Wednesday, August 1, 2018

Alex Steffen on ''What is so off about the August 5th NYT Sunday mag piece on climate by Nat Rich?'' Let me share a few initial observations, Alex tweets in this long thread.



  2. Mr. Alex SteffenVerified account

    @AlexSteffen

    I work on the future for a living. Writer, speaker, strategic advisor. 
    lives in San Francisco
    thenearlynow.com
    Joined Twitter long ago in March 2008
  3. Planetary thinking, sustainability, worldchanging solutions. 
  4. I ''block'' people who give off nonsense and rudeness.
  5.  16 hours ago
    What is so off about this whole-issue piece on climate?
     Jul 31
    I so wanted to be wrong about this piece, but this is both banal and awful.
    6 replies237 retweets344 likes




  7. Let me share a few initial observations (thread).

  8.  16 hours ago
    2. First of all, some praise for Nat Rich and his editors: It's great (and rare) to see an outfit as prestigious as the devote this much attention to climate change, to foreground the planetary crisis with the emphasis it deserves.
    1 reply7 retweets100 likes




  9.  16 hours ago
    3. Me, as someone who began covering climate change in 1990, shortly after the events described in the piece, it's great to see this critical period of failure spotlit. We're entering the last decade to ward of planetary catastrophe now because of the failure of leaders to act then.
    1 reply13 retweets79 likes




  10.  16 hours ago
    4. I notice that reactions to "Losing Earth" seem divided along a pretty straight-forward line: Those who work in climate science, journalism or advocacy—and those who don't. Folks who don't work on climate for a living seem more positive about the piece than those who do.
    1 reply11 retweets63 likes




  11.  16 hours ago
    5. There's a reason for that: It's a long 30,000 word essay that gets its subject wrong, and the ways it goes wrong are ways many of us who work on climate have seen again and again. It's work that doesn't know its history, and so makes old mistakes.
    1 reply10 retweets96 likes




6. Weirdly central in Nat Rich's story is the claim that there existed a time before politics, when climate change was not hampered by opposition: "The obstacles we blame for our current inaction had yet to emerge. Almost nothing stood in our way..." Alex says: ''This is simply untrue.''
6:59 AM - 1 Aug 2018
1 reply42 retweets145 likes



RainbombTweet text

    1. New conversation
    1.  16 hours ago
      7. Nat doubles down on the idea by explicitly exonerating high-CO2 industries+ the GOP "A common boogeyman today is the fossil-fuel industry, which in recent decades has committed to playing the role of villain with comic-book bravado. ...Nor can the Republican Party be blamed."
      3 replies10 retweets79 likes




    2.  15 hours ago
      8. Organized corporate opposition to climate action goes back decades. Conservative ideological opposition was well-established by the early 1970s (look up Limits to Growth). The Carbon Lobby's long campaign of climate predatory delay did not spring from the air, fully formed.
      2 replies26 retweets149 likes




    3.  15 hours ago
      9. Indeed, it's frankly bizarre to make the claim that the Republican party cannot be blamed, when for most of the 1980s, we had the Reagan administration—the most virulently anti-environmental gang to run the White House until Trump came along.
      4 replies38 retweets201 likes




    4.  15 hours ago
      10. That there were still, then, Republicans with an environmental conscience in public life, and that there were still bipartisan efforts to act does not mean that the 1980s GOP as a whole was not opposed to action. That's a re-writing of history, to dubious purpose.
      1 reply14 retweets103 likes




    5.  15 hours ago
      11. My sense is that the purpose there is not nefarious but narratively expedient: This is the story, primarily, of environmentalist Rafe Pomerance's part in the early climate movement, when he and others were attempting to provoke action with arguments and evidence.
      3 replies6 retweets58 likes




    6.  15 hours ago
      12. The central narrative tension, then, is the premise that they could have succeeded—that science and advocacy could have steered America (and the world) in a wide turn towards sustainability, but the opportunity narrowly escaped our grasp. I think that's naive.
      1 reply8 retweets95 likes




    7.  15 hours ago
      13. Early climate action—the kind that could have staved off our current planetary crisis—was up against a far uglier opposition than early advocates realized. The early climate movement didn't stumble, it was pushed. Hard.
      6 replies29 retweets129 likes




    8.  15 hours ago
      14. That story is harder to tell, and Rich was trying to make the most of his material.
      2 replies15 retweets99 likes



    9. That's understandable. But in so doing, he doesn't just minimize the extent of the opposition to climate action during the Reagan administration, he practically erases it.

    10.  15 hours ago
      15. That's a serious failure of climate journalism, IMHO, because that history of opposition continues to define the core of climate politics today. The central question of the climate crisis is not "Can we reduce emissions?" but "How long can high-carbon industries delay action?"
      1 reply48 retweets202 likes




    11.  15 hours ago
      16. Here's where the piece goes wrong, I think: It tries to make the story one of noble (if inevitable) failure on everyone's part; along the way, it misses the bigger story—the appalling success of powerful interests who chose to preserve profits while setting the planet ablaze.

        1.  11 hours ago
          Replying to 
          Yep I think the book Merchants of Doubt captures the opposition to climate action very well.
          4 likes



        1.  12 hours ago
          Replying to 
          A simple power analysis of who benefits from climate inaction and who pays the costs would be a good start.
          3 likes



        1.  14 hours ago
          Replying to 
          And this is why the culture of contemporary for-profit journalism collapses under it's own weight, unable to assign responsibility to powerful interests who are overwhelmingly represented by one political party, who are deliberately impeding action, and who are major advertisers.
          4 likes



        1.  5 hours ago
          Replying to 
          I have just barely begun reading it and I'm thinking, "yeah bullshit, we have seen the enemy and it is us."
          1 like



        1.  13 hours ago
          Replying to 
          Yes, I think it's so important to get that part of the story right because understanding it & resolving to do what's necessary no matter what the powerful interests want is the only way to have a different outcome in this decade's fight.
          1 like



        1.  14 hours ago
          Replying to 
          Reagan was the first Horseman.
          1 like



        1.  3 hours ago
          Replying to 
          I guess at this point I don’t care who is to blame, I would accept true actions from ANY party or nation. The piece does a lot of good.



        1.  7 hours ago
          Replying to 
          May I ask what you meant in 8. re: Limits to Growth? LtG did not include , so basically missed the most important factor, but its other predictions have withstood decades of scrutiny. Perhaps coopted by FF advocates, but useful. Genuinely curious. Thanks!



        9. New conversation
        1.  9 hours ago
          Replying to 
          please unroll
          1 reply




        2.  9 hours ago
          Hola you can read it here: Share this if you think it's interesting. 🤖



          3. End of conversation
        1.  9 hours ago
          Replying to 
          You could also call it or just what it is ...



        1.  12 hours ago
          Replying to 
          What if we acknowledged that profit-driven businesses often help their customers, and supported these businesses to reform, rather than blaming them? Any thoughts on the below pic?



        1.  13 hours ago
          Replying to 
          Big Oil commissioned a study in the 1970's on carbon emmissions & climate change. When they proved a link they buried the study & proceeded to LIE to us all.



        1.  14 hours ago
          Replying to 
          My time travel fantasy now involves going back and time, capturing a rabbit, and trying to secure Jimmy Carter's second term. I think we'd be in a better place if the renewable energy reforms and institutions he tried to start had been fully supported.



        1.  14 hours ago
          Replying to 
          Also: Boomers



        1.  14 hours ago
          Replying to 
          great thread



        1.  7 hours ago
          Replying to 
          Good thread, thanks



        1.  9 hours ago
          Replying to 
          Of course, we’ve seen this time and again (lead, asbestos, tobacco,etc.) It’s always the same script, dissemble and sow doubt. Protect profit at the expense of public health. With CO2, not only is the profit at stake so vast, there is an opposing ideology in utter denial.



        1.  14 hours ago
          Replying to 
          GOP greed at play for decades.
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August 5, 2018 at 9:50 AM

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