Climate knowledge and power: Tales of skeptic tanks, weather gods, and sagas for climate (In)justice

Capitalism, Nature, Socialism

Volumn 18, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 7-21

  Dorsey, Michael K ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

APARTHEID; CLIMATE CHANGE; ENVIRONMENTAL DEGRADATION; MITIGATION;

EID: 34249328126     PISSN: 10455752     EISSN: 15483290     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10455750701366360     Document Type: Article

References (51)

1. Originally see: S. Booker and W. Minter, "AIDS is a Consequence of Global Apartheid," The Nation, July 2, 2001
2. Also Patrick Bond utilizes this framework in: South Africa and Global Apartheid: Continental and International Policies and Politics (Uppsala: Nordiska Afrikainstitutet, 2004)
3. and also P. Bond. Against Global Apartheid: South Africa Meets the World Bank, IMF and International Finance (London: Zed Press, 2004).
4. Oxford-based Timmons Roberts and I wrote an op-ed on these "oversights" that we submitted to the Financial Times, but it was never printed. Lorna Salzman, a former Friends of the Earth U.S. board member, penned one to the New York Times. It, too, was never printed.
5. See Steven F. Bernstein, The Compromise of Liberal Environmentalism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), Chapter 3, in particular pp. 118-121
6. Pratap Chatterjee and Mattias Finger, The Earth Brokers (London: Routledge, 1994)
7. and Larry Lohmann, "Democracy or Carbonacracy? Intellectual Corruption and the Future of the Climate Change Debate," Briefing No. 24, The Cornerhouse, October 2001.
8. Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), "Greenhouse Market Mania: UN Climate Talks Corrupted by Corporate Psuedo-solutions," 2004, p. 5.
9. Lohmann, op. cit., p. 2.
10. CEO, op. cit.
11. Bernstein, op. cit., p. 118.
12. CEO, op. cit.
13. Also see Fiona Harvey, "Cashing In on Climate Change: Trade in Carbon Credits Takes Off," Financial Times, October 22, 2004, p. 15.
14. Lohmann, op. cit., pp. 7-8.
15. Bernstein, op. cit., p. 81, details how Senators Tim Wirth (Democrat) and John Heinz (Republican) worked with Harvard economists and the Environmental Defense Fund (now Environmental Defense) to bring this about.
16. Carbon Trade Watch, The Sky is Not the Limit: The Emerging Market in Greenhouse Gases (Amsterdam; Transnational Institute, 2003), p. 30.
17. The World Resources Institute describes its rationale for the need for emissions trading online at: http://business.wri.org/ project_description2.cfm?ProjectID=67, accessed November 18, 2006
18. the Institute's funders that have tried to control and even obstruct the climate negotiations include Shell, General Motors, and British Petroleum, See http://partners.wri.org/funders_cc.cfm, accessed Nov. 14, 2006.
19. World Wildlife Funds' plans on carbon trading are available online at: http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_we_do/climate_change/publications/ publication.cfm?uNewsID=15910&uLangId=1, accessed Nov. 14, 2006; WWF manages a budget of approximately $350 million (revenue plus assets, less expenditures and liabilities), which is almost double the World Trade Organization budget (approximately $130 million, in FY2003) as well as that of a host of many small island states and other developing nations. At the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development, Greenpeace actively worked with the ex-Chair of Royal Dutch Shell and then-Chair of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, Sir Mark Moody-Stewart, to make the case for ratifying the Kyoto Protocol. This meeting came after nearly a decade of Shell's backing of the now defunct anti-climate change negotiation lobby, the Global Climate Coalition.
20. By 2002, 54 of the world's largest 100 economies were transnational corporations as opposed to nation-states.
21. For a list of Pew partners see: http://www.pewclimate.org/ companies_leading_the_way_belc/company_profiles/ Accessed February 1, 2007.
22. The Global Climate Coalition website http://www.globalclimate.org/ notes: "The Global Climate Coalition has been deactivated. The industry voice on climate change has served its purpose by contributing to a new national approach to global warming. The Bush administration will soon announce a climate policy that is expected to rely on the development of new technologies to reduce greenhouse emissions, a concept strongly supported by the GCC. The coalition also opposed Senate ratification of the Kyoto Protocol [on the grounds that the Protocol] would assign such stringent targets for lowering greenhouse gas emissions that economic growth in the U.S. would be severely hampered and energy prices for consumers would skyrocket. The GCC also opposed the treaty because it does not require the largest developing countries to make cuts in their emissions. At this point, both Congress and the Administration agree that the U.S. should not accept the mandatory cuts in emissions required by the protocol." Accessed November 15, 2006.
23. CEO, op. cit., p. 22. According to CEO: "The 'action plan' was developed by the 'Global Climate Science Communications Team,' including API's [American Petroleum Institute] Joseph Walker, Exxon's Randy Randol and Chevron's Sharon Kneiss. Funding was to have been provided by the American Petroleum Institute, the Business Roundtable, Edison Electric Institute, the National Mining Congress and the Independent Petroleum Association of America.
24. See Kimberley Music, "Industry Plan Calls for Climate-Fight Recruits," Oil Daily, April 28, 1998."
25. This neologism was shared with the author by the ex-climate change program official from Greenpeace, Kalee Kreider, who presently manages public relations for former U.S. Vice President Al Gore.
26. CEO, op. cit., p. 21.
27. Ibid., pp. 19-22.
28. Ibid.
29. See the Friends of the Earth International booklet, Exxon's Climate Footprint, 2003.
30. See Peter S. Heller, Who Will Pay? Coping with Aging Societies, Climate Change and Other Long-Term Fiscal Challenges (Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, 2003). Heller is Deputy Director in the IMF's Fiscal Affairs Department.
31. P.C. Schmitter and T.L. Karl, "What Democracy Is and Is Not," Journal of Democracy, Vol. 2, No. 3, 1991, pp. 75-88.
32. Amin Samir, Empire of Chaos (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1992), p. 56.
33. George Soros, George Soros On Globalization (New York: Public Affairs, 2002), p. 36.
34. Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and Its Discontents (New York: W.W. Norton, 2002), pp. 5-15.
35. See "The Climate Justice Declaration," available online at: http://www.ejcc.org/ejcc10short_usa.pdf, accessed on February 2, 2007.
36. The Michigan Declaration itself states: "The following Principles were developed in a workshop using the Climate Justice Declaration developed at the 2nd People of Color Environmental Justice Leadership Summit," which was held in Washington, D.C., October 23-26, 2002.
37. CorpWatch, "What is Climate Justice?" fact sheet, CorpWatch, 1999, emphasis theirs. The fact sheet is also available online at: http://www.corpwatch.org.
38. See the report by Kenny Bruno, Joshua Karliner & China Brotsky, "Greenhouse Gangsters vs. Climate Justice," CorpWatch, November 1999. The colloquial use of the term "climate gangsters" may not be far from inaccurate, inasmuch as it hints at what sociologists of corporations call the "small world" nature of corporate networks. Just four firms in one sector, petroleum, are responsible for 10 percent of all carbon dioxide emissions. One hundred twenty-two companies account for 80 percent of all emissions.
39. Patz is currently the Director of the Program on Health Effects of Global Environmental Change and Assistant Professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. In 1998 he was appointed co-chair for the U.S. National Assessment on Climate Variability and Change health sector expert panel, and in 2002, Convening Lead Author for the United Nations/World Bank Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. Gubler's talk actually blamed the spread of infectious diseases on population growth and individual travel. He was asked in the question-and-answer session whether he thought "there is a correlation between the increasing global income inequality, the rise of neoliberal economic policies, and the (re)growth of infectious diseases, since the three phenomena are temporarily coterminous - and in many places where we witness the most disease we often have the greatest income inequalities." Gabler responded that "there might be a relationship, but population growth was more important," and further, "we need to control it." Parson has served on the Committee on Human Dimensions of Global Change of the National Academy of Sciences, and on the Synthesis Team for the U.S. National Assessment of Impacts of Climate Change. He has worked and consulted for the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, the United Nations Environment Program, the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress, the Privy Council Office of the Government of Canada, and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Just two years prior to his talk at Michigan, Watson was ousted from his position as Chairman of the IPCC (see: Fred Pearce, "Top Climate Scientist Ousted," New Scientist, April 19, 2002).
40. For a penetrating analysis of the basis of "centrist scholarship," see Chip Berlet and Matthew N. Lyons, "Criticism of Centrist/Extremist Theory " Repression & Ideology, Political Research Associates, n.d., online at: http://www.publiceye.org/liberty/Repression-and-ideology-04.html, accessed March 20, 2007. For Berlet and Lyons: "Centrist/extremist theorists portrayed the political mainstream as an "open democratic market place" where a rich array of interest groups competed freely and fairly, and where "the sources of power" were "difficult to locate." The center was a realm of political civility, pragmatism, rationality, and tolerance."
41. Also see Michael Rogin, The Intellectuals and McCarthy: The Radical Specter (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967.)
42. University of Michigan Environmental Justice and Climate Conference (UMEJCC) Goals and Objectives, a statement, available online at: http://www.sitemaker.umich.edu/snre-ejcc/goals_and_objectives. Accessed on November 3, 2004.
43. Gubler was the only one to communicate his "previous engagement" notice in advance via email to a conference organizer. Anonymous personal communication, November 2, 2004.
44. UMEJCC Conference Goals and Objectives statement, op. cit., accessed October 30, 2004. Perhaps the text should read: "complex interaction between [advocates of] environmental justice and global climate change..." The fact that it does not help reify the policies in question (i.e., environmental justice and climate change) further obscures the likelihood that these policies can never exist independent of interested individuals and institutions.
45. The signatories appear at: http://www.ejcc.org/ejcc10short_usa.pdf, accessed on February 2, 2007.
46. To understand the various ways in which neoliberal thinking animates multilateral institutions see: Patrick Bond, "Should the World Bank and IMF be 'Fixed' or 'Nixed'? Reformist Posturing and Popular Resistance," Capitalism Nature Socialism, Vol. 14, No. 2, June 2004, pp. 85-105.
47. For the way in which neoliberal doxa has taken root and hold of the IPCC negotiations see: Larry Lohmann, op, cit.
48. and also: Carbon Trade Watch, op. cit.
49. See the view expressed in The Royal Society of Chemistry's e-zine, Chembytes, 2000, accessed on October 28, 2004.
50. The signatories appear at: http://www.ejcc.org/ejcc10short_usa.pdf, accessed on February 2, 2007.
51. See Noam Chomsky, American Power and the New Mandarins (New York: Pantheon, 1969).