I despair when I hear people talk about climate change in terms of failing ski resorts and longer growing seasons. The disconnect between the common perception of what climate change really is and what people think it means is truly terrifying.

One of the unfortunate things about Al Gore’s “Inconvenient Truth” is it led to the notion that the principle threat posed by climate change is coastal flooding. One could watch the film and conclude that if you didn’t live near a coast climate change is problem that need not concern you directly – NOT!

About a year ago articles like “Billions could go hungry from global warming by 2100 started appearing and this seemed to surprise a lot of people.    Reality check. Far and away the most serious threat posed by climate change is famine; truly massive, global famine.

This seems counter-intuitive as another unfortunate climate change myth is that it will be good for plants. More warmth and higher CO2 levels sure sounds like it should. The threat to crops is is in various ways and not all regions are threatened. In fact under conditions of moderate climate change a few regions of the world will actually benefit in the short to medium term. (Note “short to medium term” = decades, not centuries)

However they are the exception. For the majority the effects will range from negative to devastating. Indeed Australia, northeast Africa, and the western United States are already visibly suffering the consequences.

Climate change affects crops in different ways because they are complex systems. Yes there is more CO2 and it will get warmer, but “warmer” leads to quite a few different consequences depending on other factors. I would like to offer a quick survey to help people appreciate what we are facing.

Let’s start with rising seas. A two meter rise in sea level may not seem like much if you are thinking of the cliffs of Dover, but for low lying places like Bangladesh and Florida it is huge. Some of the worlds best agricultural land is in river deltas like the Nile and the Mekong which are very close to sea level.

The greater threat from rising sea levels is not actual flooding, but infiltration of ground water by sea water. Once the ground water becomes saline the salt migrates up through the soil and turns productive land into a salt desert.

A two meter rise in sea level can affect agricultural land quite some distance from the ocean. A majority of the world’s food production is within 5 m of sea level.

Warmer weather means different weather, and that means changes in rainfall. There are a great many variables involved in creating weather, but some broad patterns are known.

Warmer air can hold more moisture, which will mean more rainfall in some regions when the air masses bring in more moisture. In other regions it will mean greater drought as the warmer air sucks up more moisture. It depends on how saturated with moisture the air is, and on whether the system is warming or cooling. Systems that are cooling will tend to drop rain. Systems that are warming will tend to suck up moisture.

Weather systems coming off of the ocean will tend to be wet. Systems coming from mountains will tend to be drying as the air descends and warms. The same will tend to be true for systems moving from north to south (ie they will be warming).

In crude terms we expect dry areas to get drier, and wet areas to get wetter. Neither is good news.

Most grain growing regions in the world are really pretty dry, including the Canadian prairies, the American West, the Ukraine and northern China. Marginal lands will become desert and good land degraded. Already areas of Oklahoma and Texas are experiencing drought comparable to what they experienced in the Great Dust Bowl of the 1930s.

Yes the IPCC stated that for North America “In the early decades of the century, moderate climate change is projected to increase aggregate yields …”, but the rest of that quote is “… of rain-fed agriculture by 5 to 20%, but with important variability among regions. “

In other words food production that depends on irrigation and/or is already in a water stressed region will not benefit; in these regions food production will decline.

So what areas of North America have been experiencing more drought in the past decade or so? The West of course (Canada and USA), California, the South East, and Florida;  ie almost everywhere that grows the majority of North American food.

But more rain is not a good thing either as flooding will kill a crop as effectively as drought, as happened in the American mid-west and is happening in Pakistan.

Even without floods more water can be a problem as low lying areas become flooded or marshy, and poorer draining soils become waterlogged, all of which damages crops or removes land from production entirely.

Any farmer can tell you that it’s not just how much rain they get, it’s when it comes. For regions that experience changes in rainfall it is critical how and when the rain comes.

It seems likely that the increases we expect will not be spread out, but rather come as stronger, more intense storms. These will damage crops directly without necessarily benefiting them as the water simply runs off. Increased runoff will cause more soil erosion and flood waterways.

Even if the total rainfall is “just right”, it won’t matter if it doesn’t come at the right times. Drenching storms followed long dry periods are of no particular benefit.

Lack of rain during planting will not be fixed by heavy rain later. Too much rain during harvest season can destroy a crop completely. Wetter will also mean increased mold, rot, and other diseases for many crops.

Warmer weather also means more intense heat waves, and more of them. Heat waves stress crops and reduce productivity at the best of times. If there is an intense heat wave during germination, flower set, or fruit set it can wipe the crop out completely.

The worlds glaciers are in catastrophic decline and this is disaster for agriculture in many parts of the world. Historically in winter the glaciers act as a storehouse for accumulated snow which then melts in high summer.

Source: World Glacier Monitoring Service

Many regions of the world depend on glacier fed rivers for irrigation during the driest part of the summer. This is true of the Canadian prairies, large areas of the American West, temperate South America, and much of central Asia. At current rates of decline glaciers will cease to be a meaningful source of water sometime in the next 30 to 40 years.

Climate change not only threatens crops, but fisheries as well. The increased acidification of ocean caused by CO2 absorption impacts marine life in many ways, and for the most part not good. As things currently stand we anticipate almost all fisheries to be wiped out within decades under the dual pressure of climate change and over fishing.

Regardless of the morality of it, the fact is that at least some of the worlds cropland is dedicated to biofuels and that will probably increase as the price of oil increases. Farmers will sell where they get the best price, and if the wealthy are willing to pay more to continue to indulge their luxuries, then the poor will be without food just as they are now.

The Global Outlook

Large areas of the worlds most productive regions are expected to suffer reduced yields from climate change. Indeed for most years in the past decade the world has consumed more grain than it produced and world grain reserves are now near record lows.

Many countries already ban or limit food exports and that is going to increase. At the same time many western countries are encouraging the production of biofuels for economic reasons, but that is taking the land out of food production.

Crops and Fisheries at Risk

Looking at the above map ask yourself “In 30 years where will my food come from? and how much will it cost?”

Needless to say this is still a very simplistic overview of a complex issue. Many posts could be written on the physiology of plant responses to heat stress, or pests and diseases on crops, never mind the uncertainties of predicting regional climate.

Even so I hope it has helped to banish the notion that climate change will have some positive benefits, at least if you agree that famine and accompanying civic collapse tends to over-shadow things like “more beach days.”

There is a certain irony that diet, which is the largest portion of our carbon footprint for most of us, is also the part of our life that is most threatened by climate change. There are numerous simplistic suggestions for dealing with the coming food crisis, but many of them are as flawed as the “more CO2 means more food” fable is.

Of the coming food crisis New Scientist said “…3 billion people will have to choose between going hungry and moving…” Uhm, move to where? Where exactly do we currently have the room for 3 billion people?

A far more likely scenario is that presented by the series “Climate Wars”  (Ideas1 Ideas2 Ideas3) and highly recommended.

“The question of bread for myself is a material question, but the question of bread for my neighbor is a spiritual question.”

Nikolai Bordyaev

Image Credits:

Flight from famine…. by tezzer57

Desertificazione, desertification, desertifikation by pizzodisevo (sorry, the left hand hurts)

Happy Halloween From Sunny New Jersey! by Sister72

Drought by Mundoo

Drought Along Po River by brtsergio

Custom House Famine Memorial by infomatique

Why do I pick on individuals and their actions instead of the corporations and government bodies? Surely it is the corporations etc who have the responsibility to correct the problems since I) the y caused them in the first place, and ii) they have all of the power relative to the trivial efforts of a few citizens. Guilty as these agencies may be of all sorts of moral and/or real crimes, I have a number of reasons for focusing on the individual.

At the risk of stating the obvious, what is the point of discussing a particular environmental or social justice issue if no one is going to do anything about it? What exactly is my agenda in discussing anything, be it climate change, marine pollution, or endangered species if not to somehow bring about change?

Even if the power to make change rests solely with government agencies and corporations, then someone still has to get them to make those changes. No matter how you look at it the impetus for change always has to come from the people. “The people” is not some abstract other, it is us.

Next there is the question of why would any corporation change their behaviour when we continue to reward them for their current behaviour by buying their products? Of course we do so while self-righteously criticizing them for producing the product in the first place, but the corporations know this is to salve our own consciences and has nothing to do with our actually wanting them to change.

The contradiction (some might say hypocrisy) is based in the delusion that it is somehow possible to provide us with all of the same goods and services at the same or lower price, while not harming the environment or some group (eg child labour) at all. Naturally this is a fiction since either the product itself and/or it’s relatively low price requires the exploitation of at least one or the other (most typically both).

One of the fundamental rules of reality is that there is ‘no free lunch’, and if there is no exploitation than the additional costs have to be paid somehow. If we “reward” corporations who try to do the right thing by letting them go bankrupt while we buy the cheaper, exploitative alternatives, then we should not be surprised that so few of them are interested in acting as we say they should.

Even where there are options such as energy derived from renewable sources, and even where those options are in the process of being implemented, the fact is that in most cases the implementation is still years away. For climate change we do not have years; the crisis is immediate and dire. For other issues it is more nuanced, but nonetheless reducible to a core moral question; just what am I saying if I support the continued exploitation of a group on the premise that at some point in the future they will not be exploited? Particularly if I can refuse to participate in that exploitation by doing without some minor luxury?

Naturally we all need certain things to live such as basic food and shelter requirements, but our real needs are typically a fraction of what we pretend they are. Regardless of how “they” produce the goods or energy that we actually “need” to consume, we are the ones who have absolute power over the ones that we simply choose to consume (which is the lions share of our consumption). The products and services which I do not buy will not be produced, and in not being produced they will not cause any damage to the environment or any social group.

Of course there are those who will raise the Red Herring of needing to purchase exploitative products so that the poor will at least have something. The answer to that one is obvious, simple, and almost universally hated. Instead of consuming exploitatively, give that money to agencies and communities that are working to create sustainable, socially just alternatives in the places in question.

We all know that only a tiny fraction of what we spend on a tropical vacation goes into the local economy, and almost none of that to those who really need it. The same amount invested in local sustainable enterprises goes almost entirely to those groups. Of course while doing a tremendous amount of good this alternative also means that a person of relative extreme privilege (ie most of us in the Industrialized world) goes without a tropical vacation or some other luxury, but is that really such tragedy?

There is also the issue of who will lead. The expectation that someone should show some moral courage and step up begs the question of who and why. If as an individual we cannot or do not, then what is the premise for expecting someone else to? On what basis do we justify the premise that it is up to them and not us?

As satisfying as it may be in the short term to pretend helplessness relative to corporations and governments, this is naturally just a self-fulfilling confirmation of our own dis-empowerment. It may ease our conscience about this mango, that article of clothing, or some other indulgence, but it really just bolsters our own sense of insignificance and meaninglessness.

Naturally this is a positive feedback loop wherein we try to address the sense of insignificance with more indulgences, and not surprisingly advertising tries to encourage that since it leads to more consumption. In that sense corporations certainly play a significant role, but ultimately it is still we who decide. In the short term we may not like taking that responsibility, but it is only empowerment when we accept responsibility for ourselves and make different choices. As inconvenient as that truth may be, it’s still true.

Admittedly empowerment is a multi-faceted, complex idea. Exactly how much empowerment should I derive from not participating in the 10 minutes of exploitation of one labourer? Out of hundreds of millions? In not producing one kilogram of carbon dioxide out of trillions?

I want to suggest that this is a limited, almost meaningless perception of what empowerment is. Empowerment is not so much about what it stops as what it starts. In Judaic tradition the existence of 36 Tzaddikim (righteous men) is sufficient to save the world. This metaphor (if indeed it is only such) speaks to the fact that truth and true action change everything not merely when they are the greater force by some numeric measure, but by existing at all.

We could argue how much the world is changed by our lone actions, but indisputable is that by aligning our actions with our principles we change our own lives totally. In doing that we create the possibility of change for those around us, and in turn for those around them  That is empowerment. Not the counting of certainties, but that by living our truths we create possibilities.

Through the midnight streets of Babylon
between the steel towers of their arsenals,
between the torture castles with no windows,
we race by barefoot, holding tight
our candles, trying to shield
the shivering flames, crying
'Sleepers Awake!' […]

Denise Levertov

Image credits:

candle without wind by topher76

Tea Candles by DOS82

National Cathedral Candles by Mr. T in DC

~ three candles ~ by littlenelly (rare but there)

Ambient Candle Park 2006-02 by HAMACHI!

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rage at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

Sounding remarkably like the early Earth First!, 350.org’s Bill McKibben published It’s time to talk and act tough in which he discusses the failure of reform environmentalism to accomplish much of anything on the climate change issue. Actually it long past time to act tough, but let’s not quibble.

If politics as usual in the backrooms has been ineffective, so is grassroots politics as usual. Summit hopping and annual protests are going to make as much difference as they already have, ie pretty much none.

As such McKibben makes a clarion call for global mobilization, the creation of a true movement that takes it to the streets:

And in any event it won’t work overnight.  We’re not going to get the Senate to act next week, or maybe even next year. It took a decade after the Montgomery bus boycott to get the Voting Rights Act. But if there hadn’t been a movement, then the Voting Rights Act would have passed in… never. We may need to get arrested.  We definitely need art, and music, and disciplined, nonviolent, but very real anger. McKibben

Predictably there has been both positive and negative responses. One of the more patronizing ones appearing in the LA Times as Bare-knuckled environmentalism won’t save the planet.

Bad as it is, there is a grain of truth in the article,  that our society suffers from an absurd delusion that we can change everything while changing nothing.

Further, that we in the Industrialized world have an unbelievable sense of entitlement that means we are not going to put aside any frivolous luxury even for our own survival. I live in a culture where we face our own extinction. and yet it is a struggle to get people to consider not using disposable shopping bags, never mind making any real changes in their lives. If this culture is going to be turned around it is going to take much more than what McKibben is calling for.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Clearly grassroots protest as usual is not what McKibben meant, but I will nonetheless underscore that more of the same will achieve more of the same, and nothing more.

We may not need any one to get arrested, but we need hundreds of thousands, possibly millions willing to risk it. Willingness to risk arrest, or worse … experience actual inconvenience by becoming largely vegan, getting rid of our private automobile, and experience the social ostracism reserved for those who actually are threatening the status quo.

McKibben invokes the Montgomery Bus Boycott to make the point that change comes only after a long struggle. I would emphasize that it is a long struggle we are talking about. The activists in Montgomery boycotted the buses and walked, hitch-hiked, took taxis etc for months.  That is what struggle means … and it is the sort of thing it will mean for us.

Of course making a call for mobilizing it and getting it are two different things. That radical action is necessary does not mean it will happen.  Clearly McKibben is hoping that we can move into Stage 4 of movement struggle, but wishing does not make it so.

Are we at the point where the Rebels are ready to come to the fore? We have to be, and we will be if we understand one thing … that “the Rebels” are you and me. We cannot wait for anyone else to fix it anymore than people of colour could wait for the white man to bring justice. It was never going to happen then and it is not going to happen now.

There is no abstract “other: who is going to do it for us. Not Al Gore, nor the scientists, nor other activists.  There is no one but you and me.

McKibben calls for anger. I would say what we need is more outrage than anger. Anger wants to strike back, outrage wants to make things right.

This is not the time for the stupid libertinage of the Black Bloc, but rather for “exemplary crimes, aesthetic crimes, crimes for love.” We need the disciplined fury of the civil rights, Indian Independence, and many other movements.

We need an outrage that burns so hot that people will not only put their bodies on the line, but practice all of the more mundane actions that make real change possible, realistic, inevitable. We need the courage to do the ordinary in order to be able to do the extraordinary. We need the courage to love.

The courage to love our children, to love whales, corals, forests and butterflies. To love them fiercely and to weep fierce tears at their possible loss.

To love and be open to that possible loss so that we may find there the strength we need to endure the struggle that we must begin.

Are we at the point where the Rebels are ready to come to the fore? To do both the day to day necessities of living a low carbon life, and the acts of extraordinary power to turn the world on it’s head? Do we have the courage to do now what must be done?

Only you know the answer to that … it is in your own heart

Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Image Credits:

Sunset balloon flight by Axel-D

sunset by DaDaAce

Bedruthan sunset by law_keven

Just another Tequila Sunset… by law_keven

sunset on goulais bay by spisharam – AWAY

Sunset from my House 2 by krisdecurtis

What makes the Digg Patriots story interesting is not so much what they did, but what it tells us about society that they were able to do it at all. I am referring of course to the revelation that a group of “conservatives” organized to suppress certain kinds of information on the behemoth news sharing site digg.com. The core story and related ones are well covered in the following articles, so I won’t repeat them:

• Massive Censorship Of Digg Uncovered
• The “Digg Patriots” Bury List
• Updated: Are You One Of These 341 Names On “Digg Patriots” Hit List?
• Cyber Terrorism Ring Revealed: A Case Study In The Depths Of Depravity

I will begin with the caveat that as one of those targeted for cyber-stalking I am really only familiar with the Digg Patriots who involved themselves with climate change and related issues, but them I know only too well. As such it is really to that segment of the Digg Patriots that I refer, although I have no reason to believe the rest are any different.

Why should we be concerned that the Digg Patriots existed at all? Is it really so bad that a group organizes themselves to promote a particular point of view, even though subverting site policy and going so far as working to suppress others? Nothing particularly surprising there.

Of course this group, or some members of it, practiced harassment and other acts (see articles above). Or as also documented, the Digg Patriots had not the slightest interest in truth or facts; they were pushing a particular politic and were quite happy to censor facts while promoting lies. Here too, not really that surprising or noteworthy in my opinion.

What is interesting to note is the nature of the groups grasp of the issues, or rather lack of it. However rational or intelligent they may or may not be in other spheres of their lives, while acting as Digg Patriots they demonstrated the maturity of grade school bullies and the intelligence of lobotomized rodents.

If you are familiar with them at all you know that it is difficult not to picture the typical Digg Patriots as being named Gomer,living in a trailer behind his uncle’s back road filling station, and hoping to someday finally finish grade 6. No doubt they are actually fairly typical demographically, but you would never know it from their comments and actions.

That may a seem an attempt at an abusive ad hominem, IE trying to discredit them by insulting them, but that is simply not the case.  Lest you doubt me, feel free to check the comment threads of the various Digg Patriots. Just select a few names from the list, search for them on digg.com and read their comments.

You will discover they never have any kind of rational or relevant response to a real climate article. Instead you get (a sampling in approximate order of frequency):

1. Vacuous, ridiculous and unsubstantiated claims such as “the hoax is over”;
2. Name calling and insults (actual abusive ad hominems;
3. References to any number of the Denier hoaxes and frauds well known to be false
4. Constant inconsistencies and contradictions, such as claiming that the world is not warming, and then on the next article that it is warming but it’s caused the Sun, not CO2, followed by another that it is caused by CO2, but not from humans, and then back to another saying that we are cooling.
5. etc

Stupidity is not a crime per se, indeed it is even protected by law. Organized stupidity equally so, unless it is done in order to commit a crime. I grant there is an argument that this would apply in this case, but let’s leave that aside for now.

The question I have is, how is it that the village idiots became gate keepers controlling the flow of information to tens of millions of people, and no one except the immediate victims noticed? Not Digg administration, not Digg moderators and not Digg users generally.

On the one hand I suppose it really isn’t that surprising. If someones regular source of information is exclusively mainstream media Deniers such as George Will, Andrew Bolt, Lawrence Solomon, or James Delingpole then the disinformation campaign at Digg was no different from what they normally experience as “journalism.”. Indeed these “luminaries” and others like them are the sources of a fair amount of the stupidity that the Digg Patriotss try to pander on news sharing sites such as Digg.

However, I assume that most Digg users do not isolate themselves in the world of wingnut pandering. I suspect that the truth is that the majority of Digg users are fairly typical of Internet users generally, and to that extent, the general population as well. They did not notice the dumbing down of the information stream because they are not particularly that aware of climate change as an issue at all.

Of course in the interests of feeling “well informed” they will look at some climate change information when it appears before them, but other than that it simply has no place in their lives. How then would they notice any change in the quality and quantity of information that appears before them? In an informed society where the media actually functioned the actions of the Digg Patriots would have been an obvious and laughable farce. As it is in our world of infotainment they were relatively successful.

As such the Digg Patriots were not a problem so much as a symptom, and not merely of the success of the industry funded disinformation campaigns.

The real, far deeper and much more terrifying problem is the relative ignorance of the general public with respect to climate change that allowed the Digg Patriots to operate unnoticed.

Catch 22, public ignorance leads to public ignorance, and until the public is better informed it is very difficult to better inform the public.

The particular site used by the Digg Patriots may be gone, but it is easy enough to create another somewhere else within hours. The various Digg Patriots then open new Digg accounts under new names in even less time (as some have repeatedly done) and they are back in business.

That is not to say that the exposure of the Digg Patriots was a futile act of mole whacking. More people are now aware of the depths to which the Deniers will sink, and hopefully Digg itself will take measures to ensure that this sort of gaming of their site is at least more difficult.

Nor am I suggesting that there are any easy answers. If there were we would have long since implemented them. The challenge of educating the public is huge, complex, and endless.

I am merely noting that the symptom will return in some form as long as the core problem remains. The exposure of this particular Confederacy of Dunces needs to be the genesis of a dialogue as to how we deal with them effectively, not seen as the conclusion of a problem that has been solved.

Image Credits:

Gary Baseman Dunce by”Scott Beale / Laughing Squid”

Heads by hydra arts

The Dunce Corner by kmakice

TV Dunce by Adam Crowe

Orange Cones and Their Strange Whereabouts by Sister72

“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory.”

Sun Tzu

For the reasons given by me and others it is necessary that the progressive movement distance itself from the violent Black Bloc faction which is coopting the movement. Even Jon Stewart (in Canada here) notes that “they’re violent, disruptive, and draw a lot of media attention, but to what?” However, noting that the Bloc co-opts the movement and drowns out our message is misunderstood as blaming the Bloc for the collective failure to achieve our goals at the G20 summit.

It is not a given that had the Bloc not been there that we would have achieved our goals or gotten our message out. It is true that we could not have done worse. The violence continues to dominate the discussions of the G20 summit with no mention of the issues that were allegedly our reason for being there. While it is clear that there were police overreaction and abuses, this is not an argument for having this sort of mess distract everyone from our real purpose.

Simply keeping the Bloc away from movement events would solve only one aspect of the problem, and a fairly superficial one at that. There are reasons why the Bloc exists at all, and those are rooted in the mainstream progressive movement as much as anywhere else.

I have no particular interest in “blaming” anyone; the Bloc or otherwise. My interest is in causes, whether we have been and/or are effective, and how we can be more effective.

While it is true that there is a certain amount of “hey look at me” frat boy element to the Bloc’s actions, it is a mistake to dismiss them as simply kids out for a riot. Many of them are as committed to the issues as anyone else in the movement, they are usually able to articulate at least  basic of Insurrectionary anarchism, and as Martha noted “their vandalism is clearly focused on the links between everyday economic violence and institutions “ ie it is not random libertinage. They are angry and violent, but they are not simply rioting.

However, having a cause and a politic is not the same as having a strategy.

The intellectual underpinnings of Insurrectionary anarchism are over a century old and framed within an entirely different social and political context. The modern defences of the methods (ie tactics) that the Bloc uses such as Ward Churchill’s ‘Pacifism as Pathology‘ and Gelderloos’ ‘How Nonviolence Protects the State‘ are laughable. They are intellectual pablum written for the naive believer to confirm their simplistic caricatures of nonviolent struggle. That anyone takes them seriously should be a mystery, but there is a reason that they do.

The basic pro-violence arguments as they articulated by the Bloc and supporters are summarized here. These may seem like parodies if you have never heard them, but they’re not. The entire case for violence rests on a cartoonish misrepresentation of what nonviolent struggle is and how it works. The alleged arguments are easily refuted (eg here) , so why are they so rarely challenged and exposed for the nonsense that they are?

In part because of the repressive tactics of the Bloc. Anyone who has attempted to have a rational discussion about tactics when Bloc sympathizers are present is aware that they practice silencing any dissent with a variety of tricks, from ad hominem attacks to accusations of not being in solidarity, etc. The faux anarchists really are a case study in the ‘Tyranny of Structurelessness.”

In part due to effective marketing. The phrase “Diversity of Tactics” (DoT) is inspired as an euphemism for violence (it puts “collateral damage” to shame) and allows the use of yet another logical fallacy to be used to prevent intelligent dialogue. Blocists will not allow any discussion of violence, you have to say “Diversity of Tactics.” In that way they try and force the false choice between accepting violence or being against diversity. It’s middle school debating tactics and logically incoherent, but it works to silence debate.

Given that choice, many in the broader movement are unwilling to challenge DoT. A sad fact is that many of us are more concerned with appearing inclusive than with being effective. It is a tragic betrayal of the issues that we are working on and needs to be called for what it is. Be that as it may, for too many self-indulgent avoidance of confrontation within the movement is preferable to real discussion of methods and effectiveness.

While the above is certainly true, the main reason most do not calmly refute the DoT nonsense is that they do not know how to. We in the broader movement have failed to clearly articulate how and why non-violence can work, how and why within the context of our society it is more effective than violence. We have failed to do so because most of us don’t know how. Our choice of nonviolent methods is too often rooted in habit, comfort, or even fear.

If the Bloc may be accused of not having a strategy, much less a coherent one,  the movement as a whole would seem not to either. If we do, most people don’t know what it is or how it is supposed to work, which is pretty much the same thing. Like the Bloc, we use tactics out of preference or familiarity rather than because we understand how they will or can lead to success.

It is easy to understand why this is so for both sides. In a grassroots movement we are all overwhelmed with the immensity of the task we face regardless of the issue. Most of us are not professionals and our activism must be squeezed in between job, family and the other aspects of life. Even the professionals among us are torn in a dozen directions by programming, administration and fundraising. Who has time to figure out what it is we are doing and why.

That there are good reasons why it is difficult does not make the fact that it is necessary go away. We may not have the time for it, but we most certainly do not have the luxury of not doing it. Diversity of Tactics and the Bloc are simply one manifestation of how we fail to take our role seriously. A far more important consequence is that we are far less effective than we should be.

I like to use the metaphor of a craftsperson. They assess a particular task and choose a tool suitable to what it is they wish to do, be it a saw, chisel, or router. In the same spirit we should look at a particular political situation and choose one of the 198 different forms of nonviolent action  because it will do the job that needs to be done.

The Bloc is a product of our collective ignorance; theirs and ours. We have a responsibility to them, to ourselves, and most particularly to the issues we claim to care about to be truly professional in our political work. Professional in the sense of being competent, knowledgeable and capable. That the Bloc exists is a testament to our failure to live up to that responsibility.

The Bloc are frustrated and angry, and small wonder given the political landscape. They are not the only ones. However, personal frustration and anger, or fear, or difficulty are not excuses for indulging oneself over being effective. Not for them or for us. Not if our activism is about the issues and not our personal issues. Not if we want to be effective.

“Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.”

Sun Tzu

When I was first exposed to real Zen practice I was initially struck, and eventually awed at the deep ecological wisdom that is central to life within a Zen monastic community. Not merely taught, but lived.

The supposedly simple act of taking a meal is done in a way that grounds the practitioner in awareness of ecological fundamentals three times a day, every day. I’d like to walk through parts of the Zen practice of oryoki to review those ecological lessons.

The meal begins with a chant done as group in the meal hall, or during monthly sessions of intensive practice, in the Zen hall. The first three lines of one version of the chant is as follows:

First, seventy-two labours brought us this food;

These meal chants are ancient. They date from a time when monasteries grew most of their own food, or at most got it directly from the person who grew it. The “seventy-two labours” did not refer to the clerks and truckers that are now part of our food chain. They referred to the sun, the rain, the insect pollinators, the earthworms, the entire web of living and non-living elements that make up the biosphere.

The “seventy-two” is a metaphoric number simply meant to convey that even a simple bowl of rice requires a vast and complex web of activity before it can be placed in front of us. From the ancient rains that weathered rock into soil up to the stove that heats it, we could not eat without the contribution of every part of that web. In some versions it is “ten thousand”, which is probably closer to the true number.

We should know how it comes to us

How many of us know how our food “comes to us”? It starts with the precarious climate that permits agriculture and which is under imminent and serious threat (here, here, here, here and here).

It includes the equally complex technological web that means our present Western diet is supported by extensive ocean pollution, wars, chemical refineries, highway systems and packaging industries (to name only a few things). The pesticides and additives that contaminate it. The ethical issues with respect to fair trade, labour issues, and the treatment of animals, etc. All of these are part of every meal, because without them that meal would not be there

In Zen practice these are not things of interest, not something you may want to look into, but rather “We should know how it comes to us”, it is a requirement. For those who don’t know, one place to start would be Food, Inc.: Take someone who doesn’t know. Ways to be more moderate in our impact include eating: locally, organic, becoming wholly or largely vegetarian, buying unpackaged, and including more raw whole foods in our diets.

Second, as we receive this offering we should consider whether our virtue and practice deserve it

Everything must be made from something else. There is no piece of the planet that is not already part of or sustaining the living system in some way. So there is no way to take from it without disrupting that web of life. Everything we consume requires that some part of the natural world be destroyed.

I do not mean simply the killing of a plant or an animal. I refer to all of the destructive activities from mining and logging to farming and transportation right up through to the energy production for your appliances, and the vast infrastructure that is required for each of these elements to function.

Every plastic bag as much as each grain of wheat required that something die. In Zen, we ask ourselves three times a day whether how we live our lives justifies that destruction. What are we giving back that we are more deserving of this use of materials rather then letting the natural world be.

Third, as we desire the natural order of mind to be free from clinging, we must be free from greed

Given the realities discussed above, it is a moral imperative to consume no more than is needed and to not waste anything. This is not merely some empty chanting though. Within true Zen practice it is lived.

Oryoki meals are taken in three bowls, the largest holding approximately 2 cups, the next slightly smaller, and the third even smaller such that all three can nest together. Generally the first will hold some sort of grain dish, the second a protein dish, and the third a vegetable dish or salad.

Of course you can only fill a bowl so full without it spilling the food, so you are constrained from taking too much. There is no second serving. The size of the meal is quite adequate for health and well being, but the way it is taken simply doesn’t allow for greed. In fact the name oryoki translates as “just enough.”

Once the meal is done a large kettle of tea is brought around to clean the bowls. The tea is poured into the bowls which you then clean with a spatula. The tea is drunk along with any remaining tiny scraps of food and then the bowls are wiped with a clean cloth and tied up in a cloth wrapper so that they ready for the next meal.

It is not possible to waste. There is no way to remove food scraps from the hall short of secretly tucking them into your waistband. If you took too much you must eat it anyway, and perhaps take less next time.

Which is not to say that Zen has any monopoly on ecological wisdom. Many volumes are written about the lessons to be found in Christian, Islamic, Judaic, Hindu, Pagan, etc teaching and practice. To the best of my knowledge all preach moderation and gratitude. In all the traditions that I am aware of the most holy individuals are celebrated for their simple lives.

However, it is only in Zen that I have found both the constant reminder of our absolute dependence on the complex and fragile web of life, coupled with mechanisms that make living that awareness the norm. Therein is the true genius of the oryoki practice. It recognizes that the impulses to greed and waste beset all of us from time to time, and simply makes indulging them impossible.

Which begs the question of how we can change the structures of our lives to assist us in making sure that we are free from greed? The oryoki bowls are just right to ensure we have enough without allowing ourselves to over consume on impulse. Are there changes we can make that would do the same for other aspects of our lives ?

How about not carrying debit and credit cards? Leave them at home and take only the cash you will need? or at most a card for an account with a very limited amount of money in it. Or placing garbage cans in very inconvenient places? If every overpackaged item means another trip to the basement or out of doors, it surely get’s us rethinking our waste production.

Whatever mechanisms you put in place, be it disposing of your vehicle or shredding your credit cards, the point is to put these things in place when you are thinking about what you want your life to truly be. That is the skillful means of living your convictions, creating the structures and mechanisms to ensure that what you consume is “just enough.” If you leave the decisions to when the impulse is upon you, then there is a very good chance it will play out exactly as it has every time in the past.

There is much more to Zen and art of planetary maintenance, eg

Saving Indra’s net: Buddhist tools for tackling climate change and social inequity

Zen and the art of climate maintenance

and I will probably be returning to this theme with that lens. The theme being that it is not enough to know and/or care, you have to do. Much more than discipline or good intentions, that art of doing requires self-awareness and skillful means.

Until then, please enjoy this beautiful slide show.

Oryoki

gassho

We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.

Image credits:

daigaku oryoki by Taiyu57

oryoiki bowl by floating ink

Three bowls by floating ink

bowls by frankservayge

Fading bowl by floating ink

I suspect we are all familiar with the argument that if someones behaviour does not seem consistent with their message, the message is obviously false. The argument is totally wrong, but it needs to be taken very seriously because the fact that it is wrong turns out not too matter in the slightest.

First why it is false:

In the first place how someone behaves has no bearing on the truth or falseness of what they say, it is entirely irrelevant. Someones case for the truth of some claim is determined by the facts relevant to the claim, not their behaviour.

“A tu quoque argument attempts to discredit the opponent’s position by asserting his failure to act consistently in accordance with that position; it attempts to show that a criticism or objection applies equally to the person making it. It is considered an ad hominem argument, since it focuses on the party itself, rather than its positions. “ tu quoque ad hominem

Second, we need to look at the whole of someones behaviour to determine if they even are being hypocritical, not simply an out of context example. In some cases there is no difference, such as when someone exhibits racist or sexist behaviour. Any single occurrence is hypocrisy. Naturally this still would not invalidate their claims, but at least the logical fallacy is not also a Straw Man.

In other examples it is the total behaviour that would tell us if someone is being hypocritical. If I generate five tonnes of CO2 to go somewhere and give a talk about climate change, but as a result of my talk 100 people reduce their CO2 emissions by one tonne each, then my Net impact is -95 tonnes and I am clearly not being a hypocrite. This example might apply to Al Gore for example, a frequent target for the tu quoque ad hominem accusation.

On a more day to day level, if I buy commercial produce because it is local and has a lower environmental impact than the industrially produced organics that are flown in from far away, then here again there is no hypocrisy. Note the reverse is true too, that someone who drives all over the countryside every week to buy local (and presumably reduce the energy cost) has clearly missed the point.

That being said, it doesn’t matter that the hypocrisy argument is false, what matters is the social reality. The social reality is that people look to our behaviour as a clue both to the validity of our claims, and as an indicator of how seriously we take them ourselves. As Randy Olson noted, perception is reality.

If someone tells us that the building is on fire as they recline on the couch & channel surf, we take it pretty much as a given that they are either joking or the situation is not serious. In the same vein talking about climate change or any environmental issue while leading a lifestyle that is materially indistinguishable from the North American norm undermines ones message regardless of whether it is hypocritical or not. Irrespective of any other consideration, it is taken as a sign that you won’t take your own message seriously.

They have a point. Just how serious is one if all you are doing is the easy things like recycling, cloth bags and owning a hybrid? We know perfectly well that even if universally adopted these gestures will not make any meaningful difference in the outcome, although they may extend the deadline somewhat. They are part of the solution, but if they are all we are going to do then it is arguably pointless to even bother with those.

Before anyone jumps to the Straw Man fallacy, I am NOT saying we all need to go live naked in a cave somewhere. I am saying that the solution is defined by the problem, not what we find easy to do in response to it. As it stands we need to reduce our carbon consumption to at least 10% of current levels, not by 10%.

Further, that if we are individually not taking measures consistent with our message then it is valid to wonder how much we believe our message and just how serious we are about the issue at all. Let’s be honest and acknowledge that for many progressives the rationalizing for doing only a little is exactly the same reasons and reasoning used by those doing nothing. Since neither approach is actually going to change anything really, how are we different? And how are they to take us seriously?

One of the more important lessons I got in activism was the first time I went to jail over a social justice issue. All kinds of people who did not want to hear what I had to say about the issue before suddenly wanted to hear about the issue. Media that I had previously pestered to give it any coverage at all were calling me for interviews, and so on.

It occurred to me that we are all constantly bombarded with messages about ‘what is important’: who wins the World Cup, how we smell, what we where, what we invest in. Our lives are filled with a cacophony of demands that we take this or that seriously. That our particular message comes with the notation that it is about justice, equality, or human survival does not make it stand out from the noise in any way. They are all labeled “important” in one way or another and ours is just another such label.

Rosencrantz: “Consistency is all I ask!”

Guildenstern: “Give us this day our daily mask.”

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead

What does make it “different” is how we behave personally. That we are willing to “sacrifice” in a meaningful way underscores that we at least take our own message very seriously. This is understood by many to be an indicator that there may be something to it. It won’t necessarily lead to anyone else immediately making similar changes, but it will get some of them to listen and that is the first step.

Obviously at this point it is not possible for most to reduce their carbon budget to 10% of the North American norm, but 50% is easily doable, and 35% not that much harder. Flying to a climate conference or to the bedside of a sick parent may be justified, but the vacation in the Caribbean is clearly an indulgence that undermines our own work.

To be effective as activists we need to get behind our own messages to support them, not to back stab and bury them. Whether or not accusations of hypocrisy are valid or not, the appearance of hypocrisy and/or insincerity is sufficient to completely undermine anything we are trying to say.

They will take us seriously when we do, and not before.

Image Credits:

DSC00604 by Leia Speia

Julius Ceasar by Crouchy69

DSC00736 by Leia Speia

DSC00572 by Leia Speia

DSC00610 by Leia Speia

Where have all our issues gone? Long time passing.

Where have all our issues gone? Long time ago …

So the Toronto G20 meetings have come and gone, but they remain in the news and the public eye because of the protests. Thanks to citizen action more protests are following up on the G20, and the public has taken notice. Just one problem … outside of the progressive media, can anyone find any mention of what our issues actually were? Things like gender equity, poverty, the Tar Sands … any of it? Is that what people are talking about?

Of course not. What they are talking about is the vandalism and violence. Who is going to listen to demands for justice when there are burning police cars to watch? And the follow up protests? They’re about the violence too. All of the reasons that we were there in the first place? not merely never heard, but now displaced as energy goes into organizing the follow up demonstrations.

Of course there was police violence too, but lets talk about the handful of people who dress in black and use protests as an opportunity to act like frat boys on spring break. It is their actions that are displacing our issues from the public dialogue and which generate the follow up actions and activities. Naturally the police violence should be dealt with, but it seems more than enough people are talking about that.

Why are we not collectively talking about the fact that once again our issues have been completely co-opted? That fact, more than anything, should be our biggest concern, no?

Of course to the extent that the police and authorities over-reacted and committed criminal acts we need to respond to that and take appropriate action; that is a given.

But have we forgotten what we were protesting for in the first place? And are we not concerned that our message got totally lost (again)? Have we no interest in how, or why?

The violence vs non-violence debate is as old as protest. It was debated over and struggled with by the suffragettes, labour, civil rights, feminists, etc and has many facets to it. For our purposes here lets set aside the moral & other considerations and be purely pragmatic about it. What is it meant to accomplish? And does it accomplish that?

Right away there is a difficulty in that the goals of those committing the acts of violence are not necessarily the same as those who organize the protests. For the moment lets assume that they are. Let’s accept at face value that “The Anarchy group believes that violence is sometimes necessary if our voices are to be heard.”

If that is really their purpose, then the tactic is a complete failure. Not only does it not get our voices heard, it drowns them out and diverts energy and resources away from the issues.

That the media will pay attention and highlight any violence no matter how marginal or unrepresentative is as surprising as the fact that water is wet. We know that perfectly well, so let’s stop blaming the media for it when, we also knew that to prevent being co-opted we had to prevent the violence. We knew it and we didn’t do it, so let’s own that.

The violent actions do considerable damage to our causes by alienating many of the people we are trying to bring onside. This includes many who are part of the progressive movement such as unions and many faith groups. No matter what we may say to the contrary, the general public perceives the vandals and peaceful protestors as one group, and there is some justification for that perspective.

In so much as we could prevent the violence and do not, we accept the vandals as being part of us. Are we not the ones who harp on “silence is consent”? How then is the public to understand our silence with regard to those acts and these people? By our silence we condone them, so lets be mature enough to own responsibility for that too.

Are they really “one of ours”? Is anyone who espouses the same values automatically “one of us” regardless of what they do? What are the limits if any? If they injure police? Media? Passers by? Other activists? Where do we draw the line?

What are their values really? As far as I can tell their operating principle is that acts of violence to achieve your ends are fine, if you have the means to commit them and can get away with it. Is that really what we are collectively about? And if so, how are we different from those currently in power other than that we are not in power?

How do we feel when we see the same sorts of acts being committed by sports fans? Or people fighting for causes that are the opposite of ours? When a group trashes an abortion clinic or some ethnic cultural centre do we shrug and say “it’s a legitimate form of protest”? And if they are really “one of us” why is it always us who have to be in solidarity with them? Why can’t they be in solidarity with us? And so on.

In so much as they undermine our efforts and are indifferent to our goals, I submit that they are not “of us.” They are what Moyers  describes as the ineffective rebel; angry, disempowered and self-absorbed they do what they do more to be the centre of attention than for any other reason.

Their methods in engaging the rest of the movement is a case study in “The Tyranny of Structurelessness.” They have confused “having an effect” with “being effective”and consequently do whatever is flashiest without regard to whether it achieves anything or not.

Make no mistake, we could keep them away and prevent the vandalism and violence if we chose to. The crowd at the N17 IMF  protests found that simply booing the Bloc was enough to make them stop. In the 1960s they developed many techniques for effectively preventing violence at protests. We could stop them, but we don’t.

Which brings up perhaps the most difficult issue of all, the strange contradictions that the existence of the vandalism underscores. We march in our tens of thousands chanting “people power”, yet claim to be powerless to stop the vandalism. We claim to have answers for issues as complex as the Middle East and climate change, yet can’t manage a few dozen disruptive young people in our own midst. We claim our issues are of utmost importance, but apparently not so important that we are willing to confront the disruptive elements among us when they undermine our efforts.

Our issues are critically important. So much so that we owe it to them to do what we must to ensure the success of our actions. Poverty, gender inequity, the environment, racism … all of them suffer as we indulge ourselves by not confronting the problems within the movement openly and honestly.

Being empowered means we don’t blame the media, or the police, or the Bloc, or the public, but rather we accept the responsibility ourselves and we act. In the 9 years since the 2001 Summit of Americas protests Harry Potter has managed to grow up, isn’t it past time that we did so as well?

Where have all our issues gone? Co-opted by the Bloc, every one.

When will we ever learn? When will we ever learn?

Image Credits:

G20 Scenes by wvs

Broken G20 by wvs

G20 Scenes by wvs

G20 Scenes by wvs

G20 Scenes by wvs

Some of the oil would undoubtedly wind up as the petrochemical based fertilizers and pesticides which are creating the dead zones  in the Gulf when they are washed off of agricultural land. Also contributing to this killing of the oceans is all of the oil based cleaners, solvents and other products that we send down our drains.

Naturally a good proportion would go into the plastics that are so ubiquitous in our lives. Many of those wind up dumped into the oceans where they kill wildlife and form the huge garbage patches at the centre of the circulation gyres (the North Pacific patch is larger than Texas).

Some would help power the industrialized fishing that is destroying the worlds oceans. There is some evidence that the collapse of all fisheries could come in as little as three or four decades . Most of the oil would be burned for power, thereby producing more of the CO2 that is acidifying (ie killing) the oceans.

The extraction of oil is a catastrophe whether it goes as according to plan or not. We are not talking about whether we save the Gulf or not – we are quibbling
about whether we get to use the oil before it kills off the oceans. That is the only thing that is at issue. Either way we destroy the Gulf, so can we please stop pretending otherwise?.

More to the point perhaps, the destruction is being done to provide us with the goods and services that we choose to pretend are necessary for us. Our personal involvement is very direct and tangible; it is our consumerism that is driving it. The lies we tell ourselves now about “what we need” are going to become apparent when we lack the things we actually do need, like food and water.

Granted, this particular accident that occurred in this particular way is going to boil down to being attributable to some combination of bad decisions on the parts of one or more people. That is a given.

It is also a given that at least some, if not all of the responsibility rests within BP, and probably at fairly high levels within the corporation. There will almost certainly also be some form of regulatory action to attempt to safeguard against another occurrence of this particular accident.

It is impossible to create a perfect system. As long as we are going to extract oil we are going to have accidents. As long as the scale of our extraction is huge, the accidents will be correspondingly huge. As long as we use fossil fuels there are going to be accidents, and as long as we do so on the massive scale that we do, the accidents will be correspondingly massive.

On the other hand it is possible to minimize the frequency of accidents, as well as take other measures to reduce the amount of damage done and improve the response capability. However, these sorts of measures cost, and each incremental improvement in safety costs far more than the earlier ones. This is not going to happen as long as we demand cheap oil as our priority.

All of that is framed within the worldview that believes that as long as there are no accidents everything will be fine, which is nonsense. It’s all pretty much irrelevant – the fact is that, between overfishing, the expanding dead zones,the garbage patches and ocean acidification, the spill almost doesn’t matter. The Gulf, along with all other marine environments, are under so many threats that the race is not to save them, but as to which destroys them first.

The real tragedy of the BP Gulf spill is not that damage which will be done, massive though that is. Rather it is that despite the disaster nothing of consequence will change because we are collectively going to pretend that it was all BP’s fault and that if there were no spills everything would be fine.

That’s unlikely to change because we get the answers to the questions we ask. In this case we’re going to ask how we prevent a repeat of this particular tragedy. This is appropriate for the individuals within particular agencies responsible for that narrow sphere, but it is not the question the rest of us should be asking.

The question we need to ask is how we restore and maintain the ecological health of the Gulf and all marine environments. We don’t ask that question because most of us assume that we had nothing to do with it except in the the vague sense of collective social responsibility.

The advantage of that worldview is that we do not need to do anything except be outraged. We can pretend that someone should do something, but there is nothing we could or should do … and certainly the way we live our lives does not have to change. That it is a highly appealing lie does not change the fact that it is a lie

Are we even capable of asking “How do we restore and maintain the health and integrity of the natural world on which we depend?” without the unspoken condition “without changing my life in any noticeable way.” Of course that unspoken condition ensures that there is no possible answer to the question.

There is no way to change the destruction of the natural world that without changing our profligate consumption. To do that requires that we critically examine our own lives and ask what truly matters. The car? Or food? If you have any doubts try going for a few months without one, then the other; that should help clarify the issue.

To some that may seem a message of despair, but I submit that it is a message of hope. We are not helpless pawns that the corporations manipulate at will. They behave as they do because we demand it through our consumer behaviour. We are the ones in control, not them. BP will stop oil extraction the second we stop paying them to do it on our behalf.

What if there had been no oil spill? It doesn’t matter. Given our lifestyles the Gulf is dead either way . The Gulf, all other marine environments, and us with them.

How about asking “what if there had been no oil drilling?” Not in the Gulf, not anywhere. Now that is an entirely different question, one that actually contains the real answer to “how do we preserve the natural world that we depend on?”

It’s up to you which question gets asked.

Image Credits:

Oiled Bird by marinephotobank

Oil Spill, Gulf of Mexico by nasa1fan/MSFC

brown pelican rehabilitated by uscgd8

Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill by DigitalGlobe-Imagery

THE OIL SPILL COULD by roberthuffstutter

“Never try to teach a pig to sing. It is a waste of your time and it annoys the pig.”

Folk saying

It has been noted that we approach climate change denial as if the problem were not enough education, not enough facts in the public domain, but this does not seem to be the problem (eg here and here). Overwhelmingly the public relies on what they consider trusted sources to tell them what is true. They do not and will not go to other sources to see if their beliefs are correct.

If public education isn’t effective, what is Plan B?

My “Letter to a climate skeptic” was actually written with 2 particular friends in mind. Intelligent, educated adults that I respect, who nonetheless had been conned into adopting the “climate skeptic” posture. I suspect their stance is largely due the appeal of the ‘maverick intellect’ image rather than actual skepticism or having actually examined the issue (which they clearly have not).

There’s the rub; they are intelligent, thoughtful people who nonetheless have been taken in be the climate Denier disinformation campaign. If that demographic is not on side, what hope is there? The comments on the ‘Letter’ are instructive in that while they confirm what I say in the article itself, I suspect the actual effect favours the Deniers.

Let’s briefly have a look at them, but with an eye to how it would be perceived by someone who is not that familiar with the issue. I think it fair to say that such a person would only scan them and not read them too closely.

The first thing to note is that there are a lot of them that disagree with the content of the article, but in fact they come from only a few posters. There are actually Denier hitlists where certain writers are targeted by the Denier activists who then spam the comments forums and vote down the articles in question. Regardless, there is the appearance of significant disagreement, but it actually only represents a small cadre of Deniers. This is pretty typical.

If we look at actual content of the comments it follows the pattern described in the article itself. More than a few claim that I am wrong and/or that I make straw man arguments etc, but offer no substantiation for the claim. For some reason we are supposed to take their word for it. If I am wrong, why can’t they say how? Or offer any evidence to counter mine?

Others bring up supposed “facts” that show that I am wrong. What should be hilarious is that most of them are debunked in the article itself and/or the references provided. How would the commentators  know this? They didn’t even read the article. Notice how many of those comments make no reference to anything I said? They are generic Denier claims that can (and are) pasted to any article about climate change despite their being known to be false. Others cite discredited works such as the misrepresentation of Hulme’s work even though Hulme himself has condemned their lies.

On and on it goes. It is juvenile and tiresome. Unfortunately it is also effective. Members of the public are not going to go through the comment threads on climate articles any more than they are going to look at the science itself. Even if they did, as long as some on both sides cite something it will look equally authoritative to them. Despite the vacuity of the responses, they do sustain the illusion of scientific controversy, at least to the casual reader.

So if writing such articles is not going to influence the public, what is the point of them? Or in responding to the Deniers comments? Like all political battles there is no single strategy or tactic that is going to win it.

In the title I say “skeptic” because there are many who believe that this is how they are behaving. They are not Deniers per se, just misinformed. Unlike the commentators they are actually open to seeing actual evidence and may be influenced by it.

Obviously the Deniers who attacked the article are not the people to whom the letter is addressed. It’s not simply a matter of confirmation bias in the sense of them only being exposed to one set of arguments. As we can see in the thread some Deniers do go to media that present the opposing case, they simply don’t read them.

How do you reach those who blind themselves to anything that conflicts with their world view? You can’t. Not in any direct way at least. As noted in the folk saying, it is a waste of your time and just annoys the pig.

On the one hand it is not even necessary to reach the hard core Deniers in that they represent a minority demographic, even if over represented among societies powerholders. On the other hand they have successfully created the illusion of scientific controversy and that has influenced public perception of the climate change issue. As such it is necessary to both continue attempts to educate the public and to respond to the challenges by the Deniers even though this in and of itself will not change much. The pigs may never learn to sing, but their grunting will drown out those who can if we allow it.

In seeking a successful strategy I think it is instructive to look at two other examples of scientific efforts to confront ignorance and Denial; evolution and tobacco denial. Both of these have faced virtually identical campaigns of disinformation (by some of the same “think tanks” and phony experts in a number of cases), but with slightly different outcomes.

While evolution is taught in most schools for the scientific truth that it is, it remains controversial and recently the Deniers have even enjoyed some success in the political arena. For the most part the tobacco denial industry is dead and the battle won. Why the difference?

In fact, the tobacco issue was not only aligned along similar ideological lines (ie the libertarian reflexive opposition to any state intervention), but also had enormous financial and political power. It is true that the evolution Denier industry is also powerful, but much more scattered.

I suspect that the answer is the infamous tobacco lawsuits. The court cases which made it not only not profitable to engage in Denial, but enormously costly. Given the enormous damage that climate change is causing, and will cause, there is considerable scope for holding those who knowingly lie and deceive the public accountable for their actions. Further, there is legal grounds for doing so (see here).

This is the most promising avenue of attack because a court of law is not the uncritical forum that the popular media is, nor will it accept the nonsense that a political committee or hearing pretends is credible evidence (eg here). Most judges take a very dim view of being lied to and treated like an idiot, and have the authority to communicate that in ways that make the point rather effectively.

Such a campaign has powerful potential allies. Industry itself is quite divided on the issue as has been seen in the US Chamber of Commerce debacle. The Chamber itself has taken a Denier stance, but this has alienated quite a number of large corporate interests. The simple facts are i) many corporate heads are not ideologically blind morons, ii) many businesses have far more to lose from climate change than they gain from the status quo,  iii) some corporations stand to profit from significant changes in our energy policies, and iv) the corporations are under increasing pressure from stockholders.

There have been some tentative forays into using the courts

(eg here), but there needs to be a lot more. We need many lawsuits to be brought against the corporations and professional Deniers who knowingly lie and commit fraud, suits that run into the billions and trillions of dollars and which hold individuals accountable for their actions. I suspect that will get the porcine chorus  singing a different tune very quickly.

Image Credits:

Three Little Pigs by johnmuk

pigs_crop by johnmuk

Munching Pig by tj.blackwell

When Pigs Fly by Studio H (Chris)