am in the middle of doing my dissertation, part 3 is going to have to wait a while. In the meantime go and frolic outside or if it is night-time watch Adam Curtis’ new documentary ‘All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace’.)

Despite their different qualities, forms and direct causes, there is an ideological concept that links the recent cuts in public spending, anthropogenic climate change and the banking crisis.

It is of pressing importance to get to grips with, to understand and to tackle in order to reclaim our shared future.

Its name is neoliberalism.

In my next few posts, I will take a closer look at neoliberalism in order to get a better idea of how it operates, in relation to people and nature and what this means for the future. Along the way I’ll show how there are social and ecological limits to neoliberalism, give examples of how its been previously challenged and describe the attributes that make it what it is.

The rise of neoliberalism

During the 1980s in the US and UK, neoliberalism took hold under the wistful gaze of a former actor, President Reagan, and the society denying gawp of Margaret Thatcher. Both of whom were influenced by economists such as Friedman, Hayek and Epstein, and championed a vision that stood as a counter to what it viewed as the failures of the Keynesian, state-coordinated model of capitalism.

A couple of academics, Peck and Tickell, termed this period in the 1980s as ‘rollback neoliberalism’, determinable by patterns of deregulation and dismantlement; the 1990s then went on to see an emergent phase of active state-building and regulatory reform, which they called ‘roll-out neoliberalism’. This can be seen in the new institutions created by Blair and Clinton in the 1990s following the dismantlement of Keynesian structures, and were designed to embed the neoliberal project more deeply in civil society.

I would like to suggest that we can now add a third phase. ‘Roll-over neoliberalism’ sees the influence of corporate power fully infiltrating every aspect of government in a deceptive, misleading and misguided ideological manuoevre that simply expects the public and the environment to roll over and take the abuse. Fast food chains are asked to come up with food policy, tax-dodgers give their input on tax and bankers smarm their way out of any punishment by holding the government’s balls firmly in their money-grabbing grips. Keynesian influenced ideas such as a Green New Deal in which a coordinated approach to stimulating the economy is taken with a focus on developing a low carbon infrastructure and green jobs, is simply ignored in favour of business as usual.

In the face of such ludicrous proceedings by our democratic representatives it is now of great importance that people seeking to improve this situation come together because although the powers that be may soak up our demonstrations in the short term, ignore our dissent and carry on as before, there are limits in the long-term that business as usual will break, bringing neo-liberalism and the global economy to its knees.

These limits are not just those of public tolerance, but are ecological. The people and the planet both have lines you shouldn’t cross, and neoliberalism is pushing both much too far, whilst simultaneously championing itself as the saviour to each in the eloquent hypocrisy that has become the mainstay of the west’s delusional political discourse. Tackling this situation means tackling social justice, poverty, equality and climate change all at once, for all are intricately interwoven and deserve a concerted effort in order to confront business as usual practices that have destructive effects to society and nature. Rather than ignoring global divisions of labour in national policies on poverty or framing climate change in moral terms, doom and gloom rhetoric or even scare tactics, they must be recognised in their true context. Issues such as social justice, poverty, climate change and equality, are situated in a discourse of power, wherein our shared environment is a critical context for shaping the debate the world over.

This is because the power of neoliberalism is in almost everything we see in the West and is itself made possible by the natural mechanisms of the environment and its ecosystems. Capitalism, of which neoliberalism is a shell, may have provided us in the West with considerable material wealth but it is critically flawed. For everyone on the planet to achieve the same standards of living as those in the US we would need another two planets.

There are two main responses to this problem and one is particularly more nasty than the other. One is to have an economic rethink and push for a more just and equal global society and form of human development where resources are utilised sustainably with an eye to the long-term rather than merely short-term political and financial gain. The other is to carry on as we are, securing and using resources for our own Western purposes, exploiting their increasing demand as supplies dwindle, emitting more and more CO2. Throughout history such competition for resources is played out over a backdrop of wars, droughts and famines and in our current trajectory we are potentially set on a course that sees a peaking in oil supplies, growing water scarcity and a potential food crisis that Lester Brown warns could cause widespread societal collapse.

From a cynical perspective, it would appear that this latter choice is a winner when you think about the timescales involved – decades perhaps – that might allow you to have an almighty blowout and then just pop your clogs before having to tidy up any of the mess. But as the baby-boomers start to retire and fade away, the younger generations might have a few things to say about all of this, as they are the ones who currently seem to be on course to get fewer and fewer benefits of business as usual practices as time moves on. The oldies might be about to shuffle of this mortal coil but the young have a vested interest in tidying this place up.

As well having our future threatened from the old school business as usual practices, our present is equally pushed and shoved. It’s not just the increasing cost of an education that has us buggered but also our relations with each other that are bound within shallow frames of consumption and identity, as well as our relations with nature. These relations have in many ways changed as a result of the ideological power of neoliberal capitalism which drives the politics, economics and culture of the world system, providing the context and direction for how humans affect and interact with non-human nature and with one another. Although we may perceive that we are disconnected from what made us, seeing nature merely as something to be bought, sold, used or overcome, we are in truth completely interconnected with it.

The ideology that has caused this disconnection or alienation has pervaded throughout modern Western living. Its power is evident, paradoxically, in its seeming elusiveness as neoliberal capitalist projects have become the norm, the way we see the world and often each other – they have shaped themselves as a set of objective, natural, and technocratic truisms, so that we can no longer see the wood for the trees.

In Part 2 I’ll be looking at the rationality behind neoliberalism and the effects this has on people and nature.

Just about every reputable climate scientist in the world will tell you that global warming is a serious problem. And almost all of them will also tell you that human activity almost certainly has a hand in causing it. Among most reputable scientists, the disagreements about global warming do not concern its existence (they all agree it is happening) or the causes (they all agree that humans play a part). I’ll concede that there is some disagreement over just how big of a role humans play, and exactly what kind of harm global warming will cause (though they all agree it will be harmful in some way).

However, human actions, dating back to the industrial revolution (and the explosion in population and carbon dioxide output it spawned), and involving virtually every person on the planet, have contributed to the buildup of excess greenhouse gasses in Earth’s atmosphere, which causes global warming.

With that in mind, can any particular person, or group of people, be sued over the damage that global warming has caused, and is anticipated to cause? That’s a very difficult question, from both a legal and moral standpoint. Is there any one person or entity that bears more blame for global warming than everybody else?

A new flurry of lawsuits has been filed in the hopes of answering that question. There have been lawsuits related (directly or indirectly) to global warming before. These, however, are premised on a somewhat novel theory: the so-called “public trust” theory.

The plaintiffs are a coalition called “Our Children’s Trust” (of course, you’ve got to throw in a “THINK OF THE CHILDREN!” argument in there somewhere. Might as well put it in the name of your organization to get it out of the way.), and are suing various government agencies. Their argument is that these agencies failed to do enough to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and are therefore culpable for the global warming problem, and have ruined an asset of public trust (Earth’s atmosphere and climate) for future generations.

This is an interesting, if somewhat problematic, argument. First of all, the precedent for suing government agencies for allegedly failing to do their job is mixed, at best. Second, because global warming is a global problem (it’s right there in the name), drawing a clear chain of causation is going to be difficult.

All civil lawsuits are about redressing and compensating for harm to the plaintiff caused by the defendant. In addition to proving that they have actually suffered some type of harm, the plaintiff must show that the harm was caused by the defendant. With a problem over 150 years in the making, pinning the harm on a particular group is not going to be easy.

This is somewhat similar to a group of lawsuits that individual states have brought against the largest power companies in the United States, alleging that they are primarily responsible for global warming. However, federal courts have not received these legal arguments warmly. Without denying that global warming is a problem (most, in fact, acknowledge that it’s a serious problem), federal courts have found that they simply lack the legal or constitutional authority to set limits on greenhouse gas emissions.

And Supreme Court justices who have weighed in on the issue have expressed skepticism that anyone other than Congress and regulatory agencies (such as the Environmental Protection Agency) has the authority to issue these rules. Even Ruth Bader Ginsburg, generally regarded as one of the most liberal justices on the Court, has said that it’s highly unlikely that a court could rule on these issues.

Litigation has often been a tool to change government policy when there is no political will to do so through legislative action. Some of our most basic legal protections were created, or strengthened, through litigation. Every state in the U.S. has laws that prohibit racial segregation in public schools. Just a generation ago, segregation was the norm. The Supreme Court changed everything when it decided Brown v. Board of Education, when it held that racial segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. After some initial resistance from a few state governments, desegregation became the norm.

Abortion is legal across the country, not due to an act of Congress, but the Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade. Every criminal defendant is entitled to a public defender, thanks to Gideon v. Wainwright.

Needless to say, when it comes to shaping public policy, the courts play a role. However, very few, if any, of these decisions involved the courts placing a serious burden directly on private actors. They involved government conduct, and most of them required the government to stop doing something, rather than imposing an affirmative obligation on it. A Supreme Court decision that imposes an affirmative obligation on private parties would be nearly unprecedented (with the exception of decisions merely upholding the constitutionality of federal or state laws that impose such obligations).

As much as change may be necessary, this seems like one area where the courts have little power. And given the incredibly difficult policy choices that will have to be made if we decide to seriously confront global warming, that may be for the best. Unfortunately, there are still many people who choose to ignore the overwhelming scientific evidence that global warming is an issue. If our nation’s response to global warming is determined by the courts, it will not have much perceived legitimacy. This is a problem best confronted by the elected branches of government.

John Richards is a writer for LegalMatch.com and the LegalMatch.com Law Blog. The above article is for general informational purposes only, and should not be construed in any way as legal advice relevant to your particular situation. The only person qualified to give you legal advice is an attorney licensed to practice in your jurisdiction, who has been apprised of all the relevant facts of your situation.

By Rob Plastow

Charlie Brooker said that you don’t really watch Mad Men, you just sit there and let it seep into you. I’m not the biggest TV fan, I put the TV on mute during the ad breaks and don’t watch many shows. Yet somehow I’m addicted to letting Mad Men seep into me and fascinated by the world in which the show plays out – advertising.

Recent reviews of the current series explain its popularity is due to its similarity to today – just how far have we really come? The anachronistic voyeurism we are allowed lets us maintain any distance we may need to not see it as a direct mirror of our own consumption habits and materialistic society.

The show is often filled with glitz and glamour, luxury products and decadent services but still populated by discontented, substance abusing middle classes who appear to want for nothing yet are modern men and women constantly in search of a soul.

In the current series, the agency has lost the contract with Lucky Strike and the creative director, Don Draper, openly dismisses tobacco companies in a full page ad in the New York Times. But back before he had even a single strand of moral fibre he was the man that had come up with the “It’s toasted” tag-line just as Lucky Strike were beginning to feel the scorn of medical researchers scrutinising the impacts of smoking.

Draper skimmed passed the health issues that were emerging in his 1960s America and went straight for the sensory cue, threw away the psychological research about death-wishes and clung on to the simple, shallow, highly effective call to indulgence. For Draper there was no point in entering the debate, just enjoy the taste of that smooth carcinogenic tobacco.

The same can be said of sustainability and climate change. We know the score and yet we keep on smoking. How do we make green living just plain living? How can behaviour change be beneficial to the individual and appeal to our self-interest?

These questions, in light of Mad Men, make me ask another: is news of anthropogenic climate change received today in the same way that news of smoking’s harmful affects were in the 1960s?

Back when that came out, some people quit. Many others didn’t. Today some people are trying to live greener and this want for sustainability has changed the political landscape, but many others remain resolutely unchanged.

Green living sometimes rubs people up the wrong way due its perceived want of altruistic behaviour which fuels a sense of self-importance that non-greens find sickening. Like a non-smoker with a smug grin telling a smoker cigarettes will kill them.

But what advocates of green lifestyles try to assert is that living green can improve your own feelings of self-importance through a qualitative change rather than a quantitative one and that altruistic outcomes can be a product of the process to living green – not always, but often.

Climate sceptics hold even firmer to their beliefs in the face of this and reason for their autonomy and independence from any ‘fads’ or unwanted changes.

This possible divide over morality, consumption and sense of self causes a lot of friction – both sides feeling wholly justified by their own beliefs, which more often than not are embedded or at least vitally attached to their own creation of self and what they perceive to be fair, right and important.

With such large implications for behaviour, stances on climate change and sustainability no doubt both inform and are created by identity of the self – how we see ourselves, each other and what we want to become.

Mad Men symbolises these aspirations for an entire ideology and culture based on modernity, consumption and progress; that are full of hope on the outside and despair within.

For all his elegant cool, Don Draper is also a philandering drunk who has no idea who he even is half the time. The story fluctuates between his efforts to change and his ignorance of his wrongs.

Making behavioural changes is different for everybody. Don Draper goes swimming and writes a journal, Transition groups try to live with less dependency on fossil fuels, and most people who want to do something about climate change make adjustments to their lives by shopping locally and reducing, re-using and recycling.

Consumption along with the desire it creates, frame our outlook (at least in the West) without us realising half the time. It is the lens through which we see the world most of the time; observing the world in terms of its potential to benefit ourselves, often through purchasing things.

It then becomes easy to understand how that desire is at the centre of consumer economies. All the credit crunch, recession, and climate change clatterings in the news media around the world all stem from a silent, invisible psychological origin that grows within us all.

Followers of Ayn Rand would even lift it up onto a pedestal and call it ‘enlightened self-interest’. But for many (especially outside of the Western world) there’s nothing enlightening about being deluded and at the whim of a silent, invisible ego that is goaded by people like Don Draper into consuming more and more in the faint hope of sating manipulated desire, or for a moment’s perceived happiness from having bought something.

And yet that is what our whole way of life, our economy and our socialisation rests upon. That psychological trick as it were, whereby PR companies, ad men and marketers have latched onto the mind and even the outskirts of the soul in order to get our money and make us work for more.

Spend, spend, spend to keep the machine working. Governments say they want to tackle climate change and social justice but at the same time they urge us to carry on consuming – the very thing that has caused our societies to be socially and environmentally unsustainable.

We are trapped, as Tim Jackson says, on a hedonic treadmill. Mad Men shows us getting on it to begin the run, and so far we are still on it.

We are encouraged by economies of consumption to take our problems and concerns and to ‘toast’ them with that good old ad man trick which has kept us smoking for so long.

Pic from Mr. Delingpole's blog http://bit.ly/5D9Izz

The irony of climate change is also one of human knowledge. It is our paradoxical wont, as Douglas Adams reminds us, to demand guaranteed, rigidly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty.

Depending on whether that uncertainty is presented as wonder or as doubt, we are then equally compelled or disabled.

The framing of uncertainty is therefore at the heart of communicating climate change, and of determining in the minds of millions what is even real, as one infamous episode also reminds us.

In November of 2009 an unknown hacker infiltrated the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit, stole thousands of emails, hacked into the RealClimate website and posted the haul. All done with impeccable timing, right before the COP15 climate talks in Copenhagen.

No one knows who was responsible and the chances are we will never properly find out. However, when reviewing the hack, the UK’s former Chief Scientist, Sir David King suggested an operation on the scale of a national intelligence agency’s capabilities, bankrolled by large American lobby groups.

Continuing on from this hack, now more than a year on, the issue of anthropogenic climate change is still seen as controversial. Despite enquiries finding nothing wrong with the actions of the CRU, and instead shedding light on the deception used in manipulating the emails from some 10 or 15 years ago, the great anti-climate PR coup has arguably been the single most effective piece of climate change communication from either side of the so-called debate.

How has it been so effective? By having a simple target that is itself complex, abstract and extremely disruptive: uncertainty.

This target is not new. Before Climategate, the same approach was taken by the tobacco industry who employed the same PR firms that later went on to represent the oil industry.

In his 2006 book Heat, George Monbiot chronicles this development of misinformation, and the perpetrators behind it whom he calls the ‘Denial Industry’. It is of note that this book precedes Climategate by 3 years. Crucial to the agenda of the Denial Industry is to muddy the waters and promote the promulgation of doubt – and in the case of climate change, its bizarre nature over time and space, its complexity and unpredictability make that all the more easy to do. As does the lack of capability of the science community to get its message across. A message, it must be acknowledged, that not a lot of people want to hear anyway due to the consequences it has for the way we live our lives.

Monbiot gives a thorough account and so I will only pick out what I feel is the key issue he presents. Monbiot highlights the commonality between the tobacco and oil industry in using PR firms to establish and fund think-tanks and institutes with purposefully misleading names such as the Science and Environmental Policy Project, The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition and many others whose purpose it has been to attack the science behind climate change (many of which are provided at www.exxonsecrets.org) in order to shift debate away from curbing their business. Their efforts are driven by a simple idea expounded in the following advice:

“Should the public come to believe that the scientific issues are settled, their views about global warming will change accordingly. Therefore, you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue in the debate”.

This advice is from Frank Luntz, given to Republican Party activists during the first mid-term election of George W. Bush’s presidency, (leaked memo available here).

Climategate then appears to be a continuation of this same rhetoric and a good example of the strength of Luntz’s advice.

Key to the climate sceptics argument then, is that the science behind climate change is in doubt. Yet, Naomi Oreskes showed in her review of 10 years worth of peer-reviewed literature in the journal Science, that the case put forward by today’s climate scientists is in no doubt at all. In a talk at MIT concerning the communication of climate change she also went on to tackle the issue of big oil funding sceptics, denialists and delayers in order to continue with business as usual.

The irony is that the side of the issue that has the least amount of quality science to support its ideas, has the most effective communication campaign through the hypocrisy of labeling climate science as ‘junk science’ and environmentalists as deceptive promoters of a global conspiracy. That coupled with an impressive commitment to their cause, of never backing down.

This in part results from the huge amounts of money that fund it from big oil companies such as Exxon and vested interests of those such as Koch Industries but also from the lack of ability on behalf of the media to discern fact from fiction in a complex topic. In the fast paced world of journalism, with ever increasing media to distribute information, coin shocking headlines and meet tight deadlines, one Phd looks very similar to another, and the innocuously named institutes all appear the same at first glance.

At the same time, the overwhelming evidence widely available – which Oreskes has pointed out – is that the issue is resolved within the scientific community: humans are responsible for global warming.

The reason ‘debate’ continues is a consequence, in many ways, of framing.

The opposition that resulted in the Climategate debacle has shown the power, albeit deceptively, of a well targeted communication campaign that frames the debate with a simple target and goal and relies on emotion to stir support. There story is that the science is uncertain, that people are trying to trick you and are attacking the way you live your life for their own gain. The hypocrisy is of gargantuan proportions and makes for exceptional camouflage.

The delays that have resulted from such tactics and the Climategate mudslinging have set the whole world back, disrupted COP15 and have led to climate change being a decidedly different kind of ‘hot’ topic than it should be. It has dropped from mass media, almost as if it is too controversial to entertain with any certainty.

And it is uncertain, but in a different way. We know that burning fossil fuels, among other things, releases carbon dioxide and that if you have societies and economies that burn them for decades all over the world every day, stores of carbon that had hitherto remained in the earth will then be released into the atmosphere as CO2. The increasing concentration of carbon dioxide will then cause the earth’s atmosphere to increase in temperature.

However, the future is uncertain, the climate models will never be 100%, nature is too complex and our understanding of it too incomplete. That type of uncertainty is unquestioned and something we must acknowledge and live with; we are merely human after all and just as much a part of the often unfathomable nature as the climate. Our existence, let alone our scientific endeavour, is still very new in the time-frame of the planet, to think we know it all would be ridiculous. The question as to our capability to ever understand the way that nature operates on a fundamental and deterministic level is itself highly questionable, but is the course of science to at least better our understanding of it. The climate challenge is a challenge of great uncertainty, which is what makes it all the more pressing for us to do something about and commit to understanding it better.

As the President of the Royal Society, Nobel Laureate Sir Paul Nurse has shown in BBC Horizon’s Science Under Attack, if science is to have the impact it necessitates on the world it studies, we had better get more adept at communicating it.

Climate activists, scientists and environmentalists need to re-claim and re-frame the climate change campaign. And they are*. Recently, WWF have sought to expound on the issue of framing, with much emphasis on transparency they would add, in their Common Cause report.

Common Cause is also a good indicator of the effort that is needed in all camps to put a stop to the quibbling that delays our response to global warming. We need to become more savvy in our deconstruction of the media, of messages and intentions behind them. We also need to acknowledge the importance of emotion, culture and ideology in the framing of campaigns, and in doing so beat the denialists at their own game in a more transparent and less vitriolic way.

If we are to affect real change and respond to global warming we need to accomplish a lot more than merely showing that it is happening. That should have been put to bed a long time ago. There is always room for criticism and debate, that’s how science works, but there is also a point at which a consensus is formed, upon which decisions are made so that we may progress to act.

Without action all the efforts of science are for nothing. 2010 was the joint hottest year on record and in that same year came acknowledgment that stopping temperatures from rising by 2C is virtually impossible.

Because of the delay we have shown to act, temperature rises are much more likely to be greater than 2C and we are looking at a world that will have a much harder time dealing with 3C or 4C changes as a result. The story has changed.

Although it is a great failure for climate activists that Climategate has brought so much enthusiasm and encouraging action within the green movement to a standstill, it is also a great opportunity to learn how to get better at communicating climate change.

If we are to have any impact at all on curbing emissions we must reclaim the narrative of global warming and recognise the importance of tackling the oil industry’s grasp on the media and the climate story as well as the climate itself. Then perhaps, uncertainty can be seen as the refuge of hope.

*Excellent work is also happening all the time at at the UK’s Climate Outreach and Information Network, (COIN) and many developments are also often reported at www.desmogblog.com

Some sources: http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/2011/01/18/four-degrees-and-beyond-climate-change-and-irrational-minds

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00y4yql

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10538198

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/apr/14/oxburgh-uea-cleared-malpractice

http://www.desmogblog.com/who-hacked-cru

http://www.wwf.org.uk/wwf_articles.cfm?unewsid=4224

http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.full

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/20/met-office-2010-second-warmest-year

http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jan/13/uk-media-ignore-climate-change

http://rsta.royalsocietypublishing.org/site/2011/four_degrees.xhtml

http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20110112/

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110112_globalstats.html

http://www.monbiot.com/

www.exxonsecrets.org

http://www.sindark.com/NonBlog/Articles/LuntzResearch_environment.pdf

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-12224948

By Rob Plastow

To find out more, just watch the video:

One of the studies focuses on an event that can easily be recalled to memory by people in the UK of voting age, and can potentially make connections in the mind between then, now and climate change in a way that heretofore would have mostly resided in speculation. In doing so, it helps to make global warming more tangible, albeit still ever elusive and complex.

Back in 2000, I used to walk to college everyday from my then home of the Quay in Exeter, Devon. One September afternoon I clearly remember getting drenched in a downpour that had been a part of a spate of rain that had caused the River Exe to burst its banks. Much of the Exe Valley between Exeter and Tiverton was flooded and the rising of the Exe also caused the Quay itself to become a good few feet under water.

I had never, and to this day still have not, experienced quite the drenching I got that day walking through fast flowing streams over the city’s concrete and tarmac. I soon became so wet that I quickly reached the point of no longer caring as there was no where on my body left to be drenched.

At the time I remember cursing the increased amount of roads and concrete that may have led to increased run-off and therefore contributed to the floods but my thoughts did not immediately point the blame towards climate change. Weather is not climate, and in the middle of that down pour as much as I may have pondered the connection, such a claim could not be made.

Whilst watching the reporting and coverage of floods, hurricanes and other weather events that have had considerable impact over the decade since, I have often wanted to know if they are indicative of changes caused by global warming. Freak floods, heatwaves, droughts, increased numbers of events and so on seemed to be pointing towards climate change in my mind but that is not to say there is a demonstrable link between the two – climate science is anything but black and white.

Could it have also been that with the arrival of 24 hour news channels and my increased use of the internet for news and information, I and many others like me were and are, simply finding more information and being bombarded with coverage that in earlier years would have gone unseen or unheard?

So this week’s news came as welcome relief for my ponderings over a decade ago whilst drenched on my walk home from college.

The first study in the much discussed issue of Nature highlights how human induced increases in greenhouse gases have contributed to the observed intensification of heavy precipitation events in the Northern Hemisphere. The second shows that it is ‘very likely’ that global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions substantially increased the risk of flood occurrence in England and Wales in the autumn of 2000, in which I only got soaked whilst many others suffered severe damage to their property and homes or their health.

The researchers in the latter study used several thousands of computer modelled sequences to determine whether increased CO2 levels affected the probability of the event occurring. They looked at scenarios with and without human induced greenhouse gas releases and found that in 9 out of 10 cases their model results indicated that twentieth-century anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions increased the risk of floods occurring in England and Wales in autumn 2000 by more than 20%, and in two out of three cases by more than 90%.

Not only I am glad to know that climate modelling and science is getting better, but I’m hopeful for how the study may change the way insurers, policy makers and leaders are going to have to think about climate change adaptation from now on when they deal with assessments of risk, probability and responsibility.

If the results of these two studies add to their understanding of global warming, as they have to mine, as a real and direct threat to today’s world and not just some distant future, perhaps they will help us move forward with speed and help us avoid getting caught in a storm.

COP 16

The Oxford University Centre for the Environment recently concluded that costs resulting from sea level rise on the Caricom islands “could amount to between $4bn and $6bn a year and with infrastructure costs running to tens of billions in many countries”.

Their report states that a 1 metre rise in sea-levels would see land being encroached by 100 metres, forcing more than 100,000 people to move and cause dramatic coastal erosion, which in turn would contaminate fresh water supplies and decimate the tourism industry.

The plea comes from islands who fear they will drown if world agreements limit global temperature rise to 2C rather than 1.5C.

Developed countries such as the USA, UK and EU member states are arguing in Cancun for a 2C limit to temperature rises and suggest that island states accept this and use adaptation funding to build sea defences.

It comes as no surprise then that the small islanders accuse the West of seeing them as ‘collateral damage’.

Rising tide

Current estimates have a broad range for predicted sea level rise this century, anywhere between 30cm and 1 metre by 2100.

But what this indicates is a commitment of the developed countries to a business-as-usual path of policy, with remuneration for adaptation being paid to the poorer countries set to be hit hardest first. The small countries are fighting hard to change this stance in Cancun but this power struggle and policy approach is at the heart of the problems of trying to reach agreements.

Inevitably, vulnerable states will not turn down money for adaptation and the rich countries know this. In time they will have no other choice.

It is this stance that is currently being held vehemently by the US and is shaping up to be a very much ‘all or nothing’ approach, much to the chagrin of developing countries the world over. As a result, there is currently much speculation over a potential walkout.

It’s only just begun so we’ll have to wait and see but again the dimensions of power will decide how things work out, instead of reasoned thought and sense.