Matt Johnson says there’s a clear starting point for governments looking to stabilize the atmosphere to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas pollution.

While decision makers often talk about the carbon dioxide emissions produced during combustion of fossil fuels, Johnson, a researcher from Carleton University, notes there is a much more powerful greenhouse gas that must not be forgotten.

“If we’re serious about net-zero, at any date, by 2050, the absolute first thing that has to go to zero is methane,” Johnson tells The Narwhal in an interview.

Johnson recently co-authored a study that found oil and gas companies, along with governments, are underestimating the amount of methane that is leaking from oil and gas production. The initial research found methane emission levels in British Columbia were 1.6 to 2.2 times higher than current federal inventory estimates. 

As his team continues to survey 8,000 sites across the country, there is mounting evidence from a range of scientific studies and assessments, including the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, that indicates existing government policies are failing to adequately tackle the methane emissions that could trigger some of the worst potential outcomes of the climate crisis.

At the same time, some of the research shows how governments and industry can get ahead of the problem and achieve significant reductions in global heating, faster than similar action that is aimed at slashing CO2 pollution.

“The first step to any reduction has to be to measure it,” Johnson says. “I think the regulations we have are an important first step, but I think people would be naive to think that we aren’t going to have to go a whole lot further.”

But to succeed, some observers say governments must also counter mounting pressure and lobbying from industry stakeholders that seek to slow down action and delay new regulations.

Many oilpatch companies are also seeking billions of dollars in government subsidies to adopt greener technologies, according to Audrey Mascarenhas, president and CEO of Questor Technology Inc., a firm that helps energy companies reduce pollution.

But instead of offering handouts to oil and gas companies, she says government officials in Canada could get better results by adopting tougher regulations.

“All the major oilsands players have gone and said we need $60 billion and then we will be clean and actually our fuel is cleaner than everybody else,” Mascarenhas says. “We don’t realize that our regulations are actually — especially on emissions —  behind the United States.”

Methane regulations could reduce warming by 0.3 C

There is agreement among scientists that stronger methane regulations could have a significant impact on efforts to slow down global warming.

Climate scientists say methane is the second biggest contributor to warming temperatures. The gas is around 28 to 36 times more potent than carbon dioxide. It only lasts for about a decade, but warms the planet a lot faster in a shorter time. After a decade or so, the gas oxidizes into carbon dioxide. It’s also why it’s referred to as a “short-lived climate forcer.”

Johnson’s report, co-authored by Carleton researcher David Tyner, concludes that an “immediate reduction of methane emissions is seen as essential to holding planetary warming below a 2 C threshold.” In addition, a 2021 assessment of impacts of methane on climate models by the United Nations Environment Programme found that rapid reductions in methane pollution could reduce potential warming by 0.3 C by the 2040s. 

Environmental Defense Fund senior climate scientist Ilissa Ocko’s research on methane has reached similar conclusions about how regulations could help reduce anticipated warming, although not by as much as what the UNEP assessment had anticipated. Regardless, Ocko has estimated that up to 0.25 C of warming could be avoided prior to 2050 through stronger policies from all stakeholders as well as stronger regulations.

“Methane is the single fastest, available and affordable opportunity to slow down the rate of warming,” Ocko says.

National and provincial regulations with a 2025 methane reduction target of 40-45 per cent below 2012 levels came into force last year. But the latest assessment of the science from the IPCC indicates that the world is going to surpass 1.5 C in the 2030s instead of the 2040s as previously predicted, “unless deep reductions in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions occur in the coming decades.”

The Trudeau government in Canada has already announced plans to strengthen its methane regulations, but has been vague about the details.

Ilissa Ocko’s research has found that better methane regulations could significantly reduce the amount of global warming expected from climate change. Photo: Leslie Von Pless

At the 26th annual United Nations Conference of Parties (COP26), beginning Oct. 31, countries will, for the first time since the signing of the Paris Agreement, present their updated plans for reducing greenhouse gas emissions — including methane.

Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said on Oct. 11 that the federal government will commit to a plan to reduce methane emissions “by at least 75 per cent below 2012 levels by 2030.” The announcement was made in support of the Global Methane Pledge Ministerial Meeting, co-chaired by the United States and the European Union.

While it declined a request for an interview, Wilkinson’s department told The Narwhal it will release a report in late 2021 on “the efficacy of the suite of federal actions to achieve the 2025 methane target.”

The most recent announcement is consistent with recommendations from IPCC’s latest report and also targets proposed by the Pembina Institute (75 per cent below 2021 levels by 2030).

The Canadian Energy Research Institute supports a slightly higher target with analysis showing the country can reduce methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by 80 per cent from 2012 levels by applying a price on carbon of less than $25 per ton.

The government currently estimates that methane accounts for 13 per cent of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions.

“It’s a matter of taking the current regulations and making them more stringent,” says Jan Gorski, senior analyst at the Pembina Institute.

Mascarenhas says increasing energy efficiency and reducing methane emissions is the “biggest opportunity right now that gets us 80 per cent of the way there [to limit warming].”

Flares are just one example where regulations can be strengthened, she explains. At oil and gas extraction sites, excess gas is routed through a piping system that is burned as it exits a flare stack. In the industry, flares are assumed to be 98 per cent efficient, meaning 98 per cent of the greenhouse gases that exit those pipes are assumed to be combusted. But Mascarenhas says it’s evident that’s not the case.

“It’s black and smoky — how can it be 98 per cent efficient?” she says.

Pembina’s report on existing regulations showed that federal regulations and provincial regulations in B.C., Alberta and Saskatchewan need major improvements on high efficiency flares and combustors, among other issues like public reporting to demonstrate compliance to regulations.

B.C. oil and gas sites releasing up to 2.2 times more methane emissions than federal estimates: study

Canada’s main oil and gas industry lobby group, the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, did not respond to a question from The Narwhal about whether Canada needs stronger methane regulations. Instead, its spokesman, Jay Averill, emailed a statement saying the industry is “actively working to achieve the methane emissions reductions” and added “British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan’s regulations on flaring, venting and fugitive emissions from upstream facilities” serve as models for other onshore jurisdictions.

Current regulations are also working with out-of-date data, according to Johnson, the researcher from Carleton.

“The absolute critical piece is we need a commitment to do these kinds of measurements,” he says. “We’re going to have to do that annually for at least the next five or 10 years, and probably as long as we have an oil and gas sector.”

It involves measuring methane emissions every year, updating an inventory based on measurements, not projections, and then tracking whether regulations are working, Johnson explains.

Johnson notes his research has adopted a new technology to detect and measure emissions within facilities and revealed that major methane emission sources from the oil and gas sites include tanks, compressors, flares and pneumatic devices. A tank can leak methane gas if pressurized gas is sent to it. A compressor can leak by letting the gas escape through gaps between piston cylinders. And flares can end up venting the gas directly into the atmosphere due to multiple factors like wind or inefficiency.

There is also existing technology to stop and prevent pollution from leaking.

Pneumatic devices, such as pumps and level controllers, traditionally powered by gas pressure, can be switched to “low-bleed” or “zero-bleed” where instead of being gas-powered, they’re powered by electricity, a relatively affordable solution, Johnson explains. Combusting the gas to generate power, through clean combustion units like those offered by Questor, can burn the gas instead of flaring and venting, and are among the cheapest to implement, Mascarhenas and Ocko both note.

A recent study on methane emissions found oil and gas companies, along with governments, are underestimating the amount of methane that is leaking from oil and gas production. Photo: Amber Bracken / The Narwhal

But Johnson adds that tanks require a little more infrastructure and cost, like installing a vapour recovery unit. 

“As soon as you put a price on carbon of any kind, then these things start to look really cheap,” Johnson says.

“There will be some sites you decide aren’t economic, like marginal wells that are remote, producing a lot of gas and not a lot of oil,” Johnson says. “It’s a multifaceted thing, no matter what.”

Ocko believes existing technology can allow for up to a 75 per cent reduction in methane emissions in the oil and gas sector.

“In theory, if you shut off all methane emissions tomorrow, a quarter of the warming would be gone in a couple decades,” she says.

In addition to methane emission reduction being good policy, she adds there are also potential economic benefits for producers that capture and sell methane on the market.

“Because you can sell it, there’s a lot of things you can do for a no net cost; you make up the cost of fixing the leaks with the product you sell,” she says.

The oilpatch lobby group appears to agree.

“Companies also have a financial interest in these efforts as producers would much rather be selling their natural gas than losing it through the production and transportation process,” Averill, from CAPP, says. “Additional methane captured means less emissions and more product makes it to market.”

The market for natural gas is also shifting, with regions like Quebec and Europe demanding a highly regulated product that conforms to climate goals.

Earlier this year, Quebec rejected the proposed Énergie Saguenay project — an LNG export project. The province’s environment minister Benoit Charette said the project would discourage a transition toward cleaner energy sources. That was a $9 billion project, 750-km pipeline to which the province simply said ‘no.’

Last year, the French government pulled out of a US$7 billion deal with Texas-based NextDecade Corporation because the LNG project emitted too much methane at its supply origin.

“Some companies are realizing the need to address methane, both from a timing perspective but also it’s what investors and stakeholders are looking for,” Gorski says.

Some oil and gas companies are moving toward that goal.

In 2018, Shell Canada said it launched a program to reduce methane emissions by replacing old valve actuators at one of its B.C.-based sites. However, Shell Canada did not respond to The Narwhal’s request for comment on what actions the company was taking in light of the IPCC’s report and the new findings on methane detection.

Updated Nov. 1, 2021, at 11:30 a.m. ET: This article was updated to clarify a line that had overstated a summary of Ocko’s research. In fact, it was a UNEP assessment, and not Ocko, that provided an estimate about how methane regulations could reduce potential warming by 0.3 C.

Updated Oct 21, 2021, at 5:28 p.m. ET: This article was updated to clarify details describing Johnson’s research on detecting and measuring leaks.

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The courts are “our best hope for averting dangerous climate change” believes Dutch lawyer Roger Cox who recently won what may be one of the most important legal cases this century.

Last June a court in The Hague ruled the Dutch government had to increase its carbon dioxide emissions cuts from 17 per cent to 25 per cent by 2020 compared to 1990 levels. Canada’s 2020 target is an increase of about seven per cent over its emissions in 1990 and it will not make that target.

Although the right-wing Dutch government fought the case, it will comply with the judgment, Cox said during a presentation at the Osgoode Hall Law Society Tuesday evening in Toronto. The event was hosted by the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI), a non-partisan think tank.

Cox represented an environmental group, the Urgenda Foundation, and almost 900 citizens in the two-year case. They argued the Netherlands is obligated to cut emissions between 25 and 40 per cent by 2020 since all developed countries, including Canada, agreed to this at the UN climate negotiations in Cancun in 2010.

The big question is: could the decision be replicated in Canada?

“Climate litigation is inevitable,” said Lorne Sossin, dean and professor, Osgoode Hall Law School, York University.

While it might be difficult to win, simply bringing a climate lawsuit forward would be important, Sossin said.

One major reason is that courts require compelling evidence — and there is an abundance of that on climate science and how to cut emissions from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), International Energy Agency and other respected bodies.

“Politicians and the media falsely claim acting on climate will harm the economy but it’s easy to prove in court reductions are not so difficult,” said Cox.

The Dutch government didn’t even contest these facts, Cox said.

“The courts will try to find a remedy once they know the real facts of climate change,” said David Estrin, senior research fellow and certified environmental law specialist at the Centre for International Governance Innovation.

Informing the court about climate science and the far-reaching impacts and risks to future generations was half of the Dutch case, Cox said.

“Few people anywhere really grasp the seriousness the problem. There are so many aspects people don’t yet get,” Cox told DeSmog.

One of those is that nothing new that uses fossil fuels can be built after 2018  to have a chance of keeping global temperature rise below 2C.

“Given the overwhelming enormity of the harm from climate change” Canada’s judiciary may have to play a role if the state refuses to act appropriately said Hon. Stephen Goudge, Q.C., formerly Justice of the Ontario Court of Appeal.

The Dutch court saw a “gigantic problem and found a way to deal with it,” Goudge said.

Governments have a “duty to protect the interests of future generations” the District Court of The Hague found. And it also ruled since it is far cheaper to act now, the state is obligated to act now rather than unfairly burden future generations with the costs of cutting emissions and coping with impacts.

The Dutch government also tried the Stephen Harper government’s favourite “we’re too small to matter” talking point. The Netherlands emissions are less than 0.5 per cent of global emissions compared to Canada’s 2 per cent. The court pointed out that the government couldn’t prove those cuts would not have an impact, Cox said.

But isn’t acting on climate solely a matter for governments? The court said the state has the responsibility to act reasonably and had not in this instance. “A legal question with political consequences is still a legal question, the court ruled,” Cox said.

The Dutch government has said it will appeal parts of the decision. In a recent report, the Dutch environment agency said the Netherlands could easily increase cuts to 25 per cent by 2020, but only if it begins right away. Delay would make reaching the court-mandated target difficult and expensive.

Cox is involved in a similar case underway in Belgium and would like to see cases brought in other countries. He just accepted an appointment at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and will be working on how to use international law, commitments and treaties in domestic courts and on legal concepts of climate justice.

Canadian law is based on common law while the Dutch have a civil law system, as does Quebec.  It would be much easier to use the Dutch decision in a climate case in Quebec, said Lewis  Klar, former dean of the Faculty of Law at the University of Alberta.

However Klar told DeSmog there is little chance a climate case could win in Canada even using the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

“Few legal experts thought we would win when we started,” Cox said.

In the end, the court “really felt the need to act due to the clear climate science and the risks to future generations,” he said.

Photo: Urgenda/Chantal Bekker

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Thanks to a bombshell investigation reported over the weekend by The New York Times, The Guardian, Inside Climate News and more, we now know that the prominent climate denialist Willie Soon, oft-cited by climate denying politicians and industry figures, calls his publications “deliverables” to his fossil fuel funders.

Some of these “deliverables” have even found their way into the reports produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), generally regarded as the most comprehensive evaluation of the current state of climate science.

After years of research and information requests, The Climate Investigations Center and Greenpeace have unearthed incontrovertible proof that Soon, of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA), has received more than $1.2 million from the fossil fuel industry, and referenced many of his papers as “deliverables” in emails to funders.

According to the Times, at least 11 of the papers Soon has published since 2008 fail to disclose the fossil fuel industry funding. [Read Inside Climate News' breakdown, "11 Times Willie Soon Failed to Disclose Fossil Funding."] 

Even more troubling, Soon’s industry-funded research has also turned up in the IPCC’s vital work. DeSmogBlog has searched all five of the IPCC’s major assessment reports for references to research and papers by Soon.

In all, seven papers that Soon co-authored have been referenced and/or cited in IPCC assessment reports. Two of the seven were papers referred to by Soon as "deliverables" in the correspondences just made public by Climate Investigations Center and Greenpeace. Some of the papers acknowledge research funding from various arms of the fossil fuel industry. But others do not. Some of the papers cited by the IPCC predate the Harvard Smithsonian Center involvement, but Soon's long history of taking fossil fuel industry money is well established. In fact, as far back as 2003, years before the release of the Fourth Assessment Report (AR4), documents revealed that Soon was actively working to "undermine" the report. 

For the historical and academic record, here are all of the papers co-authored by Willie Soon that have been referenced or cited by the IPCC in its periodic assessment reports. Soon's papers were cited in the third, fourth, and fifth installments. 

1) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) Working Group One (WGI) Chapter 5, page 462

In the text: “These simulations suggest that solar and volcanic forcing (Fan et al., 2009; Liu et al., 2009a; Man et al., 2012) may exert only weak regional influences on monsoon systems.”

Citation: Liu, J., B. Wang, Q. Ding, X. Kuang, W. Soon, and E. Zorita, 2009a: Centennial variations of the global monsoon precipitation in the last millennium: results from ECHO-G model. J. Clim., 22, 2356–2371. (PDF)

Comment: This is one of the papers that Soon referred to as a "deliverable" to Southern Company funders, though Soon himself does not disclose any funding in the paper. According to DeSmogBlog contributor Dr. John Mashey, this appears to be “one of those innocuous papers that Soon and Baliunas have done to generate publications and credibility.”  

Note: Three different papers co-authored by Soon, including one "reply to responses" to a 2007 paper, are all referenced in the same sentence in Working Group Two's portion of IPCC's Fifth Assessment Report. They are as follows. 

2) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) Working Group Two (WGII) Chapter 28, page 1576

In the text: “Use of terrestrial resources by polar bears was suggested as adaptive (Dyck et al., 2007, 2008; Dyck and Romberg, 2007; Armstrong et al., 2008; Dyck and Kebreab, 2009; Rockwell and Gormezano, 2009; Smith et al., 2010).”

Citation: Armstrong, J.S., K.C. Green, and W. Soon, 2008: Polar bear population forecasts: a public-policy forecasting audit. Interfaces, 38(5), 382-395. (PDF)

Comment: No funding acknowledgement or disclosure from Soon or co-authors, though this is another paper that Soon referrered to as a "deliverable" in a report to his funders at Southern Company. 

3) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) Working Group Two (WGII) Chapter 28, page 1576

In the text: “Use of terrestrial resources by polar bears was suggested as adaptive (Dyck et al., 2007, 2008; Dyck and Romberg, 2007; Armstrong et al., 2008; Dyck and Kebreab, 2009; Rockwell and Gormezano, 2009; Smith et al., 2010).”

Citation: Dyck, M.G., W. Soon, R.K. Baydack, D.R. Legates, S. Baliunas, T.F. Ball, and L.O. Hancock, 2007: Polar bears of western Hudson Bay and climate change: are warming spring air temperatures the “ultimate” survival control factor? Ecological Complexity, 4(3), 73-84. (PDF)

Comment: Fossil fuel industry funding of research is acknowledged: “M. Dyck and W. Soon initiated this scientific study around 2002–2003 without seeking research fundings and both have contributed equally. W. Soon’s effort for the completion of this paper was partially supported by grants from the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, American Petroleum Institute, and Exxon-Mobil Corporation.”

4) Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) Working Group Two (WGII) Chapter 28, page 1576

In the text: “Use of terrestrial resources by polar bears was suggested as adaptive (Dyck et al., 2007, 2008; Dyck and Romberg, 2007; Armstrong et al., 2008; Dyck and Kebreab, 2009; Rockwell and Gormezano, 2009; Smith et al., 2010).”

Citation: Dyck, M.G., W. Soon, R.K. Baydack, D.R. Legates, S. Baliunas, T.F. Ball, and L.O. Hancock, 2008: Reply to response to Dyck et al. (2007) on polar bears and climate change in western Hudson Bay by Stirling et al. (2008). Ecological Complexity, 5(4), 289-302. (PDF)

Comment: This is a reply to responses to the paper cited above (Dyck, et al, 2007), published in the same journal. There is no funding acknowledgement or disclosure from Soon or co-authors.

5) Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) Working Group One (WGI) Chapter 6, page 466

In the text: “The ‘hockey stick’ reconstruction of Mann et al. (1999) has been the subject of several critical studies. Soon and Baliunas (2003) challenged the conclusion that the 20th century was the warmest at a hemispheric average scale. They surveyed regionally diverse proxy climate data, noting evidence for relatively warm (or cold), or alternatively dry (or wet) conditions occurring at any time within pre-defi  ned periods assumed to bracket the so-called ‘Medieval Warm Period’ (and ‘Little Ice Age’). Their qualitative approach precluded any quantitative summary of the evidence at precise times, limiting the value of their review as a basis for comparison of the relative magnitude of mean hemispheric 20th-century warmth (Mann and Jones, 2003; Osborn and Briffa, 2006). Box 6.4 provides more information on the ‘Medieval Warm Period’.”

Citation: Soon, W., and S. Baliunas, 2003: Proxy climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years. Clim. Res., 23(2), 89–110. (PDF)

Comment: This is the infamous case that lead to the resignation of multiple editors of the Climate Research journal in protest over a flawed peer review process that allowed publication of the paper. Funding from the American Petroleum Institute was acknowledged: “This work was supported by funds from the American Petroleum Institute (01-0000-4579), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (Grant AF49620-02-1- 0194) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Grant NAG5-7635)”

6) Third Assessment Report (TAR) Working Group One (WGI) Chapter 6, page 382

In the text: “An alternative approach which has been used to reconstruct TSI (Reid, 1997; Soon et al., 1996) is to assume that time variations in global surface temperature are due to a combination of the effects of solar variability and enhanced greenhouse gas concentrations and to find that combination of these two forcings which best combine to simulate surface temperature measurements. However, these authors did not take natural climatic variability into account and a TSI series derived by such methods could not be used as an independent measure of radiative forcing of climate.”

Citation:  Soon,W.H., E.S. Posmentier, and S.L. Baliunas, 1996: Inference of solar irradiance variability from terrestrial temperature changes, 1880-1993: An astrophysical application of the Sun-climate connection. Astrophys. J., 472, 891-982. (PDF)

Comments: Funding from fossil fuel industry is acknowledged: “This program was supported by the Electric Power Research Institute, Mobil Foundation, Inc., Texaco Foundation, Inc., Scholarly Studies Program, and Langley-Abbot Fund of the Smithsonian Institution, American Petroleum Institute, and Richard C. Lounsbery Foundation. This research was made possible by a collaborative agreement between the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the Mount Wilson Institute.

7) Second Assessment Report (SAR) Working Group One (WGI) Chapter TK, page 130

In the text: “A recent paper by Zhang et al (1994) helps to bracket the range of variability observed in sun-like stars and hence the likely past and future variability of our Sun. They noted that empirical models based upon sunspots and faculae do not account for all irradiance variations observed over an activity cycle (see also NRC (1994)) and base their con-elation on an observed relationship between brightness and excess chromospheric emission, using the Ca II H and …”

Citation: Zhang, Q., W.H. Soon, S.L. Baliunas, G.W. Lockwood, B.A. Skiff and R.R. Radick, 1994; A method of determining possible brightness variations of the Sun in past centuries from observations of solar-type stars. Astrophys. J., 427, L111-L114. (PDF)

Comments: The authors acknowledge funding from the fossil fuel industry: “The work at Mount Wilson Observatory was supported by the Mobil Foundation, Inc., Electric Power Research Institute, Scholarly Studies Program, and Langley-Abbot fund of the Smithsonian Institution, American Petroleum Institute and Richard C. Lounsbery Foundation. The work at Lowell Observatory was supported by the Lowell Research Fund and the Air Force Geophysics Laboratory. This research was made possible by a colloborative agreement between the Carnegie Institution of Washington and the Mount Wilson Institute."

Willie Soon's Failure to Disclose Conflicts of Interest Hoodwinks IPCC  

According to the IPCC (see Annex 2 of the IPCC principles document, page 17), the lead authorship team of any given assessment report section, "is required to critically assess information they would like to include from any source. Each chapter team should review the quality and validity of each source before incorporating information into an IPCC Report."

If authors of journal publication fail to acknowledge potential conflicts of interest, when the IPCC lead authors review the material, they lack a crucial piece of information that impacts the "quality and validity" of the source.

By hiding funding disclosures from the publications themselves, Soon effectively hoodwinks the IPCC. And so the world's most comprehensive assessment of climate science is forced to at least consider pseudo-science fully paid for by the fossil fuel industry. 

Additional research by John Mashey.

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Vivian Krause has spent years scrutinizing how Canadian environmental groups are funded, claiming she's just asking "fair questions."

But as the blogger-turned-newspaper-columnist has run rampant with her conspiracy theory that American charitable foundations' support of Canadian environmental groups is nefarious, she has continually avoided seeking a fair answer.

If Krause were seeking a fair answer, she'd quickly learn that both investment dollars and philanthropic dollars cross borders all the time. There isn’t anything special or surprising about environmental groups receiving funding from U.S. foundations that share their goals — especially when the increasingly global nature of environmental challenges, particularly climate change, is taken into consideration.

Despite this common-sense answer, Krause’s strategy has effectively diverted attention away from genuine debate of environmental issues, while simultaneously undermining the important role environmental groups play in Canadian society.

Creating Diversions a Trademark of Oil Industry Strategy

This diversion strategy is a well-known tactic of the oil industry. A strategy document leaked yesterday details how one of the world’s most powerful PR firms, Edelman, advised TransCanada to undermine opponents to the Energy East pipeline.

Edelman recommended TransCanada apply pressure to opponents by “distracting them from their mission and causing them to redirect their resources.” To achieve that, Edelman advises TransCanada to work with “supportive third parties who can in turn put the pressure on, particularly when TransCanada can’t.”

Sound familiar?

In Vivian Krause's resume, she proudly takes credit for spawning a Senate inquiry and Canada Revenue Agency audit — distractions that forced environmental groups to spend time defending themselves, rather than doing their important work as watchdogs and advocates for environmental protection.

While Krause has been busy maligning the funding of Canadian environmental groups, very little attention has been paid to where Krause gets her bread buttered.

Krause Receives 90% of Income From Resource Industries

Krause frequently claims her research is independent (PDF) and that her work is unaffiliated with any industry — yet she has admitted that since 2012, more than 90 per cent of her income has come from oil, gas and mining interests through honorariums and speaking fees.

Krause has been paid as much as $10,000 to speak to energy executives. While she may not be directly employed by the fossil fuel industry, her work certainly aligns with that industry’s interests.

Groups paying Krause speaker’s fees included the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, the Association for Mineral Exploration and the Vancouver Board of Trade.

Large speaking fees are increasingly being used as a handy way to support the work of industry allies without directly employing them.

To see just how contentious speaking fees can be, take a gander at the recent Rex Murphy or Peter Mansbridge controversies. CBC ended up adjusting its policy, requiring hosts to disclose their speaking fees.

What Was Vivian Krause’s Argument Again?

So let’s get this straight: Krause, who has relied on speaking fees from the multinational resource sector for 90 per cent of her income for the past three years, argues that Canada’s environmental organizations are fronts for U.S. interests because they receive a portion of their funding from across the border?

Despite the spurious logic, Krause is still given a platform to spread her misleading information in the Postmedia chain of newspapers, including the Financial Post and The Province, as well as on Global News shows where she's a regular panelist on Unfiltered with Jill Krop.

While Krause may spin a mysterious tale, the answer is simple: philanthropic dollars crossing borders to support work on global issues is the norm. And Canadian charities are required to disclose all significant donations from foreign sources annually.

The Real Debate Canada Needs

The continued debate over the funding sources of the environmental community is simply a diversion tactic that favours the fossil fuel industry's desire to avoid having the real debate about Canada’s energy future.

The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change urges nations to phase out fossil fuels immediately to avoid the worst impacts of global warming.

The report puts responsibility squarely on the shoulders of our elected leaders, saying they can “either put policies in place to achieve this essential shift, or they can spend the rest of their careers dealing with climate disaster after climate disaster.”

But Canada won’t meet its 2020 international climate target, according to Environment Commissioner Julie Gelfand.

“The federal government does not have an overall plan that maps out how Canada will achieve this target. Canadians have not been given the details about which regulations will be developed, when, nor what greenhouse gas reductions will be expected,” Gelfand wrote in a report last month.

Now that China and the U.S. have signed a deal agreeing to cut emissions, Canada is left with even fewer excuses not to act.

Meantime, the federal government’s mandate to advance an energy superpower agenda marches forth, resulting in controversy across the country — from the Kinder Morgan fiasco on Burnaby Mountain, to the First Nations legal battle against Enbridge Northern Gateway, to the Athabasca Chipewyan and Beaver Lake Cree First Nations’ fight to prevent oilsands expansion on their territory, to efforts to ban fracking in Nova Scotia.

These efforts are not the outcome of foreign conspiracy — they’re the outcome of a lack of any sensible national conversation about how to develop our natural resources while meeting our international climate change commitments.

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Today Vivian Krause published an opinion piece in The Province claiming “a vote for Vision is a vote for U.S. oil interests.” So, you might be wondering: just who is Vivian Krause? We’re so glad you asked…

An essential component of all public relations campaigns is having the right messenger— a credible, impassioned champion of your cause.

While many PR pushes fail to get off the ground, those that really catch on — the ones that gain political attention and result in debates and senate inquiries — almost always have precisely the right poster child.

And in the federal government and oil industry’s plight to discredit environmental groups, the perfect poster child just so happens to be Vivian Krause.

Krause describes herself as an “independent” researcher and a single mom asking “fair questions” about American funding of Canadian environmental groups. She blogged for many years in relative obscurity before becoming the federal Conservatives’ favourite attack dog.

Krause’s moment in the sun came in January 2012 when Joe Oliver, Canada’s then Natural Resources Minister, released his infamous letter decrying “foreign-funded radical” environmentalists for “hijacking” the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline review process.

Krause had primed the pump for the Conservatives to swoop in and achieve their goal — to discredit environmental groups by building a public narrative about them acting nefariously, thereby justifying spending millions of dollars on audits of charities’ political activities.

Never mind that philanthropic dollars cross international borders all the time. Never mind that the Northern Gateway proposal is sponsored by China’s state-owned oil company Sinopec, along with many other foreign oil companies. Never mind that there’s probably no more legitimate participation in a democracy than citizens signing up to speak at public hearings.

No, once you have a vendetta, inconvenient facts don’t matter. And Krause’s vendetta against environmental groups has been in the works for a long time — ever since she worked in public relations for the farmed salmon industry.

The Salmon Farming Industry and the Birth of a Vendetta

It was due to her interest in promoting salmon farming that Krause started rifling through the tax returns of large American foundations supporting wild salmon advocacy in Canada.

It didn’t take long for Vivian Krause to cook up a conspiracy theory involving American foundations working to undermine Canadian interests — and then to expand that theory to any number of conservation issues in Canada, with a special focus on conservation campaigns that were inconvenient for the oil industry.

To Krause, it seemed suspicious that foundations from across the border were giving money to Canadian groups working on Canadian conservation and energy issues. It must be, Krause surmised, that these big foundations are spending their dollars to manipulate Canadian energy and environment politics to further American interests. And, she went further to suggest, these Canadian groups are acting as pawns of these suspicious foundations.

Speaking of suspicious, by early 2013, Krause had admitted that more than 90 per cent of her income for 2012 had come from oil, gas and mining interests. Groups paying Krause speaker’s fees included the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, the Association for Mineral Exploration and the Vancouver Board of Trade.

Vivian Krause's Convenient Aversion to Climate Change Facts

Fast forward to this week when Krause couldn’t resist weighing into the Vancouver election campaign, claiming that: “For Canada, there is no single economic issue that is more important than getting Alberta oil to global markets.”

While oil is no doubt an important part of the Canadian economy, Krause’s statement overlooks two inconvenient facts:

1) According to Statistics Canada, the oilsands account for only two per cent of the national GDP.

2) A study by Simon Fraser University and The Goodman Group Ltd released this week finds Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain jobs promises are overblown and recommends the proposed expansion be rejected as it is neither in the economic nor public interest of B.C. and Metro Vancouver.

The argument that continued oilsands expansion is a positive for the Canadian economy — and more to the point, the Metro Vancouver economy — is far from a slam dunk.

While Krause enjoys spinning another of her clandestine tales in linking Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson to U.S. foundations, it’s increasingly clear that it’s all a convenient cover story for her to push her own view that the fossil fuel industry should be allowed to expand.

“Voting for Gregor Robertson means voting to support a U.S.-funded, anti-pipeline campaign that continues the U.S. monopoly on Canadian oil, keeping Canada over a barrel,” Krause writes. “When you go to the poll, don’t vote for Gregor Robertson. Vote for Canada.”

Perhaps Krause missed the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which states that governments need to peak emissions, rapidly phase out fossil fuels and transition to 100 per cent renewable energy pronto? Rapidly expanding the oilsands and building new pipelines to serve that expansion doesn’t actually fit into any plans to have an inhabitable earth — not to mention the terrifying consequences an oil spill could reap on Vancouver.

If Krause’s modus operandi is climate change denial, it would be nice if she just stated that right up front, instead of conveniently ignoring it.

(If you want to know where we’re coming from at DeSmog Canada, mosey on over to our About Us page, where you can find out. Hint: we agree with 97 per cent of scientists about climate change, we’re proud to accept donations from anyone who supports our mission and we’re not going to tell you how to vote because that’s not our thing.)

In a recent op-ed in the Calgary Herald, Barry Cooper, a University of Calgary professor and known climate skeptic called on Alberta Premier Jim Prentice to use Krause as an attack dog against environmental groups.

“[Prentice] knows from his work with Enbridge and B.C. First Nations that the real source of opposition to Northern Gateway are the enviros and the deep-pocketed American foundations that fund them,” Cooper wrote. “So, Jim, hire Vivian Krause, who has done a lot of work on this problem, and use the government megaphone to publicize her analyses of the pernicious sources of enviro funding.”

Which raises the question: did someone hire Krause to weigh in — clumsy as it may be — on the Vancouver election?

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In its starkest warning yet about the challenges facing humanity, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said Sunday humans are responsible for all of the planet’s warming since 1951.

The Fifth Assessment Report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change includes a strict carbon budget for governments for the first time. More than two-thirds of that carbon budget has already been used up and at current rates the world would burn through the rest in less than 30 years, the panel warned.

“With this latest report, science has spoken yet again and with much more clarity. Time is not on our side,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. “Leaders must act.”

For the best chance of avoiding severe levels of warming, governments will need to peak emissions, rapidly phase fossil fuels down to zero and transition to 100 per cent renewable energy, the report said.

This transition is not only possible, but economically viable, according to the IPCC. Since 2007, clean energy costs have dropped dramatically and continuing down a path of investing in renewable energy will be cheaper than paying a growing bill for "severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts.”

The report sets governments a clear choice: “Either put policies in place to achieve this essential shift, or they can spend the rest of their careers dealing with climate disaster after climate disaster.”

“We have the means to limit climate change,” said R. K. Pachauri, chair of the IPCC. “The solutions are many and allow for continued economic and human development. All we need is the will to change, which we trust will be motivated by knowledge and an understanding of the science of climate change.”

The media release said the Synthesis Report confirms climate change is being registered around the world and warming of the climate system is unequivocal.

“Our assessment finds that the atmosphere and oceans have warmed, the amount of snow and ice has diminished, sea level has risen and the concentration of carbon dioxide has increased to a level unprecedented in at least the last 800,000 years,” said Thomas Stocker, Co-Chair of IPCC Working Group I.

The Synthesis Report makes a clear case that many risks of a warming world unfairly burden the least developed countries.

“Many of those most vulnerable to climate change have contributed and contribute little to greenhouse gas emissions,” Pachauri said. “Addressing climate change will not be possible if individual agents advance their own interests independently; it can only be achieved through cooperative responses, including international cooperation.”

Still, while climate impacts will be felt the most by poorer countries, the effects of global warming are already being felt here in North America.

Overall yields of major crops in North America are expected to decline steeply by 2100 without adequate adaptation. The productivity of California crops are projected to decline between nine and 29 per cent by 2097, with large declines in suitable land for grape and wine production. Meanwhile, corn and wheat production is projected to be negatively impacted in the northeastern and southeastern U.S.

Warm winters in western Canada and the U.S. have increased winter survival of the larvae of bark beetles (also known as mountain pine beetles), helping drive large-scale forest infestations and forest die-off. In British Columbia alone, mountain pine beetle outbreaks have already severely affected over 18 million hectares (44.5 million acres) of pine forests and are continuing to expand.

Reaction to the IPCC’s latest report was swift and voluminous.

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry described the report as another canary in the coal mine.

“We can’t prevent a large-scale disaster if we don’t heed this kind of hard science,” Kerry said. “The longer we are stuck in a debate over ideology and politics, the more the costs of inaction grow and grow. Those who choose to ignore or dispute the science so clearly laid out in this report do so at great risk for all of us and for our kids and grandkids.”

May Boeve, Executive Director of 350.org, said the scientists have done their job.

“Now it’s the politicians’ turn,” Boeve said. “World leaders have everything they need to act: clear scientific evidence, a strong economic case, and huge public support. The only thing they lack is the will.”

Merran Smith, director of Clean Energy Canada, said renewable energies are an essential ingredient in the world’s efforts to tackle climate change.

“Canada has a strong foundation in clean energy, but we’re only scratching the surface of our potential,” Smith said. “Our governments and companies must take the IPCC’s findings to heart and strengthen their commitment to clean energy.”

The IPCC report provides governments a roadmap to a new global climate agreement, which is due next December in Paris. Governments are expected to pen a draft agreement this December at the UN climate talks in Lima and follow up with national climate action plans by March.

Image Credit: Anthony Citrano via Flickr

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Problems caused by climate change are likely already dangerous and global warming may be irreversible, according to a draft science report by a United Nations committee.

The Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change (IPCC) report, leaked earlier this week to a number of major media organizations, said continued greenhouse gas emissions caused primarily by burning oil, coal and natural gas will probably increase the likelihood of  “severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems.”

The New York Times said Tuesday the IPCC report found that continued warming is likely to “slow down economic growth, make poverty reduction more difficult, further erode food security, and prolong existing poverty traps and create new ones, the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hot spots of hunger.”

The NYT story said runaway growth in greenhouse gas emissions is already swamping all political efforts to deal with the problem.

“Global warming is already cutting grain production by several percentage points, the report found, and that could grow much worse if emissions continue unchecked. Higher seas, devastating heat waves, torrential rain and other climate extremes are also being felt around the world as a result of human-produced emissions, the draft report said, and those problems are likely to intensify unless the gases are brought under control.”

The Associated Press said the 127-page draft report, which used the word “risk” 351 times, paints a harsh warning of what’s causing global warming and what it will do to humans and the environment.

The report said that without changes in greenhouse gas emissions, “climate change risks are likely to be high or very high by the end of the 21st century,” the AP noted.

“The report says if the world continues to spew greenhouse gases at its accelerating rate, it’s likely that by mid-century temperatures will increase by about another 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) compared to temperatures from 1986 to 2005. And by the end of the century, that scenario will bring temperatures that are about 6.7 degrees warmer (3.7 degrees Celsius).”

Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann told DeSmogBlog: 

"Climate change is real, it’s caused by us, and it’s a problem that we need to contend with now. The good news is that it would be relative inexpensive if we act now. It will be far more costly if we further delay efforts to cut our carbon emissions.

"We scientists are, as a lot, conservative and staid, understated, cautious. The fact that the IPCC is framing the threat in such stark terms says it all: we must act now."

Bloomberg News said that the report warned humankind risks causing irreversible and widespread damage to the planet unless there’s faster action to limit the fossil fuel emissions blamed for climate change.

“Possible permanent changes include the melting of the ice sheet covering Greenland,” Bloomberg said the report noted. “That would boost sea levels by as much as 7 meters (23 feet) and threaten coastal cities from Miami to Bangkok along with island nations such as the Maldives, Kiribati and Tuvalu.”

“Many aspects of climate change and associated impacts will continue for centuries, even if anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases cease,” Bloomberg noted the report said. “The risk of abrupt and irreversible change increases as the magnitude of the warming increases.”

IPCC Chairman Rajendra K. Pachauri said the Synthesis Report, integrating the findings the three working group contributions to the IPCC’s recent Fifth Assessment Report and two special reports, will provide policymakers with a scientific foundation to tackle the challenge of climate change.

“It would help governments and other stakeholders work together at various levels, including a new international agreement to limit climate change,” Pachauri said in a media release Monday.

The Synthesis Report integrates key messages from the three recent working group reports: the physical science basis (September 2013), impacts, adaptation, and vulnerability (March 2014), and mitigation of climate change (April 2014).

The comments received from governments will be used in a meeting in Copenhagen on October 27-31 at which time the IPCC will finalize the Synthesis Report.

The IPCC and former U.S. vice president Al Gore were awarded the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize
for their combined efforts to “build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change, and to lay the foundations for the measures
that are needed to counteract such change.”

Despite the prestigious award, some scientists have repeatedly warned politicians and the public that the IPCC observations are several years out of date and, if anything, problems associated with climate change are much more severe than their reports have said.

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Nicholas Stern, one of the world’s most influential economists, has come out with a new report showing that the future costs of climate change have been incredibly underestimated.

The report, Endogenous growth, convexity of damages and climate risk, indicates it is even more important than previously thought that politicians quickly and aggressively stop unchecked climate change caused by man-made carbon dioxide emissions.

Stern, a professor at the Grantham Institute at the London School of Economics, and his co-author Simon Dietz found that the current economic models used to calculate the cost of climate change are vastly inadequate and need to be updated so that proper decisions can be made about risks associated with global warming.

They said that even the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has cited the existing economic models and, as a result, has arrived at severely limited assumptions about the costs of global warming.

“It is extremely important to understand the severe limitations of standard economic models, such as those cited in the IPCC report, which have made assumptions that simply do not reflect current knowledge about climate change and its potential impacts on the economy,” Stern, a former chief economist with the World Bank, said in a media release.

“I hope our paper will prompt other economists to strive for much better models which will help policy-makers and the public to recognize the immensity [of] the potential risks of unmanaged climate change. Models that assume that catastrophic damages are not possible fail to take account of the magnitude of the issues and the implications of the science.”

The media release said Monday that Stern and Dietz modified some key features of the ‘dynamic integrated climate-economy,’ or DICE, model, which was initially devised by William Nordhaus in the 1990s, to take into account the latest findings and some of the uncertainties about the major risks of climate change that are usually omitted.

The new model allows a wider range of values to be considered for climate sensitivity, which is the long-term change in global average temperature that would result from a doubling of the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, the release says. 

The new model also includes a broader range of potential climate impacts, because the standard model tends to underestimate the potential economic damage that could be created by climate change, it added.

Dietz said the old economic model has been useful for economists who estimate the potential impacts of climate change but that the new model shows that some major improvements are needed before it can reflect the extent of the risks indicated by the science.

“Our aim was to show how a new version of the model could produce a range of results that are much more representative of the science and economics of climate change, taking into account the uncertainties,” Dietz said.

“The new version of this standard economic model, for instance, suggests that the risks from climate change are bigger than portrayed by previous economic models and therefore strengthens the case for strong cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases.”

Stern and Dietz said their research suggests a global carbon price should range from US $32 to $103/tCO2 by 2015 and rise to between $82 and $260/tCO2 by 2035.

They also found that that living standards could begin to decline later this century unless the growth in annual emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels is checked. Their peer-reviewed paper is scheduled for publication in The Economic Journal.

Image Credit: Stern at the 2009 World Economic Forum via Flickr.

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Downward Google trends

"The largest upward spike in Google searches for global warming occurred just after Earth Day in April, 2007, a few weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the EPA has the authority to regulate carbon dioxide to protect human health, and two months after the film “An Inconvenient Truth” won an Academy Award for Best Documentary. Since 2007, however, Google searches for the term global warming have declined to almost the same flat, relatively low level of searches for climate change."

Has climate become 'background' noise?

Overcoming crisis fatigue

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Food is at the heart of our cultural lives. It’s not just sustenance—it’s part of how we celebrate, how we mourn and how we come together. But what happens when the food that defines us begins to disappear?

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s fifth assessment report released in March, climate change is already having an affect on food security. Extreme weather in “key producing regions” has already led to drastic jumps in food pricing. In cities we are padded from these effects by long supply chains, but not so in places like Hartley Bay on the northern coast of British Columbia.

“We depend on the sea so much for our food,” says Gitga’at Chief Ernie Hill, the principal of Hartley Bay Elementary/Junior High/Secondary School who has spearheaded efforts there to document and teach traditional indigenous harvesting practices.

Spring is harvest season around Hartley Bay, he says. Starting in April, when the clear weather coincides with low tides in the morning, families from the Gitga’at Nation travel to nearby islands where they collect seaweed and lay them to dry for the day in the warm sun. While the grown-ups harvest, the little ones scrape sea prunes, large shelled mollusks also known as chitons.

Now at the age of 73, Hill is no longer able to perch on the slippery rocks to harvest the seaweed, but he’s still committed to passing that tradition on to younger generations. He learned to harvest and prepare traditional foods such as seaweed, halibut and clams when he was a child, and over the years, he has passed that knowledge on to both his children and grandchildren.

Now, with the help of his students, members of the community, and “world class” videographers, he’s been steadily building a library of short documentaries that record traditional food gathering practices so they can be shared long after his generation is gone.

Through the ministrations of community elders like Hill and Helen Clifton, who just received a BC Community Achievement Award, the practices have endured as a way to bring families together much as they did before colonization disrupted lives. They also provide a respite from the rising price of importing food to the remote community, and the nutrient rich traditional diet helps to combat rising levels of diabetes caused by sugar-rich processed foods.

The trouble is that, because of climate change, nature is no longer cooperating the way it once did. According to Clifton, who co-authored a paper on the subject of environmental change with University of Victoria researcher Nancy Turner, weather in the region has been progressively less reliable over the last two decades. Unseasonable spring rains have obstructed the seaweed drying process. Frost and snow have damaged the plants.

And it’s not just seaweed—the rains have impeded the curing of halibut, disrupted pollination cycles and caused berries to grow so over ripe as to be inedible. For the last year the community has also been warned against harvesting clams because levels of toxins leading to paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) were more than twice normal. Hill says tests pinned the problem on a rise in pH level, which could be due to climate change—because the water is getting warmer, it can no longer hold as much oxygen.

Seeing that gradual decline in harvest, the Gitga’at Nation decided to contract sustainability experts from EcoPlan International to aid in the testing and planning process. Analyst Colleen Hamilton presented the work they had been doing at the most recent Livable Cities Forum in Vancouver.

Their goal, she said, was to corroborate local observations with science that would help further conversations already happening within the community. “The first thing we did when we started this project was go into the community and talk to people about all the weird things they were seeing.”

What the group found was that although the challenges were huge, the community was already making some moves to adapt by constructing buildings for drying halibut indoors and setting up freezers at the seaweed harvest sites to preserve it through the rain.

Another idea that came up was to shift focus onto other traditional foods that might better season the changes in temperature. There may be no clams this year, but there were mussels and cockles. Although the Gitga’at Nation is staunchly opposed to fisheries, which Hill says do more harm than good, the group has been experimenting with growing oysters and scallops that may deal better with the new conditions.

The resilience of the Gitga’at Nation, built up over a thousand years of observing and adapting to our planet’s shifts, may offer a road map to other communities dealing with climate change. According to a 2012 report for the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), “Indigenous peoples have long and multi-generational histories of interaction with their environments that include coping with environmental uncertainty, variability and change. They have demonstrated their resourcefulness and response capacity in the face of global climate change.”

Still, it’s a slow, sometimes disheartening process, one that has been interrupted by the fight against the Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline proposal which poses a much more immediate threat to traditional waters.

Another unexpected challenge to the process has been massive funding cuts in the Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO). Since 2013, maintaining fish habitats is no longer part of the purview of the DFO. In the region around Hartley Bay, that has meant a suspension of water testing which was providing valuable clues about future avenues for adaptation.

“It’s such a strange thing for Harper taking the habitat out of the DFO,” Hill says. “It would have been interesting if the testing had continued over time. Then we would have known exactly what is happening.”

Image Credits: miguelb via Flickr | **604*250** via Flickr

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After the release of the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report, professor Sheldon Solomon, experimental social psychologist and co-creator of ‘terror management theory,’ suggested human responses to news of impending social and ecological collapse have nothing to do with climate science and everything to do with death.

The prospect of violence, drought, famine and species extinction – all prominent aspects of the recent IPCC report – force individuals to confront feelings of mortality which we try to suppress by doubling down on our cultural worldviews. That means our own fear of death makes us more likely to strengthen and affirm our belief systems. So if you already don’t agree with climate science, the latest IPCC report isn’t likely to change that.

In fact, says Solomon, it’s “tough to get people to dispassionately and rationally consider the facts.” This may actually be more true for “very educated and scientifically literate people,” he says.

“I say that for two reasons. One is what psychologists these days call motivated reasoning, and there’s a whole set of studies suggesting people tend to view this kind of information in ways that confirm and fortify their preexisting beliefs. And so folks that are pro-environment will be apt to uncritically embrace these facts and become more ardently so and climate change deniers will discount them by generating counter arguments and disparaging the credentials of the scientists who produced the report.”

The second reason, he says, has to do with our human response to fear-inducing information, what Solomon studies under a rubric he calls terror management theory.

“This kind of information is daunting,” Solomon says, “because it conjures up both conscious and non-conscious reactions to the fact that we will some day die.”

Solomon points to one of the basic arguments made in Ernest Becker’s book the Denial of Death: “humans share with all forms of life a basic predisposition towards self-preservation in the service of survival and reproduction.”

But beyond the drives of other creatures, humans have the unique capacity to think abstractly and symbolically, he says, leading to a sense of self-consciousness. We can also reflect on both our past and our future and this, “makes us aware that we can die some day and that our death can come for reasons we could never anticipate or control.”

Such reflections can lead to “unwelcome realizations” that “give rise to paralyzing terror that we assuage through the development and maintenance of cultural worldviews.”

Ultimately, Solomon says, in these moments of terror we want to tell ourselves that we participate in and are valuable members of “a meaningful universe.”

This desire, to position ourselves within a meaningful universe, can have undesirable consequences, however.

When confronted with the looming image of our mortality, we usually end up doing one of two things: “One is to just get the images of death out of our minds. We tend to do that through suppression and distraction: watching television, consuming massive amounts of drugs and alcohol, going to Walmart to save a buck on a chainsaw and a lemon."

He added, "the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard called this being ‘tranquilized by the trivial.’”

The other involves constructing defenses – especially ones that affirm our worldview – that keep unwelcome thoughts of death from coming to mind.

“This has to do with bolstering faith in our cultural worldviews. So we may become more devoted to our career, more supportive of charismatic political leaders, even more concerned about the success of our favourite sports team.”

Ultimately a terror management theory perspective would suggest we need to “create conditions that will make people more receptive to dispassionately considering the facts,” Solomon says.

We can do this by “undercutting motivated reasoning and helping folks recognize how efforts to deny death can foster maladaptive defense reactions.” If we can anticipate our own desire to do away with unwelcome thoughts, perhaps we can find more productive ways of coping with our anxieties.

The recognition of our own death denial is the first step to confronting it: “I think if we can do that we can nudge folks in a productive direction.”

Yet there is still a significant barrier to overcoming inaction on issues like climate change: political polarization.

“We’re going to have to kind of go to extraordinary lengths to depoliticize these issues,” he says.

The thing to remember, according to Solomon, “is that left and right are both beside the point.” Open-mindedness and compromise, from both sides, may well be the only own avenue out of our current political deadlock.

“Conservatives might have to acknowledge, as Naomi Klein points out, that there may not be market solutions to these kinds of difficulties. Liberals may have to consider, as Stewart Brand points out in his book Whole Earth Discipline, that there might be a role for nuclear power and genetically modified foods in constructive solutions as we move forward.”

The challenge is to overcome the denial that prevents us from having these important – even if difficult – solutions conversations in the first place.

Image Credit: Jeffrey Smith via Flickr

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