Who Pays for Climate Change?
the disproportionate cost structure of climate change
By Sabrina Liu
Before the Flood
In his 2016 documentary Before the Flood, Academy Award-winning actor Leonard DiCaprio traveled the world to seek the truth about climate change. From the melting glaciers in Arctic Greenland and Canada to the flooded tropical Pacific islands, the documentary displays abundance of shocking visual evidence on dramatic climate change that our generation is experiencing.
In his journey, Leonard DiCaprio also made an effort to find out why it has been so difficult for people to accept the idea of climate change over decades. In the United States, the most predominant voices of climate denial have come from government officials and news media. What is less commonly known is that these climate deniers are more or less sponsored by large oil and gas companies. One of the main arguments from climate deniers is that human activities cannot possibly cause climate change. Other arguments included climate change is not real, the recent climate change is just a natural phenomenon in the earth geological cycle, climate change is caused by solar activities, or that the scientific models used are flawed. ProCon.org provides a comprehensive summary of these arguments. The organization claims a neutral stance in debates like this (ProCon.org, 2020).
Knowing the Rising Waters — A Foreseeable Future
As a matter of fact, climate change has been a known concern to scientific society for over a century. As early as 1896, Swedish scientist Svante Arrhenius already predicted that changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels could cause the surface temperature to rise through the greenhouse effect (NASA, 2022). Scientists in the United States have also been paying attention to the climate change threat for decades. In a 1958 production of Bell Telephone Science Hour, Dr. Frank C. Baxter, a scientist from Bell Labs then warned the audience about the warming atmosphere, the melting polar ice caps, and the rising sea level (NOAA, 2022). The episode was named “The Unchained Goddess” and the full episode can be found on YouTube.
Our civilization’s history is built on carbon emissions, since the day our ancestors mastered the art of fire. Burning wood, coal, petroleum oil, and natural gas will all discharge carbon dioxide and other gasses into the atmosphere. Nowadays, a large amount of human activities rely on the latter three, known as fossil fuels. The increasing consumption of fossil fuels is the main source of greenhouse gas emissions. It also comes with heavy costs to the environment in other ways. Mountain tops are removed for coal extraction sites. Fracking is the standard operation to get natural gas. Offshore drilling and tar sands are used for oil. These activities take away massive lands and forests, and pollute the waters. “There is no such thing as clean fossil fuel”, commented Michael Brune, Executive Director of Sierra Club, when interviewed by DiCaprio (Before the Flood, 2016, 00:10:06).
According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), 79% of the U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2020 were carbon dioxide (percentage in volume). The rest is made of 11% methane, 7% nitrous oxide, and 3% fluorinated gasses. Transportation accounted for 27% of the U.S. emissions at that time, followed by electricity generation (25%) and industrial operations (24%). Globally, each of the above three sectors respectively takes up 14%, 25% and 21% of the total emissions. Though agriculture and forestry land uses also contribute to 24% of the greenhouse gas, they also serve as carbon sinks that offset their own emissions.
The scientific proof on climate change caused by human activities is straightforward. This can be shown from the correlation between the increasing carbon emissions from human activities in the past 200 years and the sudden change in surface temperature. In a published study by NASA (2022), How Do We Know Climate Change Is Real?, it is stated that “While Earth’s climate has changed throughout its history, the current warming is happening at a rate not seen in the past 10,000 years” (p.1). In a special coverage by BBC in October 2021, it says “for 800,000 years, atmospheric CO2 did not rise above 300 parts per million (ppm). But since the Industrial Revolution, the CO2 concentration has soared to its current level of nearly 420 ppm” (p. 14). The study also stated that we should have little global warming if the climate is only under the influence of natural forces in accordance with the normal earth cycles (BBC, 2021, p. 16).
This statement is echoed by Dr. Michael E. Mann and his colleagues, who have published numerous papers on climate study. He argued that a long-term cooling trend has been observed on earth and the abrupt warming started around the year 1800 (Before the Flood, 2016, 00:24:10). The below graph illustrates that the claim is supported by observations from multiple measurements and experiments. However, their work was vilified and ridiculed by mainstream media like Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and Fox News. WSJ published an editorial titled How to Manufacture a Climate Consensus on December 18, 2009 targeting Dr. Mann’s published findings. And Fox News called it “statistical rubbish” while playing a humiliating cartoon with Dr. Mann’s face in it (Before the Flood, 2016, 00:24:30).
In response to the various scenarios questioning climate change, Harvard scholar James Wang and U.S. National Academy of Sciences fellow member Bill Chameides published a paper in 2007, in which they compiled additional evidence to bust several climate denial myths including: 1) CO2 is not coming from human activities; 2) no one really knows why the climate varies; 3) the Medieval Warm Period disproves global warming; 4) recent predictions of a new ice age disprove global warming; and 5) scientists cannot prove current warming is not natural. More and more science evidence shows that human activities are unequivocally responsible for global warming. With all the possible natural causes excluded, there can be only one truth left.
Denials, Denials, and More Denials
When the climate change issue first got the public’s attention, it immediately became a public relations concern to the large oil and gas companies, not an environmental one. Companies like ExxonMobil hired their own scientists in search of counterclaims. However, according to Harvard scholar Geoffrey Supran, an expert at ExxonMobil’s climate disinformation campaign, there were “systematic discrepancies” between their internal findings and what was disclosed to the public (Powell, 2021). Meanwhile, the oil and gas companies proactively invested in lobbying and mass media to convince the public that it is impossible for human activities to cause global warming, framing the climate change theory as a hoax.
In October 2021, NBC News reported that CEOs of ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell and BP America testified before Congress and denied that “they knew their products were driving climate change and lied about it” and claimed that they were “merely following the science at the time” (p. 1). Following this event, the same year in November, the Guardian compiled a digital gallery of deceptive advertisements from 1984 to 2021 and revealed a generation-long evolving propaganda from the fossil fuel industry. The article provided an analysis of how the tone of these advertisements have changed over time.
According to Supran and Oreskes (2021), the energy companies were initially not fully aware that burning fossil fuels could lead to climate change (p. 5). But as they became more educated in the subject, there came blatant denials. The focus then was to influence the public opinion into believing that climate change is not true. Later, as more scientific evidence emerged, the advertisements started to call for the importance of keeping economic growth. Most recently, as more and more public opinion is inclined to stopping climate change, the energy companies are starting their “greenwashing” campaigns, claiming themselves to be friends of the environment, and shifting their responsibilities to consumers.
Below are some examples of the climate denial advertisements published by Informed Citizens for the Environment in the 1990s. These advertisements used rhetorical strategies to dramatize the climate issue and to steer the discussion away from scientific facts. Besides trying to convince the public that global warming is not true, they also attempted to make supporters of climate change talk into laughstocks by manipulating the popular culture.
A similar research was conducted by journalist Phoebe Keane from BBC News in September 2020. The study revealed that the above campaign also took another name, the Information Council for the Environment (ICE). It was created in 1991 which aimed to oppose climate change as a theory. The campaign also deliberately chose its audience and targeted two groups that were considered most gullible. The first group was the “older, less educated males from larger households who are not typically information seekers”. The second group was “younger, low-income women”. According to Keane, if the women talked about climate change, people would easily associate them with the “hysterical doom-saying cartoon chicken”.
Thinks tanks also play a role in the denial. One institution that stands out in this arena is the Heartland Institute. The institute publicly promotes the idea that fossil fuels are essential for American economic growth and is at the core of American prosperity. Moreover, it argues that carbon emissions from the use of fossil fuels pose no threat of catastrophic global warming. It also claimed that carbon dioxide can’t be seen as pollution, but rather a nutrient needed by plants, good for the environment. As of today, it is still clearly stated on the institute’s website that legislation in the name of stopping climate change should be opposed if there is nothing we can do to stop global warming.
According to an article published in the Washington Post, ExxonMobil contributed $736,500 to the Institute between 1998 and 2006, followed by other oil and gas companies (Eilperin, 2012). Now the institute is keeping the sources of its funds in private. But it is not too difficult to make an educated guess who the sponsors might be. This is the same organization that publicly supports controversial rights such as freedom of smoking, alcohol consumption, and notoriously, fracking. In the documentary Before the Flood, DiCaprio also pointed out that the Heartland Institute receives funds from almost all major oil companies including ExxonMobil, Valero, Shell, BP, Chevron, and most of all, Koch Brothers (Before the Flood, 2016, 00:25:08).
In recent years, several major U.S. coastal cities, like Boston and Miami, as well as the Hawaii islands have observed the impact of rising sea levels. This has raised public’s concerns on climate change to an unprecedented level. However, climate denials continued despite the worsening habitat even for the American citizens. In Florida, the most impacted state, there are still government officials who publicly deny climate change. There was even a policy in place in 2011 that bans Florida officials from using the words “climate change” (Before the Flood, 2016, 00:21:58).
The most direct result of climate denial is the delay in actions to stop climate change. As the largest economy in the world, the U.S. has failed to take the necessary steps needed in order to stop carbon emissions. The majority of the U.S. population relies on privately owned vehicles that use fossil fuels as other main countries like China and India are investing heavily in public transportation. The U.S. government also swings back and forth on the matter of participating in global cooperation on carbon reduction. The denialism undoubtedly forces other countries and regions to bear the cost from climate change disportionately to their economic gains in the industrialization age.
Paradises in Perish — Standing before the Flood
People in Florida may still have 50 or 80 years to make plans and adapt to the changing environment. But those who live in the Arctic circles and the tropical islands are running out of time. Unfortunately, it is those who have benefited the least from industrialization that have to bear the consequences of a warming climate. In Arctic Kangerlussuaq, Greenland, ice of 30-feet-thick melted into ocean water within just 5 years, as of the documentary shooting date (Before the Flood, 2016, 00:19:17). That is hundreds of cubic kilometers of ice disappearing. This happens to the entire Greenland. The key ice sheet has been losing its mass for 25 years in a row, with around 166 billion tons lost in just 12 months as of August 2021 (United Nations, 2022). This has serious indications to the global environment, not just with the rising sea levels. It could dramatically change the currents which could make natural disasters more catastrophic. It could also damage the ocean ecological system, putting ocean lives at the risk of extinction and distablizing the food supply for humans, too.
People who live in the small island countries near the tropical zone have left the least carbon footprint on earth. But now they have to face the first shock of climate change due to rising sea levels. Among them, the most affected include the Caribbean, Pacific Islands and Maldives. Islands are at the risk of being entirely wiped out by the rising water. In several cases, that speaks for the entire nation. In the Republic of Kiribati, northeast of Australia, most of its lands are coral atolls just two meters above the sea. With the water rising at a rate of 1.2 centimeters a year, Kiribati is likely the first country on earth to disappear in the ocean (Acciona, n.d.).
Other countries with a similar fate include the Maldives, Vanuatu, Tuvalu, Solomon Islands, Samoa, Nauru, Fiji Islands, Marshall Islands (Acciona, n.d.). More than 2 million inhabitants in total would be displaced from the above 9 countries if global warming continues. The government of Kiribati is already preparing their people for the big move. At the moment, people are moving to higher parts of the island that are further from shore. They bought a piece of land in Fiji in order to have the option of being migrants with dignity instead of refugees (Before the Flood, 2016, 00:41:55). However, the Fiji Islands also have their own problems, with aggravating weather conditions from storms and rising sea levels. The once dreamlike oceanic paradises ideal for Westerners to take vacations are now becoming deserted.
In the below film produced by the United Nations in 2020, 8 year old resident of Kiribati, Taoua Tetabo, expresses her fear about the rising sea level and hopes that it will stop rising. For the islanders, doomsday is already happening. They are losing their homes to the water and storms. Also, their drinking water resources are destroyed by the flood. It is unknown to the 8-year-old girl how many days are left before she has to leave her homeland.
The rising sea level is an involuntary reality for the small island countries, an exported hazard dumped by industrialized countries. It is a continuation of the colonial-age exploitation of less developed populations. Only the most developed countries reaped the benefits from the economic growth backed by fossil fuels. But those who have made peace with nature for generations now have to pay the price. Millions of people will become climate refugees if the current trend of climate change remains. The situation is much more imminent than we knew it and a solution is urgently needed.
Who Should Pay for Carbon Reductions?
One might argue that climate change is not something that the U.S. could address alone. That’s very true. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, “In 2014, the top carbon dioxide (CO2) emitters were China, the United States, the European Union, India, the Russian Federation, and Japan” (EPA, 2022, p. 16). As the “world factory”, China has become the number one carbon emitter from fossil fuels combustion in the past decade due to its fast industrialization and urbanization process. However, the per capita carbon emission level in the U.S. is still the highest in the world. According to Sunita Narain, an activist who works for Center for Science and Environment in Delhi, India, an average person in an American home consumes electricity equivalent to that of 10 citizens of China, or 34 citizens of India (Before the Flood, 2016, 00:36:25). The entire world would love to live the American lifestyle, but the consequence would be unimaginable.
In response to both international and domestic pressures on the environment issue, China has dramatically steered the national policy on energy into developing renewable energies. In the meanwhile, India, as the third largest carbon emitting country in the world, still has 300 million people who don’t have access to electricity (Before the Flood, 2016, 00:34:15). That is about the same population size of the entire United States who are still struggling to get their basic needs met. To them, fossil fuels still appear to be the solution rather than the problem, unless an invisible force could shape the energy market in a way to make renewable energy more affordable than coal, oil and gas.
Innovations on new forms of energies take time, money and commitment. Should countries like China and India pay more for a better environment due to their large volumes? That is a question of environmental justice. Carbon reduction requires global cooperation. But is it fair to ask every country to contribute in the same way as if they all started the same way? Also, one top reason for the growing carbon emissions in developing countries is because they are manufacturing products for the developed countries. The most heavily polluting industries are often dumped in countries with lower labor costs. The health and living conditions near these industries are already directly impaired. But those who purchase the final products from thousands of miles away can still breathe their clean air freely. Neither do they have to pay for the carbon discharge.
On December 12, 2015, an international treaty on climate change was signed in Paris by COP 21, known to the public as the Paris Climate Agreement. COP 21 stands for the 21st annual session of the “Conference of the Parties”. Its governing body is the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Under the Paris Climate Agreement, participating parties are legally binded to make a commitment on carbon reduction. Countries are asked to submit their plans for climate action known as nationally determined contributions (NDCs) by 2020. The ultimate goal of this practice is to limit temperature rise to well below 2, preferably to 1.5 degrees Celisus, compared to pre-industrial levels (UNFCCC, 2022). This is a great milestone for the global society to come together and work on the climate change issue. Will this treaty lead to more just outcomes, especially for the small island countries? We are witnessing history together on this.
Your Own Carbon Footprint
So, what can you do to help? According to DiCaprio, the most effective way to reduce domestic carbon emissions is through legislation. Like taxes imposed on cigarettes which will drive down the demand, levying carbon tax on carbon emitting activities is critical to shifting people’s consumption preferences. The carbon tax shall apply to not only the use of fossil fuels but also other activities like grazing for beef which discharge disproportionately high volumes of methane. However, this seems impossible, because even much less aggressive proposals on climate-related legislation have not made much progress yet. DiCaprio reminded the audience that politicians are influenced by the attitude held by the public. If enough voices are calling for the climate tax, the politicians going for elections will more likely include the topic in their platform.
There are also things you can do without going through the frustrations over lengthy legislation debates and political dramas. Below illustration by EPA shows the breakdown of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. Without having to change other people’s behavior, you can simply choose to do the below things in the daily life to help:
- Drive electric cars, or if you can’t, drive fuel-efficient vehicles.
- Drive less often and consider other forms of transportation.
- Switch to renewable energy, like solar, to power your household, if possible.
- Invest in energy-efficient appliances and weatherproof your home.
- Enjoy the outdoor life more.
- Set your room temperature 1 degree higher in the summer (and similarly, 1 degree lower in the winter).
- Stop eating beef or reduce the amount of beef consumed.
- Spread the word and help more people be conscious of climate change.
If you need a better understanding of the material discussed in this post, please watch Before the Flood by Leonard DiCaprio, which can be found on Disney+ or YouTube.
References
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