The Climate Reality Project (CRP) is Former US Vice President Al Gore's attempt to empower large numbers of citizens to 'fix the climate crisis' through lobbying, advocacy and other activities. I went to Rome with around 1000 other activists attending a 2 1/2 day training. Initially I was concerned that Climate Reality might be a Deep State project to build soft power for later, a bit like National Endowment for Democracy working with the Soros foundation to lay down the groundwork for the Color Revolutions. I wondered if it might be about drumming up business for US GreenTech companies, or even just creating demand for US dollars. I didn't find evidence for those things, and by keeping an open mind, I've been pleasantly surprised about some things:
- I'm generally very suspicious of Americans, of politicians, and of the rich but I don't doubt Gore's commitment which has been life-long even into his retirement.
- I was initially dubious about the 'bottom up' claim, since the impetus, the money, and the narrative are all very top down, but I think many of the ideas do come from below and are not micromanaged or over-policed.
- I expected both genders and many nationalities to be well represented, but there was a pleasant balance of ages too. The most conspicuously absent were the working class.
CRP provides a forum for activists to do the very necessary work of tilting the political and financial playing field away from fossil fuels. As such, it is clearly attempting to save the environment, but that said, I have documented a number of concerns, many of of them serious, about the organisation and its messaging.
My hackles rise whenever some-one purports to tell me about 'reality'. It feels like a claim to authority, a power-ploy, like when Prof Antony Fauci told us to "follow the science" which he had been massaging for years. Following Al Gore's narrative arc, 'reality' is that climate is very serious, but by leveraging our political and financial systems, the worst, whatever that is, can be avoided, and the climate could stabilise and even begin cooling in most of our lifetimes.
Hmm.
The criticisms that follow are based on what I saw at the training. I also saw that there are myriad Whatsapp groups with potentially much more depth and diversity of opinion, but that depth if it is there, was simplified out of the public discourse.
Gore's leadership.
Historically speaking, it would be surprising if a genuine climate leader, came from a political elite which depends on controlling fossil fuels to sustain its hegemony. From what I've seen of him, Al Gore is hardworking and passionate, and likeable. He is an invaluable asset when it comes to American finance and policy. But as a WASP he's not in the best position to lead a global climate movement. There other strategies and priorities are outside of Gore's purview, which are inevitably eclipsed by Gore's high profile and access to funds. As a member of the elite, Gore is much less likely to favour radical solutions than are affected people or precarious people.
You'll see below that CRP uses a lot of weak or spurious arguments which feel to me like intellectual dishonesty. I wonder if this stems from Gore's career as a politician, to poach supporters from the other side, and truth is always in service to that.
As a leader Gore was also completely remote, inaccessible. Though he appeared on stage about twice a day, he was never around for the networking sessions or meals. The only time he was seen off-stage was for the publicity photo. This is not how I imagine 'bottom up' organisations are lead.
It would be worthwhile to imagine what other types of climate leadership would look like, originating in other countries, perhaps appealing to humanity's better nature, perhaps appealing to non-material forms of wealth and abundance, perhaps focusing on meeting basic needs and increasing personal freedoms, and opportunities of happiness; perhaps relying less on the free market, perhaps accounting with other things than only money. Perhaps trying to step backwards in some respects rather than ploughing forward, gambling everything on technologies that we haven't invented yet. Perhaps there should be input from people educated outside a university system that teaches a professional class to revere authority. Perhaps we could think about redesigning our ways of life and our economies in line with the resources available.
I can't help but I wonder what CRP would be like with a head like Vandana Shiva, an agricultural expert and empowerer of women and the poor, or coup'ed ex-president of Bolivia Evo Morales whose net worth would barely purchase a flat in New York.
NetZero
The mainstream climate narratives use NetZero as the guiding star. There is a healthy body of critique around this notion, none of which was discussed. To give a sample: NetZero draws all attention to the single metric CO2 levels, as if that was the only problem. That means it would allow or encourage use to sacrifice literally everything else for it: political freedoms, biodiversity, wilderness, food systems and even inconvenient populations. A single metric is communicable and convenient, but because it cannot accurately show what is happening in a complex system, is wide open to abuse.
Another criticism is that NetZero ignores historical responsibility for emissions, putting rich and poor countries on the same starting line. I would add that NetZero is unjust because it means that some people get to emit while others only get money; the rich get to consume while the responsibility for emissions ends up with poor, often less well governed, producer countries.
Justice.
The green transition has been accused of being a colonialist enterprise, and the legitimacy of these concerns mean that insisting on justice in every aspect of the transition is critical. Gore himself didn't speak much about justice today or in his 2005 documentary but left it to experts, which is just as well because anyone with assets over $300m calling for justice is simply not credible. But apart from that, justice is a pillar of the CRP narrative. This is absolutely necessary because the fossil fuel industry's track record on social and environmental justice unconscionable. Focusing on justice gives the new industry a stick with which to beat the incumbent industry but I suspect this moral posturing during lobbying is easily watered down by the time projects are financed and realised. There was one workshop by a team which helped communities with environmental justice, and another expert in a panel whose words I didn't absorb, but I was left wondering what the focus on justice actually leads to. One problem is that in civil law, justice, even for death, is served through financial compensation. Here's an imaginary conversation to explore this.
George Bush Senior: The American way of Life is not up for negotiation {speaking at 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janiero}
Al Gore: Sorry, Indigenous People, we need the minerals under your forest or the whole earth will burn.
Indigenous people: But we and the land are one. To sacrifice the land is to sacrifice ourselves.
Al Gore: We believe in justice and so we will give you a fair market price for your land.
Indigenous: There's one buyer and one seller and no competition - that's not a market
Al Gore: The market price is the price of the metals minus the cost of extraction.
Indigenous: Our land isn't on the market.
Al Gore: The earth belongs to everyone. This money will make you free to live in the city and consume American products.
Indigenous: Our way of life is not up for negotiation.
At which point Al Gore has 2 options
Al Gore option A: I take your point. In the name of justice we'll find some other minerals.
Al Gore option B: You people don't understand how much we need those minerals, In the name of justice you will be forced to accept our generous price.
If Gore says nothing to contradict George Bush senior, then justice means everyone can squander energy at the rate of Americans. If justice is somehow limited to climate interventions, while ignoring historical and other structural injustices, then it is meaningless. Why should someone already impoverished by generations of colonialism, racism, pollution etc care about the difference between justice and climate justice? How should historical wrongs be considered when say, setting wages in a battery factory? And how can competitive businesses even afford just decisions? My concern is that justice is easily reduced to just a word, just an adjective to just include in just about every statement.
It wouldn't be unfair if countries like Congo, Bolivia, China Russia, Afghanistan were to simply stop selling to developed countries in an attempt to force them to live within their own footprints. Of course any resistance to US 'investment' typically leads to collective punishment and regime change (see Bolivia), especially with the current batch of psychopathic leaders in the West. The activists' righteous talk of justice will probably only serve only the activists. The realpolitic dictates that the rich will seize the resources from the poor, period. I don't think this can be meaningfully opposed from within the Ecomodernist NetZero tech-salvationist discourse, I think it would require a union of the Degrowth / and Peace movements. Not many people seem to be focused on that.
Hopium
Comparing this conference with Jem Bendell's work on it being too late (Deep Adaptation and Breaking Together) made me realise that hope motivates some people and makes others complacent, while despair motivates other people and makes others give up. Different people need different messages. Climate reality is all about giving hope, but in its determination to that, it cherry-picks data and loses credibility. At the extreme end of the spectrum some even try to demonise those who don't have hope - its a miniature culture war.
Gore's main presentation is half bad news and half good news. The bad news is climate science, current climate disasters and projections of the same. The good news is about existing and new technologies, legislative changes, activism and some polished slogans about how we can and must make a difference. Some of the facts were encouraging, if true. Gore argues that wind OR Solar could easily meet our energy needs, especially given the falling costs. His most shocking claim, right at the end, was that if (and when) NetZero was attained then the climate would stabilise within 3-5 years. I guess that's conditional on no tipping points having been transgressed. This claim comes from the infamous climate scientist who created the controversial 'hockey stick model' Michael Mann. I don't think it is widely supported but an even more respected scientist, James Hansen believes otherwise. It all seems rather academic to me until the rate of CO2 emission growth slows.
CRP uses the targets defined in 2018 COP Paris agreements to stay under 1.5 degrees of warming. Many commentators are saying that temperatures have exceeded 1.5 for the past 10 months and that 1.5 is dead. This matter was raised and I think Gore himself said the official 1.5 figure was based on a 10 year average, which by calculation gives us another 4 years of hopium.
The same applies to the science around tipping points. Crossing tipping points mean that humanity loses what tenuous control over the climate we might have had. So when Gore was asked about tipping points (runaway feedback loops), he framed his answer in the future, mentioning the albedo effect (melting ice darkens the planets surface so it absorbs more heat from the sun) and the Amazon (instead of capturing carbon in growing plants, it burns and emits carbon). He also mentioned the methane being released by melting permafrost, calling it a concern but technically 'not a tipping point' which I didn't understand. So according to him no tipping points have been reached. The problem with being motivated by hope is that the constant bad news batters your identity, forcing the hoper into unsustainable cognitive dissonance.
Another crutch for hope is the long term targets of the Paris agreement. 2050 is a long way off and we can pack a lot of hopes into 25 years. Meanwhile the rate of ice melt is decades ahead of schedule, scientists are warning that the AMOC could shut down before 2030, and scientists, even with the latest models, can't even agree on why temperatures jumped so unexpectedly last year. In order to keep hope alive, it look like CRP is underplaying the pace of change and overplaying our agency over it.
"We are winning" says Gore, but who is we? There is little scope for triumphalism. The idea that we are winning is itself an injustice and an insult to those billions who are not winning or who have already lost. This 'we' then refers to the developed countries, whose loss lies in the future, and who can only beat climate change at the expense of the poor and on the back of their colonial gains. Seems racist to me. Climate change is a lose-lose situation. Anybody who 'wins' will be the moral equivalent of carpet-bagger, war profiteer, or arms dealer.
By putting all attention on mitigation, despite its slim and slimming probability, no resources remain to prepare for the fat and fattening likelihood of major disruption and possible civilisational collapse.
Taboo
There were some very clear (to me) holes in the discourse, and I don't think this was accidental. In 18 years since his first documentary Gore has had plenty of time to craft the narrative and defend against major criticisms, so these holes cannot be accidental. Here are some unmentioned issues that I sensed Gore would be unable to address adequately.
Degrowth and the money system.
The take away message of An Inconvenient Truth, that we should change our lightbulbs, has barely been elaborated. Maybe just a coincidence that his country is the poster child of consumerism, but Gore does not want to talk about consumers making sacrifices. Rather, the energy industry, the finance industry and the PR industry must meet consumer needs differently. The moral nuance of a Marvel comic. There is no criticism of capitalism, no mention of the money system. Justice for poorer countries means access to credit. Degrowth / post-growth were absent. There must be growth and it must be Green, ecomodern. I think underlying this taboo is the dogma unexamined in the west, of Progress, which maps directly onto economic growth. The idea that we might get poorer is as appealing as a car being stuck in reverse gear. Since WWII economic growth has been built in to our economy and culture, and the end of growth would require re-examining and restructuring many things, and asking uncomfortable questions. Not very hopeful.
Sacrifice zones
A paper last year warned that many of the minerals needed for the batteries and motors of the green transition are buried underneath the remaining pristine wilderness some of which is inhabited by remaining indigenous peoples. The transition therefore necessitates further environmental destruction and displacement of ancient knowledge and traditions. Not mining those areas is a theoretical option, but those 'rare earth' metals are far from abundant, and hard choices and sacrifices will have to be made if those resources are to be tapped. The reason this feels taboo is that the green transition is the only plan, and the little word 'just' is all that stands between rich people's demands and poor people's supply. Same as it ever was.
Problems with green energy
There are too many problems and paradoxes with the notion of green or sustainable energy to list here. If the only thing that matters is net CO2 emissions and NetZero, then some those problems: pollution, cost, justice, pale into insignificance. However some of problems are about the very viability of those technologies. Gore mocked the expensive and clunky Direct Air Capture (DAC) technologies but he didn't say that the 1.5 degree target depended on massive scaling of that tech. There are political difficulties obtaining enough rare earth metals, which explains the ongoing efforts of the CIA to take over the Bolivian government. "We will coup whoever [sic] we want", said US entrepreneur and lithium battery producer, Elon Musk. But how should US procure resources from places like Afghanistan, which they failed to occupy, from Russia and China who are uniting against them, from French east Africa, which has just ejected them, let alone procure those resources justly? Also, given the reliance on wind and solar, there was no discussion of the problems of intermittency. Nuclear power was barely mentioned, which means they support it but don't want the controversy getting people down. Optimistic stats about the growth of green energy and the increasing proportion of green energy, conceal the fact that the new energy is mostly augmenting, not replacing the fossil energy. WS Jevons, who formated the 'functions of money' described this paradox 150 years ago. Climate Reality seems to have nothing to say about it.
Concluding questions
While the eco-credentials of the conference centre were expounded, the eco-credentials of videoconferencing were not. Since most of the content came from the stage and was not interactive at all, I could have had a better experience via videolink from a room full of activists more local to me. I will conclude with some questions that I think would challenge Gore, if not dissolve the whole narrative.
- How can we trust a man who engages in US Deep State gaslighting by backing a zombie (Biden) in the upcoming US presidential election?
- We don't call a factory 'grassroots' just because ordinary people work in it. What would you say to the accusation that elites have co-opted the idea of grassroots activism? In my opinion grassroots activism means that not only the labour, but the agenda, and the money, come from the ordinary people.
- What do we mean by 'transition' when there are not enough materials to replace even existing energy infrastructure, and half of them are in China?
- In 1992 Bush said "the US way of life is not up for negotiation". Is that still policy and at what level is it implemented?
- What is the difference between climate justice and justice per se? Is it just for example that Al Gore is rich, while I am poor?
- What is the difference between fair trade and colonialism?
- CRP talks a lot about justice, but how does it ensure that justice is baked into the projects it supports?
- When we extract minerals from under pristine wilderness inhabited by people who may regard that land as sacred and our acts as profane, how do assure them and the public that justice is served?
- What can CRP actually do to actually ensure that the new wave of mineral extraction is less oppressive and polluting than the fossil fuel industry has been?
- An Inconvenient Truth was criticised for not talking about the changes consumers need to make - i.e. changing the lightbulbs. Why isn't CRP more balanced in addressing both energy supply and demand?
Thanks to Stephen Hinton for feedback.
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