The environment – Page 40 – a sibilant intake of breath

Jeffrey Goldberg on Obama’s foreign policy

The Atlantic has a long and interesting article about Barack Obama’s foreign policy.

It discusses the use of chemical weapons in Syria; Obama’s take on Churchillian rhetoric; Obama’s appreciation for elements of the George H. W. Bush foreign policy; disagreements within the Obama foreign policy team; Obama’s views on Israeli security; Obama’s “secret disdain” for the Washington foreign policy establishment; his limited respect for foreign leaders (aside from Angela Merkel); a bit of his perspective on climate change (a “comparatively slow-moving emergency” and “a potential existential threat to the entire world if we don’t do something about it”); Obama’s views on ISIS (which he compares to the Joker in The Dark Knight); his perspective of the central role of U.S. leadership in international cooperation; the use of drones with “near-certainty of no collateral damage”; Pakistan as a “disastrously dysfunctional country” and questionable U.S. ally; the impact of tribalism and misogyny in the Middle East; America’s misunderstanding of Reagan and the Iran hostage crisis; America’s overblown fear of terrorism (“Obama frequently reminds his staff that terrorism takes far fewer lives in America than handguns, car accidents, and falls in bathtubs do”); his frustration with “free rider” allies who don’t contribute to the costs of U.S. foreign policy objectives they support; and his views on the scope of executive power in foreign policy.

It describes the resentments which Obama had developed by 2013:

He resented military leaders who believed they could fix any problem if the commander in chief would simply give them what they wanted, and he resented the foreign-policy think-tank complex. A widely held sentiment inside the White House is that many of the most prominent foreign-policy think tanks in Washington are doing the bidding of their Arab and pro-Israel funders. I’ve heard one administration official refer to Massachusetts Avenue, the home of many of these think tanks, as “Arab-occupied territory.”

On climate change, Obama is quoted saying:

“As I survey the next 20 years, climate change worries me profoundly because of the effects that it has on all the other problems that we face,” he said. “If you start seeing more severe drought; more significant famine; more displacement from the Indian subcontinent and coastal regions in Africa and Asia; the continuing problems of scarcity, refugees, poverty, disease—this makes every other problem we’ve got worse. That’s above and beyond just the existential issues of a planet that starts getting into a bad feedback loop.”

The article also includes some interesting analysis of how Obama adjusted his strategy in response to particular events, as well as interpersonal disagreements among his key advisors.

Another interesting comment is that Obama sees the Middle East as “soon be of negligible relevance to the U.S. economy” “thanks to America’s energy revolution”. It would be interesting to know if he means the noble course of improved efficiency and the deployment of climate-safe energy sources, or the massive expansion of oil and gas production which he has helped drive.

Managing volunteers

I am finding myself frustrated with the primary challenge associated with trying to produce political change using groups of volunteers, which I would judge to be maintaining accountability and motivation. If the groups aspire to be democratic, that brings a set of challenges too. (The third biggest challenge is probably avoiding and managing interpersonal conflicts.) Still, I think the greatest challenge is the tendency of volunteers to abandon projects half-finished and informally vacate positions of responsibility which they have sought (without handing them over to others in an effective way).

One potential solution is to move from volunteers to employees. This arguably gives you more oversight, perhaps makes them feel more responsible, and allows those who couldn’t normally afford to work so much for free the opportunity to pay their rent, etc. There are lots of effective staff-run NGOs (from the Pembina Institute to Environmental Defence), and taking on a few staff is often an aspiration for any serious group.

Regardless, most people who contribute their labour to grassroots-style environmental groups do so as volunteers, and it’s the effective or ineffective recruitment, retention, and management of volunteers that largely determines an organization’s effectiveness. The other main factor is the competence of key organizers, who must themselves be recruited, retained, and managed.

It’s often tempting to imagine a group in which all members are and remain strongly committed, and who manifest that commitment in consistent and professional work. It’s certainly logically possible that a group could have rules and a formal structure that encourages participation of this sort and diverts the less committed to other organizations that are also doing good work. Such a group could limit the amount of resources that need to be devoted to fundraising, and avoid the hassles, limitations, and democratic challenges of formal incorporation.

The time commitments would have to be manageable – to limit the main problem that afflicts key organizers.

Another question is how to effectively brand such a group and define its role. Being independent would cost the support of organizations with pre-existing name recognition and bases of support, but it would also allow for more of an experimental structure.

Repairs

In addition to the standard advice about reducing the amount of environmental harm you’re imposing on others (limit driving, avoid flying, avoid meat, etc), a recent Grist article suggests that you “use everything you own for so long that it turns into dust”.

As a general philosophy, I am trying out the following:

Avoid acquiring entirely new types of things, especially those that require a lot of resource use to support.
Where possible, repair gear that has become damaged.
When necessary, replace gear. If it’s gear in frequent use, replace it with something tougher

Recently, I sent my 10+ year old hiking boots off to be re-soled. I have decided to keep using my five year old iPhone 4 until it suffers a critical failure. Today, I was able to replace the battery (which had only been good for 30 minutes of talk time and prone to fail instantly in the cold) at the Apple Store for $111.87. Strangely, Apple will not replace the battery in a 160 GB iPod Classic. Instead, they will replace the whole device for the cost of the battery, something I also did today for $84.75. The charging cables for both my iPod and iPhone have nearly completely fallen apart, but I will keep using them until the last one fails. I need to replace my iPhone case, since it is falling apart. No physical stores sell such old cases, so I will need to find one online.

My collection of inexpensive watches is down to a single usable item. The Eddie Bauer watch my grandparents gave me in high school won’t run even with a brand new battery. The Mondaine watch I bought at the MoMA now loses about eight minutes per hour, making it useless. The Marathon watch with tritium tubes, which they have already repaired once, has a loose tube (full of radioactive gas) shaking around in the case and needs to go back again. My Timex Expedition‘s plastic face is all scratched up (like the Marathon watch) but it still functions perfectly.

Yesterday, I replaced one of my FEIT Electric 1600 lumen (100 watt equivalent) LED bulbs with a new one that doesn’t buzz all the time. My Barbour Beaufort jacket has growing holes in the waxed cotton along the bottom of the sleeves, as well as lots of damage along the back where I often sit on it (despite several prior repairs). My MEC merino wool long johns have big holes in the bottoms, and both of my pairs of MEC cargo pants have at least one failed zipper. I already replaced my Hedgren laptop bag with a Briggs & Riley verb bag because replacing all the failed zippers would have been costly and impractical.

There are a lot of other bits of gear with issues. The headphone out port on my nine year old iMac is dodgy, but the computer as a whole has worked remarkably well. The iPad Mini on extended loan from my brother Sasha has a cracked screen, but it doesn’t cause any problems. My Canon 5D Mk II still suffers from the consequences of its tragic injury. In particular, the shutter release on the battery grip doesn’t work. My used 5D Mk III has stranger problems. Sometimes it refuses to release the shutter, apparently because it doesn’t realize that autofocus has already happened. Sometimes, focusing on something closer and then switching back fixes the problem. Sometimes it requires a power cycle. Oddest of all, it sometimes produces corrupted RAW files, something I have never experienced with any other digital camera.

All my lenses are in good working order, as are my flashes and the radio triggers for them. My MacBook Pro and Fuji X100s are similarly at full capacity. My Sennheiser HD595 headphones are working, along with my Pro-Ject headphone amp and my Shure SE-215 earbuds (having already replaced the cable once).

One new thing I definitely need is the largest possible bookshelf for my new room. Until I can find something that I will be able to get up the three flights of stairs, my books are sitting in a stack of 15 banker’s boxes. I also want to fix the hinge on my wardrobe. In the longer term, I am thinking ahead to the research trip for my PhD. Whether I end up subletting my room for those weeks/months or not, I will want somewhere secure to store photo and computer gear, as well as backups, when I am away. Maybe I can modify the wardrobe to lock, or add a locking compartment.

I will also eventually need to replace the creaking complaining futon which I bought from the previous inhabitant of this room – ideally, with a bed which includes built-in storage underneath.

(Note: There is an extensive earlier discussion about abstinence from harmful activities and resistance against the societal structures that permit them as alternative approaches to mitigating environmental problems.)

Divestment and “The Toronto Principle”

An article in The Harvard Crimson focused on the recent report of the president’s divestment committee at U of T:

Last December, a committee at the University of Toronto released a report on the issue of divestment, drawing a clear line by aligning itself with the needs of the Paris agreement. It recommended that the university not finance companies whose “actions blatantly disregard the international effort to limit the rise in average global temperatures to not more than one and a half degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages by 2050…These are fossil fuels companies whose actions are irreconcilable with achieving internationally agreed goals.”

Hopefully, this principle will be re-affirmed when President Gertler makes the final decision. We expect that at the end of March.

PhD proposal progress

I have come across a lot of exciting material for my PhD project in the last few weeks. Documents like the papal encyclical Laudato Si raise interesting questions about the connections between the faith community’s involvement in the effort against climate change, anti-capitalism, and the moral contemplation of the environment. For instance, there are interesting parallels between this theological interpretation of biodiversity loss and ‘deep’ ecology in which nature is considered valuable for its own sake and not only for human purposes.

Another encouraging development is the universal enthusiasm for the project. I have discussed it with experts in faith and aboriginal communities, people at Massey College, committee members and potential supervisors, people at parties, environmentalists, journalists, and civil servants. People are sometimes skeptical about whether it will prove logistically feasible to talk to so many people and follow the routes of two phantom pipelines, but nobody has argued that the project is not worth trying.

Once the Community Response to the ad hoc committee on divestment’s report has been assembled, my top priority will be the creation of a major new version of my proposal for circulation to committee members and potential supervisors.

We met President Gertler

After four years of work, the fossil fuel divestment campaign at the University of Toronto met with President Meric Gertler today. He didn’t commit to anything, but the discussion was generally productive and encouraging.

We are working on a Community Response to the divestment committee’s report, with a target of February 25th. We’re expecting President Gertler to make a final decision by the end of March.

Geoengineering via rock weathering

Compared with trying to counteract climate change resulting from greenhouse gas pollution through solar radiation management (SRM) — essentially reflecting sunlight away, as with stratospheric sulfate injection — actually removing CO2 from the atmosphere by weathering rocks which form carbonates seems more attractive in many ways. The SRM approach may cause major side effects in terms of changes in precipitation, and any cessation in the injection of reflective aerosols in the upper atmosphere would lead to very abrupt climate change.

I asked David Keith about the idea when he was in Toronto talking about SRM-based geoengineering and he said that the problem is simply one of reaction rates. Even if we used zero-carbon energy to grind up vast amounts of ultramafic rock to absorb CO2, that process of absorbtion would happen so slowly that it would not counteract human-induced climate change on reasonable timescales.

I learned about the idea from Wallace Broecker and Robert Kunzig’s book Fixing Climate. Another oft-touted means of removing atmospheric CO2 is biochar. More recently, I read about the idea of speeding up natural rock weathering by biological means. I don’t know if this could somehow overcome Keith’s objection about reaction rates.

U of T ad hoc committee recommends divestment

The presidential committee at the University of Toronto just recommended divestment!

They lay out criteria for excluding stocks based on their climate change impact and “recommend… that the University of Toronto instruct its investment managers to divest immediately” from such holdings.

They specifically identify ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, the Peabody Energy Corporation, Arch Coal Inc., Alpha Natural Resources LLC, Cloud Peak Energy, and the Westmoreland Coal Company for divestment.

Look for more information on this in the hours ahead from UofT350.org and Toronto350.org.

Responses to the Paris Agreement

A bit of what I have seen online so far:

My quick take: there is lots to be disappointed about in this agreement. Targets aren’t legally binding. Indeed, the agreement text seems far too aspirational in many places. I can’t help but feel that an international agreement on trade or defence would include more concrete measures for effective implementation. It’s also objectionable that the agreement seeks to prohibit people harmed by climate change from suing those who are causing it for damages.

Even if fully implemented, this text doesn’t do nearly enough to prevent catastrophic climate change. That being said, having an agreement endorsed by so many parties — and which does include mechanisms for increasing ambition over time — makes me a bit more hopeful that this problem can ultimately be resolved.

Protests banned at COP21

Naomi Klein on Paris’ decision to ban “outdoor events” during the forthcoming climate negotiations:

Rather, after the horrific attacks of 13 November, it needed to determine whether it had the will and capacity to host the whole summit – with full participation from civil society, including in the streets. If it could not, it should have delayed and asked another country to step in. Instead the Hollande government has made a series of decisions that reflect a very particular set of values and priorities about who and what will get the full security protection of the state. Yes to world leaders, football matches and Christmas markets; no to climate marches and protests pointing out that the negotiations, with the current level of emission targets, endanger the lives and livelihoods of millions if not billions of people.

…

It is worth thinking about what the decision to cancel marches and protests means in real, as well as symbolic, terms. Climate change is a moral crisis because every time governments of wealthy nations fail to act, it sends a message that we in the global north are putting our immediate comfort and economic security ahead of the suffering and survival of some of the poorest and most vulnerable people on Earth. The decision to ban the most important spaces where the voices of climate-impacted people would have been heard is a dramatic expression of this profoundly unethical abuse of power: once again, a wealthy western country is putting security for elites ahead of the interests of those fighting for survival. Once again, the message is: our security is non-negotiable, yours is up for grabs.

The world has failed twenty times in a row to adequately address climate change. Another failure in Paris this year would have consequences in human suffering that massively dwarf what any terrorist group (or all global terrorism put together) is able to inflict.