Carbon Pricing and political action required

The cry of the earth and the cry of the poor as a result of the changes in the climate of our planet has been documented in many texts since the release of Pope Francis encyclical “Laudato Si” in 2015.

"Understanding Laudato Si," Fr. Daniel P. Horan, OFM

Fatima Syed writes “Pricing pollution won’t kill growth, World Bank report finds.” The report looked at economies representing about 20 per cent of global emissions, or 11 gigatons of carbon dioxide, and found carbon pricing was the “most flexible” and least-costly solution for cutting pollution, compared with other government approaches such as “requiring specific technologies” or “dictating when emissions need to be reduced.”

Plans to reduce GHG

A debate over the relative merits of these approaches is currently playing out on the campaign trail in Canada.
The Trudeau Liberals are defending their nationwide carbon pricing regime, put in place April 1, while the Opposition Conservatives propose to instead rely on technological solutions — their platform calls for requiring polluters to invest in clean technology.1 

Stephanie Wood reports that climate change is the number 1 concern for Canadians. And 77 per cent of respondents to the poll said they either strongly or partially agreed with the statement “The world is facing a climate emergency and unless greenhouse gas emissions fall dramatically in the next few years global warming will become extremely dangerous.”

More frequent... more violent

Climate change has been central to the 2019 election, as the Liberals defend their environmental record after face criticism from environmentalists for purchasing the Trans Mountain pipeline. The Green Party has been polling higher than past elections, sitting at 9.5 per cent according to CBC at the time of publication. And Elections Canada caused an upset in August by saying climate change may be a partisan issue since Maxime Bernier has expressed doubt about its existence, and called on charities to register as third parties if they want to publish paid ads about whether climate change is real.
Just over half of the Canadians polled also said they would be more likely to vote for a political party or candidate who promised to cut the country’s overall greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. As well, 43 per cent said they strongly felt politicians put the interests of big oil companies before communities.2 

Activist priest John Dear tours with new book on resisting climate change. Dear stressed what Christians and everyone else can and must do to resist the Earth's doomsday scenario. "I think the only way change happens is bottom-up, people-powered, grassroots movements of creative nonviolence in the tradition of Gandhi and King, which, by the way, goes back to Jesus, who was a movement builder and organizer," he told NCR after his speech.

In both his book and talk, Dear outlined a list of "rules for living in solidarity with Mother Earth." The first speaks of our need to grieve and to be joyous.  
"We need to take quiet time and sit in the beauty of creation in the presence of the Creator and grieve," he writes in his book. "We grieve for our sisters and brothers, for the death and extinction of billions of creatures, and for Mother Earth herself. The more we take formal time to quietly grieve for suffering humanity and suffering creation, the more nonviolent and compassionate we become."
Other "rules" include practicing meditation, prayer, mindfulness and nonviolent communication, cultivating fearlessness, taking public action for climate justice, and teaching nonviolence, particularly to priests and ministers.3

The example of the youth of the planet, particularly the message of Greta Thunberg, is a call for immediate political action to effectively address the climate emergency.

References

1	(2019, September 23). Pricing pollution won't kill growth, World Bank report finds .... Retrieved September 24, 2019, from https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/09/23/news/pricing-pollution-wont-kill-growth-world-bank-report-finds
2	(2019, September 20). Climate change number 1 concern for Canadians, poll says .... Retrieved September 24, 2019, from https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/09/20/news/climate-change-number-1-concern-canadians-poll-says
3	(2018, April 14). Activist priest John Dear tours with new book on resisting climate change. Retrieved August 19, 2019, from https://www.ncronline.org/news/environment/activist-priest-john-dear-tours-new-book-resisting-climate-change

Canadians care about climate, children, and grandchildren

David Suzuki spoke with National Observer on the phone from his cabin on Quadra Island on the coast of British Columbia, where he was spending time with his children and grandchildren. He said he’s doubtful humans can make the changes needed to stop the world’s temperature rising by upwards of 1.5 C before 2030, as the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has said is necessary to avoid catastrophic climate change.

Climate changing

He says to vote responsibly, voters must look past party politics and vote according to which local candidates promise to prioritize climate change, rather than focusing on party leaders.
“Whether they’re right-wing or left-wing, to me, that’s not as relevant as their individual positions on climate,” he said.
He said there have been candidates from all parties across the country he would vote for “in a heartbeat.”1

This points to the need to assess some of the “Critical questions in climate politics” curated in this post.

Critical questions for politicians

Research by Seth Klein finds that the more a bold and transformative climate plan is seen as linked to an ambitious plan to tackle inequality, economic insecurity, poverty and job creation, the more likely people are to support it.

https://www.policynote.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/Climate-Emergency-Polling-40.png

In addition to people’s concerns about climate change, they are also very worried about inequality and affordability. So, when these social equity issues are tackled as part of a climate action plan, support for bold action to reduce GHG emissions rises dramatically.The poll listed five policy actions that could help with the transition, including extending income and employment supports to those more vulnerable during the transition, and increasing taxes on the wealthy and corporations to help pay for the transition, and asked people if such policies would make them more or less supportive of bold and ambitious climate actions. Those five policy options and the responses are shown below.2

Steve Easterbrook, at the helm of the University of Toronto’s School of the Environment, says the second-most important thing we must do to act on climate change is to get politically active, whether that’s joining a protest group, writing to our MPs or making it a core part of how we vote.

A lot of sources of greenhouse gas emissions don’t come from anything we as individuals have any control over. They come from government policies. So things like: Is the government investing in renewable energy or in fossil fuel energy? Or what standards are being set for cleaner vehicles and greener buildings? If we are not pushing government to act fast to change these kind of policies, we are missing a big piece of the puzzle.3

Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist and well-known climate change communicator,

insists that adults need to be upfront with children about our warming planet.

Kids deserve the truth about the earth they will inherit, she says. And the grown-ups need to hear what children have to say about climate change. Their voices, often heartfelt and hopeful, are critical in the search for climate solutions.
“Children look at something and they don’t see impossible, they see possible,” says Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Centre at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. “They say: ‘What can we do to fix it?’ We need their perspectives more than ever. Children are what give us hope.”3 

The Guardian presents an editorial view on Pope Francis as a voice in the wilderness.

Pope Francis remains determined to reorient the church towards the global south, where it is still growing at impressive rates, especially in Africa, and to place it on the side of the poor. In Mozambique and Madagascar, he has argued for reconciliation between competing factions. In Mauritius, he has denounced the use of the islands as a tax haven, calling it “an idolatrous economic model”, and appealed to the government to “promote an economic policy focused on people and in a position to favour a better division of income”. However little the church seems to matter in the developed world, there is no spiritual leader making these arguments against unrestrained capitalism and environmental destruction as forcefully and to such an audience as Francis does in the global south today.4

No other spiritual leader is speaking out so clearly for the poor and for the environment in the developing world. Our concern for the planet often begins with the quality of life that we are leaving to the children of the world.

References

1	(2019, September 16). David Suzuki broke down barriers - National Observer. Retrieved September 19, 2019, from https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/09/16/news/david-suzuki-broke-down-barriers-now-youth-are-rising
2	(2019, August 12). When it comes to climate action, the public is ahead of our .... Retrieved September 19, 2019, from https://www.policynote.ca/climate-poll-2019/
3	(2019, July 12). What you can do about climate change now | The Star - Projects. Retrieved September 19, 2019, from http://projects.thestar.com/climate-change-canada/what-you-can-do
4	(2019, September 9). The Guardian view on Pope Francis: a voice in the wilderness .... Retrieved September 10, 2019, from https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/09/the-guardian-view-on-pope-francis-a-voice-in-the-wilderness

Fear grief and lack of talk on climate change

The answer to the question posed by Canadian climate scientist Katherine Hayhoe “What's the big deal about a few degrees anyway?”

includes exploration of our possible fear and denial even as expert scientists, economists, and psychologists present their study of the effect of the climate emergency on people and our planet.

the effect of the climate emergency on people and our planet1

Annette Dubreuil explores the question of why we stop talking about climate change.

 This “spiral of silence” is itself a big problem: “People concerned about the climate avoid voicing their worry because they rarely hear others discussing the topic, and thus the spiral continues.” But collective silence is dangerous, especially for a problem as large and urgent as climate change. How do we pull out of this spiral? According to Hayhoe, we have to talk about it. But that can be hard to do. Humans are social creatures. Belonging is a fundamental and universal human need, and as a result, we often choose to conform to our group. That’s why our friends and family have far more influence on our view than do experts. Research suggests that the silencing effect is most powerful when talking to family, friends, or neighbours about obtrusive issues. So, the need for belonging makes overcoming the spiral of silence with friends and family even harder. But in fact, we have much more common ground on climate change than expected: in a research project using dialogue between people of opposing views, participants agreed on key points, and in each case there was at least one topic where the two took positions contrary to what they predicted of the other.Even when we do talk about climate change, our instinct on what to talk about is typically unhelpful. Rather than starting with the science and facts as we’re apt to do, Hayhoe suggests that we find that common ground by looking for shared values. For example, maybe you’re both parents, or maybe you both have the same hobby. Second, don’t use fear, but rather rational hope. Talk about solutions that are “practical, viable, accessible and attractive”.2

Katherine Hayhoe recently gave a TED talk titled “The most important thing you can do to fight climate change: talk about it.”

In it, she cites the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, which finds that two-thirds of Americans never talk about climate change even though 70% believe it is a real problem.

Jennifer A Dlouhy comments that an all-star lineup of economists, from Alan Greenspan to Paul Volcker, is endorsing a plan to combat climate change

Common ground on Climate

by slapping a tax on greenhouse gas emissions and then distributing the revenue to American households.

All living former Federal Reserve chairs, several Nobel Prize winners and previous leaders of the president’s Council of Economic Advisers have signed on to a statement asserting that a robust, gradually rising carbon tax is “the most cost-effective lever to reduce carbon emissions at the scale and speed that is necessary.”
“A carbon tax will send a powerful price signal that harnesses the invisible hand of the marketplace to steer economic actors towards a low-carbon future,” the 45 economists say in the opinion piece, published by the Wall Street Journal late Wednesday.3 

Olivia Goldhill asks if therapists have a duty to confront climate change denial. The research of Dr. Renee Lertzman, an expert in the psychosocial aspects of climate change communications has inspired a video. There are various psychoanalytical theories as to why we might be psychologically resistant to addressing climate change, notes philosopher and psychoanalyst Donna Orange, an adjunct professor at New York University. Social scientist Renee Lertzman, who works on the psychology of environmental communications, believes that people are suffering from “environmental melancholia.”

Freud believed that melancholia reflected a sense of loss that is not fully conscious and so cannot be fully mourned, and Lertzman argues this state describes our response to climate change. That many are aware of the effects of climate change but do little about it suggests dissociation, the Freudian concept explaining how we bury traumatic memories in the unconscious, and regression, Freud’s explanation for why people show childlike rather than adult behavior as a defense mechanism for coping with stress, argues Orange.4 

Sara E. Gorman, PhD, MPH, a public health specialist working on mental health and Jack M. Gorman, MD, former Professor and Chair of Psychiatry and Professor of Neuroscience at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine, faculty of Columbia University's Department of Psychiatry for 25 years, find there are at least two psychological reasons that encouraging people to adopt climate protection activities in their daily lives may help promote action on the larger scale.

First, denial is a response to something we fear, and we know from animal and human studies that fear induces freezing and passivity. But studies also demonstrate that giving a fearful animal or human a task that even symbolically addresses what is feared can minimize freezing and promote action. Thus, recommending tasks that we can perform in our daily lives may help us overcome our feeling that mitigating climate change is a hopeless enterprise and motivate us join the voices insisting on ending burning fossil fuels.
Second, these quotidian activities can be the basis for the formation of committees and communities that bring people together with the common goal of addressing climate change. Being part of a group with a common goal may help people overcome denial and have the courage to face the realities of climate change, however grim they may be. It may be easier and more effective for groups of people to demand that countries impose carbon taxes and spend heavily on sustainable energy than it is for individuals.5 

Being frozen in fear and presenting symptoms of grief

Climate stages of grief

at our loss are delaying the relief we will find in beginning to seek common ground with others as we speak about our concerns.

References

1	(n.d.). Global Weirding with Katharine Hayhoe - YouTube. Retrieved February 22, 2019, from https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi6RkdaEqgRVKi3AzidF4ow
2	(n.d.). Annette Dubreuil, Author at Canada's Ecofiscal Commission. Retrieved September 7, 2019, from https://ecofiscal.ca/author/adubreuil/
3	(2019, January 16). From Greenspan to Yellen, Economic Brain Trust Backs .... Retrieved September 7, 2019, from https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-01-17/from-greenspan-to-yellen-economic-brain-trust-backs-carbon-tax
4	(2019, February 21). Do therapists have a duty to confront climate change denial. Retrieved September 7, 2019, from https://qz.com/1554808/fighting-climate-change-with-psychoanalysis/
5	(2019, January 12). Climate Change Denial | Psychology Today. Retrieved September 7, 2019, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/denying-the-grave/201901/climate-change-denial

Critical thinking required about political proclamations

Recently the CBC reported that a child - killer story revealed some dubious news activity to push election campaign messages.

Some manipulation techniques

The British tabloid The Daily Mail published a story claiming convicted child murderer Jon Venables would soon be released and sent to Canada. Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer tweeted a link to the Daily Mail story and said it was "disturbing that this pedophile child killer might come to Canada."

"As Prime Minister I won't let him come here. Where does Trudeau stand?" Scheer wrote. "Our country should not be a dumping ground for murderers, terrorists, and perverts."
Barbara Jo Caruso, an immigration lawyer and the founder of the Corporate Immigration Law Firm, said there are some exemptions to inadmissibility but added that it would be "unlikely" for someone like Venables to be approved to come to Canada.
As with another recent story in the British press — about the U.K. stripping citizenship from a dual Canadian-British national held by the Kurds and accused of aiding ISIS in Syria — the Daily Mail story played into a Conservative narrative that the Liberal government would be soft on crime.1

In words and deeds, Gerta Thunberg is the embodiment of philosopher Howard Zinn's admonition: "We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can quietly become a power no government can suppress, a power that can transform the world."

https://www.aljazeera.com/mritems/imagecache/mbdxxlarge/mritems/Images/2019/9/1/2da385a645ed41c7bf025c054504b976_18.jpg

Al Jazeera reports.

Of course, the marauding swarm of vitriolic right-wing climate-change deniers see Thunberg - not how the prophetic Zinn envisioned her - but as a tiny, pretentious zealot who threatens the existing order. Their order. Their comforts. Their traditional "way of life".
De rigueur, they have set out to discredit and, if possible, to destroy Thunberg with their, by now, familiar and crass modus operandi.
They have mocked her. They have belittled her. They have denigrated her. They have insulted her. They have dismissed her. They have questioned her motives. They have suggested she is anti-democratic. They have, in the fetid recesses of the internet, even threatened her.2

The National Observer writes that Greta Thunberg is winning hearts and minds. Some old men hate it. The piece by Matthew Klippenstein cautions that climate advocates would also do well to recognize that some of Thunberg’s critics’ core concerns do have merit. As Langley chemist Blair King noted in an articulate recent blog post.

"It is easy for climate strikers and their activist supporters, who go to bed well-fed and warm in Canada and Europe, to tell the world they should use less energy. But the governments of China and India still have deep poverty and hardship to fight and will ignore those cries because they are dealing with louder and more pressing cries of citizens who need food and shelter today."
There is also the challenge of affirming the need to transition beyond fossil fuels while discouraging boasting by those naively believing they’ve already done so. I can think of few things more counterproductive than my fellow early adopters extolling their electric cars’ carbon chastity as if they’d been fitted for vehicular purity rings.
These boasts won’t only annoy the oilpatch but public transit and cycling advocates as well, given that climate nudges may reduce support for truly transformative change. As Green Leader Elizabeth May has noted, the enemy of climate action right now (which in cities means housing density, cycling and vastly expanded public transit) is incrementalism: the belief that switching from combustion to electric vehicles is magically adequate. Zero-emission vehicles are absolutely necessary, yet still insufficient as a complete climate solution.3 

These articles underline the importance of disciplining our mind to avoid easy and lazy decision making, like the too common confirmation bias, and use our mental ability to critically think about the motives behind proclamations we read and see

particularly if we perceive an attempt to generate a fear response to their message.

References

1	(2019, September 3). Child-killer story shows how parties use dubious news to ... - CBC.ca. Retrieved September 4, 2019, from https://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/scheer-tweet-bulger-venables-story-1.5269306
2	(2019, September 1). Who is afraid of Greta Thunberg? | US & Canada | Al Jazeera. Retrieved September 4, 2019, from https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/afraid-greta-thunberg-190901191445655.html
3	(2019, September 3). Greta Thunberg is winning hearts and minds — and some old men .... Retrieved September 4, 2019, from https://www.nationalobserver.com/2019/09/03/opinion/greta-thunberg-winning-hearts-and-minds-and-some-old-men-hate-it