Saint Franzen Preaches to the Beasts

Jonathan Franzen is a notable novelist, naturalist, and journalist, so his recent critique in the New Yorker ("Carbon Capture," 4/6/15), not just of the Climate Change movement but of a whole world-view associated with it, deserves some critical attention. In brief, Franzen tells us to avert our gaze from the dismal future, appreciate what's in front of us here, now, and try to preserve what we can of our natural world--even if the whole shebang is going to blow before century's end. His message is therapeutic in a way, but is it responsible, or even tenable?

He begins with a particular gripe: after the National Audubon Society declared climate change to be the "greatest threat" to bird species in this century, a blogger on bird-related issues for the Minneapolis Star Tribune drew the false inference that lesser (but quite real) concerns like the reflective glass in a newly built stadium that kills thousands of birds no longer really matter--mean "nothing," as he crudely put it. Of course it's perfectly reasonable to believe that both the short-term and the long-term dangers matter, the dead birds today, the dislocated species tomorrow, both signaling our need to get involved.

But Franzen prefers to see this story as a parable of something larger. Drawing on the work of philosopher Dale Jamieson (Reason in a Dark Time) he examines the ethical implications of what he (following Jamieson) considers a hopeless, desperate eschatology: climate change has already happened, it will inevitably get worse, nothing can plausibly arrest it. This being the case, our only ethical choice is to adjust to living within its new paradigm. Birds will: unlike the Audubon Society, Franzen believes the adaptability of birds will serve them in their new environments, and he paints a surprisingly sanguine picture of how bird species in a warmer North America "may well become more diverse."

In any case it doesn't matter because we are doomed: following Jamieson, Franzen notes how poorly adapted the human brain is to considering longer term matters such as the survival of one's grandchildren, how vast and intangible the climate and energy questions are, how little any of us can do, given our "0.0000001 per-cent contribution" to emissions. Democracy is a system for marshaling only the most nakedly short-term self-interest of voters, and anyhow, a modest middle-class American life-style already produces way more CO2 than is tolerable as a global average. "Replacing your incandescent lightbulbs," as the Audubon folks helpfully suggest, just won't do it--though Franzen fails to even consider how using fossil-free renewable energy to generate electricity renders the type of light bulb irrelevant, and and how full-scale energy conversion would permit middle-class America to persist in its affluence without climate-based destruction.

Indeed, Franzen prefers to think that no aspect of the problem--"global governance, market failure, technological challenge, social justice"--can be successfully addressed. He sets aside some notionally contestable factors--for example, that"fossil-fuel corporations sponsor denialists and buy elections"--as somehow beside the point, and the possibility of collective action--of the 350.org sort, for example--seems not to occur to this writer, absorbed as he is in the dilemmas of the atomized homeowner and citizen. Why are such potential solutions not worth considering? Because, as Franzen hastens to observe, we are in the grip of something too big to fight, namely Protestant Guilt. We need global warming, we need to believe we have irrevocably polluted our Eden, because it confirms our sinfulness, and brings on the punishment we deserve. What can we do instead? Embrace the alternative, Franciscan vision: "helping something you love, something right in front of you."

Franzen goes on to describe some remarkable projects that do just that: projects in habitat reclamation, the creation of sustainable agriculture to compete with slash-and-burn rainforest exploitation, the loving care of 'wildness' wherever it has been preserved. Does it make sense to engage in such environmental restoration when the whole global environment is poised on the brink of climatic changes such as it perhaps hasn't seen for eons? Franzen, unlike the scientists and policy makers desperately trying to achieve international consensus at the Paris conference, accepts those changes as a "done deal," and yet he insists that the work of environmental restoration must go forward. What else can we do? I admire both his pursuit as a journalist of these stories, hidden away in the Amazon lowlands or the Costa Rican forest, and even more so I admire the perseverance of the indigenous peoples, scientists, and NGO staffers who are doing what they can. Preserving what one can of biodiversity, reversing human despoliation, these are useful for the earth and for our souls. But isn't the attempt to limit the extent of climate change useful too, even if it may be too little too late? Are we so sure it's a 'done deal'?

I feel a bond of sympathy with Franzen's anger, his impatience with simplistic nostrums, his attraction for the real work of dedicated ecologists in the field, whether indigenous farmers or university researchers. But I am distressed that he is ready to concede the larger climate issue, and consign our efforts to the ephemeral sphere, token acts of kindness while waiting for the end. We need both sorts of intervention, all at once, local conservation and global energy conversion, now, tomorrow, for as long as it takes. I haven't read Jamieson's ethical treatise yet, but I am ready to insist that calling ours a "dark time" will not by itself shed more light.

The Battle is Joined

Yesterday President Obama met the March 31 deadline (most countries have needed an extension), and submitted the US's greenhouse gas reduction plan to the UNFCCC. The plan, which follows the agreement announced in Beijing last fall, is a modest one: 26-28% reductions from 2005 levels by 2025 (the EU measures its 40% by 2030 against 1990 levels--a significant difference). The Times treated the announcement as a back-page story, while environmental groups such as Friends of the Earth pointed out that the proposal is far too modest to meet the overarching goal of arresting temperature increases at 2 degrees C.

But the real story is the reaction of Republicans in the US Congress. This submission marks the start of an epic battle. Majority Leader McConnell has declared the US approach--depending on executive regulatory actions independent of Congress--"illegal" and probably unconstitutional. Along with Senator Imhofe, chairman of Environment and Public Works and the Senate's most notorious climate change denier, McConnell and their allies warned the UN to "proceed with caution" since the US commitments were unreliable, unratifiable, and would be overturned by Congress. Missouri's Senator Blunt has already introduced legislation that would require Senate confirmation for any agreements reached in Paris. In short, as with Iran, the Republican Congressional party is trying to precipitate a constitutional crisis while undermining the capacity of the President and executive branch to proceed with its international commitments to mitigate climate change.

Can the Republicans sow enough doubt in international circles to undermine the Paris conference? That is surely their goal. They understand that the Paris conference is the point of no return. They sense they can bring the American people with them in this insane joy ride Their Presidential candidate in 2016 will no doubt attempt to inhibit the Democratic nominee from supporting further greenhouse gas reductions, or savage her (or him) for taking a responsible stand. This is a battle with enormous consequences. Are we ready for it? Can we generate enough support for science, reason, and the future to turn back the truly dark forces lining up behind ignorance, indifference, and short-term gain? I don't think we can afford to fail.

Getting it Wrong in Guatemala

Mechanisms fall neatly into place for bringing low-carbon development to the world's poorer countries. The UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) reviews projects worldwide and certifies them for low-carbon efficiency. That allows them to gain funding from EU countries, whose Emissions Trading System (ETS) allows investors to earn carbon credits for capital they invest in such projects, which credits become part of the EU's overall carbon reduction strategy, as presented to the UNFCCC in Paris this December. Eventually the 'Green Climate Fund,' which recently opened for business in Korea and is slated to receive $100 billion/year if wealthy countries keep their promises, will act as a sort of World Bank for such projects.

It's a neat system, until you look at it up close in, say, Guatemala, where the $250 million Santa Rita dam and hydroelectric generating plant are Exhibit A. Certified by CDM, the project was moving forward with support from local landholders, but peasants, thousands of whom will be removed from their lands by the project, began to object. Elite proponents responded with shootings, beatings, and threats, tactics reminiscent of Guatemala's 'dirty war' of the 1980s when 200,000 Guatemalan peasants were brutally killed. Augusto Sandino Ponce, whose landowner father was a lieutenant of General Rios Montt in that campaign (Rios Montt was  convicted of genocide by a Guatemalan court in 2013), was implicated in the shooting of a crowd of peasants last spring, resulting in several deaths.

The international community became concerned last August when two children were executed by a drunken gunman employed by the hydroelectric company. Their uncle, David Chen, a community activist and the apparent target of the shootings, was meeting at the time with the rapporteur for the InterAmerican Human Rights Commission, which had begun to investigate the attacks on local farmers.

Will projects like Santa Rita become the hallmark of the climate movement in developing countries? The CDM has been widely criticized for its narrowly quantitative criteria, and an NGO watchdog, Carbon Market Watch (CMW), has begun to monitor its work. Proponents cited the gains to local farmers from cheap, clean electricity, but others have noted that most of that electricity will be sold in international markets. The scale of the project, with its 40-foot dam, requires evictions and disruption of the local economy, and in that context a haunting detail is worth noticing: when Sandino Ponce's gunmen fired on local peasants last April, the people were gathered to celebrate a ritual where the farmers ask the earth for permission to plant their crops. Clearly those farmers understand something profound about environmental stewardship. As all the nations and powers of the world meet in Paris to recalibrate the global economy along sustainable lines, could those farmers be empowered to share with us what they know?

Climate Warrior

Arjuna, warrior hero of the Mahabharata, includes among his epithets Bhibatsu, meaning 'he who fights fair.' According to the website of Arjuna Capital, a small Massachusetts-based sustainable investment management firm, Arjuna, a skilled archer, stood for enlightened engagement in society, and so does Arjuna Capital. In that spirit Arjuna (the company) joined non-profit As You Sow to introduce a shareholder resolution at last year's ExxonMobil annual meeting, requiring that the petroleum giant acknowledge the declining value of its potentially stranded assets, i.e. carbon reserves that we all know must never be used, in the interest of human survival. ExxonMobil fended off the resolution by noting the hypothetical possibility of stranded fossil-fuel assets, while rating it "highly unlikely" that it will be constrained to leave those assets in the ground.

So this year Arjuna was back with a new resolution, calling on ExxonMobil (and also Chevron) to divert funds from new exploration--the search for even more reserves it would be species-suicidal to exploit--back to shareholders in the form of buy-backs or increased dividends. Alas, the SEC--which has power to restrict shareholder resolutions--blocked the ExxonMobil resolution while inexplicably allowing the quite similar Chevron one to move forward.

So does it help to have the keen-eyed archer Arjuna on our (human) side? What these resolutions make clear is how determined the oil titans are to carry on, building bigger reserves, exploiting them at the most profitable pace they can, while funding pseudo-scientific research to 'prove' they aren't intending to destroy the planet as they pocket billions of dollars in profits. Actions like Arjuna's neatly frame the problem, in much the same way as the divestment movement does. Of course the mega-corporations are right: we can't just stop exploiting fossil fuels without replacement energy sources. This claim is disingenuous, though, when coupled with efforts--well-documented now--by the oil companies to sabotage the development of alternatives, starting with the adversarial research they fund. We have to approach the problem from the other end, developing efficient alternatives and taxing carbons at their real cost, before it will make financial sense for those reserves to stay in the ground where they belong. Meanwhile, keen-eyed Arjuna is taking aim at new exploration, the most outrageous aspect of corporate climate denial. Let's hope the SEC will change its mind and let him shoot. 

A Vision

Carol Anne Duffy, Britain's poet laureate, has written this poem, "Parliament," a modern allusion to Chaucer's "Parlement of Fowles," to acknowledge the ecological plight we face. It seems worth reprinting here:

Parliament

Then in the writers’ wood,

every bird with a name in the world

crowded the leafless trees,

took its turn to whistle or croak.

An owl grieved in an oak.

A magpie mocked. A rook

cursed from a sycamore.

The cormorant spoke:

Stinking seas

below ill winds. Nothing swims.

A vast plastic soup, thousand miles

wide as long, of petroleum crap.

A bird of paradise wept in a willow.

The jewel of a hummingbird shrilled

on the air.

A stork shawled itself like a widow.

The gull said:

Where coral was red, now white, dead

under stunned waters.

The language of fish

Cut out at the root.

Mute oceans. Oil like a gag

on the Gulf of Mexico.

A woodpecker heckled.

A vulture picked at its own breast.

Thrice from the cockerel, as ever.

The macaw squawked:

Nouns I know -

Rain. Forest. Fire. Ash.

Chainsaw. Cattle. Cocaine. Cash.

Squatters. Ranchers. Loggers. Looters.

Barons. Shooters.

A hawk swore.

A nightingale opened its throat

in a garbled quote.

A worm turned in the blackbird’s beak.

This from the crane:

What I saw - slow thaw

in permafrost broken terrain

of mud and lakes

peat broth seepage melt

methane breath.

A bat hung like a suicide.

Only a rasp of wings from the raven.

A heron was stone a robin blood

in the written wood.

So snow and darkness slowly fell

the eagle, history, in silhouette,

with the golden plover,

and the albatross

telling of Arctic ice

as the cold, hard moon calved from the earth.

--Carol Anne Duffy

Mayors Join Climate Race

The mayors of 30 of Europe's principal cities joined today in signing a message of cooperation and solidarity as they promote "local solutions" to a global climate problem (in English here). Tomorrow the mayors will meet in Paris, part of a world-wide 'local government' day for climate intervention (though the only North American venue I have detected so far is Vancouver). As masters of an estimated 2 trillion euros in annual budget appropriations, the mayors--who govern the capital cities of nearly all the EU countries--will look for ways to cooperate in supporting green infrastructural investments, and share strategies for improving key sectors such as energy-efficient housing rehabilitation, mass transit, energy procurement, and 'smart growth.' The mayors, representing 60 million of Europe's inhabitants, will also pledge to use their influence on national and continental energy policies as the EU and its member states prepare their national proposals for COP 21.

Are such initiatives useful? Apart from the fact that local governments are indeed on the front lines of many energy-related policies, the mayors' concurrence on the importance of climate questions seems significant. Assembling 30 big-city mayors around any set of issues is a major achievement, and the targeted policy areas point to the strategic importance of cities. Whether practical consequences in terms of shared policies and technologies or cooperative purchasing and sponsorship will result is hard to predict but worth watching. Cooperation among disparate peoples must be one of the hallmarks of any successful UNFCCC climate conference. Europe and its mayors play an especially important role in modeling that transnational cooperation.

One World , Two World-Views

Nothing is so stimulating as bitter polemic, and in that spirit I have been breathlessly immersing myself in the Battle of the Ecomoderns and the Environmentalists (see previous posts, 2/16 and 2/20), most recently in this devastating review of Naomi Klein's This Changes Everything by Will Boisvert on the Breakthrough Institute's website. At issue are two authorial sensibilities: one female, intuitive, given to deep emotion and grand designs, the other exactingly male, scientifically rigorous, skeptical, dismissive. But beyond that chasm in sensibility, what Boisvert highlights is a truly interesting and important distinction between two conflicting approaches to the climate crisis--and much more.

Klein starts from the premise that corporate capitalism, in its untrammeled pursuit of profits, cannot supply the framework for reducing carbon emissions and converting to a sustainable global economy. Within the family of eco-socialist, communitarian, localist, organic environmentalists, she argues for speedy and absolute conversion to renewable energy sources such as solar, wind, and tidal (but not hydro, with its devastating ecological side effects), and she celebrates the transfer of power this might entail from the centralized hierarchy of a corporate and financial elite to the local councils and peoples who might administer the new sustainable economy, with its reductions in transport, heavy industry, militarization, consumption. One hears the music of natural religion, and even the Goddess, particularly when these themes are amplified by Boisvert's jaundiced critique.

On the other hand, Boisvert and others like him at the Breakthrough Institute are perhaps less acutely sensitive to the ideological music of their own arguments than they should be. Call it Scientism, their world-view assumes technological solutions to the problems not just of climate change but of poverty and human encroachment on the natural sphere. They see the twin forces of market economics and technological advancement leading to consolidation of the human population in densely aggregated-- and thus ecologically efficient--metropolises, freeing up tracts of marginally cultivated land to return to its natural condition, as in the reclaimed New England forest. They imagine, without really drawing out the timeline, that techniques of carbon capture will save the climate from over-consumption of carbon fuels without any need for market tampering, and without the romanticized inefficiencies of solar and wind entering the equation. Above all, they promote cheap, clean, dense, infinitely expansive nuclear power as the answer to the energy question.

Without taking time to explore the many nuances of this clash of visions, the stark difference in energy policy is the one I want to highlight as we look ahead to the Paris conference. Will the individual national plans for carbon reduction (the INDCs that are supposed to be piling up at UN headquarters in coming weeks and months), will these plans for energy conversion be looking to the traditionally 'sustainable' methods of solar, wind, hydro, possibly tidal or geothermal? Or will they envision a major expansion of the nuclear sector--a technological 'silver bullet' but arguably also a Pandora's box of safety and security issues, along with the unresolvable issue of toxic waste, and enduring questions about relative cost? Of course the answer won't be either/or: the 195 COP 21 nations will file 195 variants on 'the solution,' and there will no doubt be some mixing and matching of these divergent approaches. In the long run, though, the world is heading towards a crossroads: different energy technologies can co-exist, but the corporate capitalist systems of control are inherently hegemonic. Either that hegemonic system will survive and indeed direct the global energy transformation (or take us over the cliff), or it will give place, as Klein proposes, to a different regime altogether. That's a big set of questions--and a good reason to embroil oneself in the evolving answers.