Bryan Walker

Water is rising

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A friend from Los Angeles mentioned when visiting us a few days ago that he had recently seen a striking performance at UCLA by dancers from the Pacific islands of Tuvalu, Tokelau and Kiribati. Climate change figured strongly in the concert, which was part of a project called Water is Rising. Intrigued, I tracked down the project website and to my delight discovered a video of the live performance at UCLA (presented above). I say delight advisedly because I was unable to tear myself away from the 90-minute performance once I’d begun to watch it, captivated by its dance and song and moved by the simple human appeal that accompanied it. The performers were bringing their unique cultural art to American audiences, but they were also haunted by the deep threat to their cultures of the rising sea levels and they had a clear message to go with their performance.

It’s a message which I think we in the developed world need to hear over and over again. I’ve therefore transcribed some of the introductory words of the leaders of the three groups. They were not carefully crafted, the speakers felt for their words, and the English syntax was not always perfect, but the plea was all the more telling for that. The Tuvalu leader, gesturing towards the performers:

These are the human face of climate change. We are the most vulnerable people to climate change and we are here with a simple message to you all – for you to give us a hand, for your minds to feel with us, your hearts to be with us. We are here to represent our countries…we [Tuvalu] are small, we are only 24 square kilometres land mass. No mountains for us to hide ourselves when it comes to sea level rise…we are only three to four metres high. Please think of us, and enjoy yourselves.

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Stuck in the muddle with Obama

I look back with some embarrassment on my enthusiastic posts when Barack Obama was in the early days of his presidency. I thought he was offering strong political leadership in addressing climate change. His words seemed unequivocal. Here he is speaking at the UN in September 2009:

That so many of us are here today is a recognition that the threat from climate change is serious, it is urgent, and it is growing. Our generation’s response to this challenge will be judged by history, for if we fail to meet it – boldly, swiftly, and together – we risk consigning future generations to an irreversible catastrophe.

And he was positive about facing that challenge:

As we meet here today, the good news is that after too many years of inaction and denial, there is finally widespread recognition of the urgency of the challenge before us. We know what needs to be done. We know that our planet’s future depends on a global commitment to permanently reduce greenhouse gas pollution. We know that if we put the right rules and incentives in place, we will unleash the creative power of our best scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs to build a better world. And so many nations have already taken the first steps on the journey towards that goal.

The rhetoric has changed substantially since then. In this week’s state of the union address there was certainly no clarion call to confront climate change. The term was used, and the science acknowledged, but only in passing in the context of his promotion of clean energy:

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What Will Work

Kristin Shrader-Frechette of the University of Notre Dame is rigorous in the presentation of her argument in What Will Work: Fighting Climate Change with Renewable Energy, Not Nuclear Power. In recent times a number of leading environmentalists have concluded nuclear power has to be employed to enable the transition away from fossil fuels. Shrader-Frechette disagrees. There is no “devil’s choice” between expanding nuclear fission and enduring climate change. Nuclear power is not needed, and it’s certainly not desirable.

Not that the author in any way downplays the need to give up the use of fossil fuels. She fully accepts the science of climate change and what is needed to avoid climate-related catastrophe. Objections to taking action are listed in detail and briskly dismissed. The people who deny climate change for profit are categorised and exposed for their role in misleading the public. Among them, sadly, are the American politicians who repay campaign fund donations from fossil-fuel companies by denying or delaying climate change issues.

But Shrader-Frechette rejects the argument that nuclear power is necessary in the energy mix if we are to address climate change quickly enough to be effective. A substantial part of the book is devoted to showing that nuclear energy is not only undesirable but also diverts much-needed investment and government subsidy from energy efficiency and renewable energy development. Far from being part of the solution it gets in the way of solution.

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The wrong road to take

It’s difficult not to become repetitive when blogging about climate change. The basic science is well-established. The dangers global warming poses to human society are clear and in some places present. The solutions lie with drastically cutting the level of greenhouse gas emissions and adapting to changes already unavoidable. The mitigation solution in particular continues to be resisted by vested interests and their political allies. I’m conscious of having expressed each of these facts many times over in a variety of forms over the past three years. And now I’m about to repeat myself within a month of last writing about the contradiction in New Zealand government thinking.

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Climate ethics and the reckless endangerment of denial

An interesting-looking series of posts has begun on the climate ethics blog of Penn State’s Rock Ethics Institute. The series plans to put the the climate change disinformation campaign under the ethical spotlight. The introductory post written by Associate Professor Donald Brown examines some of the broad issues before planned subsequent posts look at the detailed tactics employed to discredit the science. As I read the first post I was struck by how relevant its argument is across a much wider sector of society than that occupied by the ethically reprehensible disinformation campaign: it challenges the moral lethargy which seems to afflict many of the world’s governments and business communities when it comes to climate change. They may not be part of the organised denial of climate change, but their response as yet hardly reflects the gravity of the issue or faces up honestly to the ethical challenge it presents. I’ll extract or paraphrase some of Brown’s points which seemed to me to have relevance to our common need to face the moral imperative climate change brings with it.

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