A Few Words on Climate Science, Values, and Politics

“The facts are in. The evidence is clear.” 

Time To Choose and Act

No Time For Moderation

People’s Climate March, NYC (9/21/14)

[Updated]

I wrote recently in frustration to question the NJ environmental community’s failure to capitalize on the People’s Climate March and organize in support of an important and radical climate change bill that would require purchase of 80% renewable power by 2050, with enforceable steps along the way.

I almost hoped to get angry emails from environmental leaders slamming me that I got the story all wrong – that environmental groups had issue action alerts, held press conferences, conducted public events and generated thousands of calls to legislators in support of the bill.

Sadly, my hope was misplaced.

But environmentalists were not alone – in writing that post, I left out the failure of leadership by NJ scientists and other NJ based technical and policy experts and institutions.

It is way past the time to dodge the policy issues and hide behind professional conventions or institutional taboos about participating in “politics”  – it is no longer acceptable to put “reputation” or career or business interests above telling the truth: all people of good faith who have expertise or moral support to offer need to speak out publicly.

As I’ve written before, scientists should be organizing their professional communities, prioritizing climate action, and getting out of their comfortable research and academic silos to engage in the political and policy process to educate policymakers and media.

Reflecting this moral imperative, climate scientists played a visible supportive role at the People’s Climate March.

NJ is home of major climate science and policy institutes, including Princeton & Rutgers Universities and the Union of Concerned Scientists; well endowed philanthropic foundations; and new policy outfits like Climate Central and 350.org. – and of course, the State Climatologist, who has an important media megaphone that can inform and shape debate, especially on things like extreme weather.

[Update: sorry, I didn’t know that Climate Central had abdicated responsibility by design:

Climate Central is not an advocacy organization. We do not lobby, and we do not support any specific legislation, policy or bill.  –

Heck, actually telling the American people what the science means and what’s going is dangerous – it might piss off the big Foundations and corporations that fund the work  – end update]

There are also many private sector scientific and policy experts who realize the gravity of the situation.

But none of them showed up in Trenton last week to support this legislation or have spoken out publicly thus far.

They simply must do so – and very visibly and loudly join the policy debate.

I’ll close by letting Naomi Klein’s words, from her superb recent book This changes everything, put a finer point on it (boldface emphases mine, italics in original):

… I am not asking anyone to take my word on the science; I think that all of us should take the word of 97 percent of climate scientists and their countless peer-reviewed articles, as well as every national academy of science in the world, not to mention establishment institutions like the World Bank and International Energy Agency, all of which are telling us that we are headed towards catastrophic levels of warming. Nor am I suggesting that the kind of equity-based responses to climate change that I favor are inevitable results of the science.

What I am saying is that the science forces us to choose how we want to respond. If we stay on the road we are on, we will get the big corporate, big military, big engineering response to climate change – the world of a tiny group of big corporate winners and armies of locked-out losers … Or we can choose to heed climate change’s planetary wake-up call and change course, steer away not just from the emissions cliff but from the logic that brought us careening to that precipice. Because what the “moderates” constantly trying to reframe climate action as something more palatable are really asking us is: How can we create change so that the people responsible for the crisis do not feel threatened by the solutions?  How, they ask, do you reassure members of a panicked megalomaniacal elite that they are still masters of the universe, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary?

The answer is: you don’t. You make sure you have enough people on your side to change the balance of power and take on those responsible, knowing that true populist movements always draw from both the left and the right. And rather than twisting yourself in knots trying to appease a lethal worldview, you set out deliberately to strengthen those values. (“egalitarian” and “communitarian” as the cultural condition studies cited here describe them) that are currently being vindicated, rather than refuted, by laws of nature. (@ page 59)

Amen Sister!