Tag: politics

The politics of climate justice, migration and mobility

Posted on by janet.crompton

Migration Mobilities Bristol (MMB) and the Cabot Institute for the Environment bring together researchers from across the University of Bristol to explore connections between movement and the environment from a multi-disciplinary perspective. Their diverse approaches highlight the importance of developing frames that incorporate both migration and environment, and in so doing benefit our understandings of both. Here, the directors of MMB and the Cabot Institute for the Environment introduce the blog series through the lens of the politics of climate justice, migration and mobility.

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Migration is often mobilised to illustrate the enormity of the challenge of climate change. Some Small Island States in the Pacific, for instance, may become uninhabitable with sea-level rise. Highly vulnerable countries in South Asia, including Bangladesh and the Maldives, may see large proportions of their populations forced to move because of sea-level rise, floods and salinisation of water. US climate envoy John Kerry recently fuelled fears of a future where food production collapse would force a ‘hundred million people’ to move. His comments strongly implied that even those of us who imagine we are protected from the frontline of climate change will be faced with the challenges of ‘climate refugees’ in their millions.

Moniruzzaman Sazal / Climate Visuals Countdown

Kerry’s remarks were heavily criticised, but this is not to deny that there is a connection between the world’s ecosystems and environment and human movement. It is easiest to causally relate environmental factors to migration in situations of ‘rapid onset disasters’ – destructive events that occur suddenly, such as typhoons or floods. In these situations, people move to survive, but often to a place of safety a short distance away, and they return to rebuild homes and lives once the emergency has abated. But many environmental changes are taking place over periods spanning two or three generations. ‘Slow onset’ environmental change can be a primary or contributing factor to deteriorating socio-economic conditions – increasing periods of drought, or crop yields declining rather than collapsing, for instance. In these circumstances, migration can be an important way to diversify income streams. Environmental change may also contribute to shifts in land usage and land ownership, which again may result in migration.

Declining resources can also prevent people from moving, especially when resources are slowly depleted over a generation or more. Limited access to capital can force people into illegal or exploitative migration or lead them to delay moving until forced to do so in an unplanned way – perhaps because of a rapid onset disaster that they no longer have the resilience to cope with.

The challenges faced by people who don’t move may become more severe when combined with conflict. For example, in Somalia, armed conflict has hindered the movement of pastoralists, who would otherwise relocate as a response to drought. It has also limited the possibilities of humanitarian organisations to assist them. Human mobility and environmental change are deeply interconnected but need to be understood systemically not simplistically if we are work towards climate justice.

Understanding the relationship between migration and environmental change in a more holistic and integrated way has important policy implications. For example, economic factors can mean that people migrate to places of environmental instability as well as migrating from places of environmental instability. Currently 55% of the world’s population lives in cities, and it is forecast that by 2050 this will increase to nearly 70%; nearly 60% of forcibly displaced people move to urban areas (World Bank, 2020). Many cities are extremely vulnerable to future environmental change, and already experience high temperatures, sea level rise, water stress and threats to health. Rural to urban migrants are often especially vulnerable, as they tend to move to neighbourhoods with high population density that are prone to environmental risks – think of the favelas in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, or the slums of Dhaka, Nairobi and Mumbai.

Peter Castleton (CC BY 2.0)

In these contexts, migrants, whether rural-urban or international, can be represented as an environmental problem in themselves. The movements of the poor are also represented as a root cause of problems: migration destroys carbon sinks, ‘environmental refugees’ put pressure on already scarce resources and services and so on. Rather than seeing the interconnections of human movement and climate change, the risk is that the politics of climate and the mobility of the poor – that is, ‘migration’ – are framed as oppositional. As a result, in wealthy countries we are seeing increasing tensions between politics of the environment and politics of migration, as illustrated by John Kerry’s remarks.

It is critical, then, to recognise the complexity of the connections between (human) movement and ecosystems. This new blog series, co-published by MMB and the Cabot Institute for the Environment, draws attention to some of these connections and raises questions for further research to help us understand in more depth the relationship between movement and the environment, and its political significance. The contributions in the series approach this relationship from many angles, ranging from the role of water access in shaping migration to debates around the status of the ‘environmental refugee’. One analyses the environmental footprint of home working versus office working to explore the sustainability potential of our increasing immobility. Others focus on animals and plants on the move: we have writing on the ecological context of bird migrations and on the hyper-mobility of the European eel. Meanwhile, other posts look at the movement of goods and how humans locate themselves in, and move through, landscapes of extraction and risk. In bringing together such diverse topics we hope this series will encourage new conversations about the connections between migrations, mobilities and environments.

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This blog is written by Bridget Anderson, Professor of Migration, Mobilities and Citizenship at the University of Bristol, and Director of Migration Mobilities Bristol; and Professor Guy Howard, Global Research Chair Environmental and Infrastructure Resilience at the University of Bristol, and Director of the Cabot Institute for the Environment.

Bridget Anderson
Guy Howard

 

Are you a journalist looking for climate experts? We’ve got you covered

Posted on by janet.crompton

We’ve got lots of media trained climate change experts. If you need an expert for an interview, here is a list of Caboteers you can approach. All media enquiries should be made via Victoria Tagg, our dedicated Media and PR Manager at the University of Bristol. Email victoria.tagg@bristol.ac.uk or call +44 (0)117 428 2489.

Climate change / climate emergency / climate science / climate-induced disasters

Dr Eunice Lo – expert in changes in extreme weather events such as heatwaves and cold spells, and how these changes translate to negative health outcomes including illnesses and deaths. Follow on Twitter @EuniceLoClimate.

Professor Daniela Schmidt – expert in the causes and effects of climate change on marine systems. Dani is also a Lead Author on the IPCC reports. Dani will be at COP26.

Dr Katerina Michalides – expert in drylands, drought and desertification and helping East African rural communities to adapt to droughts and future climate change. Follow on Twitter @_kmichaelides.

Professor Dann Mitchell – expert in how climate change alters the atmospheric circulation, extreme events, and impacts on human health. Dann is also a Met Office Chair. Dann will be at COP26. Follow on Twitter @ClimateDann.

Professor Dan Lunt – expert on past climate change, with a focus on understanding how and why climate has changed in the past and what we can learn about the future from the past. Dan is also a Lead Author on IPCC AR6. Dan will be at COP26. Follow on Twitter @ClimateSamwell.

Professor Jonathan Bamber – expert on the impact of melting land ice on sea level rise (SLR) and the response of the ocean to changes in freshwater forcing. Jonathan will be at COP26. Follow on Twitter @jlbamber

Professor Paul Bates CBE – expert in the science of flooding, risk and reducing threats to life and economic losses worldwide. Follow on Twitter @paul_d_bates

Professor Tony Payne – expert in the effects of climate change on earth systems and glaciers.

Dr Matt Palmer – expert in sea level and ocean heat content research at the Met Office Hadley Centre and University of Bristol. Follow on Twitter @mpclimate.

Net Zero / Energy / Renewables

Professor Valeska Ting – Engineer and expert in net zero, low carbon technologies, low carbon energy and flying. Also an accomplished STEM communicator, is an BAME Expert Voice for the BBC Academy. Follow on Twitter @ProfValeskaTing.

Professor Philip Taylor – Expert in net zero, energy systems, energy storage, utilities, electric power distribution. Also Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Bristol. Philip will be at COP26. Follow on Twitter @rolyatlihp.

Dr Colin Nolden – expert in sustainable energy policy, regulation and business models and interactions with secondary markets such as carbon markets and other sectors such as mobility. Colin will be at COP26.

Climate finance

Dr Rachel James – Expert in climate finance, damage, loss and decision making. Also has expertise in African climate systems and contemporary and future climate change. Follow on Twitter @_RachelJames

Climate justice

Dr Alix Dietzel – climate justice and climate policy expert. Focusing on the global and local scale and interested in how just the response to climate change is and how we can ensure a just transition. Alix will be at COP26. Follow on Twitter @alixdietzel

Dr Ed Atkins – expert on environmental and energy policy, politics and governance and how they must be equitable and inclusive. Also interested in local politics of climate change policies and energy generation and consumption. Follow on Twitter @edatkins_.

Climate activism / Extinction Rebellion

Dr Oscar Berglund – expert on climate change activism and particularly Extinction Rebellion (XR) and the use of civil disobedience. Follow on Twitter @berglund_oscar.

Air pollution / Greenhouse gases

Dr Aoife Grant – expert in greenhouse gases and methane. Has set up a monitoring station at Glasgow for COP26 to record emissions.

Professor Matt Rigby – expert on sources and sinks of greenhouse gases and ozone depleting substances. Follow on Twitter @TheOtherMRigby.

Land, nature and food

Dr Jo House – expert on land and climate interactions, including emissions of carbon dioxide from land use change (e.g. deforestation), climate mitigation potential from the land (e.g. afforestation, bioenergy), and implications of science for policy. Previously Government Office for Science’s Head of Climate Advice. Follow on Twitter @Drjohouse.
Dr Taro Takahashi – expert on farming, livestock production systems as well as progamme evaluation and general equilibrium modelling of pasture and livestock-based economies.

Climate change and infrastructure

Dr Maria Pregnolato – expert on effects of climate change and flooding on infrastructure. Follow on Twitter @MariaPregnolat1.

Plastic and the environment

Dr Charlotte Lloyd – expert on the fate of chemicals in the terrestrial environment, including plastics, bioplastics and agricultural wastes. Follow on Twitter @DrCharlLloyd.

What else the Cabot Institute for the Environment is up to for COP26

Find out what we’re doing for COP26 on our website at bristol.ac.uk/cabot/cop26.
Watch our Cabot Conversations – 10 conversations between 2 experts on a climate change issue, all whilst an artist listens in the background and interprets the conversation into a beautiful piece of art in real time. Find out more at bristol.ac.uk/cabot/conversations.
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This blog was written by Amanda Woodman-Hardy, Communications and Engagement Officer at the Cabot Institute for the Environment. Follow on Twitter @Enviro_Mand and @cabotinstitute.
 

Research and teaching in the midst of climate crisis

Posted on by janet.crompton
Bristol Climate Strike September 2019. Image credit Amanda Woodman-Hardy.

I became a co-convenor of the PSA Environmental Politics sub-group in 2019, against the backdrop of the rise of Extinction Rebellion and the increasing impact of the environmental movement. The convening team decided to reflect this in our workshop on ‘Activism and Academia in an Age of Environmental Breakdown’ at Nottingham Trent which aimed to not only bring together activists and academics but to critically reflect on the intersection between the two and try to explore how to hold academic events in this time of climate crisis.

As anyone who’s organised an event knows, finding a convenient date is half the battle. Balancing the start of term dates for myself and the other co-convenors was difficult and the date of 20th September 2019 was one of the few that worked for us all. But surely holding an event on environmental activism on the date of the global climate strike was contradictory? After much discussion, we decided that the fit between the theme of the conference and the strike could provide a rich source of discussion and that we should try and explore this. So we arranged for the lunch break to include time for anyone who wanted to, to attend the demonstration being held in the nearby city centre with directions provided.

Some participants also mentioned that they would be attending the workshop as part of their strike action, with one participant wearing a strike arm-band. Registration was free and we were clear that people could attend for whatever time they could, to further support people coming along as part of their strike activities. Participating in a climate protest, whether by labelling attendance at the workshop as such or briefly joining the main demonstration, while at the same time critically analysing both the protest and the intersection of activism and academia blurred the objectivity of the workshop, to say the very least. But bringing our practice into the workshop and openly discussing how they intersected, in addition to ensuring that no activism was compulsory, grounded our discussions and prompted each participant to reflect on how they experienced the intersection of both their research and their action.

The current wave of climate action and the groups that are spearheading it, such as the school strike movement and Extinction Rebellion, are distinct in the way that they are driven by young activists. Initially, we recognised this through a panel on youth engagement, with excellent speakers such as Dr Sarah Pickard presenting their work on young people’s political activism. However, this felt disingenuous and was not representative of the movement nor the agency of the young activists driving it.

So we reached out to young climate activists around the globe and asked if they would like to record a video to be shown at the conference which explained why they got involved with the climate strike movement and how the networks they were part of were organised. (We took advice regarding data protection and gained the consent of their parents when necessary.) Hearing directly from these activists from across Europe and America brought balance to the panel, ensuring that we weren’t just discussing youth activism, but listening and responding to them and their work directly. This activist engagement was also reflected in the speakers we invited to the conference and the call for papers.

We wanted to ensure that activists and practitioners were included and highlighted this in both the name of the workshop and throughout. For example, the ‘Critical Reflections on Extinction Rebellion’ panel featured activists from the group as well as academics who study it, and representatives from a local wildlife NGO took part in another panel.

The NGOs represented were from Nottingham and the Midlands in part due to proximity to the conference venue but also because we wanted to reflect the context of the area we held the event in, to ‘think global, act local’. We endeavoured to match this with an engagement with the wider context of climate activism, with a discussion of activism and academic globally and in the Global South in particular. Deciding against a specific panel on this topic, we tried to reflect the global context throughout the day, such as including videos from young activists around the world and a specific reflection on this topic at the start of the roundtable led by a scholar of and from the Global South.

However keeping the balance between the local and the global was difficult, raising questions of whose voices are included and whose are heard.

Within the workshop, we wanted to reflect the growing trend of more inclusive academic conferences, a trend that is particularly prevalent within environmental scholarship. The roundtable at the end of the workshop was designed to facilitate this, with activities that paired up activists and academics for discussion and time for the group as a whole to talk together. This turned out to be one of the strongest aspects of the workshop – certainly, it was one of the most commented upon and more space for this discussion, even at the expense of time for the earlier papers, would I think have been welcomed.

Reflecting on the workshop now, while there are changes I would make, the attempt to not only bring together academics and activists but to embed that approach within the format of the day and its priorities was I felt worthwhile. To research and teach on environmental issues in the face of climate denialism and apathy as well as the increasing environmental collapse is a political act and we should recognise that in our forums.

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Ashley Dodsworth, a lecturer in politics in SPAIS at the University of Bristol and co-convenor of the PSA Environment sub-group. Her research explores the intersection of the history of political thought and environmental politics, and environmental rights. She is co-editor of Environmental Human Rights: A Political Theory Perspective (Routledge, 2018). This blog was reposted with kind permission from the Centre for Environmental Humanities at the University of Bristol. View the original blog.

Ashley Dodsworth

Teaching controversial subjects in a conservative area

Posted on by janet.crompton

Political polarization, the ever-widening divide between Right and Left in the US, is an obvious problem. We have lost our ability to communicate with one another: using different sets of ‘facts’ to back up our arguments, with the ‘facts’ depending on our side of the political spectrum. The internet has in large part facilitated this fracturing. One can spend 10 minutes on Google to find support for anything that they believe. For example, Youtube videos link to increasingly conspiratorial videos, pushing us farther apart. This loss to our collective conversation is damaging in most arenas, even in the classroom or lecture halls. When a collection of outright lies masquerading as facts meets science, it causes problems. When a student population has firmly-held beliefs in concepts that are simply not true, as a facet of their personal values or beliefs, this presents a difficult and unique challenge for an instructor. I was a visiting assistant professor in a conservative area, dealt with these issues, and hope to provide some help for those who are walking into a similar task in this post.

I loved teaching at Sam Houston State University (SHSU), enjoyed my time with both my students and colleagues. Some of this is going to read as if I was combative the entire time I was at SHSU. I wasn’t. I truly enjoyed interacting with my students (and most liked interacting with me, from reading my evaluations), especially the ones who thought about topics differently than I do. College is supposed to be about exposure to new ideas, after all. I find it difficult to let people believe in materially incorrect things however, especially when they’re detrimental to their lives, and to my own or my family’s lives. SHSU is in a very conservative area in East Texas, and my introductory, general education course covered both climate change and evolution. Covering these subjects meant that the students signing up for “Historical Geology” as an easy science credit got a more ‘controversial’ course than they expected.

To say that climate change or evolution is controversial is imprecise. Both subjects, scientifically, are not controversial, especially at the introductory level. Evolution is a multifaceted theory that is accepted by scientists and there are no competing arguments; this has been understood for 150 years. Scientists also agree that the climate has been changing for decades, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is a potent greenhouse gas since Svante Arrhenius calculated the extent to which increases in CO2 can cause heating in the atmosphere (he was alive in 1859-1927). Both subjects, unfortunately, are controversial in the public’s eye. Today, 29% of the American public believe scientists do not agree that humans have evolved over time, and 32% reject the scientific fact that is human-caused climate change (and 24% are uncertain!). Walker County, TX, which SHSU is in, has 7% lower acceptance rate than the national average. When I asked my students if scientists agree or do not agree that evolution is a fundamental process describing change through time, ~20% said scientists did not agree. To say that my classes were comprised of more conservative students, with strong personal beliefs, than an average introductory science course in the US is probably accurate.

Teaching these particular students about climate change isn’t simply because it’s course material–it’s vital for them specifically. My second week of teaching was canceled entirely by the university because of the impact to the region by Hurricane Harvey. SHSU is a 45 minute drive from Houston, and areas of the town were closed. Many students were commuting from the south, and some had to miss additional classroom time. One individual had to miss many Fridays that semester because he was working on fixing his mother’s house. Climate change has a direct impact on that region, will continue to have a direct impact, and these students should be fully cognizant of their choices when acting as consumers or citizens. There is an irony to a region economically-driven by oil production reaping the consequences of climate change. That, however, doesn’t mean that the population should suffer.

Flooding in Houston, Texas caused by Hurricane Harvey in 2017. The hurricane caused unprecedented flooding which displaced 30,000 people from their homes, causing more than $125 billion in damages. Image credit: urban.houstonian.

Educating a student population with strongly held personal beliefs counter to course material doesn’t work well with traditional teaching methods. We not only have to teach students the material that they need them to understand for the course (past greenhouse gas changes, radiative forcing, proxy data, feedback mechanisms, etc.) but we also have to convince them of barefaced reality. We have to convince them that, no, scientists aren’t lying to them or the public. We have to convince them that we’re not in the pocket of ‘big-environment’, reaping the benefits of ‘big’ grants. We have to recover their idea that there can be legitimacy of the scientific process. If you say the words ‘climate change’ to someone of a Right ideology, they are likely to not listen to what you say afterwards because you’ve been written off as ‘far-Left’. How do you teach when your students might react that way?

A Hybrid Teaching Approach

Instructors, professors, and educators have to engage in science communication rather than teaching. Not entirely, but to a degree that can be uncomfortable. To explain: Science communication is sharing scientific results with the non-expert public. It relies heavily on a ‘values-based’ model, which is empirically more effective than the older ‘information-deficit’ model. The information-deficit model said that “People just don’t know enough, so if I explain what I know, they’ll agree with me.” That’s standard teaching. The professor explains the subject, the students take notes, everybody agrees the professor is telling the truth and that the professor has the most thorough understanding and information. The information-deficit model assumes that facts win, which simply isn’t the case.  We resist facts that don’t conform to our strongly held beliefs. It doesn’t work if everyone does not agrees that the professor has authority in the subject. If a large enough number of the class think the professor is a member of a global conspiracy of attempted wealth redistribution, then the information deficit model falls completely apart. If the information-deficit model worked, then no one walking out of a (properly taught) high school biology course would believe intelligent design or creationism. That’s simply not the case.

The values-model says that the communicator (professor, instructor, educator) establishes shared values with their audience and communicates with them in a back-and-forth exchange.  They then explain why a scientific concept is important to them, and why it should also be important for those who share the same values. That’s not teaching, in the purest sense, because it’s broader than just pure information conveying. That’s also not possible in the lectures we frequently find ourselves teaching.

Let’s assume that our goal is to take students who are uncertain about climate change, or don’t believe that evolution has occurred through time, and get them to accept scientific truths. Information-deficit isn’t going to get us to students accepting the truth, if we’re dealing with a resistant population. While not all of my students were resistant, I like to ‘swing for the fences’ and get everybody to understand concepts. Past students said they liked the ‘nobody left behind’ classroom ethos I set out. The values-model is uncomfortable for scientists, in particular. A scientific-upbringing, like one has while you get a Ph.D., prizes the ultra-rational and eschews ‘values’ for data (click here for a discussion about science being inherently political).

Blending both the values-based and information-deficit models of teaching might be the right approach. We need to communicate information, but if we demonstrate to students why the subject matters, how it fits with their previously held ideas, or even provide space for them to blend their faith with known biology, then we move them away from irrational, ill-placed skepticism.

I had these concepts gnawing at the back of my head while I was teaching my introductory course (Historical Geology). There was one particular moment that help me see a blending as the correct way forward. In class I occasionally asked students to submit anonymous questions to me on note cards about either impending or just-covered subject material. I’m one of the only research-centric scientists these students might ever meet, and I know from conversations with students that they have questions that weren’t covered in the course. Sometimes I answered the note card questions in lecture alongside the regular material, like in my climate lectures. Other times they exchanged cards with 5 other people, then the last person decided if they wanted to ask that now-anonymous question right then. At the end of my evolution section I got the question “What are your values?” from a student. I used my answer to that question as my first slide when discussing climate change.

That’s me sharing a value that most folks should share: that truth is important, something that we should respect. I used it to set the stage for a series of lectures on climate change that talks primarily about the mechanism and past examples, but also talked about climate models, future projections, and why we’re still arguing about it.

The following are my suggestions for how to teach a subject that folks in your classes think is controversial.

Basic structure

I opted for an overt structure to the roughly two weeks that I discussed climate change. I went methodically through a series of questions, going from “What can change climate?” to “Has climate changed in the past?” and “Why might it matter?”. Touching back to the objections that folks have to climate change and systematically explaining why they are wrong is useful, and makes a really compelling way to organize your lectures. Just be sure not to reinforce the incorrect material by stating it as a statement, rather phrase them as questions. So, you shouldn’t say things like “‘Climate changes all the time, so it doesn’t matter if it does now’ is wrong”, instead it should be “Has climate changed in the past? Yes, but here’s why that’s important”.

Spend time with contrarian ‘evidence’

I had a student bring up a conspiracy theory: the Rothschilds were funding research in climate change and if the research came up counter to human-caused climate change they’d bury it. The student then brought up a ‘fact’ which I’d never encountered before, which they said had been buried by the Rothschilds company. The fact was counter to a huge amount of real research. All I was able to do in the moment was to explain the way things really are, but if the student has decided that the underlying data is falsified it’s difficult to counter. Since then, all I’ve been able to find is an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory from the Napoleonic Wars and a Democratic DC Council member talking about how the Rothschilds control the weather. I still do not know where the student got their ‘fact’. I feel like I was under prepared to handle that interaction.

The index card activity that I mentioned above allowed me time to prep for these kinds of questions from my students, when I ask them for questions for the next lecture. I prompt them with “What’s a question that you’ve always wanted to ask a climate scientist? Something you heard about that sounds wrong or is confusing?”. On the spot, it’s difficult to do the due-diligence of tracking down the source of the student’s misconception. A student in another class wrote a question about Al Gore’s prediction of a sea-ice free Arctic Ocean by a certain deadline. The student missed several key points; it was about Arctic summer ice, Gore is not a scientist, the actual analysis Gore got that from was correct, Gore just used the most pessimistic number rather than the scientists preferred value, etc. Those aren’t facts I keep in my head, but I was able to collate them and present them one-after-the-other as a way to dismantle that piece of misinformation.

One way to view the interactions is as an accidental “Gish Gallop”. Dwayne T. Gish was a debater of evolutionary biologists. He was infamous for his rapid-fire objections to evolutionary science. He would place a simple objection, “There are no transitional forms,” and then another and another, then the scientist would need to explain why that’s clearly not true. The explanation requires a great deal more time. Any unanswered objection is then assumed by the audience to be correct. Such is the way in these classes. If you don’t clarify or correct a student’s point, that point is assumed to be correct, at least by the students you’re trying to reach the most, the ones that don’t accept the legitimacy of climate or evolutionary science.

In an ideal world a student would say, “Did you know crazy-thing-X?” and you respond, “I saw that somewhere, but that’s completely wrong because of A-B-C-D, and have you considered that person-backing-X does so because of E-F-G?”. It’s easier to catch something out of left field if you have some knowledge of the outfield.

Consider your approach

Telling somebody to their face that they’re an idiot for voting for somebody might be both cathartic and true sometimes, but it’s not that effective. Changing minds doesn’t involve hurling epithets, even if the president and his supporters are doing it (please see section My Perspective below for an important caveat). Scientists have facts on our side. Proving your point without literally cursing the name of the current president during a lecture in class is more effective than adding “*&@^ Trump”. Are you just venting your own frustration or are you trying to actively convince these folks who are wrong to join the correct side? By all means, force your students to grapple with the underlying long-term consequences of their voting choices, if they voted for him, but do it in the most effective way possible. Yelling at them is just going to stop them from listening.

An example: three students and I are having a conversation that explicitly turns to voting for Trump*. One student voted for Trump because Trump was going to redistribute wealth to the little guy, the other voted for Trump because Trump was going to engage in trickle-down economics (a failed style of economic policy that gives taxes breaks to the ultra-wealthy that then increases economic benefit down the class structure [it fundamentally does not work]). I tried to make sure they realized that they voted for him for polar opposite reasons, and that at least one of them had to be wrong about what Trump would do in office. Just like we try to do in education: making them walk down the path themselves, providing a guiding hand when necessary, and not just telling them, is more effective than yelling it at them (I’ll admit I laughed at the idea that trickle-down economics would actually be effective, but it took me by surprise).

I also spent a lot of time thinking about how the students perceived me as the messenger. I am originally from the Northern Midwest, where “hey guys” is a gender-nonspecific greeting for a group. In Texas it’s “y’all”, which is actually gender-nonspecific, unlike guys which is just used as nonspecific while being male. It’s very easy to adopt regionalisms accidentally or when it appeals to you for good reason. I’m living in the UK now and I’ve no reason to start saying trousers but I have. I fought the “y’all” change because it felt like the students would perceive me trying to co-opt their language to be more like them, which if you add me trying to push them away from strongly held viewpoints, would lead to resentment.

*This happened without me trying to get the conversation there. I try to discuss the political issues with my students, not the individuals involved in politics, when possible.

Talk politics

One of the questions that stuck out in my mind most from the folks who already accepted and had seemed like they might have a solid understanding of climate change was “Why do some people not believe in climate change?”.

Besides the word ‘believe’ in there, it’s a really astute question. Why is it? The physical basis is solid and fairly simple. The question ends up being more of a social science question. Leaving that unanswered though, falls into a serious trap. If you’re presenting the physical science of climate change you leave questions in your students’ minds. They know there’s another side to the ‘debate’. While the ‘there are two sides to every story’ journalism trope has plenty of faults, we’re conditioned to expect to hear the other side’s opinions. So cover it! Without it you seem like you’re trying to obfuscate.

Explain how the Pope, the U.S. Department of Defense, and all oil companies have statements affirming that climate change is real. Go to Open Secrets and show them where the lobbying money goes (mostly Republicans, with the occasional Democrat from an Oil state like North Dakota). Talk about the fight to remove lead from gasoline (which has a great connection to the age of the Earth), or talk about cancer and tobacco litigation.  I also try to explain to students about the Dunning-Kruger effect and how confident non-experts can be when discussing topics (which explains the bulk of the internet). Explain how you can simply say the words “Climate change” to someone on the right and they erect a mental wall, not hearing anything after. Explain that the divide on climate change acceptance can be attributed strongly to political party. It is scientifically shown that climate change is a a political issue . By ducking the question you’re doing a disservice to your students.

Judging pseudo-scientific crap (fact checking?)

A basic understanding of how to engage in sniffing out pseudoscience is useful these days. There are folks peddling all sorts of incorrect information, and students should be inoculated to that. It’s certainly relevant to climate change, where on social media stories about how climate change is all faked go viral very quickly. Giving students a primer on how to suss out lies, misinformation, and disinformation is important in your class and literally every other!

Individual actions vs. community actions

Lastly, while this might lose your conservative students, it’s important to discuss with your students the actions that can be taken. While individual actions are useful and important, we all have our roles to play in conservation, those individual actions aren’t going to solve anything by themselves. The issue in climate change isn’t solved by one, two, or a hundred people starting to recycle (though that is a good end), it’s systemic change that is required to fix this problem. The end goal of doing this is to motivate the students to vote or to engage with their policy makers in some fashion. Them driving less is important, but the impact is not of the magnitude that we need.

I’m deeply uncomfortable with advocating for individual solutions. As a physical scientist teaching a physical science course at a public institution, it’s not really my purview to go into what solutions are politically feasible, unless asked. I explain the situation, I go through some of the solutions we have, and the implication is that the most effective one is to get involved politically. Because it is. That’s the solution to the community action; to involve the community in solving the problem.

My perspective

All of this has been from my individual perspective. I’m a straight white dude in my thirties. I look, and probably outwardly project, a more traditional set of values than I actually hold. That affords me a whole lot of privilege in certain situations. Particularly in conservative areas there’s a baseline respect that comes with students having to call you ‘Sir’, ‘Doctor’, or ‘Professor’. It works, I think, really well to act as a Trojan horse for these students as someone who is not immediately bothered within their views. I’m a person who presents as fairly stereotypical American male, so there aren’t quick barriers thrown up that my views are from someone with a more liberal set of values, similar to how when the words “climate change” are used, conservative individuals ignore the rest of the argument made.

So your mileage may vary. This advice may not work, some might actually be horribly counter productive for somebody who doesn’t have a similar background or the assumed respect that goes with being a white, male professor. I chose to keep my preferred pronouns out of my email signature while at SHSU, because that’s a clear sign I’m a lefty. Part of my privilege is that it’s not a life-and-death or job-or-no-job situation for me to fight for those rights. I don’t have the level of righteous anger of someone marginalized, targeted, or worse by our government, which allows me the privilege to not having to worry about getting into many possible unsafe situations. I opted to not engage on some issues in my first semester teaching, and to only deal with very specific battles. Making sure that I taught my course material, including those viewed as political, as effectively as possible seemed like a good first step.

——————————-
This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Andy Fraass from the University of Bristol School of Earth Sciences.  This blog has been reposted with kind permission from the Time Scavengers blog.

In defence of science: Making facts great again

Posted on by janet.crompton

“We must not let rhetoric or vested interests divert us from what we know is the right course of action.”

From across the Atlantic, the European scientific community is watching warily as our American colleagues endure increasingly politicised attacks on their work and on the very foundation of evidence-based science.

President Donald Trump‘s decision earlier this month to withdraw the United States from the historic Paris Agreement on Climate Change – a decision condemned by heads of state, businesses, mayors and ordinary people in the US and the world over – epitomised this contempt for the facts from some within the political sphere.

We can, to some degree, relate, as many European scientists – and particularly those who research climate change and its impacts, as I do – have been forced to confront the politicisation of their disciplines, the distortion of their research and the promotion of “alternative facts” and vested-interest propaganda.

In fact, just two months ago at the annual General Assembly of the European Geosciences Union, for the first time in the body’s history, we debated issues around existential threats to science in general, the integrity of the scientific community, trust in science and what we can do to ensure that evidence-based science forms the basis for informed decisions and debate by policymakers and the public.

Later this month, we’ll watch as some of our American colleagues gather for the annual Broadcast Meteorology Conference of the American Meteorological Society, which will include in its programme a short course explicitly focused on the communication of climate science.

Never has accurate, fact-based communication of climate science been more urgently needed, and in modern history, it has rarely been so compromised. There is a clear trend, particularly evident in the US, of a growing distrust of “experts” who are branded as intellectual elites, rooted in a populist backlash towards the establishment.

This goes all the way up the rungs of government to the American president himself, who has called climate change a “hoax” and in his first 100 days in office has moved to curb spending on climate and earth science research and is overseeing an agency-wide scrubbing of climate science out of federal websites and publications.

As he announced the US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement on June 1, Trump also left himself open to accusations of misrepresenting climate science to suit his own political objectives: after the US president quoted a figure from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study to support his argument that the Paris Agreement is ineffectual, MIT officials – including one of the study’s authors – declared that Trump had misunderstood their work and that they did not support a US withdrawal from the agreement.

The science of climate change, however, is clearer than ever. We see the fingerprints of human-induced global warming on more and more long-term climate trends. In the US and throughout the world, for instance, warmer temperatures are amplifying the intensity, duration and frequency of many weather events, none more evident than extreme heat. Western states have suffered through record numbers of heat waves since the turn of the century, with overnight temperatures often at historical highs. This is particularly dangerous as it doesn’t give the human body the necessary relief. Already, these heat waves are costing lives, and the scientific link between human-induced global warming and heat waves is crystal clear. The European heat wave of 2003 is estimated to have caused 35,000 premature deaths and was very likely a consequence of human interference with the climate system.

By listening to the best available science on climate change, we can better prepare for its impacts. By ignoring, censoring, or shunning our scientists, we put more Americans at risk. The alternative to informed decision-making is uninformed decision-making. Without evidence-based science, decisions of vital importance to humanity will be made founded in prejudice, emotion and ignorance. That is no way to run the planet. It is no way to plan our future.

Besides helping prepare for the impacts of climate change, science should guide our efforts to minimise them. For these mitigation efforts, the science is telling us that we don’t have much time. In fact, it’s saying that 2020 must be the target for peaking global carbon emissions. We must bend the curve of global greenhouse gas emissions towards a steady decline by the next US presidential election. If emissions continue to rise beyond 2020, the world stands very little chance of limiting global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, the threshold set by the Paris Agreement, and a temperature limit that many of the world’s most vulnerable communities consider a threshold for survival.

The world has four short years to reverse our emissions trends to avoid the very real risk of dangerous and irreversible climate change, but we won’t get the policies we need without trusting and relying on the science that tells us that’s so. Science has no political affiliation, nor can it be bent to your will. You don’t renegotiate with physics and you aren’t about to “win” a deal with chemistry. We must not let rhetoric, vested interests or the blind dismissal of the overwhelming scientific consensus divert us from what we know is the right course of action ethically, scientifically and economically.

By Jonathan Bamber, professor of polar science at the University of Bristol and president of the European Geosciences Union. Blog originally posted on Al Jazeera.

Environments without Borders

Posted on by janet.crompton
The effects of climate change vary hugely across political borders, and have wide-ranging impacts on different communities and environments. Climate policy responses must recognise this global interconnectedness, and integrate international cooperation with effective
local action. This is why global treaties such as the Paris Agreement are so important in the fight against climate change, but individual nations must also do their bit to achieve the objectives set out in the agreement. In Environments without Borders  (part of Research Without
Borders), a panel debate hosted by Bristol Doctoral College and the Cabot Institute on Wednesday 10th May, we will discuss some of these issues, using examples from our research on particular challenges facing our global ocean and water environments.

 

Iceberg photo taken on a research trip to Antarctica, by
Eric Mackie

Rising Sea Levels

Many climate change impacts require a policy response that balances mitigation with adaptation. Mitigation, by reducing global greenhouse gas emissions to achieve a zero-carbon economy, can drastically reduce some of the worst effects of climate change. However, we are already committed to certain climate change impacts, and these will require humanity to adapt. Sea level rise is a prime example. Global sea level has already risen 20cm since 1900, and the rate of sea level rise is increasing. We know this trend will continue throughout the 21st century and beyond, but the question is, how much will sea level rise, and how fast?
Projections of global sea level rise by 2100 range from a further 30cm, assuming drastic mitigation action, to 1m or more in “business-as-usual” scenarios with increasing carbon emissions. Cutting carbon emissions can hugely reduce the number of people at risk of displacement by sea level rise globally, from up to 760 million in a scenario with 4°C of warming, down to 130 million if warming is limited to 2°C in line with the Paris Agreement. Mitigation is therefore essential if we want to avoid the worst effects, but adaptation is also necessary to ensure humanity is resilient to sea level rise that is already locked in.
A coastal scene taken on a research trip in the South
Pacific, by Alice Venn

Disappearing Islands

The South Pacific is home to some of the world’s states most vulnerable to climate change impacts. Sea-level rise threatens coastal erosion, the widespread displacement of people and the inundation of the lowest-lying islands in Tuvalu, Kiribati and the Marshall Islands, while oceanic warming and acidification threaten the livelihoods of many remote coastal communities. More intense tropical cyclones, Cyclone Pam in 2015 and Winston in 2016, have recently resulted in tragic losses of life and damages in excess of $449 million and $470 million respectively. The devastation facing Small Island Developing States in the region, when juxtaposed with their negligible contribution to global greenhouse gas emissions which is estimated at just 0.03%, serves to illustrate the need for the international community to urgently step up efforts to provide support. Enhanced financial assistance for adaptation is essential, however this must be accompanied by strengthened legal protection for communities, readily accessible compensation for loss and damage, capacity building and a strengthened role for civil society organisations giving voice to community needs and traditional knowledge in policy-making processes.
The Lion Fish is an example of an aggressive invasive fish
in the Caribbean Sea, and has had an impact over native species, ecosystems and
local economies.

Invasive Aliens

Biodiversity in water environments can be adversely affected by invasive fish species, which originate from different sources, including marine ballast, fisheries improvements, and aquaculture. Invasive fish species can cause environmental concerns such as changes in the nutrients cycle, transmission of diseases, competence for resources, displacement and extinction of native species. Success in the establishment of invasive species depends on propagule size, physiology of the proper species, and current biotic and abiotic factors in the invaded system. Invasive species represent a global issue, and when combined with climate change their effects can be sharpened. Some limiting abiotic factors are expected to change as the climate changes, favouring new invasions and the spread of established invasive species to new ranges. Milder winters in northern latitude lakes, worldwide flooding and salinisation of coastal freshwater systems will provide suitable thermal conditions, new pathways for escape and dispersion, and the increase in dominance by invasive fish species adapted to brackish water systems. Deficient planning for future responses in water management can also result in favourable conditions for dispersion of undesirable aquatic organisms. For example, this is the case with the Nile tilapia, an invasive species in tropical ecosystems of southern Mexico and Tanzania, where flooding causes its dispersion but alternative management policies could improve the situation. More information see the Invasive Species Specialists Group.


Sustainable Resource Management

Against the backdrop of climate change, which will exacerbate the impact of human activities on natural resources, today’s environmental challenges require above all a strong and consistent commitment by national governments to better implement ambitious environmental policies that they previously adopted. However, traditional decision making approaches often are not equipped to ensure that precious resources are protected, if not enhanced. Sustainable management of natural resources is without doubt complex and creates conflicts between users that compete for access. For instance, there still seems to be too great a divide between the environmental and the business sector and these policy domains are as yet not fully integrated. Nonetheless, there are good examples of governments (and sub-national governments) that were successful in getting all key policy sectors on board when implementing difficult and ambitious environmental policies. For instance, the Scottish Government’s approach in implementing the Water Framework Directive demonstrates that with a strong political commitment, coupled with very proactive efforts in balancing the decision making towards more inclusive and cooperative policy processes, and with an intense and systematic use of evidence to back up policy proposals, it is possible to build trust between sectors and to act upon the barriers to implementation.

It’s clear that each of these challenges requires imminent action, but what are the right approaches, actors, and requirements to make meaningful progress? Whether you’re a member of the public, a policy maker, or someone working in the field, we invite you to join us at the Environments without Borders event on Wednesday 10 May for a lively and provocative debate about the challenges we face and how, collectively, we can spur action for change.
Blog authors (and panel members): Laura De Vito is a postgraduate researcher in the School of Geographical Sciences. Carlos Gracida Juarez is a postgraduate researcher in the School of Biological Sciences. Alice Venn is a postgraduate researcher in the School
of Social Sciences and Law. Erik Mackie is a postgraduate researcher in the School of Geographical Sciences, working together with the British Antarctic Survey, and kept up a blog during his recent fieldwork in Antarctica. Blog originally posted on the Policy Bristol Blog.

Post-truth politics: Why do facts no longer matter to so many people?

Posted on by janet.crompton
Credit – Titan9389/Flickr.com (CC BY-ND 2.0)
 

Virtually unknown a few years ago, the terms “post-fact” and “post-truth” have exploded onto the media scene in 2016, with thousands of articles around the globe expressing concern over the absence of a shared body of facts and evidence in public and political debate. This concern is buttressed by evidence that the public is misinformed about a range of issues, from vaccinations to climate change and the fabled Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.

Politicians have always sought refuge in fantasy or subterfuge when confronted by uncomfortable facts. So why the sudden concern with the emergence of “post-truth” politics? Two factors can be identified that confirm that the landscape of public discourse has changed: first, the brazenness with which some politicians have unshackled themselves from the constraints of evidence and reality, and second, the public’s acquiescence with this flight into fantasy land.

These factors are particularly evident in two political contests that have dominated the UK and the U.S. in 2016; namely, the EU referendum and the American presidential election. In the U.S., the pronouncements of Republican candidate Donald Trump are demonstrably false around 70% of the time, according to the independent non-partisan fact-checking site Politifact. Only 4% of Trump’s statements were judged to be unambiguously true. In the UK, many claims of the Leave campaign in the lead-up to the referendum were likewise clearly false, from the claim that the UK transferred £340,000,000 per week to the EU, to the spectre of Turkey joining the EU and its citizens becoming eligible for residence in the UK.

“Vote Leave” poster, Market Street, Omagh. Credit – Kenneth Allen/Geograph.ie (CC BY-SA 2.0)
Trump’s false claims have been routinely debunked by the American media, but this has had little effect on his standing in the polls. Similarly, the mythical figures of the Leave campaign were widely condemned and corrected in the media, without any discernible impact on opinion polls or the public’s beliefs.

Nonetheless, the Leave campaign brazenly continued to display their false figure on their campaign bus to the very end, only for Nigel Farage to admit their inaccuracy on TV within a few hours of the polls closing. And in defiance of all fact-checking, Donald Trump has thus far shown no inclination to let his campaign speeches be infiltrated by facts or evidence.

It is unsurprising that the Washington Post has wondered how democracy can survive if facts no longer matter.

Why do facts no longer matter to so many people? And if facts no longer matter, what does?

To answer those questions we must confront at least one myth surrounding the success of Brexit and the persistent popularity of Trump. In both cases, many commentators have argued that voters supported Brexit or Trump because they felt “disenfranchised” or were “left behind” by globalisation, or live on the “edges of the economy.”

It is true that some Trump supporters belong to that category, as did many Britons who voted to leave the E.U.

But by and large Trump supporters are not the wretched of the earth.

The median income of Trump supporters is around $10,000 higher than that of Clinton supporters. If only men voted, polls have suggested that Trump would win the election by a landslide. The “edges of the economy” do not encompass the majority of American men. And although Brexit found more support among low income earners than wealthier Britons, that effect was dwarfed by attitudinal variables such as support for the death penalty, strength of “English identity”, rejection of gay equality, and anti-immigration attitudes. Those same attitudes are also the strongest predictors of support for Trump among Republican voters in the U.S. Among those who believe that newcomers are threatening American values, Trump support is high, and it is low among those who believe that the U.S. is strengthened by immigration. Likewise, hostility towards women is one of the strongest predictors of support for Trump.

 

Donald Trump makes a campaign stop at Muscatine, Iowa, January 2016. Credit – Evan Guest/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Trump and Brexit are phenomena that have tapped into people’s deeply-held attitudes. The EU referendum ultimately was a contest between the voices of diversity and tolerance on the one hand, and nationalism and exclusion on the other, rather than a competition between different economic visions for the future.

Trump and Brexit are about emotions, not the economics of the moment. It is how people feel about themselves and others.

And emotions operate to a logic that is largely independent of facts and evidence.

But that does not mean those emotions are illogical or erupt on their own, like some sociological volcano, without any possibility of guidance or control. Far from it. Hatred of Muslims or immigrants, misogyny, and ethnic supremacism do not erupt, they are stoked.

We now know from painstakingly detailed research that the “Tea Party” in the U.S. was not a spontaneous manifestation of “grassroots” opposition to President Obama’s healthcare initiative but the result of long-standing design efforts by Libertarian “think tanks” and political operatives pursuing an anti-regulatory agenda. Donald Trump did not come out of nowhere but learned his trade from Sen. Joe McCarthy’s chief counsel who was the brains behind the paranoid hunt for communist infiltrators in the 1950s.

Likewise, the negative attitudes towards the E.U. in England did not spontaneously emerge but were shaped by decades of mendacious tabloid coverage that immersed the public in industrial-strength misinformation about the E.U. The anti-immigration attitudes that are particularly rampant in regions devoid of immigrants did not grow naturally but were stoked by relentless media spin.

Daily Mail newspaper, 23 August 2006. The headline was repeated in August 2015. Credit – Gideon/Flickr.com

If Brexit and Trump are driven by emotion and attitudes, fuelled by misinformation and demagoguery, rather than (just) economic concerns, what does this portend for the future?

The developments in the UK during the last few months offer a glimpse of how a public decision driven by such emotions can turn into actual or proposed policy. In the few months since pro-Remain MP Jo Cox was assassinated by a man calling himself “death to traitors, freedom for Britain”:

This selection is neither exhaustive nor necessarily representative, as there may be many policy proposals and actions that escape public notice because they are less controversial. Nonetheless, those actions do not reveal an attitude that considers the French or German people as neighbouring vintners whom we might visit for anything from a short holiday to a gap year or indeed retirement. Those actions do not consider the Belgian people as friendly neighbours who like their beer cooler and stronger and their chocolate particularly exquisite. Those actions fail to remember that the EU won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2012 for transforming Europe from a continent of war to a continent of peace.

Those actions also fail to mesh with the feelings of the European people who lit up their landmarks—from the Eiffel Tower to the Ponte Vecchio—in Union Jack colours on the evening of the referendum in a gesture of appreciation of the UK’s membership in the E.U.

 

Front page of the Algemeen Dagblad, Dutch newspaper, 15th June 2016. The paper issued an open letter in English titled “please don’t leave us”.

It remains to be seen how those initial actions and proposals will translate into long-term policy, but they do not augur well for a future climate of tolerance and diversity in the UK and towards its closest neighbours. Similarly, if Donald Trump wins the presidency, it is difficult to be optimistic about the prospects for tolerance and continued protection of civil rights in America.

How can we move on from here?

This is a political question that can only be resolved by political means. To have any chance of success, those political efforts must be based on a realistic assessment of the current situation. Two factors in particular deserve to be recognised:

First, the xenophobia of Trump and the anti-immigrant slant of the Leave campaign are not coincidental features of campaigns that are pursuing some other substantive agenda. On the contrary, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that xenophobia and white nativist supremacy are the agenda.

Second, the contemporary Republican Party and its British counterpart have very little in common with the parties that each used to be. The British Tory party was instrumental in drafting the European Convention on Human Rights in the 1950s and Winston Churchill was one of its ardent supporters. The contemporary Tory party is now committed to withdrawing from it, to the alarm of human rights organisations.

 

Sir David Maxwell Fyfe, the Earl of Kilmuir, in 1954. British Conservative politician, lawyer and judge who was instrumental in drafting the European Convention on Human Rights. Credit Elliott &Fry/Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain)
 

The Republican Party used to be the party of the conservative but pragmatic establishment, with figures such as Ike Eisenhower or Gerald Ford. Today, Trump’s evident authoritarianism is only the beginning of the transformation of that former Republican Party into an off-shoot with troubling and chilling attributes: A party that finds little wrong with a candidate who refuses to promise that he will abide by election results has at best a tenuous grip on the democratic mainstream. A party that brazenly promises not to confirm any nominee for the Supreme Court if Hillary Clinton is elected president is a party that has taken leave from democratic practice and traditions.

We should not ignore those realities however discomforting they may be.

This article was written for the Policy Bristol Blog by Cabot Institute Member Professor
Stephan Lewandowsky, Chair in Cognitive Psychology, University of Bristol.

Bristol Geographers appear in The Times and condemn divisive Brexit rhetoric

Posted on by janet.crompton

The following text comprises a longer version of a Letter to the Editor that appears in print and online in The Times. The letter, signed by over 85 members from of the School of Geographical Sciences expresses our dismay and disillusionment with the recent divisive rhetoric from the government regarding foreign workers and an inclusive society.

Further, we are concerned that this rhetoric is already acting as a detriment to our university’s values, and the research and teaching we do.

The letter starts here:

“As a nationally and internationally recognised research and teaching department, we echo Lord Rees’ recent comments to express our deep concern at the divisive and ‘deplorable’ rhetoric during discussions about Brexit and immigration at the recent Conservative party conference. This rhetoric does not reflect the values we aim to uphold in our university and discipline, nor the diversity of feelings in the country. We are dismayed, further, that our Prime Minister, a former student of geography, seems to have forgotten our subject’s core teachings and values.

We are ‘citizens of the world’. Our department’s research, teaching, and study ranges across diverse fields: from financial institutions to flooding; from philosophy to parliamentary boundary reform; from colonialism and biogeochemistry, and all the planetary processes in between. We come from over 19 different countries, and virtually every populated continent. We come from everywhere. And we contribute to numerous global and local initiatives that seek to make our world a better, healthier, happier place.

What unites our diverse scholarly work is the recognition that how we make sense of the Earth – how we ‘geo-graph’ it – matters. How we understand our relationships to the Earth and each other matters for addressing issues affecting our shared planet, equitably and honestly. For this reason, we highlight our responsibility to one another and the many complex forces that make life possible; we recognise and value the many who make us, always, more than one.

Thus, we stand behind all of our staff and students who come from all corners of the world, and who contribute, as international citizens, to the strength of our department and its impacts locally, nationally, and globally. International staff and students now feel very insecure about their futures here. While we will do everything we can to protect their work and contributions, we hope the government will make clear that their futures – and those of our colleagues across the UK – are under no threat.

The School of Geographical Sciences

University of Bristol”

In order of signing:

Prof Paul Bates, Head of School

Prof Ron Johnston, OBE, FAcSS, FBA (former-VC, University of Essex)

Prof Clive Sabel

Prof Richard Harris

Prof Jemma Wadham

Prof Tony Payne

Prof Alexandre Anesio

Prof Sharon Collard

Dr T Davies-Barnard

Dr Merle Patchett

Dr Alex Farnsworth

Dr Sarah Greene

Prof Kelvyn Jones, FBA, FLSW, FAcSS

Dr Jon Hawkings

Dr Gemma Coxon

Dr Chris Williams

Dr Malcolm Fairbrother

Dr Fotis Sgouridis

Mr Earl Harper

Dr Niall Quinn

Dr Chris Yates

Ms Laura De Vito

Mr Matt Trevers

Dr Fiachra O’Loughlin

Dr Twila Moon

Mr Edward Armstrong

Mr Julien Bodart

Mr Rory Burford

Mr Erik Mackie

Dr Peter Hopcroft

Mr Gwilym Owen

Mr Michael A. Cooper

Mr Tim Morris

Mr Gregory J. L. Tourte

Dr Julie MacLeavy

Dr David Manley

Dr Patricia Sanchez-Baracaldo

Dr Winnie Wang

Dr Mark Jackson

Dr Sandra Arndt

Dr Sean Fox

Mr Nathan Chrismas

Mr Thomas Keating

Ms Catherine Midwood

Dr Luke Ridley

Dr Andrew Tedstone

Ms Jeni Milsom

Dr Dewi Owen

Mr John Hargreaves

Ms Claire Donnelly

Dr Victoria Lee

Ms Natalie Lord

Ms Ciara Merrick

Dr Ros Smith

Dr Rosalyn M. Death

Ms Amy Waterson

Dr Jamie Wilson

Ms Nina Williams

Ms Iskra Mejia Estrada

Dr J-D Dewsbury

Ms Sara Davies

Mr George Burdon

Mr Sam Berlin

Ms Emily Eyles

Prof Jonathan Bamber

Mr Stephen Chuter

Mr Alistair Anderson

Mr Jethro Brice

Mr Matthew Marshall

Mr Oliver Wing

Mr James Crosby

Dr Katerina Michaelides

Dr Jo House

Dr Fran Bragg

Mr Dominik Hülse

Dr Alba Martin

Dr Jeff Neal

Dr Julie MacLeavy

Mr Edward Thomas

Prof Paul Valdes

Dr Franklin Ginn

Mr Samuel Rogers

Mr Alan Kennedy

Dr David Richards

Prof Penny Johnes

Prof Dan Lunt

Mr David Hayes

Mr Mat Keel

List of countries people are from:

United Kingdom

Spain

Brazil

Sweden

Denmark

United States of America

Canada

Greece

Italy

Ireland

The Netherlands

Belgium

France

Colombia

China

Germany

Mexico

Israel-Palestine

Cyprus

From Paris to Parliament: Is there a climate for action?

Posted on by janet.crompton

The Paris Agreement reached at the COP21 late last year was a big success, and the UK played an important, constructive role in that. But the UK is going backwards in policy terms with respect to greenhouse gas emissions.

That was the general message I took away from an event I attended last week in Parliament on behalf of the University of Bristol’s Cabot Institute. In truth, this wasn’t a big surprise to me. But what did strike me was the unanimity of the panellists who spoke: an MP, a scientist, an economist, a financial advisor, and an activist.* They were all more or less in agreement about the following:

  1. Paris was a big deal. There are certainly all kinds of things to be worried and dissatisfied about, and it would have been better to have had an agreement like this 20 years ago. (If you add up all the commitments national governments have made, we’re nowhere near keeping climate change under 2˚.) But it really does give us a much better shot than we had beforehand. In an important sense, to quote the scientist, December 2015 was when humanity really decided that climate change was “a problem we agreed to do something about”.
  2. Above all, Paris did two crucial things. First, it established a mechanism for making countries accountable to each other, and for making governments more accountable domestically. Second, it provided firms and investors with a clear steer: the world economy is going to decarbonise in this century. The private sector will appreciate the implications: some power stations will have to be decommissioned early; governments will sooner or later have to introduce policies favourable to renewables and unfavourable to fossil fuels; “climate risk” is going to be a huge issue for the financial services sector.
  3. And the private sector is not the problem. In a lot of ways, big companies are ahead of the government, and many are looking to governments to get with the programme and establish sensible, long-term targets and regulations. I found it striking that even an activist from Friends of the Earth and the former leader of the UK Green Party seemed to feel this way.
  4. Cutting carbon isn’t bad for the economy. Again, I wouldn’t have been surprised by a couple of the panellists saying this. But for all five to agree was impressive. They made the point in different ways. The scientist for example talked about employment growth in the clean energy sector, while the activist noted that greenhouse gas emissions have come way down in the UK in the last 25 years even as total economic activity has grown.
  5. Both of the UK’s major political parties–i.e., the Conservative Party included–have been positive forces shaping the global climate regime, and UK governments led by both parties have advised other countries on how to get their emissions down. This message too was striking to me.

All of the above just confirmed things I’ve thought for a while: That decarbonising is completely economically doable, and the reasons we’re not doing it fast enough are just political. And that at this point (in some contrast perhaps to 10 or 20 years ago) the private sector isn’t much of a problem politically.

What remains perplexing to me then is why the current government is not just doing so little, but actually going backwards–another more-or-less consensus view among the panellists. For example, revenues from environmental taxes have been flat or declining for years as a proportion of all tax revenues–directly contrary to what mainstream economics recommends. In the housing sector, the government has weakened energy-efficiency standards and killed off its flagship scheme to encourage better insulation. Subsidies for renewables have been cut (though the economic case for such subsidies is more equivocal). And this year’s Energy Bill is strangely silent on climate change.

So… What’s with the current government? I’m sure some of them are climate sceptics, but I wouldn’t expect a majority are (and I don’t think David Cameron is). Are they overestimating the economic costs of taking action on climate change? Maybe. But my best guess is that green issues just aren’t a big concern for them personally, and they don’t see the British public as too interested or supportive. As such, climate change is just constantly slipping down the agenda.

We may soon know more. The panellists noted that a number of big decisions are coming up in the UK within the next year, and in a sense this country will provide the first test of the Paris Agreement. Notably, there are questions about the climate implications of the Energy Bill, next month we will find out about funding for renewables post-2020, and we will see a new Carbon Plan by the end of the year. Let’s hope for some more positive news on those fronts.

* The panellists were Caroline Lucas (MP, former leader of the Green Party); Sir David King (formerly the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, and now Special Representative for Climate Change); Prof Michael Jacobs (various think tank and academic affiliations); Kirsty Hamilton (various finance affiliations); and Simon Bullock (Friends of the Earth). The event was a seminar of the All Party Climate Change Group (APPCCG) and Parliamentary Renewable and Sustainable Energy Group (PRASEG).

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Malcolm Fairbrother, from the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol. 

COP21 daily report: The politics and culture of climate change

Posted on by janet.crompton
Cabot Institute Director Professor Rich Pancost will be attending COP21 in Paris as part of the Bristol city-wide team, including the Mayor of Bristol, representatives from Bristol City Council and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership. He and others Cabot Institute members will be writing blogs during COP21, reflecting on what is happening in Paris, especially in the Paris and Bristol co-hosted Cities and Regions Pavilion, and also on the conclusion to Bristol’s year as the European Green Capital.  Follow #UoBGreen and #COP21 for live updates from the University of Bristol.  All blogs in the series are linked to at the bottom of this blog.
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The main road in Tuvalu in September 2015, photographed by Viliami Fifita a PhD student in Policy Studies, University of Bristol.  His travel was funded by an ESRC Impact Acceleration Award to assist the Tuvalu government measure poverty and living standards in the context of climatic change and rising sea levels.
 
The Climate Change (COP21) conference in Paris is one of the most important gatherings of politicians, civil servants, academic experts, journalists, business and civil society representatives of the 21st Century – over 50,000 people are expected to attend.   The need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions is clear as in 2015 global temperatures may rise to an average of 1oC above the pre-industrial level and atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (CO2) levels rose above 400 ppm for the first time in the past 800,000 years.  Some climate model results show that if greenhouse gas emission were stabilised, which would require a 60% reduction in global emissions immediately, then the World’s climate would still warm up to 1.6oC above the average pre-industrial level.
 
The natural sciences have made huge efforts to investigate the problem of climate change; unfortunately, the social sciences have not been so active.  This lamentable situation needs to change, so under the auspices of the IASQ (International Association on Social Quality) over 200 social scientists from around the world have signed the Sustainability Manifesto which argues that;

“one-dimensional solutions cannot address multidimensional problems like those we currently face….. environmental change is still viewed primarily in physical science terms, whereby the (interrelationships of) socio-environmental, socio-economic, socio-political and socio-cultural dimensions of sustainability receive insufficient attention”.

Interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary research is needed particularly to fill the current knowledge gaps about socio-political and socio-cultural aspects of sustainability.  A lot is now known about the environmental and economic aspects of climate change but this has not been sufficient to persuade many politicians or some sections of the public that major actions are required which may affect their lifestyles.  Research is needed into how best to overcome these socio-cultural and socio-political barriers to sustainability.

The Sustainability Manifesto has received the unanimous backing of the executive committee of the International Social Science Council (the World’s governing body for the social sciences under the auspices of UNESCO) and the ISSC president, Alberto Martinelli, has called on all “scientists and colleagues all around the world to support the Initiative”.  I have helped to draft the Sustainability Manifesto and have signed it on behalf of the University of Bristol.  

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Professor David Gordon.  Prof Gordon studied environmental and climatic change for his PhD research and has worked at Bristol for 25 years in the School for Policy Studies.  He is the Director of the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research and was the editor of the European Journal of Social Quality for two years.

Prof David Gordon
 
This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:
 
Monday 30 November: COP21 daily report
 
Tuesday 1 December: Setting a more ambitious agenda – Bristol’s Transformative Action Plans
 
Wednesday 2 December: Reflecting on the science of climate change

 Friday 4 December: Be brave, work together and involve the next generation
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