Tag: Trump

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.

A response to Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement

Posted on by janet.crompton

The decision by President Trump to withdraw from the Paris Agreement on Climate Change puts the United States at odds with both science and global geopolitical norms.  The fundamentals of climate change remain unambiguous: greenhouse gas concentrations are increasing, they are increasing because of human action, the increase will cause warming, and that warming creates risks of extreme weather, food crises and sea level rise. That does not mean that scientists can predict all of the consequences of global warming, much work needs to be done, but the risks are both profound and clear. Nor do we know what the best solutions will be – there is need for a robust debate about the nature, fairness and efficacy of different decarbonisation policies and technologies as well as the balance of responsibility; the Paris Agreement, despite its faults with respect to obligation and enforcement, allowed great flexibility in that regard, which is why nearly every nation on Earth is a signatory.

Moreover, although climate change affects us all, it will affect the poorest and most vulnerable the most. They, despite being least responsible, bear the greatest risks and the greatest burdens. For the President of the world’s second largest carbon polluter to blatantly disregard such evidence and injustice, to refuse to even acknowledge the consequences of its actions and to disengage with this relatively modest and non-binding agreement puts it odds with the norms of global partnership and human rights. This abrogation of responsibility is particularly profound because President Trump has also withdrawn the United States from the Green Climate Fund, which helps the poorest of the world adapt to the climate change that his actions make more likely.

And to what end?  Other nations will now assume global leadership, politically, morally and technologically.  It will likely cost American businesses money, hinder innovation in one of the world’s most dynamic sectors, and ultimately cost jobs. It will likely undermine the United States’ global stature and diplomatic reach. It is hard to imagine a decision so blatantly motivated by self-interest while being so profoundly self-harming.

The crucial question now is how we respond.  China and the EU have stepped forward, increasing their voluntary commitments, repudiating President Trump’s decision and assuming the mantle of leadership.  Nations around the world are following suit, as are cities and states across the United States.  Businesses have re-stated their commitment to decarbonisation – ironically, the day before Trump’s decision, shareholders voted that Exxon develop plans compliant with the Paris Agreement’s targets.  In the UK, in the midst of a general election, parties from across the political spectrum have responded to Trump’s decision with reactions ranging from disappointment to outrage. The UK has always provided leadership in this arena, recognising that climate change is a non-partisan issue, and it is one of the few nations with a cross party Climate Change Act.  It is vital for both the planet and the UK that these initial comments are followed by bolder actions and stronger leadership.

Across the world and in the University of Bristol, we are frustrated with the symbolism of Trump’s actions, his speech’s misrepresentation of facts, and his decision’s potential to slow climate action.  But we also recognise that these actions will not stop climate action. The responses of local, national and international leaders, in politics, community groups and businesses, across sectors and across society show that no person, regardless of his position or his nation, can stop the energy revolution. It is too deeply embedded in our politics, economy and ambitions, borne of out of multiple necessities.

Here, in the University of Bristol Cabot Institute, we remain committed to this challenge.  Our University is committed to carbon neutrality, ethical and low-carbon procurement and divestment from fossil fuel-intensive businesses. We have foregrounded Sustainable Futures in our undergraduate teaching.  And in our research, we are investigating improved energy efficiency in everything from computer software, to our homes and our cities.  We are exploring how smart technology enables new forms of transport, community energy and individual action. We are converting nuclear waste into diamond batteries with 5000-year lifetimes, we are leading one of the projects under the Natural Environment Research Council’s Greenhouse Gas Reduction programme and we have just launched new initiatives in wind, tidal, solar and nuclear energy.

Our ambitions are at all scales, from the local to the global.  We continue to work with our Green Capital partners, with a focus on building an informed, diverse, inclusive and powerful movement to become a more sustainable city and region, exemplified by the Green and Black Ambassadors Initiative.  Globally, our projects have been exploring the impact of conflict, climate change and geological hazards on development and the environment; the potential for micro-grids to deliver electricity to isolated communities; new forms of parasite resistance for subsistence farmers; and how geothermal energy can be harnessed in Ethiopia.

This commitment to sustainability builds on five decades of research on our environmental challenges and how to manage them.  The Atmospheric Chemistry Research Group makes among the world’s most accurate measurements of atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases, and they have shown how rapidly these compounds are accumulating. They are committed to refining those measurements and the modelling methods that allow us to understand why global emissions change. The Bristol Initiative for the Dynamic Global Environment reconstructs past climates and uses those insights to better understand our future; recent projects are building global collaborations to explore the controls on Earth’s temperature and monsoons.  Our glaciologists study sea level rise; our hydrologists study floods and drought; our social scientists study the injustice of climate change and its impact on migration and conflict; and our vets and life scientists are exploring how to improve animal welfare and crop yields on a climate disrupted planet.

Our commitment includes appointing the best and the brightest at understanding these challenges, including Dr Dann Mitchell who joined the University in November.  As co-ordinator of the largest dedicated project in the world on the climate impacts of the Paris Agreement (www.happimip.org), he sums up the Cabot Institute’s collective commitment: “The news of Trump wanting to pull out is incredibly frustrating. Our results are already suggesting more extreme events, such as droughts and heat waves, and serious impacts on society, such as increased human and animal health issues, failures in global crop distributions and bleaching of our coral reefs. I am frustrated that Trump continues to ignore the scientific evidence that has been recognised by his global peers, but that will not dissuade us from doing all we can to understand climate risks… and prevent them.’

 

 

Article by Professor Rich Pancost
Director of the University of Bristol Cabot Institute
Professor of Biogeochemistry
Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Scholar

Climate negotiations: From Paris to Marrakech and… Trump?

Posted on by janet.crompton

A few weeks ago, Morocco hosted the Twenty-second Conference of the Parties on Climate Change (COP22), which meant to become the “COP for action”. One of the main challenges of this edition was setting the stage for the implementation of the Paris Agreement, adopted by the UNFCCC parties last December.

After the unexpected early entry into force of the Agreement, the COP22 sought to transform Paris discussions into reality and to develop concrete guidelines for achieving the 1.5°C goal. However, this call for climate action was disrupted on its second day by the outcome of the elections in the United States: someone who thinks climate change is a Chinese hoax was elected President of the Unites States.

When I arrived in Marrakech, I was not sure what to expect from the COP22 after that black Tuesday. The scenario was disappointing, but so predictable at the same time; besides the statements of countries such as China, Japan and the European Union ratifying their commitment to the fight against climate change (with or without the U.S. in the game), there was still an odd combination of uncertainty and sadness among delegates. These feelings were definitely projected onto the negotiations.

Broadly speaking, speculation overshadowed the final decisions of subsidiary bodies of the Convention and the governing body of the Paris Agreement (CMA).  They came out with generic final decisions, sometimes focused on procedural matters under the Paris Agreement and the rules of the Convention of Climate Change. In some other cases, they surprisingly postponed discussions to the next subsidiary bodies meetings in Bonn (May 2017) and, for topics such as the linkages between the Technology Mechanism and the Financial Mechanism to accelerate and enhance climate technology development and transfer, they agreed to bring it back again to the agenda at the twenty-fourth session in 2018.

But why? The answer is aggressively simple: Gaining time. By far, the U.S -one of the crucial players in the game of tackling Climate Change- has been leading a wide range of initiatives together with the European Union, China, Canada and Mexico, to name a few. It is understandable from an international perspective, that nations are anxious to know if, after this transition period, the U.S. will still be part of the team or abandon the game.

At COP22, the first press brief of the U.S. was delivered by Jonathan Pershing, U.S. Special Envoy on Climate Change. He stressed the importance of transitioning from negotiation to implementation and qualified as ‘immature’ speculating about the new administration and what actions they would take. But rumors of President elected Trump appointing a climate change destroyer as the head of the EPA were annoying many delegations in Marrakech.

The COP22 appeared to be a Conference for merely presenting initiatives agreed between the UNFCCC Parties, using the Paris Agreement goals as a guideline, rather than defining pathways for implementing the legal instrument itself. However, we should keep an eye on strategies such as the ‘2050 Pathways Platform’ presented by national and subnational entities as well as the private sector, to reach a deep decarbonisation towards the middle of the century; and the Global Partnership on Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency launched by the least developed countries (LDCs) to speed up the clean energy transition.

In terms of climate finance, countries such as Canada, Denmark, the European Union, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Switzerland and the United States announced a $23 million contribution to the Climate Technology Centre and Network (CTCN) of the UNFCCC to facilitate and accelerate climate change mitigation and adaptation measures in developing countries.

Patricia Espinosa, the Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, remarked the importance of the deployment of clean and green technologies for the implementation of the Paris Agreement and the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs). She also stressed that “Finance will also be key if deployment is to happen at the speed and scale required”.

Although these initiatives can give us hope for the upcoming years, we should bear in mind that some pieces are still missing in the climate change puzzle.  Many countries are still deciding the roadmap for implementing their nationally determined contributions (NDC), whose achievements should be evaluated every five years; and the Ad Hoc Group of the Paris Agreement (APA) has not yet defined the rulebook for the implementation of the Agreement, nor the accountability rules to ensure a transparent and flexible process of monitoring and verification of those targets.

The international community agrees with the IPCC that climate change needs to be addressed now in order to achieve the well below 2 degrees aim. It is widely acknowledged that there is no time to lose, so why does time seem to have frozen for those in the frontlines of climate negotiations? Why they are still trapped in an endless loop of bickering?

During Education Day, Youth representatives raised their voices to say: We refuse to accept that this is over! And I am one of them. This is just the beginning of an era in which all sectors, from youth to the private sector, have to take the lead. We cannot base our decisions on childish statements from a democratically empowered billionaire and lose precious time. The clock is ticking, if we don’t take action now, there won’t be anything left to fight for in the near future.

Thanks to the Coordination Unit of International Affairs at the Mexican Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT) for the opportunity of being part of the Mexican Delegation.

Blog by Cabot Institute Masters Research Fellow and Chevening Scholar Mireille Meneses Campos.Chevening Scholarships, the UK government’s global scholarship programme, funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and partner organisations.

What does Trump mean for the environment?

Posted on by janet.crompton
President Trump. Image: Gage Skidmore CCBYSA 2.0

Several weeks ago, I was walking along Avenida Paulista in São Paulo. Through the noise of the traffic, the familiar shout of one man’s name could be heard. ‘Trump, Trump, Trump’ echoed across the street.  Somehow I had stumbled upon a ‘Brazilians for Trump’ rally. A group of 40 people stood on the pavement, clutching signs that read ‘Women for Trump’, ‘Jews for Trump’, ‘Gays for Trump’. This struck me; such demographics holding such signage represented for me a similar message to ‘trees for deforestation’.
 
Yet, the votes are in. The electoral tally has been made and one fact is obvious: Donald Trump’s popularity transcended demography. As, House Speaker, Paul Ryan has said, Trump “heard a voice out in this country that no one else heard. He connected in ways with people that no one else did. He turned politics on its head.”
 
Key here is not only Trump’s victory, but also how the Republican Party has been able to ride his coattails to majorities across both the Senate and the House of Representatives. In doing so, the Grand Old Party (GOP), working with Trump, will likely have the freedom to pursue their political agenda. As a result, the Republican platform, published at the 2016 National Convention, provides a number of clues of what we can expect from this new administration.
 
From this document, it is possible to profile what a Trump administration would mean for US environmental policy. I have previously written blogs of a similar vein for the UK 2015 election and the recent transfer of power in Brazil and it seems only fair that I cast my eye to the United States. In its platform, the GOP pledge a return to coal as an energy resource, with it described as “abundant, clean, affordable, [and] reliable.” It is likely that the extraction and use of this resource will increase, with federal lands opened up for coal mining, as well as oil and gas drilling. President Obama’s Clean Power Plan will be withdrawn and restriction on the development of nuclear energy likely be lifted. The anxiety of this turn from renewables can be found in the falling stocks of wind and solar companies since Trump’s win.
 
Furthermore, the President-Elect has already vowed to cancel the recent Paris Climate Agreement. For Trump, climate change is manufactured by the Chinese government and/or an expensive hoax. This rhetoric is matched by many in the Republican Party (who can
forget Senator James Inhofe’s snowball routine?) A solid majority in the House will allow for the continued harassment of climate science by individual politicians, such as Representative Lamar Smith, who has previously argued that climate scientists manipulate data to show that the planet is warming.
 
As has been argued elsewhere, the United States cannot officially leave the Paris agreement until November 2020 (conveniently coinciding with a potential Trump re-election bid.) However, there is another way: to leave the UNFCCC entirely, immediately after taking office. In doing so, a Trump administration could – hypothetically – leave both agreements by January 2018. The political message of such action would be clear: policies of climate change mitigation restrict the opportunities for further American development and must be removed if the Trump administration is to meet its oft-repeated target of 4% GDP growth.
 
This tension between sustainability and growth is also evident in the likely elimination of a number of regulations related to environmental health. The Environmental Protection Agency will be restricted to an advisory role, with its responsibility for regulation of CO2 removed.
Trump has previously mentioned Myron Ebell, a prominent climate denier, as a potential head of this organisation.
 
Regardless of who is in charge, air and water regulations will likely be kerbed, with Vox reporting that regulations at risk include those related to mercury pollution, smog, and coal ash. Such policies are perceived as a hindrance to ultimate goals of job creation and economic growth. Yet, as the Sierra Club have argued, this restriction of regulation will likely “imperil clean air and clean water for all Americans.”
 
Such actions will also open up questions of environmental racism. In the United States, people of colour face the effects of pollution disproportionately. As a result, an attack on environmental regulation promises consequences that will migrate into different policy sectors. Furthermore, this is occurring in the shadow of the Flint water crisis: an episode which exposed issues of environmental racism in the country. With the restriction of regulation, it is likely that Flint will cease to be an outlier.
 
The Washington Post has argued that, these plans will “reverse decades of U.S. energy and climate policy” and recent analysis has shown that such policies will raise US greenhouse gas emissions by 16% by the end of Trump’s (potential) eight year term.
 
However, the language of the GOP platform cautions against such assertions. Within this document, environmental campaigners become ‘environmental extremists’. The document seeks to depoliticise environmental issues, with, in their words, environmental regulation being “too important to be left to radical environmentalists. They are using yesterday’s tools to control a future they do not comprehend.” Remember, these words have been written at the time of the militarized action against the water protectors of Standing Rock. Such a language suggests that we can expect more aggression against environmental defenders in the future.
 
The victory of Trump, and of the GOP, not only represents a change in the political landscape but also a likely transformation of the physical one too. It, as some argue, may come to represent a serious challenge to the environmental health of the planet itself.
 
Writing this, my mind has been drawn back to those campaign signs in São Paulo. ‘Women for Trump’, ‘Gays for Trump’, Jews for Trump’. Yet one thing is certain under this new President: the trees are most definitely for deforestation.
 
 
This blog was written by Cabot Institute member, Ed Atkins, A PhD student in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies.

 

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.
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