Risking the planet for big business profits
By Norm Dixon
As the December climate conference in Kyoto approaches, the rich capitalist countries are refusing to agree to emission targets that begin to reduce the levels of greenhouse gases reaching the atmosphere. Unless these gases are stabilised — according to the 2500 scientists from 80 countries who make up the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) — the Earth's average temperature will rise 1.5-4.5°C during the next century. The results of such global warming are potentially catastrophic.
To achieve stabilisation, global greenhouse emissions must be rapidly cut by at least 60% from current levels. Anything less will not stem global warming. In response, government and industry spokespeople bleat that cutting greenhouse gases will "cost" jobs and "reduce" economic growth.
While North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand are responsible for more than 80% of past emissions and 75% currently, governments are selfishly placing protection of the profits and "competitiveness" of their powerful corporations — and the super-rich who own them — above the welfare of the world's population.
Not surprisingly, governments and allied corporate interests have sought to cover their naked, profit-driven irresponsibility with the fig leaf of scientific respectability.
Robert Eaton, chairperson of the giant US car maker Chrysler, writing in the July 17 Washington Post, described estimates of the consequences of global warming as "uncertain science".
He continued: "[Emission reductions] would be an unwise and unnecessary move even if scientists could agree that the Earth's atmosphere is getting warmer because of man-made carbon dioxide and other gases. It becomes more so given the fact that they can't."
Western Mining Corporation's (WMC) chief executive, Hugh Morgan, recently told a conference in Japan that it was a "leap of faith" to believe scientific models of global warming because they had not "passed the experimental test".
Australian PM John Howard — who argues that Australia needs to increase greenhouse emissions in the "national interest" — understandably echoes these sentiments. During the South Pacific Forum meeting in September, Howard claimed there was still "quite a bit of debate about the science" of global warming.
The Business Council of Australia claims that no "proof" has yet been supplied to link greenhouse gases and climate change.
Remember the tobacco industry's claim that no "proof" existed to link smoking with cancer? Or the asbestos mining industry's view that no "proof" existed to link asbestos and mesothelioma? What about the chemical companies and the US and Australian governments' denial of a link between cancer and birth defects amongst Vietnam war veterans and dioxin in the herbicide Agent Orange?
In each case, corporate and government apologists sought to avoid responsibility — and the resulting costs and penalties — by sponsoring scientific studies to contradict or cast doubt on less favourable or damning research. Thousands of people died from cancer before the scientific evidence accumulated to such an overwhelming degree that governments and courts could no longer ignore the links. Now big business and their governments want us to "wait" until global warming's "certainty" is "proved" to their satisfaction.
Pulitzer Prize winner Ross Gelbspan, in his book The Heat is On, outlined how a relatively small number of US scientists — the much quoted "greenhouse sceptics" — in league with the highly paid public relations specialists have created the false impression that scientists are sharply divided over climate change.
The former chair of the IPCC, Bert Bolin, agrees that the resulting high profile these well-paid "sceptics" have achieved in the media has created an "increasing polarisation of the public debate" in many countries that does not reflect discussions among scientific experts.
Contrary to the claims of the sceptics and their backers, there is a broad consensus among the vast majority of global climate scientists: global warming is real, it has already begun, and decisive and immediate action must be taken to prevent possibly terrible consequences, which include rises in sea levels, devastating droughts and storms, increases in life-threatening diseases and other effects.
There is little consensus over the details, and none pretend accurate predictions can be made. For every scenario that suggests milder consequences, there is another that points to something potentially much worse.
The sceptics' modus operandi is not to question directly the reality of global warming but to suggest that the scenarios presented by scientists are "exaggerated" or too "apocalyptic", or argue that not enough evidence has accumulated for an accurate assessment to be made or that countervailing phenomena that will delay warming have not been factored into the models. They quibble about the "uncertainties" and complain that warming is not happening just "as predicted".
The dissemination of the sceptics' views is made easier by the self-interested largess of big business. Before US President Bill Clinton's October announcement of the US government's weak proposed target for the Kyoto conference, the Business Roundtable — a grouping of CEOs from more than 200 large corporations — funded national advertising campaigns and lobbying to raise doubts about the dangers of global warming.
Thirty CEOs personally converged on Washington in June to attend an official briefing on the administration's position on greenhouse.
Australian big business has used these sceptics to influence Australian government policy. In August, a conference in Canberra was sponsored by the APEC Study Centre — whose affiliates include WMC, Rio Tinto, Boral, Alcoa, BP, Esso, Woodside Petroleum, the National Australia Bank and a host of others — and a far-right US think-tank called the Frontiers of Freedom Institute. The confab was endorsed by the US Chamber of Commerce and the New Zealand Business Roundtable.
Featured speaker was Dr Patrick Michaels from the University of Virginia's Department of Environmental Services. Michaels is a leading greenhouse sceptic. The latest issue of the Mineral Policy Institute's Mining Monitor reveals Michaels' long association with US fossil fuel industries.
In 1991, Michaels was adviser to a US$500,000 PR campaign sponsored by the Information Council for the Environment to debunk concerns about greenhouse. The ICE was a front for the National Coal Association, coal company Western Fuels Association (WFA) and the Edison Electric Institute.
Right-wing talk-back demagogue Rush Limbaugh urged listeners to phone up for an information package written by Michaels.
In 1995, Michaels testified that fossil fuel industries had paid him $165,000 in consultancy fees since 1990. He admitted that his newsletter, World Climate Change, is funded by the WFA and had received $49,000 from the German Coal Association.
When the Nine Network's Sunday program presented its feature story on November 16, titled "The Greenhouse Effect: Hothouse Hype?", none other than the "constant and colourful critic of greenhouse doomsayers", Dr Michaels, featured prominently.
The central claim in the program was Michaels' that: "Everybody who forecast gloom and doom is now really taken aback by the fact that there is no warming at all in the last decade; they don't know how to handle that one".
Few studies agree with Michaels. Dr Neville Nicholls, leader of the climate research group for the Bureau of Meteorology in Melbourne, has found clear evidence of a 0.4° to 0.8°C warming in the south-west Pacific Ocean.
According to the Worldwatch Institute's Vital Signs report issued in March, 1996 was the fourth warmest year on record since 1866. The IPCC in 1996 reported that in 1995, average temperatures were 0.4°C higher than the average 30 years ago and 0.8° higher than 100 years ago. Nine of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 1980.
The October 11 New Scientist reported that Alaska's permafrost is melting as a result of average temperatures rising 1°C per decade for 30 years, just as computer modelling of the greenhouse effect had predicted. "If it's not greenhouse warming, what the hell is it?", asked the University of Alaska's Gunter Weller.
As Green Left Weekly writer Phil Shannon observed in 1994: "The greenhouse effect sceptics are asking us to gamble with the planet. But why take the risk? Changes which would prevent global warming, such as preservation of forests, development of renewable energy sources, more and better public transport, are all worth doing with or without the spectre of the greenhouse effect.
"Those of us who don't own oil wells, coal mines or road freight transport conglomerates have nothing to lose by taking the greenhouse effect seriously and being wrong about it, but much to lose by ignoring the risks and being wrong. To do nothing, to dismiss the greenhouse effect, to exploit those genuine areas of uncertainty surrounding greenhouse effect science, as the Business Council of Australia does, is scientifically unwarranted, socially complacent and politically irresponsible."