'Hot air' activism and the war over climate change

By Hardev Sanotra Durban: Climate change conferences organised by the United Nations are an opportunity for the leaders of 194 countries to put their positions forward, enter into the cut and thrust of international diplomacy, and generally see that their part of the turf is not affected. The Durban climate conference is no different. But these are also opportunities for activists from non-governmental organisations, sceptics, artists, musicians, and religious figures to seek their “15 minutes of fame”, as Andy Warhol, the American pop artist, would have put it. Among the activists, though, there is a great divide, an almost unbreachable wall which keeps them on different sides of the climate argument. [caption id=“attachment_150429” align=“alignleft” width=“380” caption=“Environmental activists, such as these body-painted women, seek to influence climate change policy at Durban. Reuters.”] [/caption] On one side are what are loosely called the alarmists: those who believe that the report on climate change by the UN’s Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change is a sort of a bible, not to be fooled around with. They agree that without action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, the world is heading towards a run-away catastrophic rise in global warming, which would lead to unmitigated disasters. The believe that humanity’s future is doomed -  unless developed countries pour hundreds of billions of dollar into the coffers of the Third World coffers so that poor countries can take  action to tackle climate change. Among the big advocates of these ideas are the Greenpeace, the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Oxfam, Climate Action Network and the humbler Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) back home. There are dozens and dozens of smaller ones. The big daddies have budgets that run into millions of dollars, except CSE, which has a more modest outlay. And they bring hundreds of their supporters inside and outside the conference to make their point, often loudly, leading to a virtual babel of ideas on climate. They hold meetings, demonstrations, marches, events, press conferences and media interviews  to convey the message that unless steps are urgently taken to reduce the “carbon footprint” of every country, “time would run out for humanity.” Greenpeace Climate Campaigner Ferial Adam said while participating in a march in Durban that the leaders at the conference “must listen to the voice of the people, not the polluters.” Most of the activist organisation follow the events on an hour-to-hour basis. On Wednesday, when negotiations in Durban were not going anywhere, Time Gore of Oxfam reacted with anger: “What we see in Durban is blocking action by the United States.” He advised the US to “step aside” so that a solution could be found. CSE, which has been sponsoring several Indian journalists to cover the conferences, is led by Sunita Narain, the agency’s Director-General, who said at a side event sponsored by the Centre that the big powers pollute more than India or China, but they do not want to talk about this. On the other side of this divide are sceptics, who call themselves “climate realists.” In several of the earlier conferences, they often held meetings away from the conference halls. But in Durban they are turning up in big numbers, bringing in their big guns, possibly because the strong advocacy of human-induced climate change may be waning. The interest in Durban is lower than in Cancun last year and far lower than in Copenhagen in 2009, when over a hundred heads of state or government turned up. The sceptics, who have brought out a report of their own , see the waning interest as the result of the changing perception among  the people that climate change threat is not as serious as ‘green’ advocates would like them to believe. Many scientific studies too have chipped away at the stand taken by the IPCC. “The IPCC’s lies are no longer believed,” says Christopher Monckton, an adviser to Margaret Thatcher’s government in the UK, and a vociferous critic of the IPCC. “People in several countries, including the UK, are beginning to question whether billions need to be spent to mitigate so-called climate disasters that are based on mere models, and which talk of fractions of a degree change.” The leakage of emails among scientists at the East Anglia University, which gave much of the data to IPCC, and some of whose scientists were part of the working groups of the Panel, dented the credibility of the IPCC, says Monckton. The leaked emails showed that data on global warming had been manipulated. Now, a further set of emails have been released by someone whom the alarmists call a  “thief” but sceptics consider a “whistleblower”. There is a whole war of words on the internet between the two sides. Alarmists say the sceptics take money from big companies and big oil to support their stand. Sceptics say there are hundreds of scientists, including Nobel Prize winners on their side, and they cite hundreds of peer-reviewed articles to shore up their position. “Exxon Mobile has been accused of giving out $15 million dollars to sceptics over 20 years. Compare this with thousands of projects which the alarmists get, where some of them are $20 million dollars, each,” says Marc Morano, who released a report titled A-Z Climate Reality Check at Durban on Wednesday. The sceptics say billions of dollars go to advocates of alarmism from governments and the industry, but the press doesn’t care to write about this critically. Whether the greenhouse gases have resulted in the earth getting warmer or not, the debate between the two sides have certainly got hotter over the years.