UNFCCCC talks go nowhere - Colour Me Amazed

Well, gosh, I am such a Nostradamus. Just last week I said to someone "these climate talks in China are going to achieve nothing." It was a brave prediction, that few could have dared to make. And so it is with grim satisfaction that I read on the BBC website that

UN climate talks in China have ended without a major breakthrough and with angry words about the US from Beijing.

At the talks in Tianjin, China blamed the US for failing to meet its responsibilities to cut emissions and for trying to overturn UN principles.

The US accused China of refusing to have its voluntary energy savings verified internationally.

Make this shit up. I defy you to.

The only sane response

I alerted London-based friends to an upcoming seminar at the Royal Society (April 27th), given by Richard Leakey.
The title is "Climate Change and extinction."
Further details below these good suggestions from one recipient of the email...

No! Not of interest! Why would I want to go to a talk entitled 'Climate change and extinction'? Why can't you find me a happy seminar to go to? Like Willy Wonka Has The Answer: He's making Charles Fourier's utopia a reality, and using all the CO2 to turn the oceans into lemonade? Eh? Something like that? Planet Earth is Fucked But It's All OK Cos Willy Wonka Says There's Plenty of Room in His Great Glass Elevator? Mmm? Something like that? The Seas Are Rising But Worry Not, The Oompa-Loompas Will Build Us All A Dam. Come on. Get something like that put on at the Royal Society. Who's got Gene Wilder's number?

"Over one hundred years ago the first national parks were established in order that nature might be preserved for the enjoyment and benefit of the current and future generations. Today countless protected areas' for biodiversity are maintained at huge public and private expense. The question we must consider is whether our protection' strategies actually protect when the real threats are related to the current climate change.

"Mounting evidence suggests that the parks are in fact very vulnerable and mass extinctions may be the consequence.

"This lecture is free - no ticket or advanced booking required. Doors open at 5.45pm and seats will be allocated on a first-come-first-served basis.

"This lecture will be webcast LIVE at royalsociety.org/live and available to view on demand within 48 hours of delivery.

Half in love with easeful death

There was a little piece in the Lex Column of this weekend's FT

“Market stages of grief”- that used Kubler-Ross's “Stages of Grief” as a hook

“With tottering eastern European economies throwing an emerging markets crisis into the financial and real economy turmoil and trade levels collapsing in Asia, investors are not yet ready to move on to acceptance.”

That, and a fortuitous (for me, if not for you, gentle reader) unearthing of a scrap of paper suggesting that I compare the 'stages of dealing with your own mortality'/grief thing that Elizabeth Kubler Ross formulated and the Issue Attention Cycle of Anthony Downs, leads to this;

Kubler-Ross's “Stages of grieving”	Downs' Issue Attention Cycle	Comments
Denial	1. The pre-problem stage.	We've heard (and some have felt) the signs for a long time (20 years plus), but have stuck our fingers so far into our ears that they're now just about touching.
Anger	2. Alarmed discovery and euphoric enthusiasm.	A lot of the victims are getting angry. (Anyone taking bets on a vengeful nuke sometime in the next 25 years?) A lot of the perpetraitors (sic) are too deafened by the “ker-ching” sounds as they think about the carbon trading/money making scams that they see in all this to hear the mutterings.
Bargaining	3. Realizing the cost of significant progress.	The poor have nothing to bargain with. Within a few years we in the West will realise quite how much adaptation costs. For us that is. Screw the poor- we always have...
Depression	4. Gradual decline of intense public interest.	A lot of environmentalists (including some famous names who'll remain nameless) are battling a sense of hopelessness in themselves. And that's even before the inevitable clusterfuck of Copenhagen. The public has “gotten” climate change as much as it ever will, and moved on to the credit crunch and losing their jobs and houses and so forth
Acceptance	5. The post-problem stage.	Well, we are going to have to “accept” reality, at some point. Mother Nature doesn't do accounting tricks, or bailouts, after all. Post-problem stage? The only problem is that the public hasn't even really got its head around climate change. Properly I mean. You know, the feedback loops, the methane burp etc. We Don't Do Non-linear. We just don't. WAAGTD.

References

Kübler-Ross model
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model

Up and Down With Ecology: The "Issue-Attention Cycle"
http://www.anthonydowns.com/upanddown.htm

Groundhog Days

In the autumn of 2006 I put together a spoof newspaper called "Socialist Lurker." It got handed out at the (in retrospect and at the time) disastrous meeting where the Climate Campers decided- with a little stalinist push from a couple of very hierarchical "non-hierarchicals", to keep doing big Climate Camps, bringing them to their current impasse and colonisation by NGOs.

The lead story in Socialist Lurker was "Scientists admit climate reports wrong: It's actually far far worse." I may get round to posting it here at PED, who knows. The point of my rambling is that the story pointed out that there was a discernible pattern of scientists recanting their previous predictions of the speed and scope of climate change's impacts of food production, glacier melt, ocean acidification, forest die-back etc etc. Science is too small-c conservative on this particular wicked post-normal science problem

The drumbeat of bad news gets louder and louder, with the latest example being, Dr Chris Field, a co-ordinating editor of the previous IPCC report (which got a roasting for its caution), telling a meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science that - you guessed it- the carbon dioxide emissions have been increasing a lot quicker than they'd thought. Ties in with the recent NOAA story that last year we went up 2.3ppm. Sink failure, positive feedbacks from forests and soil etc etc. What a doomed stupid species. And I remember that my mate Marc Roberts did a fantastic cartoon about this... (he's done fantastic cartoons about lots of things)

Obama as Superman; Younge, Chomsky, Pilger etc.

photo courtesy of Liad Baniel

Obama Superman Mural
One of Los Angeles' most prominent street artists, Mr. Brainwash (a.k.a. Thierry Guetta), has created a mural of Barack Obama as Superman for SCOPE Art Fair Miami 2008. The French-born artist will also be presenting a large-scale, non-commercial installation sponsored by the SCOPE Foundation.


I suppose I should riff intelligently on Laurie Anderson's "Oh Superman" at this point, but, er, I can't. Instead, I'll point to a couple of recent Obama pieces that I've read.

The first was by the Guardian's Gary Younge. Younge is, IMHO, one of the most subtle and incisive commentators on race that we have (not a special field of interest of mine, I'll admit. The only other name that jumps to the fingertips is Tim Wise. But there are others).

Writing in the October/November Red Pepper he concluded,

"The potential to expand and build a borad progressive front to check and reverse the reactionary excesses of the past eight years has opened up as a result of Obama's run for office. To achieve their goals, his supporters must not stand still after election day."

So, as Chomsky wrote recently:-

"What would be the content of the "Obama brand" if the public were to become "participants" rather than mere "spectators in action"? It is an experiment well worth undertaking, and there is good reason to suppose that the results might point the way to a saner and more decent world."

The latest Doonesbury cartoon (14th December) takes that and runs with it- (be warned- it won't mean much to those who don't know the characters...)

We also have John Pilger, who seems to think that people thought Obama was going to bring radical change, and lists the "betrayals" of his appointments, in a piece in the New Statesman/Morning Star.

Finally for now, we have a piece by Richard Waters in the FT on the 9th December, "Obama weighs putting the wisdom of crowds to work"

"According to the adviser to the Obama transition team, the best approach will be to tap into the "edge intelligence" of the network- letting people with specialist knowledge have their say, much as Wikipedia draws on the expertise of volunteers to compile its online encyclopedia."

After all this, what do I conclude.?Obama is not the Messiah. If we sit on our asses expecting him- or anyone- to Save Us, then we are toast. We are toast anyhow, but couldn't we at least go down with a little dignity? Just sayin'...