A billionaire, a novelist and a professor all write a book about climate change.
That may sound like the start of a joke but it is not, especially for philanthropist Bill Gates and author Jonathan Franzen. Their books have come out just as Michael E Mann, one of the world’s best known climate scientists, has published a book accusing each of abetting new forces of inactivism slowing efforts to tackle climate change.
It is hard to think of another time the publishing world has delivered such an engaging spectacle. As raging wildfires and deadly floods drive a new sense of urgency, the debate about how to curb global warming has spread far beyond the scientists, economists and activists who once dominated the field. We are all, as it were, environmentalists now.
Yet the scale of the climate problem makes it hard to know what constitutes a meaningful response. Is it enough to give up meat and flying? Do we need a slew of technological breakthroughs? Or is disaster now inevitable and any sort of action too late?
These three books address all these questions, but none so comprehensively as Mann. The Pennsylvania State University professor has had an unusually vivid view of the battle to cut the world’s dependence on fossil fuels.
He was still in his early thirties in 1998 when he and two colleagues published what has been called the most controversial chart in science: the hockey stick. At a time of widespread denial about climate change, their simple graph showed global temperatures had varied little for centuries, but shot up after fossil fuel burning took off after the industrial revolution. In other words, the world was warming at a rate unseen in modern history and humans were causing it.
Mann faced a blistering effort to discredit his work — and even death threats. In the US, Republicans in Congress, many of them recipients of fossil fuel industry donations, accused him of inaccuracy, fraud and worse, as he recounted in his 2012 book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars.
Nearly a decade later, the science behind the hockey stick remains robust. Yet Mann makes a convincing case that the fight against climate action continues — under different terms of engagement. “Outright denial of the physical evidence of climate change simply isn’t credible any more,” he writes in The New Climate War. The war on the science has ended, he says. But in its place has come a war on climate action, or “a softer form of denialism” in which “inactivists” deploy a mix of deception, deflection and distraction to delay cuts in emissions.
Many readers will be surprised to learn that one of Mann’s chief complaints concerns flight-shaming, vegan diets and other types of individual behaviour widely thought to be central to tackling climate change. Personal actions can help, and often set a sensible example. But, as Mann writes, they cannot rival broad, systemic measures such as carbon pricing or ending fossil fuel subsidies. For all the scrutiny of flying, it currently accounts for about 3 per cent of global carbon emissions.
Worse, some research suggests a focus on personal behaviour creates an illusion of progress that can erode support for more effective collective policies. One study found the more people switched off lights and scrimped on household energy use, the less likely they were to support a carbon tax.
Dwelling on individual behaviour is also a “particularly devious” deflection strategy, Mann argues, because it breeds divisive finger-pointing among campaigners and attempts to render leaders as elite hypocrites. Celebrity climate activist Leonardo DiCaprio, for instance, is often lambasted for flying in a private jet. After Al Gore released his 2006 documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, claims emerged that his home used 20 times more energy than the average American house.
Mann shows attention on personal action did not occur in a vacuum. Oil companies were early promoters of the personal carbon footprint calculator and there is a well-thumbed playbook for industries seeking to divert attention from their own activities to individuals using their products. The US gun lobby claims “guns don’t kill people, people kill people” to fend off tougher laws; beverage groups back campaigns against roadside litter created by their own bottles and cans.
Some of Mann’s other examples of soft denialism are even more insidious because they are promoted by green activists themselves. Exhibit one: what he calls climate “doomists” who promote the idea that all hope is lost and action is fruitless, which is where Jonathan Franzen comes in.
The best-selling US novelist is no climate denier. But in 2019 he caused an outcry with an elegantly written New Yorker magazine article titled “What if We Stopped Pretending?” which argued climate disaster was all but certain and it made sense to focus on how to use finite resources to deal with it. His new 70-page booklet bears the same title and includes the article, along with an interview Franzen gave a German journalist to expand on his views. “All-out war on climate change made sense when only as long as it was winnable,” says Franzen. Human nature has made meaningful climate action almost impossible and “a false hope of salvation can be actively harmful,” he argues. Preparing for floods, fires and refugees might be more pertinent.
The essay reads at times like an elegiac counsel of despair. For the pugnacious Mann it is far worse. He devotes nearly four pages to what he calls “one of the most breathtakingly doomist diatribes” ever written. The fundamental problem with the article, Mann rails, is that it attempts “to build a case for doom on a flimsy foundation of distorted science”.
Mann argues that it is still possible to avert 2C of warming and that every bit of carbon that is not burnt prevents additional damage. “There is both urgency and agency,” he says. Social and political changes also give him cause for cautious optimism. Apart from the fact that outright denialism is fading and that climate action advocates such as Joe Biden are being elected, he is buoyed by the youth climate movement and the rise of investors rethinking the risks of fossil fuel investments.
In addition, he thinks the Covid crisis has reawakened appreciation of science, while pandemic recovery plans have opened opportunities for green investments. “We appear to be nearing the much-anticipated tipping point on climate action,” he writes.
Yet the urgency of the problem remains, which is what leads Mann to cite Bill Gates on several charges of climate inactivism.
The Microsoft co-founder is not an obvious target. Unlike other billionaires bent on reaching Mars or the Moon, Gates has spent vast sums to improve the lives of the poorest on this planet. He warned of the need to prepare for a global pandemic years before the current crisis and is now leading vaccine efforts to defeat Covid-19. He is also a lavish backer of technologies to avert what he says is the very real threat of global warming, as he details in his book, How to Avoid a Climate Disaster.
Yet Gates has long irked many climate campaigners. He has raised doubts about using green energy in developing countries (a form of inactivism for Mann) and scorned the idea of fossil fuel divestment, telling the FT in 2019 it had “zero” impact on emissions.
In his new book, Gates reveals he actually divested his direct holdings in oil and gas companies in 2019. He still supports what Mann calls “non-solution solutions” offering the illusion of climate action, such as geoengineering schemes to offset warming carbon emissions. Gates has long been among the largest funders of research into such efforts, which can range from directly capturing carbon dioxide from the air to shooting sulphate particles into the atmosphere to mimic the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions.
For Mann, these schemes come under the heading of “dangerous techno-fixes” that appeal to free-market conservatives — by suggesting government regulation is unnecessary — but entail hugely risky “tinkering” with complex Earth systems we do not fully understand.
Gates acknowledges such concerns, admitting that unproven geoengineering concepts raise “thorny ethical issues”. He adds that his funding for such efforts is “tiny” compared to his other climate financing. But he still thinks the approach is worth investigating “while we still have the luxury of study and debate”.
The idea that there is time to develop meaningful climate solutions underpins a central theme of the book, namely that existing green technologies are not enough and must be augmented by big innovation breakthroughs. “We have some of what we need, but far from all of it,” he says.
This puts Gates on one side of a debate between those who think the climate problem will be solved by technology, versus those who believe the technology needed is here and what is required is more political will and policies to deploy it.
Mann belongs to the latter camp. “Sorry Bill Gates, but we don’t need a miracle,” he writes, pointing to academics who showed years ago that existing renewable energy and storage technologies could meet up to 80 per cent of global energy demand by 2030, and 100 per cent by 2050.
The framework Gates uses to support his view is based on his idea of the “green premium”, or the extra cost of zero-carbon technologies compared with fossil fuel alternatives. The average cost of a gallon of conventional jet fuel, for instance, is $2.22, while jet biofuels cost about $5.35, so the green premium adds up to $3.13.
He argues that clean technologies should only be deployed if they have a low or zero green premium, which by his analysis excludes all but a handful of options, such as home air heat pumps in some cities which in certain cases can actually be cheaper than fossil fuel alternatives. That is, he admits, partly because fossil fuel prices do not reflect the damage they inflict, and meaningful carbon pricing will be “crucial” to eliminating green premiums.
This analysis is useful. So too is his accessible description of what needs to be done to tackle climate change: bring the 51bn tons of greenhouse gases typically emitted globally each year down to zero.
Some readers may find his folksy tone, and occasional fart joke, more agreeable than Mann’s punchier work. Others may wonder how Gates managed to write an entire book on climate action that scarcely mentions the powerful political forces bent on thwarting it.
Either way, his approach leads him down some curious paths, especially when it comes to the state of existing renewables. Readers in the UK, who have been getting more than 10 per cent of their electricity from offshore wind farms this year, will be surprised to see Gates describe offshore wind as a green idea “currently in the proof phase” of market development, along with low-carbon cement.
Likewise, Gates is oddly dismissive of the idea that emissions should fall fast this decade, despite UN science reports showing global emissions should halve by 2030, and reach net zero by 2050, to avoid 1.5C of warming. “Making reductions by 2030 the wrong way might actually prevent us from ever getting to zero,” he claims. We might, for instance, replace coal power plants with gas-fired ones that have carbon capture equipment but still emit greenhouse gases. Theoretically, that is a risk. But so is waiting years for innovation breakthroughs that do not arrive.
Ultimately, Gates and Mann probably agree more than they disagree. Each wants action to curb warming emissions that pose a dire threat to the climate and, considering the torrid state of climate disputes in very recent history, that is a welcome relief.
The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back Our Planet, by Michael E Mann, Scribe, RRP£16.99, 368 pages
How To Avoid A Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need, by Bill Gates, Allen Lane, RRP£20/Knopf RRP$26.95, 272 pages
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston says it’s “disgraceful and demeaning” that a Halifax-area school would request that service members not wear military uniforms to its Remembrance Day ceremony.
Houston’s comments were part of a chorus of criticism levelled at the school — Sackville Heights Elementary — whose administration decided to back away from the plan after the outcry.
A November newsletter from the school in Middle Sackville, N.S., invited Armed Forces members to attend its ceremony but asked that all attendees arrive in civilian attire to “maintain a welcoming environment for all.”
Houston, who is currently running for re-election, accused the school’s leaders of “disgracing themselves while demeaning the people who protect our country” in a post on the social media platform X Thursday night.
“If the people behind this decision had a shred of the courage that our veterans have, this cowardly and insulting idea would have been rejected immediately,” Houston’s post read. There were also several calls for resignations within the school’s administration attached to Houston’s post.
In an email to families Thursday night, the school’s principal, Rachael Webster, apologized and welcomed military family members to attend “in the attire that makes them most comfortable.”
“I recognize this request has caused harm and I am deeply sorry,” Webster’s email read, adding later that the school has the “utmost respect for what the uniform represents.”
Webster said the initial request was out of concern for some students who come from countries experiencing conflict and who she said expressed discomfort with images of war, including military uniforms.
Her email said any students who have concerns about seeing Armed Forces members in uniform can be accommodated in a way that makes them feel safe, but she provided no further details in the message.
Webster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
At a news conference Friday, Houston said he’s glad the initial request was reversed but said he is still concerned.
“I can’t actually fathom how a decision like that was made,” Houston told reporters Friday, adding that he grew up moving between military bases around the country while his father was in the Armed Forces.
“My story of growing up in a military family is not unique in our province. The tradition of service is something so many of us share,” he said.
“Saying ‘lest we forget’ is a solemn promise to the fallen. It’s our commitment to those that continue to serve and our commitment that we will pass on our respects to the next generation.”
Liberal Leader Zach Churchill also said he’s happy with the school’s decision to allow uniformed Armed Forces members to attend the ceremony, but he said he didn’t think it was fair to question the intentions of those behind the original decision.
“We need to have them (uniforms) on display at Remembrance Day,” he said. “Not only are we celebrating (veterans) … we’re also commemorating our dead who gave the greatest sacrifice for our country and for the freedoms we have.”
NDP Leader Claudia Chender said that while Remembrance Day is an important occasion to honour veterans and current service members’ sacrifices, she said she hopes Houston wasn’t taking advantage of the decision to “play politics with this solemn occasion for his own political gain.”
“I hope Tim Houston reached out to the principal of the school before making a public statement,” she said in a statement.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
REGINA – Saskatchewan Opposition NDP Leader Carla Beck says she wants to prove to residents her party is the government in waiting as she heads into the incoming legislative session.
Beck held her first caucus meeting with 27 members, nearly double than what she had before the Oct. 28 election but short of the 31 required to form a majority in the 61-seat legislature.
She says her priorities will be health care and cost-of-living issues.
Beck says people need affordability help right now and will press Premier Scott Moe’s Saskatchewan Party government to cut the gas tax and the provincial sales tax on children’s clothing and some grocery items.
Beck’s NDP is Saskatchewan’s largest Opposition in nearly two decades after sweeping Regina and winning all but one seat in Saskatoon.
The Saskatchewan Party won 34 seats, retaining its hold on all of the rural ridings and smaller cities.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 8, 2024.
HALIFAX – Nova Scotia‘s growing population was the subject of debate on Day 12 of the provincial election campaign, with Liberal Leader Zach Churchill arguing immigration levels must be reduced until the province can provide enough housing and health-care services.
Churchill said Thursday a plan by the incumbent Progressive Conservatives to double the province’s population to two million people by the year 2060 is unrealistic and unsustainable.
“That’s a big leap and it’s making life harder for people who live here, (including ) young people looking for a place to live and seniors looking to downsize,” he told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
Anticipating that his call for less immigration might provoke protests from the immigrant community, Churchill was careful to note that he is among the third generation of a family that moved to Nova Scotia from Lebanon.
“I know the value of immigration, the importance of it to our province. We have been built on the backs of an immigrant population. But we just need to do it in a responsible way.”
The Liberal leader said Tim Houston’s Tories, who are seeking a second term in office, have made a mistake by exceeding immigration targets set by the province’s Department of Labour and Immigration. Churchill said a Liberal government would abide by the department’s targets.
In the most recent fiscal year, the government welcomed almost 12,000 immigrants through its nominee program, exceeding the department’s limit by more than 4,000, he said. The numbers aren’t huge, but the increase won’t help ease the province’s shortages in housing and doctors, and the increased strain on its infrastructure, including roads, schools and cellphone networks, Churchill said.
“(The Immigration Department) has done the hard work on this,” he said. “They know where the labour gaps are, and they know what growth is sustainable.”
In response, Houston said his commitment to double the population was a “stretch goal.” And he said the province had long struggled with a declining population before that trend was recently reversed.
“The only immigration that can come into this province at this time is if they are a skilled trade worker or a health-care worker,” Houston said. “The population has grown by two per cent a year, actually quite similar growth to what we experienced under the Liberal government before us.”
Still, Houston said he’s heard Nova Scotians’ concerns about population growth, and he then pivoted to criticize Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for trying to send 6,000 asylum seekers to Nova Scotia, an assertion the federal government has denied.
Churchill said Houston’s claim about asylum seekers was shameful.
“It’s smoke and mirrors,” the Liberal leader said. “He is overshooting his own department’s numbers for sustainable population growth and yet he is trying to blame this on asylum seekers … who aren’t even here.”
In September, federal Immigration Minister Marc Miller said there is no plan to send any asylum seekers to the province without compensation or the consent of the premier. He said the 6,000 number was an “aspirational” figure based on models that reflect each province’s population.
In Halifax, NDP Leader Claudia Chender said it’s clear Nova Scotia needs more doctors, nurses and skilled trades people.
“Immigration has been and always will be a part of the Nova Scotia story, but we need to build as we grow,” Chender said. “This is why we have been pushing the Houston government to build more affordable housing.”
Chender was in a Halifax cafe on Thursday when she promised her party would remove the province’s portion of the harmonized sales tax from all grocery, cellphone and internet bills if elected to govern on Nov. 26. The tax would also be removed from the sale and installation of heat pumps.
“Our focus is on helping people to afford their lives,” Chender told reporters. “We know there are certain things that you can’t live without: food, internet and a phone …. So we know this will have the single biggest impact.”
The party estimates the measure would save the average Nova Scotia family about $1,300 a year.
“That’s a lot more than a one or two per cent HST cut,” Chender said, referring to the Progressive Conservative pledge to reduce the tax by one percentage point and the Liberal promise to trim it by two percentage points.
Elsewhere on the campaign trail, Houston announced that a Progressive Conservative government would make parking free at all Nova Scotia hospitals and health-care centres. The promise was also made by the Liberals in their election platform released Monday.
“Free parking may not seem like a big deal to some, but … the parking, especially for people working at the facilities, can add up to hundreds of dollars,” the premier told a news conference at his campaign headquarters in Halifax.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 7, 2024.
