Reversion to fossil fuel dependence

With economic instability, the Ukraine war, and increased fossil fuel prices there is a disturbing trend toward nations deepening their fossil fuel dependence. For instance:

This all brings up a familiar fear: at a time when humanity can only avoid disaster through cooperation, there is a serious risk that increasingly strained circumstances will instead drive a selfish and ultimately hopeless logic of individual self-protection among states. Thus, the hope that a more acute experience of the impacts of climate change will drive a rejection of climate denial and public demand for strong mitigation policy may not be well justified. With all the structural barriers to climate action, our worsening global situation could become inescapably self-reinforcing.

Trans Mountain would not be profitable

One of the most bizarre things the Trudeau government has ever said about energy and climate change is that building the Trans Mountain pipeline is necessary for the transition away from fossil fuels because it will raise the money needed to carry it out.

This has always been an absurd proposition. It’s ridiculous on its face that investing billions of tens of billions in fossil fuel export infrastructure which will operate for decades will help Canada do its share to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Now even the financial argument has come under serious criticism. Parliamentary Budget Officer Yves Giroux recently estimated that the cost of the project has grown from $12.6 billion in 2020 to $21.4 billion now and concluded that “Trans Mountain no longer continues to be a profitable undertaking.” At the same time, cancelling the project would yield a $14 billion loss.

Neither the federal nor Alberta government is changing course because of this analysis. Chrystia Freeland’s press secretary has said: “The Trans Mountain Expansion Project is in the national interest and will make Canada and the Canadian economy more sovereign and more resilient.” Alberta Energy Minister Sonya Savage said: “This project is necessary for Alberta and Canada’s energy sectors.”

All this is a reminder of how the behaviour a government needs to follow to stay in power does not consist of serving the public interest or putting forward a coherent policy agenda, but rather maintaining the support of the key societal actors that the government needs to keep in power.

Related:

Slides in academic presentations

I have seen hundreds of academic presentations, the great majority with slides. Unfortunately, I would say that the most common practice is one of the worst: putting all or nearly all of what you will say on your slides. Since nearly everybody reads faster than you will talk, this gives the whole presentation a dragging sense of going over the same ground slowly and repeatedly.

Putting totally different text on your slides is in some ways even worse, since now the audience needs to follow two simultaneous narratives which may not combine perfectly or benefit from being put forward in parallel.

The approach which I use and have found successful is to make myself a Powerpoint deck with speaking notes in point form. With the slides on a screen that only I can see, I can be sure to follow my overall outline and not miss any points. It also lets the audience concentrate fully on what I am saying, without the distraction of comparing it against text on slides. Generally I think it sounds more engaging and human to turn point form text into full sentences on the fly, rather than read a speech verbatim, but if the presentation is very short it can be best to have everything written succinctly in advance and then to try to read it in a way that doesn’t sound like a recitation.

A couple of ways to have slides with fewer problems are to only include very brief summary or conclusion text, which the audience will be able to read so quickly it isn’t a distraction, or using slides more-or-less exclusively to show charts, graphs, and photos. That is what I tried to do with my recent lesson on the robotic exploration of the solar system.

These approaches do detract from the viability of a slide deck as a standalone presentation which can be understood without the accompanying speech, but I would argue that a deck meant to be used that way should have a totally different design from slides meant to support a spoken talk, whether it’s in-person or online. If the priority is the live audience, the talk should be designed to engage them in the moment and not to be a set of reference materials that would be equally comprehensible to someone who hasn’t heard the talk.

Related:

The most important (as opposed to the most powerful) audience for my PhD dissertation

I have always intended my research to be of more interest and use to activists than to anyone else. Nonetheless, I think my tendency in academic writing to criticize weaknesses in the climate movement is ultimately motivated by a desperate determination to collectively take our best shot at avoiding climatic disaster.

Operating under those conditions, I contend that we cannot afford to be congratulatory or to prioritize making activists feel positive over what they have done over continuing to pursue the goals which motivated them. I got into CFFD activism already expecting climate change to be the main work for the rest of my life. My experiences with the Keystone XL protests in Washington in 2011, with Toronto350.org between 2012 and 2017, with the first University of Toronto divestment campaign, and with conducting this research has shown me how many others share that sense of purpose and importance. When I criticize the work of activists it is because I think we cannot afford to fail and that learning is a critical skill and practice for us all, not because I don’t respect the thought and effort which they have put into it.

Plus, I don’t expect anyone to take what I say for granted. One advantage of academic-style writing is that there are clear standards of attribution, with an expectation of identifying where your supporting information comes from. One thing I would say confidently about volunteer-based environmental organizations is that we’re always muddling through and doing the best we can amid our limitations and constraints. Even if you end up fully disagreeing with an idea which I try to advance or defend, perhaps it will prompt you to rethink or refine your view on the topic. It’s through adjustments of perspective like that we can all become collectively better informed.