Four part series by Assaad W. Razzouk on reviving and reinventing the global climate movement
Part 1: Warm, too warm, and warmer still: The climate movement must face up to its colossal failure
There is no disputing its passion. But far, far too little has been achieved
This article first appeared in The Independent on 4 March 2014
At a sustainability conference earlier this month in New Delhi, a senior representative of India’s Ministry of Petroleum stood up to give a speech (fun fact: the Petroleum Minister in India doubles as the Environment Minister). Among his sleep-inducing bureaucrat-speak, he squeezed-in a bizarre tirade against clean energy, which according to him, must be evaluated carefully given its “occasionally horrible impacts on health”. As an example of these so-called harmful effects, the speaker gave the example of biomass-fired cookstoves and the toxic gases these apparently emit.
The remark was either incredibly self-serving or incredibly ignorant and illustrates one aspect of the failure of the climate movement. Traditional cook stoves are in fact dirty and lethal, no relation to clean energy cook stoves which save lives amongst women and children by improving indoor air quality. Some 1.5 billion people (half of whom are in India) burn wood and other biomass to cook their food or heat their dwellings with traditional cooking stoves. These account for 13 per cent of global energy consumption and their toxic emissions kill 1.6 million people each year, according to the World Health Organization. More efficient biomass stoves are readily available (financed with donor funds).
How is it that a figure of such influence can peddle this piffle with impunity? Why are national and global policymakers so infrequently challenged when pronouncing nonsense from their bully pulpits? Is the global climate movement so deeply on the defensive that it can no longer mount a defence?
There is no disputing the climate movement’s breadth, depth, diligence, passion or commitment. Crucially, it’s also right, fighting for nothing less than the future of our civilisation. But playing out in slow motion in front of our eyes, we are witnessing its complete collapse. Sustainability conferences hijacked by oil officials and sponsored by Big Oil are but symptoms of a deeper malaise.
Form of climate movement
To understand the climate movement’s failure, we must first understand its form. Climate advocates come in numerous varieties. Advocacy organizations include 350.org, Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the World Wildlife Fund, the Sierra Club and many others. These are massive, with Greenpeace alone having more than 2.9 million donors and a 2012 budget of over $300 million. Some are organized in global networks (such as the Climate Action Network, a worldwide network of over 850 Non-Governmental Organizations in more than 90 countries). All are supported by the vast intellectual power of a maze of think tanks relentlessly publishing thoughtful, fact-based research about our climate crisis, including Tsinghua University (China), The Energy and Resources Institute (India), the Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations (Europe), the World Resources Institute and Brookings (US) and many, many others.
At university campuses around the world, a “divest” movement (calling for divestment from fossil fuel investments) is pushing as hard as it can. In parallel, shareholder activists such as the Asset Owners Disclosure Project, the Carbon Disclosure Project, the Global Investor Coalition on Climate Change and others are pushing for sustainable business and investment practices, for increased disclosure of climate risks as well as for government policies and investment practices that address the risks and opportunities of climate change.
An extensive and costly UN infrastructure is also fully deployed. The world has formally known that it is facing catastrophic climate change since at least 1992, the date the United Nations Rio Summit took place and we decided to take action, principally via the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Since then, this has been supplemented by a spider web of supranational bodies, international conventions, accords, protocols, clubs and investment funds, in addition to the World Bank and the IMF, whose bosses periodically make strident calls in support of the climate movement and of climate action.
Little to report
So what has this massive climate movement achieved? Sadly, its 25-year track record is one of failure where it matters.
Climate vulnerability has increased dramatically on its watch. Emissions have kept increasing since 1990, with carbon now building up in the atmosphere faster than ever, from 353 parts per million (or ppm) of carbon dioxide in 1990 to nearly 398 ppm in January 2014 (anything above 350 ppm is widely regarded as unacceptably risky). The Earth’s main ice sheets have been melting at a rate of 362 billion tonnes per year between 2002 and 2011 – a nearly six-fold increase from the melting rate of 64 billion tonnes per year between 1992 and 2001 and a complete change from the historic accumulation of ice. Biodiversity in the tropics has decreased by 30 per cent since 1992, due to deforestation and agricultural land-use change. And so on. These are not spikes, or “possible indications of a trend”. These events are happening now.
And yet, no one is listening, certainly not politicians, business or institutional investors. The latter, who control $70 trillion of investment assets, are ignoring climate risks in their investment analysis: the Asset Owners Disclosure Project’s 2013/14 Index reveals that 80 per cent of the 460 institutions it rates are either D rated (abysmal) or X rated (doing nothing) and a further 540 funds did not disclose sufficient information to allow a rating and we must assume they would have been X rated as well. Despite the increasing frequency of extreme weather events like United Kingdom’s recent catastrophic flooding, each of which cost billions of dollars in damages, the media gives only scant attention to climate change; and citizens don’t care enough to significantly alter their behaviour, let alone mobilize en masse.
The next chapter
And so on current trends, cumulative worldwide investments in new fossil-fuel extraction and processing are expected to be three times investments in renewables between 2012 and 2035 ($22 trillion versus $7 trillion). Emissions will continue to soar and Planet Earth will be far less liveable. Regional differences in the impacts of climate change, some of which are already evident, will almost certainly trigger geopolitical instability.
We have had a clear breakdown in global governance as it relates to the most critical issue of our lifetime. Governments are not delivering because they are incapable of looking sufficiently far into the future. Civil society, academia, scientists (and a few businesses) are getting nowhere with advocacy, propagation of scientific facts, protests or demonstrations. It’s time for the climate movement to face up to its colossal failure, examine why it failed, re-group and re-emerge with a strategy to ensure it succeeds. Human civilization’s very survival depends on it.
Part 2: What the climate movement must learn from the fight against AIDS
The battle against Big Pharma was won in a way that offers important lessons for the fight against Big Coal, Big Oil and Big Gas
This article first appeared in The Independenton 18 March 2014
There is a recurring theme in the debate about climate change: the idea that our brains are “wired to ignore climate change” and that we collectively suffer from “socially organized denial” around the issue. This view is often coupled with claims that the climate movement talks the “wrong sort of narrative”; to the extent that in many forums “climate” and “change” have become dirty words.
I was reminded of this on a recent visit to Hong Kong, when a broker at a major investment bank complained of his inability to prominently refer to climate change in his research notes. In an impressive tour de force, he had just managed to write a 60 page report into China’s pollution, waste, water and renewables industry which more or less avoided the dirty words entirely; opting instead for safer code-words like “environmental problems”. This is impressive dissemblance given that the country, today the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, is witnessing environmental degradation “on a scale and speed the world has never known”.
Climate campaigners should take inspiration from a social movement which faced greater and more entrenched reticence: the global fight against AIDS. Generations of brave campaigners and clinicians have shown how to effect coordinated global action against powerful denialism currents and vested interests shamelessly financing armies of lobbyists and lawyers worldwide, as portrayed recently in the Hollywood movie the Dallas Buyers Club. The battle against Big Pharma was won in a way that offers important lessons for the climate movement’s fight against Big Coal, Big Oil, Big Gas and their friends: AIDS medication was transformed from a luxury for the rich to a perceived “human right for all”, funded by a global fund and manufactured as generic medicines.
First diagnosed as an illness in 1981, AIDS was widely misunderstood and misrepresented by powerful voices in politics and society; many of whom sought to minimise the threat it posed and to marginalise its sufferers. Its social movement started developing from 1986, demanding universal access to treatment for those living with the disease and succeeded by 2001 in having the UN General Assembly declare in favour of universal access to treatment. By 2008, more than 4 million people in poor countries were benefiting from the previously unaffordable treatment.
One can never diminish the terrible struggles AIDS sufferers still face today – both in getting access to medicine and finding understanding in their communities and home countries. But neither can we deny the astonishing successes the movement has achieved. The bungling climate movement should learn from its example.
According to Ethan B. Kapstein and Joshua W. Busby’s, “AIDS Drugs For All – Social Movements and Market Transformations”, there are five factors behind a social movement’s success. These are useful to consider in understanding the divergent fortunes of the AIDS and climate movements.
The first factor is a defined market to fight for. The AIDS treatment movement succeeded by focusing on Big Pharma, pouncing on its weak points and attacking it for favouring profits over people. By contrast, the climate movement’s opponents have successfully made it seem that because harmful emissions come from many activities (power, transportation, agriculture, housing), and multiple energy sources (coal, oil, gas, land use), transforming the market requires transforming how we live, travel, build and trade – a daunting and extremely diffuse objective.
The second is a compelling message and frame. The AIDS movement’s effectiveness in this space, compelling empathy by arguing that the drugs necessary to fight HIV/AIDS were essential for life, starkly highlights the climate movement’s failure to connect climate change to its reality, which according to the Pentagon’s 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, will – among other calamities – devastate homes, land, and infrastructure, exacerbate water scarcity and lead to sharp increases in food costs.
The third success factor Kapstein and Busby note is coherence. The AIDS movement focused on clear goals based around universal access to treatment without regard to affordability. In comparison, the climate movement is distinguished by its incoherence. Vast gaps often exist between groups that would be considered to share the same vision; witness for instance the dissonance between the divest movement (calling for divestment from fossil fuel investments) and shareholder activists (calling for the disclosure and pricing of climate risks by companies).
The fourth factor is low costs to effect change. The AIDS movement leveraged cheap generics while the climate movement cannot seem to articulate the cost-benefit analysis involved in the man-made destruction of our planet. Instead, we are bombarded with ever-increasing estimates of the budgets “wasted” on climate action and the trillions of dollars needed to de-fossilize our way of life.
Finally, stabilizing institutions are crucial to giving a social movement permanence and efficacy. The fight against AIDS gave birth to such institutions, the most prominent of which is the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, partly capitalized via a voluntary tax on airline tickets adopted by no fewer than 14 nations. To date, this fund has disbursed £14bn, saving 8.7 million lives. The climate movement, on the other hand, is hampered by an extensive, costly and highly ineffective UN infrastructure characterized by a spider web of supranational bodies, international conventions, accords, protocols, clubs and investment funds. Most of this UN infrastructure is in effect broken and its latest creation, the Green Climate Fund, has managed so far to spend all the cash it raised on its own expenses and board meetings – climate change be damned.
While these unfavourable comparisons with the fight against AIDS could be dispiriting, the climate movement should turn to them for inspiration. There are many lessons to be learned and applied from AIDS campaigners’ success.
Part 3: How to slow climate change? Target the 90 companies who pollute the most
Very little has been achieved despite scientists sounding the alarm time after time
This article first appeared in The Independent on 15 April 2014
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released on Sunday its third of four planned reports. This one is on mitigation, or the “human intervention to reduce the sources or enhance the sinks of greenhouse gases.” There have been many such reports before by the IPCC and others; and many more reports are on their way.
We have no reason to expect this latest IPCC report to galvanize the extensive climate action that’s needed. As I have argued, the 25-year track record of the climate movement is one of failure where it matters. Very little has been achieved despite scientists sounding the alarm time after time.
Perhaps adapting the lessons learned from other successful social movements could be a promising path forward?
First, to push forward effective climate action we need to define the target narrowly. Harmful emissions come from many activities (the power sector, the transportation sector, agriculture, housing and others), and multiple energy sources (coal, oil, gas, land use). This variability contributes to the size of the climate movement (huge) and its propensity to shoot in multiple directions to try and cover oil, gas, coal, construction, transportation, manufacturing, food, travel, waste, e-waste, and many other industries.
In reality however, the “market” can be narrowly defined: Ninety companies are responsible for two-thirds of the harmful emissions generated since the industrial age began. All are oil, gas, coal or cement companies and their CEOs can conveniently fit in a short Tesla convoy. They control five times as much oil, coal and gas as it is safe to burn; in other words, 80 percent of their reserves must be locked away underground to avoid a catastrophe. This tiny number of large companies, lobbying to prevent government action on climate change, are at the heart of our current carbon-intensive model destroying the planet. The target market is therefore clearly small and contestable – it’s how we contest it that matters.
Second, the climate movement must focus its message on people, not animals or things. Climate change challenges the most basic human rights: The right to life (climate change kills people), the right to subsistence (increased droughts, water shortages and floods affect the means of basic subsistence) and the right to health (climate change spreads diseases and injury). In Bangladesh alone, rising sea levels are expected to inundate 17 per cent of the land and displace 18 million people; a similar story can be said for Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
Research shows that climate change will impact society and could increase violent behaviour; political stability could be threatened and governing institutions put under further pressure. While endangered polar bears and a polluted planet drive sympathy, they don’t drive global action for a good reason: Earth will still be there after we are gone. More climate action could arise if the scale of present and future human suffering were to be communicated consistently and becomes clear to all.
Third, to move towards significant climate action we need a drastic cut in emissions, leading to an economy fuelled with renewable energy. This much is clear. The problem is that the costs of climate action are not always accepted because it is not clearly understood what damages fossil fuels are causing. For example, according to a 2012 KPMG report, the largest 3,000 companies by market capitalization cause some £1.29trillion of environmental damage per year. All the climate action in the world won’t cost a fraction of this amount. We should also bear in mind that when human rights are violated, costs must take a back seat: Doing away with slavery was extremely costly to slave owners but these costs were not relevant to the argument.
In short, a coherent approach to climate action would focus on the largest culprits, a small group of 90 companies. Fundamental change can be effected by focusing on their violations of basic human rights and the resulting suffering caused to tens of millions of people today, and many more tomorrow. Through effective action, these companies’ standing would be cut to what it should be, about 20 per cent of the size they are today – shifting investment capital away from them and towards clean energy and innovation. Starved of capital, they would no longer be able to extract the 80 per cent of fossil fuels we can’t afford. This process of change would be supported by strong institutions which would become increasingly required as this change lifts off.
However, talking about human rights to the 90 companies sinking the rest of the world won’t work: witness Exxon’s recent disclosure about climate risks where it brazenly stated that in fact it doesn’t see how these are related to its plans to exploit all of its oil and gas reserves through 2040. Climate action should therefore focus on a narrow objective: Shrinking the market capitalisation of the companies most responsible for climate change and limiting their access to capital, thereby stifling their ability to exploit reserves and grow. This would dramatically slow emissions, while moving massive amounts of capital to where it belongs: economies and lifestyles fuelled by a clean energy infrastructure.
Part 4: A barrage of lawsuits is needed to curb climate change
Calling for investors to divest from polluters is laudable but won’t be enough
This article first appeared in The Independent on 22 April 2014
Institutional investors command a stratospheric £70 trillion of assets and tens of millions of savers worldwide depend on them. These investors continue to back the 90 companies responsible for two-thirds of the harmful emissions generated since the industrial age began. The scientific community is absolutely certain that climate change is a clear, present and massive danger and scientists continue to churn out report after report to that effect. Institutional investors, by and large, have their earplugs on and their reading glasses off.
At the apex of the £70 trillion sit pension fund trustees, individuals who owe the public a duty to invest prudently. They evidently aren’t doing so because although 80 per cent of known fossil reserves cannot be extracted without extremely serious consequences across our economies, pension funds and stock markets continue to assign value to companies on the basis of these reserves.
If trustees were to accept that climate-related risks must be incorporated into investment analyses (and therefore priced into the value of traded shares), large amounts of money would migrate from climate culprits to the clean energy economy: The value of Big Oil, Big Coal and Big Gas would collapse to where it should be (about 20 per cent of its current size, then declining to close to zero by 2050). Furthermore, new capital would stop flowing to fossil fuel exploration, freeing up more than $5 trillion for climate-friendly investments. The political clout of big polluters would be impaired, and the $2 trillion of annual subsidies they receive – directly proportionate to the size of their lobbyists’ pay – would evaporate.
How do we get pension fund trustees to invest prudently?
First, via a barrage of lawsuits. To spark a clean energy revolution, multiple targeted lawsuits should be unleashed against pension fund trustees in as many jurisdictions as possible – wherever legal analysis shows that litigation has a chance (even a tiny one) to succeed, either in the courts or via the court of public opinion. Calling for investors to divest from polluters is laudable but won’t be enough. The call to divest should be accompanied by robust action in the courts, aimed not at investors but at pension fund trustees, the investors’ ultimate “bosses”.
As recently as 1987, tobacco companies had never lost a case or settled. Like tobacco, it would likely take decades to win a claim from the big corporate polluters. Pension fund trustees, however, are a different story. Which pension fund trustee would like to be accused of violating the basic human rights (including the right to life, the right to health and the right to subsistence) of millions of people and of many millions to come? That’s exactly what they may be complicit in and it’s time we hold them to account via the courts, because Governments won’t.
A strategy anchored around lawsuits should shake the pension fund industry out of its torpor. Aggressive litigation would establish with the public first, then in the courts, that there is nothing responsible about investing in companies which are violating basic human rights. Even if no favourable court decision is forthcoming in the short term, the combination of a clear objective and a compelling and coherent message together with low costs to effect change creates a winning set of facts. Investors can switch their investments away from fossil fuel companies and any losses on these trades can be more than compensated by their portfolios benefiting from the clean energy economy.
Conveniently, fundamental change can be achieved without having to rely on politicians, regulators, the faltering UN climate talks or new legislation (or for that matter, demonstrations or civil disobedience). Indeed legislation isn’t working and even well-intentioned statutes are being abused. US agencies for example have turned environmental statutes such as the Clean Air Act inside out: On state, local, and federal level, the agencies treat environmental laws as if they were broad permitting systems, with permit denials the exception. Similarly, the carbon regime in Europe has fattened the pockets of energy companies who arbitraged low carbon prices into windfall cash of more than £15 billion over the past 5 years.
Second, in parallel with a targeted lawsuits approach, the communication of climate change by activists should focus almost solely on the egregious – and immediate – human rights violations it causes, rather than the harm perpetrated on the planet or its other inhabitants: Environmentalists cannot continue to be viewed as people who care about the environment and not about people.
The objective of this approach would be to seek to revoke the social license of big polluters to operate as they please. This would involve influencing how those companies are seen in the eyes of the more passive silent majority and ultimately by the pension fund trustees sitting at the top of the pyramid of money. Here’s my proposed “tag line:” It may still be legal to invest in the biggest polluters on earth but it’s immoral.
Third, anticipating positive change at pension funds; the ineffective, under-funded – albeit extensive – United Nations climate finance infrastructure should be revamped. As I have argued, there are several funds set up by the UN and others, none of which have the financial means to decisively tackle climate risks. These should be allowed to raise the necessary funds – following the lead of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria – via voluntary taxes on airline tickets and the shipping industry (each Government would decide whether to apply this tax and transfer its proceeds to UN climate funds).
In time, once Governments muster the courage to actually make a positive difference on climate change, these voluntary taxes can be supplemented by a compulsory financial transaction tax (commonly known as the “Robin Hood Tax”), a tiny levy on share, bond and derivative transactions carried out by banks and hedge funds. This could raise more than £178 billion a year. We would then have a Green Fund with the financial muscle to help the vulnerable, while the capital markets shift their cash to fuel clean lifestyles and economies.
