Site TitleClimate matters, Grey-Bruce

The folly of the 1.8%

“But we are only 1.8%” and other denier delusions.

A few years ago, one could meet people who would flat-out deny the climate was changing. Just- “No it’s not. Nyah nyah. You are an alarmist.” Their numbers have diminished as the evidence mounts, but the immense influence of fossil fuels has ensured that some deniers still hang around.

I divide the deniers into two broad groups, the Ignorant and the Adamant. The Ignorant aren’t stupid, necessarily-they just don’t know. They don’t understand the science, because it’s hard. They don’t know whom to believe, because they haven’t read Blog #2. They are perfectly decent people, most of them, and they are just confused and worried. We can reach these people not by shouting at them and getting in their faces (which is what I generally do) but by providing them key bits of information, by giving them the tools by which to learn. There is a lot of good psychological research explaining why it is so hard to convince people with facts. Turns out there is something called “motivated reasoning”, in which new information is instantly countered with a subconscious negative. This is believed to be a survival mechanism left over from our Paleolithic forebears, one that instantly countered new or threatening information with a countervailing response. The result is that, when we think we are being scientists, we are really being lawyers.

This gets worse. In broad terms, humans may be classified as “hierarchical” or “egalitarian” in their outlook. In the US, these groups would be conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. In Canada, it’s not so clear, but one could guess that adherents of the PPC (People’s Party of Canada) would fall into the hierarchical group, and-if there are any left-members of the Green Party would be egalitarian.

This presents enormous difficulties when trying to communicate the threats posed by AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming). For example, when presented an example of an opinion on climate by an expert in the field, only 23% of heirarchicals accepted the expert’s credentials, whereas 88% of the egalitarians had no problem.

 In other words, some people will reject the validity of the source of scientific data if it conflicts with their deeply-held views. How in hell can we get around this? Confronting holdouts with hard data may in fact result in a hardening of their views. And it gets worse again. Back in the good old days, every village had an idiot, and the people knew to give the idiot a wide berth. Now, when any moron with a mouse can make mischief, people can seek out “news” and opinions that comfort them. Getting information from Facebook or Twitter or Fox News or The Rebel may be comforting to some, because “a man hears what he wants to hear, and disregards the rest”, but this makes it very hard to penetrate and communicate. Cherry-picking leads to motivated reasoning. And it’s not just the Right that is capable of holding outrageous views in the face of all the evidence: “If you want to find vaccine deniers, all you have to do is hang out at Whole Foods” (Mnookin, 2020).

If we want reluctant people to understand climate change, then we need to ensure that we present the information in a way that does not challenge their core beliefs, one that does not trigger their automatic defense mechanisms. So No, Mike, don’t yell at people- ask them what might change their minds, ask them what they really believe.

Of course, up until now we have been talking about the Ignorant. There may be hope that their minds can be changed. There is little we can do about the Adamant, because these people are just selfish assholes who are too wedded to fossil fuels to bother listening. They are the ones who will, predictably and monotonously, spout phrases like “We are only 1.8% of global emission” and “But China.” It then becomes our job, every time this nonsense surfaces, to bat it back down, hard, with facts. We won’t change the Adamant’s mind, but we will alert anyone else listening or reading.

Let us start dismantling the 1.8% argument, because it’s the epitome of selfish stupidity. Yes, Canada right now contributes “only” 1.8% of global emissions. Does that mean we get a reprieve? If so, then so does Turkey (1%), Iran (2%) and Mexico (1%). In fact, all the countries with emissions down around Canada’s sum to about 25% of the global total-far more than the US, and just under China, at 29%. So, selfish and dumb. But we aren’t done yet with these goomers.

The 1.8% argument is the precise moral equivalent of being one of 20 people in the hot tub, and saying “It’s OK if I pee in the hot tub because I am only a small percentage.” It is the exact moral equivalent of driving down the highway, throwing your cup out the window, and saying “The last 20 cars also did this, so I can too.”

“But we are a big, cold country.” Sure. And our per capita emissions are twice those of Iceland and Finland, four times those of Denmark and the Ukraine, and 5 times higher than Sweden. And enough of the “big country” bullshit. 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the US border.

The 1.8% argument is just a way of saying, I want everyone else to go first. Irredeemably selfish. But it’s also dumb. The warming of the planet is a function of the total CO2 we have added. In order to keep warming levels low enough that our civilization has a chance of surviving, it is obvious that the total atmospheric content of CO2 is the driving factor. Imagine for a moment that the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere need to be kept below 100 units. Then imagine some country saying “We have already produced 99 units, but we’re not producing as much now, so we will leave it to you guys to solve.”

That is precisely the 1.8-ers position, and it has recently been eviscerated by Carter and Dordi, 2021, in a technical paper for the Cascade Institute (Univ. Waterloo). They analysed Canada’s past and projected fossil fuel production-and the results are sobering. With 0.5% of the world’s population, our 2021-2050 production would exhaust 16% of the planet’s remaining carbon budget. Canada is a carbon bomb of global significance. The paper goes on to point out (and this will surprise no one) that the oil and gas lobby plays a dominating role in Canadian policy, obstructing supply side policy implementation. In the first year since the onset of the Covid pandemic, fossil fuel industries and associations met with government officials a total of 1,224 times, or more than 4.5 times per working day.

The outsized influence of the fossil fuel lobby is a subject for another post. This one is already getting pretty long, so I will spend a few sentences on “But China.”

First of all, China has a plan, and is on schedule. Even though they will have started at a much lower base, they plan to be at Net Zero just a few years after us. I think this rapid response on their part has to do with two factors: first, China’s governing elite are mostly engineers, not the lawyers and economists that dominate (litter) many other governments. This means they understand the issues, and their importance, whereas in Canada the scientists have to wade through an endless mass of bureaucrats (none of them scientists) until they get to decision makers. Never forget: year after year, DFO scientists recommended catch sizes for Cod off our East Coast, and year after year the Conservative government replaced those recommendations with catch sizes that were two and three times higher. Look where that got us. The other reason China can move so quickly, to be frank, is that their authoritarian government doesn’t have to do a lot of consulting.

I don’t worry as much about China as I do about India and the US. India’s a mess, a huge, chaotic country ruled by a religious fanatic. (What could possibly go wrong?) Right now (April 2022) they are cozying up to Russia because they want oil at discounted prices. (War crimes? What war crimes?) The planet’s ace in the hole here may be that neither China nor India can feed their people. They both depend on imports of food. Much of India’s agriculture depends on water from the Himalayas, carried down by the great rivers of SE Asia, the Indus, Ganges and Brahmaputra. Some of their water is shared with neighbours like Pakistan and Bangladesh. Climate change will result in huge drops in the amount of food India can produce. Governments faced with mobs of starving people may be open to negotiations-or, they could use their nukes.

The US is another sort of problem. Their fractured politics almost ensures nothing much will get done soon. A few crop failures in Red States may make them see the light.

Now we know how to deal with “We are just 1.8%”. Next, a blog on beer. Partly.