Antarctica and the Anthropocene

Bill McKibben tweeted this morning that 

An iceberg with twice the volume of Lake Erie has broken off the Larsen Ice Shelf, 'leaving the continent forever changed'

The other night I watched a Luc Jacquet documentary Antarctica: Ice and Sky. What's makes this documentary, which covers the career of renowned French glaciologist Claude Lorius, worth watching is that by the time it is finished you will never harbor any doubts about the reality of climate change.

Lorius pioneered the method of accurately measuring prehistoric temperatures by deep drilling ice cores. He was able to confirm that the Earth undergoes periodic climate change (ice ages), but what the planet has been experiencing the last 100 years is like nothing else in Lorius' vast trove of ice cores. Man has changed and is changing -- radically -- the Earth's natural systems (what's known as the "Anthropocene"). 

What adds to the impact of Lorius' message is the scope of the science involved. Spanning decades, marshaling the logistical support of several nations (the footage of the Soviet Antarctic camp is awesome), this is not some fringe pursuit the validity of which can be disputed. This is the best that governments have to offer. There should be a Nuremberg trial for political appointees like Scott Pruitt, Trump's EPA chief, who recently announced to a bunch of coal company lobbyists that he will be fielding a team of climate-change deniers to "test" the academic consensus.

The U.S.-China Carbon Accord: a Nod to the Competitiveness of the Green Economy, but Primarily Poltical

As we enter a second day where the U.S.-China climate accord fills the newspaper gobbling up precious column inches you have to hand it to Obama: he has flipped the conversation off the abominable performance of his party in last week's midterms and reestablished his relevance. And that is the way to look at the carbon-reduction agreement with China: foremost it is a strategic move on the political battlefield of the homeland; it elicits hostile reactions from the Republican leadership in Congress that paints them as knuckle-draggers sucking on billionaire Koch brothers tits at the same time it galvanizes important segments of the Obama-Coalition voters Democrats will need in 2016.

A set narrative regarding the Obama-Xi Jinping climate deal is already taking shape. First, the numbers. The United States has already pledged to reduce carbon emissions 17% below 2005 levels by 2020. Obama plans to achieve this through limits on tailpipe and power-plant smokestack emissions implemented by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The deal announced the other day in Beijing commits the U.S. to reduce carbon emissions further to between 26-28% below 2005 levels by 2025.

China has agreed to reach peak carbon emissions by 2030 as well as shift 20% of its energy supply to clean, renewable sources.

The positive of the bilateral accord is presented in unsigned Gray Lady editorial, "A Major Breakthrough on Climate Change":

The climate accord represents a startling turnaround after years of futile efforts to cooperate in a meaningful way on global warming. It sends two critically important messages, one to the world and the other to the United States Congress. China and the United States together account for about 45 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. Their new commitments are thus almost certain to energize other countries to set more ambitious targets of their own before negotiators meet to frame a new global agreement at the climate summit meeting in Paris in December 2015. 

In the United States, the agreement cuts the ground from under people like Mitch McConnell, the next Senate majority leader, and others who have long argued that there is no point in taking aggressive steps against greenhouse gases as long as major developing countries refused to do likewise. This argument effectively undermined Senate support for ratification of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol. The climate deniers in Congress will find other reasons to oppose a strong climate strategy, and are doing so even now. But the “China” argument has effectively disappeared.

Throughout the stories written about the climate deal with China these two points are consistently made: 1) it provides a strong impetus for something of substance coming out of the global negotiations in Paris next December, and 2) it rights a wrong, salves a wound that goes back to the Kyoto Protocol which the U.S. Senate failed to ratify because of any limits placed on China.

But I think the real positive of the agreement is one that Bill McKibben mentions in his assessment of the deal, "The Big Climate Deal: What It Is, and What It Isn’t," which appeared yesterday, namely, the Green Economy is already here:

These numbers are easy — if you were really being cynical, you could say they’re trying to put a floor under the retreat from carbon, to manage a retreat from fossil fuels instead of really putting carbon on the run. The Germans, for instance, will be moving in on 60 percent of their energy from clean sources by the mid-2020s, when we’ll still be cutting carbon emissions by small increments.

Germany, one of the planet's key industrial economies, and one of its most competitive, proves that the cutting edge is green energy. This is all about economic advantage among the big players. Germany has shot far out ahead, and what China and the U.S. are doing with the bilateral agreement is, as McKibben says, putting "a floor under the retreat from carbon."

The big negative is that the deal isn't big enough. As Henry Fountain and Jonathan Schwartz point out in  "Climate Accord Relies on Environmental Policies Now in Place":

Experts said that the emissions reductions in the agreement would not be enough to enable the world to keep global warming below the target of a 2-degree Celsius, or 3.6-degree Fahrenheit, rise in global temperatures that was adopted at a climate meeting in Copenhagen in 2009.

Two-degree temperature rise is an important marker because once you hit it there's no going back; we're cooked, so to speak.

Fountain and Scwartz also point out a lack of commitment of other big players internationally:

Beyond the reductions, they said the deal was important for what it showed the rest of the world, particularly other large carbon emitters like India and Russia, in advance of a meeting in Paris next year to negotiate a new climate treaty. 

“It shows that the two big dogs in the room are taking the issue seriously,” said Kevin Kennedy of the World Resources Institute, a think tank. “It provides a real opportunity for the start of what could become a race to the top.” 

But it remains unclear whether that will happen. In India, the world’s third-largest carbon polluter, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has signaled that it will not announce a reduction target for emissions cuts. India has long maintained that it should not be required to commit to such goals.

The must-read story is Coral Davenport's "In Climate Deal With China, Obama May Set 2016 Theme"; she offers a compelling account that the Obama administration is guided primarily by politics here. First off, Obama's climate-plan architect is none other than John Podesta, Clinton eminence grise who soon plans to leave his White House post to manage Hillary's presidential campaign:

The architect of Mr. Obama’s climate change plan is none other than his senior counselor, John D. Podesta, who is likely to leave the White House next year to work as the chairman of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign. 

The climate plan that Mr. Podesta has drafted for Mr. Obama is expected to serve as a blueprint for Mrs. Clinton’s climate change policy, should she run.

Climate change is a wedge issue for suburban swing voters, as potent as welfare queens were for Reagan Democrats. As Davenport says,

President Obama’s landmark agreement with China to cut greenhouse gas pollution is a bet by the president and Democrats that on the issue of climate change, American voters are far ahead of Washington’s warring factions and that the environment will be a winning cause in the 2016 presidential campaign. 

A variety of polls show that a majority of American voters now believe that climate change is occurring, are worried about it, and support candidates who back policies to stop it. In particular, polls show that majorities of Hispanics, young people and unmarried women — the voters who were central to Mr. Obama’s victories in 2008 and 2012 — support candidates who back climate change policy. 

But Republicans are betting that despite the polls, they can make the case that regulations to cut greenhouse pollution will result in the loss of jobs and hurt the economy.

***

As evidence, Republican strategists point to their recent wave of victories in this year’s midterm elections, when they campaigned aggressively against Mr. Obama’s E.P.A. regulations. 

But Democrats are increasingly emboldened by polls showing that in national elections, candidates who push climate change policies will win support from voters. 

According to a 2013 poll by Stanford University, 73 percent of Americans believe that the earth has been warming over the past 100 years, while 81 percent of Americans think global warming poses a serious problem in the United States. In addition, 81 percent think the federal government should limit the amount of greenhouse gases that American businesses can emit.

Twenty-one percent of Americans think producing electricity from coal is a good idea, while 91 percent of Americans think making electricity from sunlight is a good idea.

A 2014 poll by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, meanwhile, found that majorities of women, minorities and young people support candidates who strongly endorse climate action. That poll found that 65 percent of Hispanics, 53 percent of blacks and 53 percent of unmarried women support candidates who back climate change action.

Thomas Edsall in his midterm postmortem, "The Demise of the White Democratic Voter," argued convincingly that GOP success was due to the national party's ability to muzzle the Tea Party knuckle-draggers, the troubadours of "legitimate rape" and the global-warming deniers who provide the incendiary soundbites that not only drive Democrats to the polls but also prompt fickle suburbanites to let their inner liberal run free. As Edsall frames it:

Republicans are not satisfied with winning 62 percent of the white vote. To counter the demographic growth of Democratic constituencies whose votes threaten Republican success in high-turnout presidential elections, Republicans have begun a concerted effort to rupture the partisan loyalty of the remaining white Democratic voters. Their main target is socially liberal, fiscally conservative suburbanites, the weakest reeds in the Democratic coalition. These middle-income white voters do not share the acute economic needs of so-called downscale Democratic voters and they are less reliant on government services.

The Republican strategy to win over these more culturally tolerant, but still financially pressed, white voters is to continue to focus on material concerns – on anxiety about rising tax burdens, for example — while downplaying the preoccupation of many of the most visible Republicans with social, moral and cultural repression.

These are the very voters who believe in climate science and can see that converting to a Green Economy is a job creator that makes the U.S. more economically competitive. The Koch brothers who didn't appear to be such an enormous albatross in the midterms -- because Democrats often ran away from criticism of the oil and gas industry -- will not fair so well in 2016.

The next card for a suddenly more potent POTUS to play will be on immigration. Once that is done, the GOP will be effectively boxed for the next two years. The electoral science is largely settled: a presidential candidate can't win with Latino support in the high-twenty-percent range (Romney) or low-thirties (McCain).

If Obama plays his cards right, as he did in Beijing, the old warhorse Hillary might be bound for the White House after all.

Gary Chaison Announces the Death of Union Political Power

Judged by the amount of post-election coverage in the Gray Lady today -- day #2 following the GOP blowout of the Dems -- I think it is dawning on liberals that the 2014 midterms are a turning point.

For some shallow handwringing from a Deep State liberal, there is Nicholas Kristof's "America's Broken Politics." The Gray Lady actually features a helpful unsigned editorial, "In Red and Blue States, Good Ideas Prevail: From Marijuana to Gun Control, Liberal Initiatives Passed," which provides a rundown of progressive ballot measures that passed on Election Day.

The elephant in the room isn't the GOP mascot. The elephant in the room is the failure of Democratic Party and organized labor to represent the interests of working people. Gary Chaison, a labor academic who is frequently quoted by the mainstream media, sums it all up in a letter that appears in today's paper.

To the Editor: 

Re “Walker Wins Re-election, and Keeps Hope for 2016” (news article, Nov. 5):
Can there be a more glaring sign of the loss of union political power than the election success of Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin? Here is a man who thumbed his nose at the unions in 2012, when he led his Republican state legislature to pass a law that greatly curtailed the activities of Wisconsin’s public worker unions. Mr. Walker survived a recall election and has just won a second term, which might lead to his running for president in 2016. 

In the future, when someone asks, “When did the unions finally lose their political clout?,” the answer will be: “In the 2014 midterm elections, when the unions’ nemesis, Scott Walker, won re-election.”

GARY CHAISON
Worcester, Mass., Nov. 5, 2014 

The writer is a professor of industrial relations at Clark University.

What needs to be done -- clearly -- is a move to a new electoral vehicle. Dump the party of Jackson. After two hundreds years it is time for it to collapse; it is too infested with bankers and stockjobbers and warpigs. Unions should lead the way, but they won't. That is why change is going to have to come from the environmental crowd and socialists. It looks like Obama might soon sign off on Keystone XL. Once he does that there will be a golden opportunity for a large bloc of progressive voters to vacate the Democratic Party. It is something that Bill McKibben should consider in addition to organizing marchers and sit-ins -- a new national political party that can field credible candidates.

Keystone XL Rallies

Last night rallies opposing the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline were held throughout the country. The pipeline, if all phases of the project are completed, will run from Hardisty, Alberta to Port Arthur, Texas and transport daily 830,000 gallons of heavy crude oil extracted from bitumen deposits in Canada. At least 100 spills are projected over the lifetime of the pipeline.

The rallies were called because the State Department released its final environmental impact statement (EIS) on Keystone on Friday (when news meant to be buried is usually released) and it was interpreted by most of the mainstream press to signal an approval of the pipeline by the Obama administration.

Secretary of State John Kerry is slated to make the call since Keystone crosses an international border, and then three months after that Obama will make the final decision; the Wall Street Journal reports that a final decision could come as early as this June.

The reason why the final EIS is being seen as a green light for the project is its conclusion that the dirty oil, absent Keystone, will find its way to market anyway by means of rail. Here's how Coral Davenport of the New York Times put it in this past Saturday's frontpage story:

The State Department released a report on Friday concluding that the Keystone XL pipeline would not substantially worsen carbon pollution, leaving an opening for President Obama to approve the politically divisive project. 

The department’s long-awaited environmental impact statement appears to indicate that the project could pass the criteria Mr. Obama set forth in a speech last summer when he said he would approve the 1,700-mile pipeline if it would not “significantly exacerbate” the problem of greenhouse gas emissions. Although the pipeline would carry 830,000 barrels of oil a day from Canada to the Gulf Coast, the report appears to indicate that if it were not built, carbon-heavy oil would still be extracted at the same rate from pristine Alberta forest and transported to refineries by rail instead.

Bill McKibben of 350.org and others pushed back on this reading, saying that ample evidence exists in the EIS to justify Obama blocking the project. This from a story, "Pipeline Opponents’ Hopes Now Rest Largely on Kerry," that appeared the same day by Sarah Wheaton and Coral Davenport:

Still, opponents of the pipeline found some encouragement in the report, in passages that subtly vindicated their warnings.

“This report today reflects some grudging movement,” said Bill McKibben of 350.org, a group that has made opposition to the pipeline its signature issue. 

Activists pointed to a line in the report contending that the “total direct and indirect emissions associated with the proposed project would contribute to cumulative global greenhouse gas emissions.” 

In a conference call with reporters, Mr. McKibben said, “This report gives President Obama everything he needs in order to block this project.”

I had RSVP'd to attend the rally last night at the Federal Building downtown. But in a display of weakness, which is a recurrent pattern with me when it comes to attending political gatherings, I opted instead to get some takeout food and go home. After an unusually mild January, the weather has turned cold again, dipping down into the mid-30s; plus, I was feeling a little sleep-deprived from listening to the street revelry following Seattle's Super Bowl victory on Sunday night.

Anyhow, I'm sure I was not the only one to no-show; an ill omen, I would think. Without a huge display of popular opposition, it is a safe bet that Obama will approve Keystone XL. Signs point in that diecrtion. A couple key Democrat Senate seats (oil politicians Begich of Alaska and Landrieu of Louisiana) and possibly control of the Senate apparently hang in the balance of a green light.

The danger of approving Keystone is more existential for Democrats. What is remarkable about the anti-Keystone campaign is the extent to which all the big, mainstream environmental organizations -- NRDC, Sierra Club, FOE, League of Conservation Voters -- are on board and actively mobilizing their memberships. If Obama goes ahead and approves the pipeline he will be doing so based upon the tried-and-true reasoning that all these people -- vital Democratic constituents -- will fall back into line with the next election. Why? Because they have nowhere else to turn. This has been the pattern for decades, not only for conservationists but for labor unionists as well.

But we are now entering into different territory. Planetary crisis is a reality of which people are mindful. Labor is dying, and so too apparently are the days when go-along-to-get-along rules at the big enviro groups.

Next steps? Massive direct action coupled with a third-party political movement.

****

UPDATE: Here is a link to some Monday rally photos.

Joe Nocera's Oil Sands Sophistry

Before it vanishes forever from public memory, which hopefully will be soon, a few words of reproach for Joe Nocera's Tuesday column, How Not to Fix Climate Change. In it Nocera dismisses James Hansen, Bill McKibben, their campaign of civil disobedience designed to pressure Obama to block the Kelystone XL pipeline, even the idea that producing oil from tar sands would have much of an impact on the environment. As Nocera says, "And the climate change effects of tar sands oil are, all in all, pretty small."

The "pretty small" hyperlink included in the column online is to a Congressional Research Services report by Richard K. Lattanzio, "Canadian Oil Sands: Life-Cycle Assessments of Greenhouse Gas Emissions." A quick read of the report's summary reveals that, contrary to Nocera's assertion, the greenhouse gas emissions related to the production of oil from tar sands are not "pretty small":

A number of key studies in recent literature have expressed findings that the GHG [greenhouse gases] emissions intensities of Canadian oil sands crudes may be higher than those of other crudes imported, refined, and consumed in the United States. The studies identify two main reasons for the increase: (1) oil sands are heavier and more viscous than lighter crude oil types on average, and thus require more energy- and resource-intensive activities to extract; and (2) oil sands are compositionally deficient in hydrogen, and have a higher carbon, sulfur, and heavy metal content than lighter crude oil types on average, and thus require more processing to yield consumable fuels by U.S. standards.

And from the "Selected Findings from the Primary Published Studies" portion of the report here are two of the bullet points Lattanzio makes:

• discounting the final consumption phase of the life-cycle assessment (which can contribute up to 70%-80% of Well-to-Wheel emissions), Well-to-Tank (i.e., “production”) GHG emissions are, on average, 72%-111% higher for Canadian oil sands crude than for the weighted average of transportation fuels sold or distributed in the United States;

• the estimated effect of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline on the U.S. GHG footprint would be an increase of 3 million to 21 million metric tons of GHG emissions annually (equal to the annual GHG emissions from the combustion of fuels in approximately 588,000 to 4,061,000 passenger vehicles).

Apparently Nocera didn't read the report; or if he did, he doesn't think that adding the greenhouse-gas equivalent of several million automobiles to the road is a big deal. Which brings us to the tendentious nature of Nocera's column. For how can his readers know if pouring extra greenhouse gas into the atmosphere is a big or a small deal if he never lets on what the climate scientists are saying? To read Nocera one would think that climate change is analogous to the federal budget deficit, a theoretical problem becoming potentially hazardous decades down the road. But then again we can't say for sure because he never tells us what he thinks climate change is and what is at stake if global temperature continues to rise.

For an excellent synopsis of what we're talking about when we talk about climate change, check out this month's Monthly Review and the "Review of the Month" by John Bellamy Foster, "James Hansen and the Climate-Change Exit Strategy." Here are the first two paragraphs:

The world at present is fast approaching a climate cliff. Science tells us that an increase in global average temperature of 2°C (3.6° F) constitutes the planetary tipping point with respect to climate change, leading to irreversible changes beyond human control. A 2°C rise is sufficient to melt a significant portion of the world’s ice due to feedbacks that will hasten the melting. It will thus set the course to an ice-free world. Sea level will rise. Numerous islands will be threatened along with coastal regions throughout the globe. Extreme weather events (droughts, storms, floods) will be far more common. The paleoclimatic record shows that an increase in global average temperature of several degrees means that 50 percent or more of all species—plants and animals—will be driven to extinction. Global food crops will be negatively affected. For example, a 2011 report of the National Resource Council indicates that the U.S. corn (maize) crop, which accounts for 40 percent of the world’s total, will experience a 25 percent decline in average yield with a 2°C rise in temperature. 

A 2°C increase in global average temperature is associated with the emission of about one trillion metric tons of cumulative carbon emissions since the Industrial Revolution. A total of 566 billion metric tons of carbon have already been added to the atmosphere due to fossil fuel combustion, cement production, and land cover change since 1750. This sets up a carbon budget—the remaining tons of carbon that can be released without reaching the trillion metric ton mark—of less than 500 billion metric tons. Based on the record of emission rates over the last two decades it is estimated by climate scientists at Oxford University (associated with the website trillionthtonne.org) that we will emit the one-trillionth metric ton in twenty-eight years (this reflects a recent recalibration of the methodology resulting in a two-year reduction in the estimated timeline). We could, it is calculated, avoid emitting the trillionth ton if we were to decrease carbon emissions from this point on by about 2.4 percent a year. A truly safe response would require a drop in carbon emissions at more than twice that rate. The longer we wait the steeper the reductions will need to be.

While McKibben and company rallied against Keystone XL in D.C. this past Sunday, the story making the rounds is that Obama was golfing in Florida with key players in the Texas oil and gas industry. Nocera probably would see nothing wrong with this. And maybe there is an explanation that isn't malign. Nonetheless I feel compelled to end this morning's post with Funkadelic's "Maggot Brain (Alternate Mix)":

Keystone XL

Obama faces a momentous decision on the Keystone Pipeline System. It's his call to make and not Congress' since it in involves an international boundary. Climate-change experts like James Hansen are quite clear -- if we go ahead with large-scale production of oil from the tar sands in Alberta, which Keystone makes economically possible, our goose is cooked; there will be no way to avoid the planetary tipping point of a 2-degree-Celsius increase in global average temperature.

Bill McKibben's 350.org has been doing a lot of organizing around Keystone for a couple of years now. Yesterday there was a big rally at the Washington Monument to say no to the Keystone XL.

For an establishment perspective that definitely tilts toward the oil industry and Canada's Conservative government led by Alberta-centric Prime Minister Stephen Harper read today's article by John M. Broder, Clifford Krause and Ian Austen. But before you do that, check out Michael Klare's latest readable and informative piece on TomDispatch.com.

I've read Michael Klare's Resource Wars and Blood and Oil (I've got Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet but haven't read it yet); and I always read what he has posted on TomDispatch.com. The guy is usually right. He was right about Africa becoming a hot spot of Pentagon activity. And he was right about the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute, as well as the Spratly Islands dispute. So he's someone worth reading.

And what he says is that if Keystone XL is blocked it'll be a death blow to the Canadian tar sands industry. At the end of the Broder et al. story there is a quote from a Shell Canada official saying that it's not the only option. But it really is. According to Klare,

A presidential thumbs-down and resulting failure to build Keystone XL, however, could have lasting and severe consequences for tar-sands production. After all, no other export link is likely to be completed in the near-term. The other three most widely discussed options -- the Northern Gateway pipeline to Kitimat, British Columbia, an expansion of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline to Vancouver, British Columbia, and a plan to use existing, conventional-oil conduits to carry tar-sands oil across Quebec, Vermont, and New Hampshire to Portland, Maine -- already face intense opposition, with initial construction at best still years in the future.

The Northern Gateway project, proposed by Canadian pipeline company Enbridge, would stretch from Bruderheim in northern Alberta to Kitimat, a port on Charlotte Sound and the Pacific. If completed, it would allow the export of tar-sands oil to Asia, where Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper sees a significant future market (even though few Asian refineries could now process the stuff). But unlike oil-friendly Alberta, British Columbia has a strong pro-environmental bias and many senior provincial officials have expressed fierce opposition to the project. Moreover, under the country’s constitution, native peoples over whose land the pipeline would have to travel must be consulted on the project -- and most tribal communities are adamantly opposed to its construction.

Another proposed conduit -- an expansion of the existing Trans Mountain pipeline from Edmonton to Vancouver -- presents the same set of obstacles and, like the Northern Gateway project, has aroused strong opposition in Vancouver. 

This leaves the third option, a plan to pump tar-sands oil to Ontario and Quebec and then employ an existing pipeline now used for oil imports. It connects to a terminal in Casco Bay, near Portland, Maine, where the Albertan crude would begin the long trip by ship to those refineries on the Gulf Coast. Although no official action has yet been taken to allow the use of the U.S. conduit for this purpose, anti-pipeline protests have already erupted in Portland, including one on January 26th that attracted more than 1,400 people. 

With no other pipelines in the offing, tar sands producers are increasing their reliance on deliveries by rail. This is producing boom times for some long-haul freight carriers, but will never prove sufficient to move the millions of barrels in added daily output expected from projects now coming on line. 

The conclusion is obvious: without Keystone XL, the price of tar-sands oil will remain substantially lower than conventional oil (as well as unconventional oil extracted from shale formations in the United States), discouraging future investment and dimming the prospects for increased output. In other words, as Bill McKibben hopes, much of it will stay in the ground.

Obama has the Canadian government, the oil industry and the Building Trades unions on one side versus Climate scientists and the environmental movement on the other. The decision Obama makes will show if he plans on being a supra-historical figure in his second term. Based on his first term, one would have to say no; that he will side with industry. Obama rocks the boat only gently; he works well within the status quo, which is the globalized neoliberal "greed is good" race to the bottom, science be damned. But there is the possibility of an "Obama unchained" in his second term. He's a smart guy. He has to know, based on the science, that if he okays a pipeline for the dirtiest, most carbon-rich form of oil destined for refineries owned by the Bircher Koch brothers that he has made the wrong choice.