Tomgram: Michael Klare, Perpetuating the Reign of Carbon
Think of it as the uncertainty principle. By the nature of things, doubt, the unknown, and uncertainty are naturally part of the big picture in science, especially when it comes to creating “models” of the future. As Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway showed in their blockbuster book, Merchants of Doubt, the giant oil companies (following the playbook of Big Tobacco) proved adept at taking advantage of the uncertainty principle to protect their positions as the most profitable corporations in history. They funded a small group of scientists to not quite deny the reality of climate change, but to emphasize the element of doubt in its science, as in all science. Major fossil-fuel producers used their money both to create a network of outright climate deniers and a subtler if no less dismissive attitude toward climate change based on uncertainty. Think of them as the Yo-Yo Ma’s of doubt. And proof of their success at this effort is evident in a new Congress in which few self-respecting Republicans would dare claim (“I’m not a scientist...”) that there's any reality to human-produced climate change, while the leading “environmental” figure in the party, Senator Jim Inhofe, dismisses the world’s climate scientists as part of a gigantic plot against the free market.
It hardly matters that climate change is, by now, an obvious reality or that the evidence piling up indicates that it will prove devastating for us and the planet unless the burning of fossil fuels is in some way significantly curtailed and most fossil fuel reserves are somehow kept in the ground. And here’s another point not to remember: uncertainty is actually a two-way street. The oil companies, not surprisingly, placed their bet on the direction that headed toward doubt that climate change was a serious issue for humanity. That part of the street is now largely blocked. However, the other direction is unnervingly open -- and it leads into uncertainty about whether the effects of climate change will be more devastating than presently predicted by, for instance, the consensus science of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
With that grim uncertainty increasingly possible, the big energy outfits, ever ahead of the rest of us when it comes to keeping themselves in business, are -- as the invaluable Michael Klare, author of The Race for What’s Left, tells us in his latest dispatch -- polishing up a new pitch for our future confusion. There are so many ways, after all, to foster uncertainty about our world. Until recently, the big energy outfits focused largely on an essentially negative approach to climate change with remarkable success. Now, it looks like they may put their energy (so to speak) into propagating a dazzling dreamscape of life on Earth in the decades to come (in which oil, natural gas, and coal will, of course, play enormous roles and climate change essentially none at all). Those fretting about the future of our children and grandchildren on a planet that could be heated to a crisp for the immediate profits of Big Energy and the oil states that are really just an arm of the same enterprise had better listen up. If their vision really proves to be our future, I offer you one certainty: we’re in trouble. Tom
Around the world, carbon-based fuels are under attack. Increasingly grim economic pressures, growing popular resistance, and the efforts of government regulators have all shocked the energy industry. Oil prices are falling, colleges and universities are divesting from their carbon stocks, voters are instituting curbs on hydro-fracking, and delegates at the U.N. climate conference in Peru have agreed to impose substantial restrictions on global carbon emissions at a conference in Paris later in the year. All this has been accompanied by what might be viewed as a moral assault on the very act of extracting carbon-based fuels from the earth, in which the major oil, gas, and coal companies find themselves portrayed as the enemies of humankind.Under such pressures, you might assume that Big Energy would react defensively, perhaps apologizing for its role in spurring climate change while assuming a leadership position in planning for the transition to a post-carbon economy. But you would be wrong: instead of retreating, the major companies have gone on the offensive, extolling their contributions to human progress and minimizing the potential for renewables to replace fossil fuels in just about any imaginable future.
Further Reading: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175940/tomgram%3A_michael_klare%2C_perpetuating_the_reign_of_carbon/
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten