Obama and US Climate Change Movement: Who’s the Walrus? Who’s lunch?

Five living Presidents acknowledge the problem and must know that an effective response will demand ‘muscular’ American leadership - at home and globally. Four failed in office and the incumbent is failing too. Yet, the Climate Change Movement is still soft on Barack Obama.

The smartest, best-financed, most theatrical grassroots lobby since Sixties lacks something. The Civil Rights movement made its own mistakes and suffered for those mistakes. But it never outsmarted itself.

That movement didn’t check out its tactics or ambitious demands with Democrat Presidents Kennedy or Johnson. They challenged influential conservatives as well as liberals. There certainly wasn’t a Freedom March on Washington to celebrate Executive Orders and thank either President for their eloquent speeches. Their political savvy didn’t impress but their courage did. 

Climate change is intensifying and its Movement is anxious, a voice of alarm in every public square, explaining the science, naming deniers, and warning Obama that: he sure better do what he’s already signaled he’s comfortable doing.

New York Times explained just last week how Obama’s I’ll Do What I Can Plan can help secure a global agreement that’s less laughable than what’s on paper now:

*His negotiators will aim for a “sweeping” set of commitments from all the significant polluter nations. But it will be an “accord” not one of those clunky treaties that must be ratified by at least 67 votes in the US Senate.

*Implicitly, Congress won’t be asked to provide the US Executive any new tools to make an important difference; for instance, a staged carbon tax or standby tariff on high carbon imports.

Apparently, Obama will coax leaders of burgeoning state-directed economies to reset their priorities, threaten powerful domestic allies, without asking US legislative branches to legislate - without formally binding the next President, let alone the United States of America.

Cute? You bet.

Professional advocates quoted in this front-page story, however, are content; Obama is being “realistic” about his limits. “There’s some legal and political magic to this,” purrs Jake Schmidt, an expert in global climate negotiations with the Natural Resources Defense Council, a distinguished Washington environmental lobby.

A smooth leak gently handled by a great liberal newspaper; nothing surprising here.

After all, without the US at the table, there won’t be another UN negotiation. Diplomats, advocates and their media trackers would be stuck in Washington agonizing over another crummy Canadian pipeline.  

Many of us can accept that Obama knows - and likes - what he’s doing. And admire his subtle calculations, if not his soaring speeches.

During this fall’s Congressional elections, Obama Democrats want to brag about America’s fossil fuel boom as well as their support for clean energy - and portray Republicans as anti-science and scarier than the weather.

Moderates within the two national parties, market economists, techno optimists - and most likely Barack Obama - see that significant market changes in the US are already shifting against the dirtiest fossil fuels. So, he favors tweaking regulations that tweak business, leaving noncommittal legislators and consumer at peace.

However, do any of these mitigating explanations have a place in the heads of a radical movement?

Specifically, is it in the interests of the Climate Movement’s transformative vision to accommodate a self-styled lame duck President and his Do What I Can Plan? Is it in its interest to assist the Democratic Party paint Republicans as impossibly hostile to their cause? Is it transformative to help divide Americans along ancient party lines on a profound national responsibility?

Is it progress to accept an evasive legislative strategy that strands moderate Republicans and lets blue Democrats off the hook in Congress?

What’s fascinating about all this is the willingness of the Movement, the champions of an agenda that is determined to change how humankind lives and earns a living, to accept so easily politics as usual.  Surely their radical agenda should only reward and comfort politicians with the nerve and skill to change what’s possible. 

Climate movement’s own disrespect for science

The only unifying objective behind the various campaigns to shift humanity away from CO2-emitting fossil fuels is to ensure that the upper atmosphere continues to be able to keep the earth’s surface temperatures bearable.

It is a challenge borne of scientific analysis and a problem that can’t be successfully addressed until all global beneficiaries of the status quo join in.

Climate scientists and the social sciences of persistent human wants agree that it can’t be solved without either a formal global agreement to cut emissions or transformative breakthroughs in energy research and innovation. The environmental movement generally rejects the latter as too optimistic and too slow.

(The world’s fossil fuel industry is highlighted because it is the principal source of the energy we all crave, not because today’s oil executives are ideal campaign targets as robber baron capitalists run amok. Most of the value they generate ends up in consumer and producer governments. Also, they are amon the smartest employers of scientists and engineers in the world. More important, their industry only exists because we all use their products and haven’t found a tolerable way to stop.)

Climate-change campaigners are dedicated to global top-down action. You start with the affluent and enlightened democracies, scold rich skeptics, and eventually plead with Asia, the climate crime’s feisty new entrant.

This is work for unifiers, not dividers.

And, so, you’d think that the urgency of their unifying mission would guide their tactics. That they would set aside unresolved, divisive arguments from those innocent times when we divided over capitalism, socialism, and religion without a care in the world for the upper atmosphere.

Yet the notion of thinking globally and acting locally isn’t working. Local, it seems, is also easier to think about.

Fragmented campaigns using filmable fragments of the planet are dividing even early adopters. Consensus science is being shouldered out of the campaign by sensationalism, ideology, regionalism, and the primitive religious claims of Mother Earth and scene-scape warriors in penthouse cities along our lovely, chilly coasts.  

Three fair immediate illustrations:

Manitoba Transportation Minister Steve Ashton announced last week that his government formally opposes the transportation of Alberta’s oil on an existing rail line across the vast, empty lands of northern Manitoba to the seaport at Churchill — turning his back on the last hundred years of co-operative Western development through that "gateway province." Ashton would close another commercial outlet for a sister province because transporting oil by rail today is “too risky to the environment and the safety of those who live in the north.”

Without bothering with a proper review of the proposal by the Transportation Safety Board of Canada, the Manitoba government embraces this extravagant, untested assertion by Grand Chief Irvin Sinclair:

“One derailment or spill is all it would take to destroy the livelihood of generations," Mr. Sinclair said.

“There goes the wildlife,” he said. “There goes a way of life for everybody if something drastic happens. It would be devastating to the environment.”

Coal mining protest in B.C. is set to erupt, according to The Globe and Mail, because significant commercial deposits of clean-burning coal unfortunately were discovered in the wrong valley:

“Nothing is more sacrosanct to the Tahltan than the Sacred Headwaters – a high, wide valley 400 kilometers just hours south of Alaska. There, the Stikine, Skeena, and Nass salmon rivers that nourished aboriginal cultures of the Pacific Northwest originate in an area known to First Nations as Klabona, or Klappan. According to native myth, the Big Raven forged the world in that valley.”

Ryan Lizza's New Yorker report Keystone XL, a gossipy political update on Obama’s so-called “signature” environmental decision, quotes Kate Gordon, the senior policy/marketing talent behind California billionaire Tom Steyer’s anti-Keystone television campaign. She was a reluctant convert:

“She did see the benefits of the campaign, however: “The goal is as much about organizing young people around a thing. But you have to have a thing. You can’t organize people around a tipping point on climate change.”

Phantom jobs in Canada’s largely uninhabitable north, non-existent gods everywhere, catastrophic scenarios about the resource, pipeline, and rail industries that still are the workhorses of North America, the cleanest economic superpower in history — all have equal place in the marketing tool kit of today’s climate change movement.

None of these divisive fragments — these stories about “things” — has anything to contribute to mobilizing the world to address climate change intelligently.

They put untruths to work, create demons, and invite heads of states and local politicians to tighten other people’s belts.  

Barack Obama or planet Earth? Which comes first, Mr. Weatherman?

Has the North American climate change movement decided that keeping Democrats in power in the US—and getting Conservatives out in Canada—is their priority for now? Along with the "deniers," are environmentalists putting partisan preferences before the "survival of life" as they know it?

Witnessing the follow-up to Obama’s airy speech on climate change this Tuesday would make a reasonable person wonder.

Obama introduced his message as: "a father" who believes in science and is too busy to meet with the Flat Earth Society. Accordingly, the Keystone pipeline, he declared, will not be permitted if he thinks it will “significantly exacerbate” carbon emissions. Also, his environment regulators will be instructed to negotiate carbon-emission reductions from existing US coal plants. On the 5-year-old Keystone application, he didn’t offer a clue about what more he’s waiting to learn. On coal, he didn’t define his negotiating objectives or demonstrate how the negotiations with coal states and corporations could be resolved before his term expires—let alone before next fall’s Congressional midterm elections.

Implicitly, Obama thinks America can meet its CO2 emission-reduction “targets” without a carbon tax, higher energy prices, another recession, or even additional Congressional action to expand the EPA’s regulatory authority. America can leave the job to him, his regulators, and his pencil-ready diplomats at the State Department.

Of course, there is not a conscientious economist, environmental expert, or citizen who has come of age since Bill Clinton and Jean Chrétien came to power in the early 90s who believes that Obama’s approach will do the job. Certainly, not one Canadian environment spokesperson believes that the Canadian government—pursuing the same tactics as Obama—can meet the same targets for Canada, even though Canada is twice blessed with clean renewable power.

Nevertheless, environmentalists in both countries publicly celebrated Obama's speech. What is going on here?

It was one thing to not raise coal emissions as an urgent issue during last year’s presidential election. It could have cost Obama Ohio and Pennsylvania—and, possibly, the presidency. Also, it’s reasonable to ignore right-wing nuts who think climate change is a Communist conspiracy—and, as well, avoid left-wing nuts who think pollution was invented by capitalism.

However, the climate change movement today seems less intent on demanding credible action in the US than it is in not embarrassing the Democrats politically.

This leads to silly and enfeebling behavior: laying down the law in Alberta where no one votes in US elections; damning "foreign" oil companies; and, most importantly, letting Obama get away with rhetoric and writing off the political weight and decisive potential importance of moderate conservative voices in Washington and in swing states.

Environmentalists are free to be as partisan as they wish. However, they should expect to be treated accordingly.

Keystone XL Project: Ambassador Jacobson’s little lambs in Canada

You could argue that being a real US ambassador to Canada is impossible, that America’s Ambassador David Jacobson doesn’t truly represent a foreign power because he doesn’t have an independent host to worry about.

Canada’s business leaders, diplomats, and most accomplished politicians have little influence in Washington, but they do know what’s going on. When Jacobson speaks publicly in Canada, he’s addressing public affairs audiences that already know as much about Washington affairs as audiences in Seattle or Tampa.

When he’s speaking in private, he can spice up the gossip, but needn’t worry about hurting anyone’s feelings or about ever having to pass along unpleasant or alarming messages from Stephen Harper to his President.

Ottawa is a G-8 capital, but it isn’t Jerusalem. Can you picture Barack Obama ever wrestling with a Jacobson aide memoire after the kids have gone to bed?

Nevertheless, Jacobson is mighty powerful up north. His President is more liked, trusted, and respected by Canadians than their own prime minister and parliament. So, in effect, as Obama’s man in Ottawa, he knows that he has the backing of millions of Canadians when he tells Harper what Obama wants to hear.

The ambassador’s key job isn’t to represent widely known American interests, but to coach—to tell Canadians how they can most pleasingly present their interests in Washington. About a month ago, in a major speech, he told Canada’s government and business establishment how to help Obama feel more comfortable about approving the Keystone XL Pipeline.

He admonished Canadians and their governments to communicate their concerns about the environment more effectively and to more concretely address the environmental concerns of American environmentalist.

There was no explaining why Obama was taking an eternity to decide. Everyone knows. No imagining what saying “no” could do to Canada’s economic recovery or their relationship. He only told them what they needed to hear: “What do they say to influential Americans?”

Nevertheless, his advice was unanimously accepted as “deft”. So, right now, Harper’s government and a wave of Canadian lobbyist ministers, executives, and premiers are being watched—and judged—by Canadian voters as they scramble to live up to Jacobson’s’ instructions.

Getting past Canada’s mediocre environment rhetoric—and talking about its somewhat superior performance in actually addressing CO2 emissions and its policy initiatives in both cap-and-trading and carbon taxing—will not impress US climate-change activists or their experts and friends in Washington. They know that neither Canada nor the US has a comprehensive plan to mobilize businesses and consumers to do their part to solve the problem.

Environmentalists have decided to concentrate on Canada’s shortcomings rather than America’s—for old-fashioned tactical reasons. Concentrating on Alberta’s oil sands is economically illiterate and scientifically trivial. Still, doing it makes news, does not scare liberals in swing states, raises money for public education, and keeps Hollywood activists on side.

In following the Jacobson line, Canadians and their Washington allies seem compelled to say silly things.

Claiming that the pipeline isn’t important environmentally (because the oil in question will get to the market anyway) shamelessly understates the damage that a negative decision would do to Canada—and the prospects of building an indispensable climate change consensus amongst North Americans and inside their capitals.

Unquestionably, killing Keystone XL would hurt capitalists in both countries. And it would provide a dramatic victory for those selling the suicidal idea that the free markets and conservatives and climate change and progressives must be in conflict.

Nevertheless, stopping this pipeline—even turning Alberta into a New England meadow—wouldn’t cut growing global demand for fossil fuels, diminish the longer-term profitability of the fossil fuel industry, or convince representatives in Congress to save the planet by doing in their districts what their government is agonizing about doing to Alberta.