Category: The environment

Atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, etc – everything about life and the state of this planet

Open thread: oil by rail

The CBC is reporting today that the oil production cuts enacted by the NDP provincial government to try to raise fossil fuel prices have made oil transport by rail less viable.

The possibility of exporting the bitumen sands by rail when pipeline capacity is exceeded has highlighted how fossil fuel advocates take climate change inaction as a given. They posit only two scenarios, a certain amount of oil being shipped by rail or shipped by pipeline, and then say that since the pipeline option is cheaper and safer they should clearly be built. That misses how the most important reason for stopping pipelines is to keep the oil in the ground. Using the bogeyman of a more dangerous transport option to promote a less dangerous one ignores the obligation to decarbonize.

Fossil fuel production needs to be squeezed in every possible way: by imposing carbon taxes, by requiring them to pay remediation costs for damaged areas and abandoned equipment, by stopping new export infrastructure, by withdrawing investment from the industry, and so on.

At root, climate change is a problem where fossil fuel users impose harm on climate change victims because of the convenience, power, and profit that fossil fuels provide them. Forcing communities to accept bitumen exporting trains to pass through has a similar dynamic.

The marriage of climate and economic justice

Something occurred to me as I was walking through the snow this morning. There’s an episode of Yes Minister (The Bed of Nails) in which the hapless minister Jim Hacker is charged with implementing an integrated national transport policy. His savvy and manipulative chief civil servant explains:

It is the ultimate vote loser… If you pull it off, no one will feel the benefits for ten years. Long before that, you and I will have moved on… In the meantime, formulating policy means making choices. Once you do that, you please the people that you favour, but infuriate everybody else. One vote gained, ten lost. If you give the job to the road services, the rail board and unions will scream. Give it to the railways, the road lobby will massacre you. Cut British Airways investment plans, they’ll hold a devastating press conference that same day.

Ultimately, the minister and his permanent secretary conspire to be freed from the job, first by proposing a service-slashing approach to transport reorganization, in which they deliberately alert the prime minister about unpopular changes it would imply for his constituency, and then using Sir Humphrey’s second strategy:

We now present our other kind of non-proposal… The high cost, high staff kind. We now propose a British National Transport Authority with a full structure, regional board, area council, local office, liaison committee, the lot. 80,000 staff, billion-a-year budget. The Treasury will have a fit! The whole thing will go back to the Department of Transport.

What occurred to me in the snow is that while Hacker and Humphrey may have been using these approaches as a dodge, one could say metaphorically that those calling for strong climate change policies have in some ways pressed the same two strategies.

First there was the dream of an economically efficient solution via a carbon tax. All the most sophisticated and credible economic analyses projected that the best way to solve climate change was to put a rising cost of carbon across the entire economy and then let individuals and firms make their own economic choices to adjust. This policy was favourably contrasted with trying to reduce fossil fuel use and the resultant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through regulation. It was also tailored to appeal to people on the political right: rather than imposing particular technological choices it relies on the free market to adapt naturally to the increasing cost of a previously-neglected factor of production, just as they do every day as commodity prices like oil and copper spot prices do.

What seems to have sunk this strategy is the willingness of those on the political right to play Russian roulette on climate change, assuming the damage we do won’t be that bad or that some future technology will solve the problem painlessly. Coupled with that is the unreasoning hostility to taxes that has been embraced by some right wing populist figures, movements, and political parties. Proposing an environmental policy that can be given the derogatory label “a tax on everything” is challenging in a climate where such figures are influential, and can make it easy for an incoming right wing government to scrap on the basis of “giving money back to [insert name of jurisdiction] families”.

The carbon tax idea was always an awkward fit for the “social greens” to use Clapp and Dauvergne’s terminology. In Paths to a Green World they differentiate between four broad streams within environmentalism: market liberals, institutionalists, bioenvironmentalists, and social greens:

If your analysis is that our system is beset by an ever-destructive capitalism which must be deconstructed, the virtues of a carbon mitigation measure designed to function through efficient capitalist markets was never likely to appeal. Perhaps it speaks to the climate justice dimension when carbon tax revenues are put to purposes that aid the disadvantaged, as with refunds to those with low emissions under a cap and dividend scheme or proposals to use carbon tax revenues to fund a basic income system.

That’s the second set of policies that occurred to me in the snow, corresponding to Humphrey’s “high cost, high staff” straw man. That’s the mainstream media criticism consensus on proposals like the Green New Deal: that they can’t see the rational connection between proposed elements like a job guarantee and climate change, and that the set of new government benefits being proposed seems unreasonably costly.

We surely can’t know what strategies will succeed on climate change. There has never been a problem sufficiently similar to serve as a credible model, so we can never say with complete confidence that one or another past movement suggests the best activist strategies in the world today. We’re going to need to keep trying multiple strategies, especially if we’re committed to democracy. Under a democratic system the populace must ultimately begrudge and tolerate any burdensome actions their society is undertaking for the sake of a stable climate. It has to be akin to the general tolerance of taxation, and be an expected and embedded norm to be part of a society progressively moving away from carbon fuels.

It’s great that social greens are so passionate and able to turn a belief that they’re fighting for justice into enthusiasm and motivation. It probably helps to have a comprehensive vision for societal reform, as opposed to the rather abstract and unemotive “what strategies for decarbonization can work, if we put it ahead of all other priorities?”.

Organizing and seizing the moment

A memorable criticism in Frances Fox Piven and Richard Cloward’s Poor People’s Movements: Why they Succeed, How they Fail alleges that organizers often miss their opportunity because the use the moment of chaos in which the common people are prepared to rebel as an opportunity for institution-building instead of revolution or immediate large-scale reform.

The point is well taken, and organization-building can indeed involve tedious bureaucracy that bores volunteers and doesn’t seem to justify the time it takes. For the climate activism movement specifically, however, we need to think more than most about the durability of the edifices we create, because this fight isn’t going to end for decades. Even if miracle after miracle takes place, we aggressively decarbonize around the globe, and we manage to keep the temperature increase below 1.5 ˚C, there will still always be the temptation to exploit valuable fossil fuel reserves that nations have so far forborne to use for the sake of the climate. Perhaps we will one day have energy technologies so superior that fossil fuels will lose their commercial value, but especially with hard-to-replace applications like air travel and spaceflight rising in popularity, it seems imprudent to assume that will happen. And so we will need to keep the fossil fuels buried not just now, but for generations to come. In all probability, we will need to do so despite steadily-worsening climatic conditions and secondary stresses associated, from famines to mass migration.

Certainly organization-building can be done wrong, and we all learn from the mistakes of past efforts. Climate activism may well be unlike some other movements, however, and face a particular need to keep functioning and influencing public policy even after the current generation of organizers are dead, to say nothing of three years down the line when everyone involved in the movement has switched their primary organizational affiliation and central area of focus.

Prospects for a Green New Deal

A frequent criticism of climate change policies like the Leap Manifesto and the Green New Deal which seek to accomplish a number of labour and social justice objectives alongside controlling climate change is that the policies don’t have a logical relationship with one another, framing the effort this way reduces the emphasis on climate change specifically, and taking this approach will create barriers to political success. The Economist‘s online Democracy in America column recently argued:

Such objections are thought unsportsmanlike by the proposal’s backers. The Green New Deal has people excited in ways think-tank white papers on cap-and-trade schemes never did. Boosters argue that it moves the “Overton window” of political dialogue: towards taking serious action on climate change. The little details, like how to pay for universal health care and a federal jobs guarantee can be dealt with later. Perhaps the Green New Deal will galvanise the youth vote, or help elect environmentally minded Democrats. Perhaps it is good politics to yoke environmentalism to other economic policies that could be popular.

Yet it seems rather more likely that the politics of the Green New Deal will backfire for Democrats. Republican strategists have stymied progress on climate change by caricaturing Democratic ideas as pie-in-the-sky efforts that would result in massive tax increases. Their parody now seems reality. The next Democratic nominee may well be someone who has endorsed the idea of the Green New Deal.

There is little wonder that Nancy Pelosi, who cares about climate change but also retains shrewd political instincts, has been so public in her doubting of the proposal. “The ‘green dream’ or whatever they call it, nobody knows what it is but they’re for it, right?” she told Politico. The bold plan could make the party unelectable in conservative-leaning states, ensuring that Republicans retain control over one chamber of Congress or even the White House and then stymie all climate legislation—whether sensible or not—for years to come.

There’s certainly a counter-argument. People may care somewhat about climate change, but it’s never their top priority in comparison to personal welfare issues like health, education, or taxes. Also, people have many financial concerns about climate change action. Conceivably, a broad-based policy could tie climate change protection to other tasks of more immediate political interest to people, and mitigate concerns that decarbonization will be economically damaging.

There’s cause to the skeptical about that enthusiasm, however. If a package consists of a bunch of objectives with relatively appealing short-term benefits, along with decarbonization policies which are largely about enduring near-term costs to avoid long-term catastrophe, it’s quite possible that the climate parts will be dropped, diluted, or counteracted. One virtue of an approach that focuses narrowly on decarbonization and climate protection is that it could be made compatible with a range of ideologies and party platforms. That is to say, there may be a lower chance that it will just be scrapped by the next non-progressive government to be elected.

Louis Sobol on divestment at Mount Allison

Louis Sobol recently wrote a piece in the National Observer about university divestment organizing in New Brunswick: Lessons from campaigning for divestment at Mount Allison University.

It covers some themes of the movement: the sense of ecological threat motivating people to take action, the dominant perspectives within the movement about intersectionality and progressive allyship, an explanation of the objective of stripping fossil fuel companies of social license, a description of a range of tactics used by campaign organizers, and frustration with the university’s response.

Redwater Energy Supreme Court decision

A bit of good news: Supreme Court rules energy companies cannot walk away from old wells.

The fossil fuel industry has huge future cleanup costs, including the UK’s North Sea platforms, and of course Canada’s bitumen sands. The CBC story notes:

Alberta has been dealing with a tsunami of orphaned oil and gas wells in the past five years. In 2014, the Orphan Well Association listed fewer than 200 wells to be reclaimed. The most recent numbers show there are 3,127 wells that need to be plugged or abandoned, and a further 1,553 sites that have been abandoned but still need to be reclaimed.

The industry functions by socializing costs and privatizing profits: for instance, imposing climate change on everybody while directing revenue to shareholders, staff, and executives. The post-productive phase for oil, gas, and coal projects can be a major opportunity to divert costs that should legitimately be borne by the corporation onto the public.

Saudi Arabia as an argument for Canadian oil

An increasingly frequent media line from supporters of the bitumen sands and the fossil fuels industry generally is that if oil isn’t produced in Canada it will be produced in Saudi Arabia instead, and that is undesirable because the conduct of people in Saudi Arabia is unethical while Canadians behave ethically. As more morally worthy recipients of fossil fuel revenues, Canadian industry can thus feel unblemished by any adverse consequences the bitumen sands produce.

Obviously it’s a weak argument. At the most basic level, misconduct by some unrelated party has no bearing on whether or not Canada’s ethical choices are acceptable. One can object factually by questioning how much Saudi oil really comes to Canada. One can make the economic argument that if we’re not burning all the oil, we should burn the cheapest stuff and avoid developing the expensive stuff. You can argue that a global transition away from oil, intended to avoid catastrophic climate change, will eventually undermine Saudi oil revenues too. In the alternative, you can argue that this is simply a deflection, not a sincere effort to critique the conduct of the Saudi government or to propose any meaningful solutions to that problem. It’s using the mistaken supposition that we can solve one problem (while actually doing nothing) to strengthen political resistance to implementing real climate change solutions.

Has anyone seen a good online rebuttal to this general argument? It would be good to have some convincing pages to link, as well as rebuttal’s pithy enough to include in a tweet or blog comment.

News on North American planetary stewardship not encouraging

Some less-than-encouraging news today:

The first story about the poll has some room for interpretation. Seeing pipelines as a “crisis” doesn’t necessarily mean supporting them, though the article goes on to say: “Looking at Canadians’ impressions of the Trans Mountain and Energy East pipelines, 53 per cent of respondents voiced support for both, while 19 per cent opposed both, 17 per cent couldn’t decide”. It also notes: “Comparing age groups on pipeline issues, the survey found the majority of Canadians ages 18 to 34 were not supportive of pipelines, while little more than half of those ages 35 to 54 were supportive, and those over the age of 55 expressed the most support for pipelines and labelled the lack of pipeline capacity a crisis.”

In part this reflects a crisis of education and self-interest. Older Canadians who are likely the least informed about climate change and the economics of a global transition to decarbonization are the most supportive of climate-wrecking old industries. They are also the ones with the least to lose personally from climate change.

As for Trump’s pro-coal plan, it’s not surprising from someone who is gleefully controlled by industry and utterly uncomprehending of everything complex. Still, it demonstrates the huge danger of backsliding with climate change policy. For every leader who tries to do something helpful (almost always while keeping climate change at a lower level of priority than economic growth and other objectives) there can be a successor who takes us back to a place worse than when we started. The challenge of climate change isn’t just putting the right policies in place, but keeping them there long enough to matter.