Divestment

On my more cynical days, I think that “sustainability” has largely become a meaningless buzzword, a marketing ploy to attract customers in the case of a corporation or potential students in the case of a university. This is because many companies, schools and individuals who espouse environmentally conscious beliefs while at the same time profiting from fossil fuel extraction due to investments. I do acknowledge that sometimes this is out of the individual’s control in some cases. However, at the end of the day it seems pretty dishonest for a school to claim the mantle of sustainability while they give money to and receive dividends from extractive fossil fuels industries. Therefore, I call upon CSB-SJU to divest itself from fossil fuel interests to become a more genuine partner in the global fight to stop the burning of fossil fuels as our primary form of energy. This will assuredly not happen unless students force the issue, the administrations will not change on their own.

In many ways, divestment (or reinvestment) is back end solution to ACC. I think a more front-end course of action would involve ensuring that companies profiting from the burning of carbon receive no public funded subsidies. This will decrease profitability (in an environment where prices are already decreasing) and therefore these companies will not be so attractive to investors because they will be competing on their own merits. I would propose taking at least some of that public subsidy and pushing it into subsidies for non-carbon-based forms of energy such as solar and wind.

How We Know What We Know - and Why it Matters

Both Jesse and Mahony's article were at the very core discussing epistemology. Epistemology is generally related to the study of philosophy and examines how we know what we know: or the process of creating knowledge. Despite Jessy’s hedging during class, I really appreciated her article that thought it necessary to the discussion. I’m not sure why students would not like it!

Jessy is an anthropologist of scientists, so her specialization is studying the cultural practices and norms of those engaging in climate science practice. Her examination of two hiccups in the scientific debate regarding ACC: 1.) a transpositional error that predicted the collapse of Himalayan glaciers by 2035 and 2.) the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet not including the full extent of melting demonstrate the nitty-gritty details of the scientific debate. This also shows us the necessity of peer review and its weaknesses, Jessy suggests further auditing to mitigate this problem. They also show us potential strategies that ACC “skeptics” might use in order to discredit science they do not accept.

It is also important, I think, for scientists to admit what they do not know. A lot of the resentment that many undereducated people feel towards climate science has something to do with a “know-it-all” perception of scientists. So, rather than taking refuge in the Ivory Tower of academia, scientists must more thoroughly engage with the public.

A scientist may argue, “That’s not my job, I belong in the lab.” This is a cultural construct that plays on societal stereotypes of scientists as stuffy, awkward people with poor communication skills. Cultural constructs and societal outlooks, thankfully, are subject to change and scientists must make this change happen. There are several transparency measures such as peer review, but if these measures are not taken in a way that the public understands it matters little outside the academic-journal circuit. Not only that, but many workers in non-science fields are impacted by a shrinking world due to globalization, social media and increasingly democratic/bottom-up cultural practices and saying “that’s not my job” when it is clearly essential will result in that person losing their job. Academics are a little more insulated from this, and this could also be behind some popular resentment of scientists. Most importantly, scientists must descend from their Ivory Tower and engage in the vigorous debate Jessy and Mahony illustrate so well: what do we know, and how?

Lack of Climate Change Discussion at Carnivore Conference

From October 11-14, I was attending a wildlife policy conference in Washington DC. It was great to get out to DC and do some networking with like-minded people and there were some issues on which there was broad agreement and scientific consensus. Unfortunately, one of the issues that everyone agreed: climate change, while definitely a threat to large carnivore populations, especially in the long term, the conference was more focused on “immediate” threats to carnivore population: habitat loss and poaching. This was disappointing to say the least, as well as the apparent lack of ethnic and age diversity: boomers and older were highly represented whereas there were almost no students.

The argument that poaching and habitat loss are more “immediate” than the negative impacts on climate change is a very dubious one. First of all, polar bear habitat as well as that of their prey is already being reduced due to reductions in artic sea ice. Habitat loss most commonly thought of as the result of development, expanding suburbs and roads. However, habitat loss it is also occurring due to less visible human activities: emitting fossil fuels. This dubious argument also only makes sense if you exclude the wolverine. Already at perilously low numbers in the continental US, climate change is reducing alpine snowpack that wolverines rely on as their primary habitat. As snow recedes, according to Christine Eisenberg’s Carnivore Way (2014), wolverines are relegated to ever-shrinking mountain-top environments. Lack of attention to polar bear and wolverine challenges was probably the result of the Cougar Fund acting as one of the primary funders of the event. There was a disproportionate focus on cougars and wolves (probably due to wolf popularity/controversy).

There were some positive discussions that had little to do with climate change. Another consensus at this conference made up mostly of scientists was that more science will not change policy – anti-carnivore state or federal management agencies or policy commissions will simply ignore inconvenient science or use minority viewpoints that support convenient policies even that means following a graduate thesis instead of peer-reviewed science. What most speakers called for at the conference was a change in values, or at least government action that reflects a change in values – the general public now supports the existence of large carnivores. I think this is analogous to climate change: more science isn’t going to prove our point, those who deny the science of the last thirty years are probably stuck in their ways or have a vested interest in the status quo. What we need is a change in values, recognizing that the immediate, short term dollar – profitability and shareholder payouts for the next quarter – needs to become subordinate to taking care of our common home. Only reflection on our values, and sound public policy to match them will rise to the challenger of climate change.

Merchants of Doubt and the Supremacy of Emotive over Rational Reasoning

I had previously watched "Merchants of Doubt" (2014) before participating in this course, and found it very enlightening. There has been a disturbing trend among corporate America, driven by short term thinking and desire to deliver profits and dividends to shareholders at all costs, to forego honesty and public health concerns and hire public relations firms. Their charge is to create doubt relative to scientifically proven dangers of products manufactured by private interests. The most infamous example, brought forth by lawsuits, was a Phillip-Morris internal memo which indicated "doubt is our product". Similar tactics, including use of ideologically sympathetic "experts" and literally copying the layout of scientific reports to bolster pseudoscience that just happened to find industry blameless, have been used by the fossil fuels, flame retardants, and tobacco industries.

This trend is an expected result of relatively unbridled capitalist culture. Especially concerning the climate change and fossil fuels debate, the United States population has far higher levels of doubt than societies in Europe with comparable levels of education and similar, if not identical, liberal democracies. The difference comes down to capitalist culture, which is less restrained in the US. European liberal societies have market economies, whereas the US has a market society with liberal (and neoliberal) government structures. . In many ways, culture is elucidated through values, and the US greaty emphasizes free market, neoliberal and materialist-cosumerist values versus European commutarian values that yield stronger welfare states and greater scrutiny of the private sector to protect public health and economic equality.

I felt very vindicated by the cognitive discussion, "The Science of Why We Don't Believe Science". In my 9/22 blog post "Convincing Climate Change Deniers?", I argued that it is largely a waste of  time to try to convince invested, educated adult deniers of ACC, who usually have a political or economic interest in the debate that prevents them from coherently accepting ACC and/or the policy changes its logic requires. This article further supports my argument in that it shows that rational arguments do not change peoples' minds. In fact, emotive reasoning that involves being part of a team or tribe rallied against the "other" is far faster-acting than logical reasoning. Therefore, it is definitely a waste of time to attempt to persuade educated, invested ACC deniers. You only have a chance to convince them, as the article mentions but does not quantitatively demonstrate, when you associate ACC and responsible climate policy with conservative-friendly values.