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August 10, 2012

America's Drought of Political Will on Climate Change

By Naomi Wolf

America has led the world in climate change denial, a phenomenon noted with amazement by Europeans, not to mention thinking people around the world. Year after year, the US has failed to sign global treaties or curb emissions, even as our status as a source of a third of the world's carbon emissions goes unchanged.

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Cross-posted from The Guardian


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A field of corn drying up in a drought-stricken field near Vincennes, Indiana, July 2012. Photograph: Scott Olson/Getty Images

As the US faces record drought and an Old Testament-level pestilential heatwave in the midwest, American environmental denialism may be starting to change. The question is: is it too late?

America has led the world in climate change denial, a phenomenon noted with amazement by Europeans, not to mention thinking people around the world. Year after year, the US has failed to sign global treaties or curb emissions, even as our status as a source of a third of the world's carbon emissions goes unchanged.

It is fairly well-known what has been behind that climate change denial in America: vast sums pumped into an ignorance industry by the oil and gas lobbies. Entire think-tanks to obfuscate man-made climate change have been funded by these interests, as have individual congressmen and women. Entirely typical, for instance, is Louisiana Representative John Fleming, whose campaigns, according to blogger John Henry, accept about $200,000 a year from oil and gas lobbyists, and who uses his social media pages to deny global warming.

It is weird to live inside that US denial about climate change. Last year, for example, as tropical storm Irene approached New York, we duly boarded up windows, put in emergency supplies, and heard endless alarming bulletins from the mayor's office about which neighborhoods were likely to be submerged if the tides surged -- without ever hearing from local officials or the media a word connecting rising sea levels with manmade global warming. All the more weird because New Yorkers weren't writing off portions of their downtown neighborhoods to overflowing seawater a century ago.

It is weird, too, to watch the leaves turn red earlier and earlier in the fall in the American northeast and have absolutely everyone say, "the weather is strange" -- yet never see mainstream media reflect any interest in the connection between human industrial activity and that strangeness. And this weather map shows how widespread and extensive that extreme weather is in the US.

But could our denial be cracking, this summer, as, in the heartland -- that most iconic of American landscapes -- broiling temperatures injure humans and cook fish in the water? This summer a crisis has occurred (though one that, again, is seldom reported on in terms of our outsize contribution to the disaster), as midwestern farmers lost vast swaths of their corn crops to scalding heat and drought. In the American unconscious of wishful ignorance, this disaster and loss was to be borne, as usual, by other people far away.

But we face some serious problems in rising out of our torpor. In "Shifting Public Opinion on Climate Change: An Empirical Assessment of Factors Influencing Concern over Climate Change in the US, 2002--2010," John Wihbey shows that Gallup surveys reveal Americans' level of concern varying widely:

"In 2004, 26% of respondents said they worried "a great deal" about the issue; in 2007 that number rose to 41%; by 2010, it had fallen to 28%. This variation comes despite consensus among scientists about the underlying data patterns and virtual unanimity of scientific opinion."

Wihbey and colleagues' study found that this fluctuation was caused by, among other factors, political polarization. In other words, when one party says global warming is a crisis and the other says all that is nonsense, and there is no cooperation between political elites at both ends of the spectrum, the net result is apathy.

"The two strongest effects on public concern are Democratic congressional action statements and Republican roll-call votes, which increase and diminish public concern, respectively. This finding points to the effect of [a] polarized political elite that is emitting contrary cues, with resulting (seemingly) contrary levels of public concern."

They found, ominously, that the level and quality of good information in the general media at large had little effect on people's levels of concern -- indeed, weather events themselves had little bearing on people's levels of climate-related anxiety or interest. Only the combination of media coverage and expressed alarm from political leaders bumped up public concern.

With the oil and gas lobbies pumping money into Congress to blunt any professed concern among the political class, that motivating union of genuine concern and honest messaging can scarcely be relied on. The authors conclude, dispiritedly:

"Given the vested economic interests reflected in this polarization, it seems doubtful that any communication process focused on persuading individuals will have much impact."

I spent part of this summer looking at glaciers in Alaska; in Juneau, in Tongass National Forest, park rangers expect that a glacier there will withdraw, from effects of anticipated climate change, in 50 years. So, the federal government is planning for the effects of manmade climate change, even as the White House and US Congress remain paralyzed from doing anything to arrest the warming: the very definition of denial. If we don't snap out of this stasis of stupidity, nothing can change for good.



Authors Website: http://naomiwolf.org/

Authors Bio:
Author, social critic, and political activist Naomi Wolf raises awareness of the pervasive inequities that exist in society and politics. She encourages people to take charge of their lives, voice their concerns and enact change.

Wolf’s landmark international bestseller, The Beauty Myth, challenged the cosmetics industry and the marketing of unrealistic standards of beauty, launching a new wave of feminism in the early 1990s. The New York Times called it one of the most important books of the 20th century. Her next book, Vagina: A Cultural History, will be released in 2012.

Wolf’s New York Times bestseller, The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, is an impassioned call to return to the aspirations and beliefs of the Founders’ ideals of liberty. The New York Times called the documentary version “pointedly inflammatory.” Her latest book, Give Me Liberty: A Handbook For American Revolutionaries, includes effective tools for citizens to promote civic engagement and create sustainable democracy.

Her international journalism includes the investigative report “Guantánamo Bay: The Inside Story” for The Times of London, and as a columnist for Project Syndicate her articles have been published in India, Philippines, Egypt, and Lebanon. She’s a frequent blogger on The Huffington Post and writes cultural commentary for The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Harper’s Bazaar. Her TV appearances include Larry King Live, Meet the Press, The Joyce Behar Show, and The Colbert Report.

A graduate of Yale and a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford, Wolf was a consultant to Al Gore during his presidential campaign on women’s issues and social policy. She is co-founder of The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, an organization that teaches leadership to young women, and The American Freedom Campaign, a grass roots democracy movement in the United States whose mission is the defense of the Constitution and the rule of law.

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