That is the final paragraph of my (thick)
Expert Report written more than a year ago for Juliana v. United
States. We are fortunate to have such a brilliant and dedicated group
of attorneys who have assembled a score of Experts and are working to
ensure that young people receive their day in court.
In the meantime, there are reasons why it may be useful to summarize the climate science story.
Albert Einstein once said that a theory or explanation should be as
simple as possible, but not simpler. And it depends on who the
audience is. My target is the level of a Chief Justice or a fossil fuel
industry CEO.
This is a draft, because I want to be sure that there are no
inconsistencies in my testimonies against the government, against the
fossil fuel industry, and in support of brave people who have taken
risks in fighting for young people. So I am seeking suggestions for how
to make this science story clearer.
I should say something here about end-game strategy. We probably are
getting close to the next opportunity for real progress. We blew the
last opportunity, when Barack Obama was elected. It was not his fault.
We had not really made the whole climate/energy/economics story clear
enough.
Despite the sour turn toward increased global authoritarianism, the
heart-warming sight of marching Australian children, defying their Prime
Minister’s instruction to stay in school, suggests that it may not be
long until we have a chance at another day of reckoning. This time we
must be clearer about what young people and other life on our planet
need to assure their future. And thoughtful people at high government
and industry levels must understand.
History of this understanding is not well reported, as I discuss in Sophie’s Planeta. Already in 1982, E.E. David, President of Exxon Research & Engineering, in his keynote at the Ewing Symposiumb, presciently characterized the climate story: “faith in technologies, markets, and correcting feedback mechanisms is less than
satisfying for a situation such as the one you are studying at this
year’s Ewing Symposium. The critical problem is that the environmental
impacts of the CO2 buildup may be so long delayed. A look at the theory
of feedback systems shows that where there is such a long delay the
system breaks down unless there is anticipation built into the loop. The
question then becomes how to anticipate the future far enough in
advance to prepare for it.”
David recognized the delayed response of the climate system,
which is the critical factor that gives rise to intergenerational
inequities. He concluded that this delayed response demands anticipation
to avoid system breakdown, where, in the climate case, system breakdown
would be catastrophic climate change for today’s young people and
future generations. David’s conclusion began “To sum up, the world’s
best hope for inventing an acceptable energy transition is one that
favors multiple technical approaches subject to correction - - feedback
from markets, societies, and politics, and scientific feedback about
external costs to health and the environment.”
aA slightly revised draft of the Preface of Sophie’s Planet is available here. bavailable here.
Response of the U.S. government and the fossil fuel industry was not
policy that would move the energy industry gradually and efficiently
toward clean carbon-free energy. Instead they chose very expensive
investment in developing technologies such as hydraulic fracturing
“fracking,” an energy-, chemical-, water-, and resource-intensive
process that allows extraction of more and more fossil fuels. E.E.
David became a climate change denier. Government and industry concurred
in this approach.
In assessing this failure of early government policy in Sophie’s Planet I
suggest that we, the scientific community, bear much of the
responsibility. I disagree with the assessment in the dedicated issue
on the New York Times last summer, that the greater public was the
villain. I argue that President George H.W. Bush, in supporting the
1992 Rio Framework Convention on Climate Change, did what was
appropriate at that time.
The failure has been not to advance policy in the subsequent 26 years.
When I gave a talk to executives of an oil company that adorned its web
site with windmills and solar panels, I learned that they actually had
almost no investment in carbon-free energy, it was more a PR strategy.
They could take advantage of the clout of “Big Green” environmental
organizations, while not really getting serious about carbon-free
energy.
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