Target: the bipartisan US climate policy

[Billhook]

The following text was written for Climate Progress (CP) on 28/12/12 as a response to an article on the NYT actually daring to criticize Obama's conduct on climate. 'JR' refers to Joe Romm, the site's editor. I'm posting it here almost in its original form in part because I'd appreciate suggestions as to how better to get Americans to look beyond the conventions that box their minds
(you can take a whore to culture, but you can't make it think . . .)
- as well as wanting to hear PS readers' views on the thesis.
_________________________________________________

With regard to the ongoing discussion of climate across US websites the bit I find hard to take is the closet denialism – not the fabricated circus of AGW denial since 2009 that gave spurious cover for Obama’s silence and gross negligence of climate in his first 4 years, but the denial of the need to get beyond the BAU of political tribalism. Comments above asserting juvenile apologia for Obama are a case in point. However many times official gesture-scale actions on climate are cited, the fact remains that Obama’s chosen US ‘pledge’ for 2020 is a mere 3.67% off the 1990 baseline – which is far less than the US signed up to at Kyoto for 2012 and it is 8 years later. For comparison the impoverished EU is debating raising its 2020 goal from 20% to 30%.

If people were actually interested in looking beyond the failed conventional ‘wisdoms’ of that political tribalism then future climate damages could be greatly reduced. Where for instance is progressives’ discussion of Obama’s staunch inspiring address to the Governors’ Climate Summit in November 2008 after being elected (and before adopting Cheyney’s ‘Brinkmanship of Inaction’ with China in 2009) in comparison with his response to the recent press conference after being re-elected ?

By my count his latter brief statement crammed in 2 strawman prevarications, 3 hype-the-controversies, and 3 outright lies.

There are of course a range of closet denialisms – from denial of the critical significance to mitigation strategy of the loss of the cooling sulphate parasol by closing coal-fired plants,
- to denial of the critical significance to mitigation strategy of the ongoing interactive acceleration of six out of seven mega-feedbacks,
- to denial of the obvious need for the US to begin negotiating an equitable and efficient global climate treaty at the UN,
- to denial of the obvious impossibility of resolving AGW by an Emissions-Control-only climate treaty,
- to denial of the viability of resolving AGW by means of a climate treaty mandating Emissions Control + Carbon Recovery + Albedo Restoration.
(Unlike many of CP’s commenters, I note that JR’s posts are clear, explicitly or tacitly, on each of these).

Yet the denial of the White House’s obdurate pursuit of the bipartisan policy of a Brinkmanship of Inaction with China is the pivotal issue, since in assuming that US prevarication is only accidentally heading for food shortages in China it misdirects progressives’ critique onto the exceptionally thick-skinned fossil fuel lobby (that funds the circus of denial partly to maintain that focus) and it wholly fails to instigate widespread adamant demand for effective presidential action by the ~80% popular support for action.

Obama’s recent fervent commitment to action on gun control – despite around 50% vitriolic opposition – utterly discredits the old excuse for his ongoing silence and inaction on climate being due to insufficient support – yet still most US progressives ignore the reality of the bipartisan policy of inaction being pursued in their name.

Maybe that policy needs to be put in context of previous precedents ? Seeking the end of China’s bid for global economic dominance via prolonged inaction on GHGs while awaiting sufficient crop failures and food shortages to empower massive Chinese civil unrest, and thus to impose the climatic destabilization of the Chinese government, may be a novel tactic but it is far from being a novel strategy. – History is replete with examples of nations disrupting the food supplies of their rivals for dominance. The classic international example was of the WW2 U-boat campaign to cut off Great Britain’s food supplies, while the classic internal US example was Washington’s decision to exterminate the buffalo as a means to advance its policy of the genocide of the native peoples of America and the seizure of their land.

Maybe the reasons for the policy’s obvious risks being strategically acceptable need clarifying ? These are, first, Washington’s paramount priority since WW2 of maintaining US global economic dominance – on which the profits of all US corporations and America’s whole “way of life” depend – and for which the 8yr Bush terms notably launched no anti-China military build-up, though the previous generation saw the immense costs and existential risks of pursuing a 40yr cold war nuclear arms race as entirely justified in deflecting the USSR’s bid for global dominance.

Second, the risks of inaction on climate were seen as acceptable by Cheyney owing, firstly, to the conventional wisdom in 2000 saying that not only would developing nations like China suffer far greater climate impacts than the US, but also that the US would be far better able to afford the resulting damages, rebuilding costs and food-price rises than China. And, secondly, owing to Edward Teller’s ’95 paper proposing sulphate aerosol geo-engineering as a reliable means to halt climate destabilization promptly when that became desirable (as Secretary of Defence under Bush senior Cheyney was certainly acquainted with Teller).

Obama’s adoption of the bipartisan policy in 2009 can already be seen as a tragic and unforced error. His reneging in March 2009 on the UNFCCC 1990 emissions baseline in favour of Bush’s unilateral 2005 baseline signalled that decision worldwide, but it was largely ignored within America. His crushing of the Copenhagen conference and derailing of the Senate climate bill were similarly ignored – with the notable exception on the latter of Ryan Lizza’s forensic New Yorker article – as JR reported at length.

In 4 years in office Obama has gone much further than Bush went in his 8 years in pursuit of the bipartisan policy of a Brinkmanship of Inaction – even to the extent recently of denying the need of a treaty. If progressives are to have any significant effect on the chances of avoiding catastrophic climate damages they need to recognize his adoption of that policy and to focus their efforts on him personally and on getting the policy replaced. But how many are prepared to look beyond the conditioning to BAU political tribalism ? In terms of his conduct of foreign policy one point that should perhaps be better known is that Obama is said by friends to enjoy his very considerable talent at playing poker.

Maybe the bipartisan policy needs criticizing on grounds of its evident incompetence for progressives to recognize and challenge it ? If so then Cheyney’s expectation in 2000 of advancing the ‘Project for a New American Century’ by using climate destabilization against the Chinese rival for global dominance has proven characteristically inept. China’s brinkmanship response was an immediate flat-out coal-fired growth policy (as anyone familiar with the graph of China’s emissions turning up abruptly by 2002 will be aware) which has made a nonsense of the expected relative-wealth advantage for the US – quite apart from Bush economics having now crashed the US economy. The upshot is that China’s economy is on track to exceed America’s during 2016.

In addition, far from China facing far worse climate impacts, America’s impacts have been increasing faster than any other large nation, to the extent that 2012 US damage costs may well match most of the year’s GDP growth. With the accelerating decline of the cryosphere and consequent disruption of the Jetstream, the prognosis for the next decade is increasingly dire for the US in particular, but also for its former allies such as the European Union. As I write Britain is getting its most extreme annual rainfall in hundreds of years of records, while earlier this year we were still in extreme drought.

In short the bipartisan US policy of a Brinkmanship of Inaction with China was always strategically reckless and genocidally immoral, and in practice has proven grossly incompetent and economically unsustainable. Obama’s reliance for his pursuit of the policy on consensus support across Western corporations is now history, with numerous powerful EU corporations and even some Australian and US ones pointedly promoting commensurate global collective action. Thus the policy is increasingly vulnerable to exposure and challenge internationally, but most particularly by the progressive wing of American politics. Once informed of it, will the American public’s national self-esteem tolerate such stupid immoral conduct by their government ?

I’ve laid out most of these points numerous times on various sites with little notable effect apart from a few strong approvals – JR did once remark that none of his official govt contacts would confirm the bipartisan policy – which begged the question of just how few staffers have any operational need to know of it, beside the fact that JR of CP is about the last person on earth an informed staffer would tell. So just what will it take for US progressives to wake up from the futile reflex responses to the intentional denialist provocations of BAU tribal politics
- and recognize just what is being done in their name
- and take the struggle to where it is needed
- at the gates of the White House ?

Regards,

Lewis

[woodburner]

Bashing your head against a brick wall. That the climate will change is certain. The reasons for it's changing are irrelevant. Those who want to prevent it changing, even if it were possible, are often just trying to preserve BAU. Tough! it always has changed, and always will. With so many people on the planet, and many of them greedy, there is a problem. If the climate changes enough, many will not survive, so there will be equilibrium again for a while.

Happy new year.

[UndercoverElephant]

Bashing your head against a brick wall. That the climate will change is certain. The reasons for it's changing are irrelevant. Those who want to prevent it changing, even if it were possible, are often just trying to preserve BAU. Tough! it always has changed, and always will. With so many people on the planet, and many of them greedy, there is a problem. If the climate changes enough, many will not survive, so there will be equilibrium again for a while.

I can't agree that the reasons it are changing are irrelevant. They are relevant for the same reason it is relevant that humans are the product of evolution, and not created by fiat 7000 years ago. In other words, if people are making mockery of science this does matter, purely out of principle if nothing else.

But I agree with the general drift of your post. Trying to get the Americans to think outside of their box is a worthy goal, but you'll need a miracle. They are not going to change because of outside pressure. Their culture will only evolve when internal changes occur. We may be seeing that happen right now with this "fiscal cliff" business. It may just be brinkmanship taken to the extreme, but it looks increasingly like internal US politics is going to make a deal impossible.

Unfortunately, it is only happening because it is impossible for the US to deny fiscal reality. It is all too easy for them to continue denying the physical reality of climate change for a few more years or decades.

[RenewableCandy]

The article shows why tactical voting can be such a failure. People could have voted Green in the USA, but probably voted Obama instead, for obvious tactical reasons. However, those Green votes don't just go away: they sit there as a warning (in this case, to Obama) of what the Great Voting Public will do if he lets them down.

[Billhook]

My thanks to UE & RC for their helpful comments, unlike the first one, which seemed IMHO ill-informed, callous, libellous, nihilist, defeatist and complacent too.

I should perhaps have focussed more in the post on the 80% support for action on climate in recent US polls, which is masses of fuel for change if the necessary kindling and spark can be applied. I'd well agree that it's hard to get people to look outside the box of conventional wisdom, but we have the immense ally of intensifying elemental forces being unleashed - with the growing public knowledge that without commensurate action even the pipeline warming will give 30yrs of massive intensification - let alone additional GHG outputs from here on.

The provision of a focus of blame, in the form of the bipartisan policy of brinkmanship of inaction, for the intentional failure to negotiate a commensurate treaty, is a shift in perceptions that may well catalyze the adamant popular demand that is needed, and thus seems eminently worth pursuing. Particularly given that the policy is way too discreditable to be admissible, so its exposure beyond some threshold will predictably trigger its review.

I wish now I'd added a poll to the post, on the lines of:
- evidently correct
- probably correct
- possibly accurate
- probably mistaken
- certainly mistaken

as I'd greatly like to know the spread of reactions to this thesis. The last option I'd include as a matter of courtesy, as I've been posting the general analysis since soon after Copenhagen without ever yet getting anything near a coherent refutation - indeed, the sparsity of responses over three years has been quite a puzzle. There's a fine quote from Churchill (which I hope someone can provide accurately) which may perhaps explain it to some extent:

"Many men will at some point stumble over the truth; most will pick themselves up and hurry on as if nothing ever happened."

So if there are any questions still being mulled over I'd really like to hear them.

Regards,

Lewis

[peaceful_life]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5GVHqlnPAc

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... script-31/

An insight into policy influence.

[biffvernon]

Er, Lewis, forgive me for not reading your big post (I don't usually have time for a post that is more than half a dozen lines long. Life and stuff.) But now I've taken another glance.

Are you saying that the reason the USA is doing little about global warming is that it figures that by creating a global catastrophe that it can weather better than the Chinese or other developing countries, it can retain it's global dominance? Maybe I mis-glanced through your post and got the wrong end of the stick but if I'm right then you are suggesting the biggest conspiracy theory ever?

Bring on the lizards.