The climate battleground heats up

Cathrine Dyer and Bernard Hickey detail the latest climate news, including how the incumbent power of polluting industries is being put to work resisting the transition across multiple fronts

TL;DR : Here’s the top six items climate news for Aotearoa-NZ this week, as selected by Bernard Hickey and The Kākā’s climate correspondent Cathrine Dyer. Usually we have a video chat to go with this wrap, but were unable to do one this week. We’ll be back next week.

1. Several reports this week demonstrate the intensifying battle between those trying to advance the carbon transition and those digging in to resist it. Drilled media is providing excellent coverage of the US Senate Budget Committee hearings, detailing how the oil and gas industry co-opted the Obama administration to lift a decades-old ban on exports, then crafted a successful narrative in support of the current build-out of LNG export terminals, aiming to lock in methane gas for decades to come. GOP Senator John Kennedy used the hearings to demonstrate the industry tactic of ‘character assassination’ of experts, but was too clumsy to get away with it, according to a report in Heated. Further revelations detail how the American Petroleum Institute (API) and Chevron partnered with Discovery Education to produce lesson plans that were sold to schools around the US.

2. The United Nations-led effort to ‘end plastic pollution’ could result in an agreement that fails to address  the ‘elephant in the room’, the ongoing production of plastic, as a result of successful lobbying by the oil and gas industry.

3. At the same time, the UN has issued a new report detailing the mounting violence and intimidation suffered by environmental reporters.

4. Climate Analytics investigates pre-monsoon record heat waves in Southeast Asia, while climate scientist Andrew Dessler considers how tropical cyclones are becoming more damaging.

5. Emeritus Professor of Law Jane Kelsey writes in The Conversation about the costly risks that the new fast-track law could pose to Aotearoa in relation to existing investor-state dispute resolution processes.

6. A new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in the United States by economists from Harvard and NorthWestern Kellogg finds that the macroeconomic damages from climate change were six times larger than previously thought. They projected a one degrees celcius increase in global temperature led to a 12% decline in world GDP, which implied a Social Cost of Carbon of $1,056 per ton of carbon dioxide.

(See more detail and analysis below. Cathrine Dyer’s journalism on climate and the environment is available free to all paying and non-paying subscribers to The Kākā and the public. It is made possible by subscribers signing up to the paid tier to ensure this sort of public interest journalism is fully available in public to read, listen to and share. Cathrine wrote the wrap. Bernard edited it. Lynn copy-edited and illustrated it.)

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GOP Senator Kennedy’s behavior is “living proof of the influence of oil money on American politics”, said climate disinformation expert Geoffrey Supran. Photo: Getty Images

Industry on the attack over downsizing demands

Several articles in the media this week attest to the increasing intensity of the battle between those who are trying to advance the energy transition, and those who are trying to extend the profit-maximising status quo of polluting industries for as long as possible.

Many of the easy mitigation gains to be made by maximising efficiency or adopting available technologies have already been banked. The incumbent power of polluting industries is now being put to work resisting the demand that they downsize.

The resulting tension is palpable at the hearings being held over the past week by the Senate budget Committee in the US. The hearings, mentioned briefly in last week’s climate wrap have continued to provide insight into the incumbent industries’ playbook.

Amy Westervelt at Drilled Media has supplied some of the best coverage, describing how the industry first co-opted the Obama administration into lifting a decades old ban on oil and gas exports, then created a narrative that supported the current build-out of LNG  export terminals as they sought to lock in methane gas for decades to come.

“ Newly published documents from a three-year bicameral investigation into fossil fuel disinformation show that almost as soon as they began exporting LNG, the U.S. fossil fuel industry set to work pushing a new narrative that would help lock in gas exports for decades: the idea that LNG, despite being 95 percent methane, a potent greenhouse gas, is a climate solution.”

During the hearings over the past week,  GOP Senator John Kennedy demonstrated further tactics from the playbook, including the age-old approach of attempted ‘character assassination’.

The witness, Geoffrey Supran, director of the Climate Accountability Lab at the University of Miami and an expert on climate disinformation, threaded his opening statement with over 120 cited sources, which the Senator completely blanked in his bid to discredit the expert. According to Emily Atkin at Heated, Kennedy overplayed his hand, much to the merriment of targeted climate activists, who enjoyed the profile boost their organisation received . As Supran himself explained to Heated, he hopes the entire exchange proves educational for observers:

“More important than the Senator’s theatrics themselves is how they typify the hostile tactics that the fossil fuel industry and its allies have resorted to for decades to attack not just the message but the messenger.

It’s straight out of Big Tobacco’s playbook. In fact, research by John Cook and his colleagues has shown that character assassination has been one of the most common ways in which fossil fuel interests have attempted to deny accountability for the climate crisis. 

The Senator’s behavior is also living proof of the influence of oil money on American politics. As I mentioned in my testimony, scholars at Yale and Cambridge have statistically shown that the more Congresspeople vote against the environment, the more money they get from oil companies.

Perhaps it’s just a coincidence that Senator Kennedy has taken $1.5 million from the oil and gas industry.”

Further revelations from the hearings detail how the American Petroleum Institute (API) and Chevron partnered with Discovery Education to produce lesson plans that were included in a paid digital curriculum platform sold to schools around the US. The reporting, once again by website Drilled, describes a new and powerful model for assisting companies to influence children via curricula, activities and “virtual field trips”.

“Schools are sites of political struggle,” said Kenneth J. Saltman, a professor of educational policy studies at the University of Illinois Chicago. “API has a very clear agenda for what they want schools to teach, that is in accord with the interests and profits of their industries. And that’s not in line with the interests of the public generally — which includes the interest in surviving the next decade or two.”

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Watered down plastics treaty on the cards

Meanwhile, reporting on progress at the United Nations’ global plastics treaty suggests they are inching towards a final agreement. However, the agreement, designed to “end plastic pollution” could wind up with no mention of any plan to reduce the actual production of plastics, in yet another sign of successful lobbying by incumbent industries.

“Nothing happened that was particularly surprising, but this outcome is still quite demoralizing,” said Chris Dixon, an ocean campaign leader for the nonprofit Environmental Investigation Agency who attended the talks. Other groups called the outcome “disappointing” and said the negotiations had been “undermined by deep-rooted industry influence.””

According to the report by Grist,

“The world already produces more than 400 million metric tons of plastic per year, and fossil fuel companies are planning to dramatically increase that number over the next few decades. Plastics have been described as the fossil fuel industry’s “plan B” as the world pivots away from using oil and gas in transportation and electricity generation. This could have dire implications not only for plastic pollution but for the climate; according to a recent study, greenhouse gas emissions from growing plastic production could eat up one-fifth of the world’s remaining carbon budget by 2050.”

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Environmental reporting a risky business

Meantime, the UN is warning in a new report that attacks on environmental journalists are increasing globally as they face mounting violence and intimidation resulting from an increasingly febrile environment. Yale E360 covered the report, saying:

“Environmental journalists have been subject to attacks including assaults, harassment, arrests, criminal prosecutions, and defamation lawsuits. The report tallied 749 attacks globally over the last 15 years, with attacks growing more frequent over time. It further counted 44 murders of environmental journalists, of which only five resulted in convictions.

In a related survey of more than 900 environmental journalists worldwide, 70 percent reported being attacked, threatened, or pressured in relation to their reporting.”

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Heatwaves and hurricanes

Meantime in other news, a pre-monsoon heatwave is breaking records in South and Southeast Asia while parts of Western South Asia receive excessive precipitation. According to Climate Analytics scientist Dr Fahad Saeed, a major injustice is being perpetrated as poor people, without access to electricity, and who have done little to contribute to climate change bear the brunt of its effects.

“You can see the fingerprints of climate change all over this. Extremes are emerging with torrential rains in some areas of South Asia, and deadly heatwaves in others. The rains would usually bring intermittent relief from the heat for people, but with climate change that’s not happening. So what we’re seeing is these more intense, longer periods of extreme heat.”

Climate scientist Andrew Dessler reports in the Climate Brink this week on the increasing destructiveness of hurricanes as a result of climate change.

The increase in damage manifests through a range of mechanisms including the rise in sea levels (“the non-linearity of flood damages means that even a small contribution from sea level rise to total flood depth can increase damages a lot”), increasing rainfall (“following the logic chain 1) much of the water vapor in air flowing into a tropical cyclone’s core will fall out as rain when the air ascends in one of the rain bands, 2) in a warmer climate, the air flowing into a tropical cyclone’s core holds more water vapor. Put points 1 and 2 together and you get more rainfall!”), and higher intensity (“Basic physics tells us that hurricane should get more intense as the climate warms”).

What we’re not sure about is whether the number of tropical cyclones will change as the climate warms or the monetary damages associated with that.

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Fast track law’s unexpected consequences?

Finally, Jane Kelsey, Emeritus Professor of Law at the University of Auckland details how the proposed fast-track law could expose the government of Aotearoa to expensive trade disputes, in The Conversation this week.

In particular, she examines the possible role of investor-state dispute settlement provisions if, for instance, drilling rights offered by the current government under the bill were extinguished by a future administration.

“The existence of ISDS might suit the proponents and beneficiaries of the fast-track legislation. But the government must also be aware it carries fiscal risks that could run into the billions.

Foreign investors wanting to protect their gains under the controversial new law could hold the country to ransom by threatening a dispute. As a result, they would constrain New Zealand’s democratic ability to exercise its sovereignty, and to protect te Tiriti rights.”

Ka kite ano

Bernard and Cathrine