Elizabeth+Mathy+and+Jerry+Wong


 * __ 1ac—Warming __**

Sam Kutesa (Uganda), Assembly President, __said the well-being of the planet must go hand in hand with development efforts__. While science unequivocally pointed to human activity as the primary cause of global warming, it also underlined that __there was still a chance for this generation to **reverse the current trends** and preserve the planet through bold, collective action__. “Simply put, __it is not too late. **But**, we must **act now**. And we must act with courage,”__ he declared. __While the issues to be resolved__ ahead of the twenty-first Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) __were both challenging and at times controversial__, __a **successful outcome** was possible with **constructive engagement** and flexibility of all parties,__ he said. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that, in many ways, “__the stars are aligned as never before”, with__ the world’s two biggest greenhouse-gas emitters announcing ambitious actions and the number of national climate laws and policies nearly doubling since 2009. __China, the European Union and the United States had “placed their bets” on low-carbon, climate-resilient growth__, and the price of renewable energy sources was falling dramatically, with the world using more renewable electric power each year. The private sector, he said, was integrating climate risk into decision-making, revamping energy systems and calling for a price on carbon, while civil society was demanding action, demonstrating that the world was “hungry” for and capable of taking serious steps to meet the climate challenge. The pace of UNFCCC discussions, however, was far too slow. “If we fail, we will condemn our children and grandchildren to a future of climate chaos,” Mr. Ban said. “If we succeed, we can set the world on course for greater stability, better health and stronger economies for all.” Mogens Lykketoft, Speaker of the Parliament of Denmark and President-elect of the General Assembly for the seventieth session, said the Paris conference was the first real test of translating the world’s collective commitment to sustainable development into action. __“We should take action now__,” said Manuel Pulgar-Vidal, President of the twentieth session of the Conference of Parties (COP20) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Minister of Peru. “We have already run most of the marathon,” he said, emphasizing that, now, __it was imperative to “put all the pieces together__”. Laurent Fabius, Minister for Foreign Affairs of France and President of COP21, said __climate change and humanity’s contribution could no longer be contested. The threat was global in nature, which required global action__.
 * It’s __not too late__ – action on warming can prevent __devastating impacts__, **
 * UN 15 ** (United Nations, “Failure to Constrain Climate Change Will Create ‘Climate Chaos’, Secretary-General Says at High-Level General Assembly Event Aimed at Inspiring Ambitious Accord,” 6-29-15, [] )

The Paris Summit in December 2015 is being seen as the “last chance” to save the world from the worst ravages of climate change, yet whether the international community can reach a new climate change agreement remains to be seen. __The U__nited __S__tates __and China, the **two biggest economies and largest emitters** of greenhouse gases in the world, **hold the key to the success of**__ not only the Paris Summit but also **__long-term global efforts to combat climate change__**. Thankfully, **__unlike most aspects__** __of Sino-U.S. relations where tensions are rising, **bilateral cooperation** on climate change has made **remarkable progress**, highlighted by the historic climate change agreement signed by the two countries in November 2014__. During Xi Jinping’s first state visit to the United States last month, the two sides announced a new set of policies to combat climate change, including a national cap-and-trade program in China and a $3 billion fund from China to help developing countries curb global warming. Energy Cooperation: The Key Success Factor __The remarkable success in Sino-U.S. climate change cooperation can be attributed to a wide arrange of factors, including growing domestic pressures, stable and flourishing non-official exchanges, and a change of attitude towards some of the key climate issues, to name but a few__. Nonetheless, the solid foundation which has been laid on bilateral energy cooperation, clean energy in particular, is the key driving factor. **__However__**, relying on the energy sector alone is risky, and __efforts__ in the energy sector **__might not be sufficient__** __to sustain Sino-US climate change cooperation and curb global warming. The two countries’ commitment on clean energy **should not be taken for granted**__. In the U.S., the Obama administration certainly has put curbing fossil fuels top of its policy agenda and has made very real efforts to enact policies and regulations to achieve these goals. However, whether those measures can survive political opposition remains uncertain. The 2016 presidential election could be a critical moment in the trajectory of U.S. climate policy. Moreover, the shale gas revolution not only enables the U.S. to achieve energy self-sufficiency, it may also make America the world’s top exporter of fossil energies. This means energy security concerns might no longer be the top policy issue for the United States, which could then weaken the government’s commitment towards developing clean energies. In the case of China, the current economic slowdown, if it persists, could force the country to rethink its ambitious plans for carbon emission reduction. For years, the bottom line for China on climate change mitigation has been to strike a balance between economic development and climate concerns. __While in recent years__, amid rapidly worsening pollution, __China has been more willing to take decisive action such as breaking away from cheap coal and closing down energy intensive factories to curb domestic greenhouse gas emission at the expense of economic growth. However, it **does not mean** that climate change concerns will prevail over economic development__. With hundreds of millions of people still living in poverty and per-capita incomes lagging far behind those of the developed countries, China’s development needs are immense and the government’s top priority is to maintain stable growth. Therefore, if the economic situation in China worsens, it will be no surprise if the Chinese government retreats from efforts to curb emissions in favor of stabilizing economic growth. On Sunday and Monday, __foreign ministers and other international leaders met__ in Anchorage, Alaska __to attend__ the Conference on Global Leadership in the Arctic: Cooperation, Innovation, Engagement, and Resilience (__GLACIER). The State Department described the meeting as “focused on changes in the Arctic and global implications of those changes, climate resilience and adaptation planning, and strengthening coordination on Arctic issues.” The United States is currently the chair of the Arctic Council__, a grouping of the eight Arctic States (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Sweden, and the United States) plus a dozen states with permanent observers status, including China, India, Japan, South Korea, and Singapore. __The U.S. made it clear that the GLACIER conference was not an official Arctic Council event, but said the meetings would “focus attention on the challenges and opportunities that the Arctic Council intends to address.”__ As a sign of the importance the United States placed on the Alaska forum, President Barack Obama attended. He used the conference as a platform for urging swifter action to combat climate change. “Climate change is no longer some far-off problem; it is happening here, it is happening now,” Obama said. “We’re not acting fast enough.” He also used his speech to focus attention on the need for a global agreement to be reached at this year’s UN climate meeting in Paris: “This year, in Paris has to be the year that the world finally reaches an agreement to protect the one planet that we’ve got while we still can.” After the conference, the representatives of the Arctic Council members signed a joint statement affirming “our commitment to take urgent action to slow the pace of warming in the Arctic.” The Arctic states were joined by 10 of the 12 Arctic Council permanent observers – with China and India as the holdouts. Most of the joint statement contained a litany of climate change-related issues already seen in the Arctic, including statistics on melting glaciers and ice sheets and warming temperatures, as well as the impact on Arctic communities. In terms of state commitments, however, there wasn’t much to see. The signatories affirmed a “strong determination … to achieve a successful, ambitious outcome at the international climate negotiations in December in Paris this year”; acknowledged the importance of reducing black carbon (soot) and methane emissions; and called for “additional research” on how climate change is impacting the Arctic. According to CCTV America, __China said that it needed more time to review the document before signing__. But RT had a different take, saying that __China and India “opted not to sign the document” because “reducing emissions entails huge expenditure and loss of economic effectiveness__.” (RT also said that Russia had decided not to sign, contradicting other reports). __China is not a member of the Arctic Council, but was added as a permanent observer in 2013__. In the two years since then, __Beijing__ has moved rapidly to stake out its interests in the Arctic, particularly when it comes to developing mostly-untapped energy reserves in the region. __It is **especially interested in being acknowledged as a key actor in the Arctic**– though not an Arctic state, China believes the fate of the region is crucial to its national interests. China has begun defining itself as a “near-Arctic state” in the hopes of gaining a larger say in Arctic affairs. Beijing’s decision__ to abstain from the joint statement on climate change in the Arctic suggests that it viewed the statement as being in conflict with its Arctic interests, __potentially set__ting __the stage for later arguments in the Arctic Council itself about how to balance environmental protection with resource extraction and other development activities. China’s reaction to the GLACIER conference also **sends a worrisome signal** about U.S.-China cooperation on climate change__. In addition to refusing to sign the statement, China sent a relatively low-level representative. Former Chinese Ambassador to Norway Tang Guoqiang, billed as a “special representative” to China’s foreign minister, headed the delegation from Beijing; most other countries sent either minister-level or deputy-minister-level officials (Russia was another exception, sending only its ambassador to the United States to the event). __Last year, China and the United States surprised the world by unveiling a climate change deal wherein both sides agreed to take concrete steps to move toward clean energy.__ That, in turn, raised hopes that the December 2015 climate change conference in Paris could successfully unveil a new global roadmap for emissions reductions. Both China and the U.S. have been slow to adopt binding commitments to cut emissions, despite the fact that they are the world’s two largest carbon emitters; their joint cooperation will be crucial to getting a deal done in Paris. China, in particular, has long held that its status as a still-developing country should make it immune to mandatory cuts (a stance also adopted by India, the other hold-out at the GLACIER conference). 2014 marked a remarkable change in China’s willingness to commit to reducing global emissions, a side effect of China’s “war on pollution” domestically. **__Conversely__**__, the failure to come to an agreement at the GLACIER conference **sends a troubling signal**__ for the Paris summit, and __for U.S.-China cooperation in general.__ __The Supreme Court’s surprise decision__ Tuesday __to halt__ the carrying out of President __Obama’s climate change regulation could weaken or even imperil the international global warming accord reached with great ceremony in Paris__ less than two months ago, climate diplomats say. The Paris Agreement, the first accord to commit every country to combat climate change, had as a cornerstone Mr. Obama’s assurance that the United States would enact strong, legally sound policies to significantly cut carbon emissions. The United States is the largest historical greenhouse gas polluter, although its annual emissions have been overtaken by China’s. But __in the capital__s __of__ India and __China, the other two largest polluters, climate change policy **experts** said the court’s decision **threw** the **U**nited **S**tates’ **commitment into question**, and **possibly**__ New Delhi’s and **__Beijing’s__**__.__ “If the U.S. Supreme Court actually declares the coal power plant rules stillborn, __the chances of nurturing trust between countries **would all but vanish**__,” said Navroz K. Dubash, a senior fellow at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. “This could be the proverbial string which causes Paris to unravel.” The issue can be overwhelming. The science is complicated. We get it. This is your cheat sheet. __The court did not block the rule permanently, but halted it from being carried out in the states until legal challenges against it have been decided, a process that could take a year or more. Legal experts said the justices’ decision to stop work on the rule before any court had decided against it was unprecedented and signaled that the regulation might ultimately be overturned__. That could set back the United States’ climate efforts for years, although there would still be a chance for Washington to meet its commitments by 2025. “If the American clean energy plan is overturned, __we’ll need to **reassess whether the U**nited **S**tates **can meet its commitments**,” said Zou Ji, the deputy director general of China’s National Center for Climate Change Strategy and International Cooperation, a government think tank in Beijing__. Mr. __Zou__, who was __an adviser to the Chinese delegation at the Paris negotiations__, said by telephone: “It had seemed that with the American commitments, it was possible to get on the right emissions path globally. But without those commitments, that could be a blow to confidence in low-carbon development. __In China domestically, there is also resistance to low-carbon policies, and they would be able to say: ‘Look, the United States doesn’t keep its word. Why make so many demands on us?’ ” Inaction by the United States has long been the **chief obstacle** to meaningful global climate change agreements.__ Mr. Obama sought to change that with aggressive but politically controversial Environmental Protection Agency rules to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired power plants. With those rules, Mr. Obama won agreements from China and India to enact pollution reduction plans and helped push other countries to sign on to the Paris measure. The top priority for Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India remains to provide cheap electricity to the 300 million Indians without power. If the United States reneges on its commitments, “it really would strengthen the hand of those who say Paris was ineffective and a bad deal for India,” Mr. Dubash said. Under Mr. Obama’s commitment to the Paris Agreement, the United States will cut its emissions 26 percent to 28 percent by 2025, largely through the E.P.A. regulations on power plants and a mix of rules reining in pollution from cars, buildings and other sources. All of those policies were set to be carried out briskly so they would be well underway by the time Mr. Obama left office. White House officials insisted on Wednesday that the rule would eventually be upheld, and that given the timetable for litigation and for meeting the target, the United States could still achieve its Paris commitment. A White House spokesman, Eric Schultz, pointed to other greenhouse gas reduction policies Mr. Obama had established to help meet the 2025 target, including a federal budget agreement late last year that included long-term extensions of tax credits for wind and solar power. Still, __the Supreme Court’s decision ensures that climate policy will not be set on__ Mr. __Obama’s watch.__ The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit will hear oral arguments on the climate rule June 2 and is expected to issue its decision later this year, but an appeal to the Supreme Court is all but certain. If the justices agree to hear the case, __a ruling is unlikely before June 2017__. If the rule is eventually overturned, the E.P.A. is still required by law to put forth a regulation controlling carbon dioxide emissions. That rule would be shaped by the next president and face its own legal gantlet, pushing action years into the future. The White House and its supporters took hope from announcements that the governors of some states, including California, New York and Washington, would continue to work voluntarily to carry out the rule. But **__most__** __states are expected to **halt their compliance efforts**__. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, had already been urging governors to refuse to comply with the plan. “These regulations are, in my view, likely illegal,” Mr. McConnell said Wednesday. “Yesterday’s Supreme Court order is just the latest sign of that. If nothing else, it shows we were right to let governors know their options.” American policy experts said that the Supreme Court decision might be the first of many fractures in the deal. “This pushback is not something that’s unique to the United States,” said John Sterman, a professor of management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who attended the negotiations in Paris. “It’s happening all over the developed world.” Poland and some other coal-reliant countries have resisted the European Union’s commitment under the agreement to more stringently reduce emissions across member states. Already, some people close to the climate talks worry that the events in the United States could lead to a repeat of what happened after the signing of the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the first major climate change treaty. Vice President Al Gore, a staunch environmentalist, negotiated the treaty with other world leaders, but the Senate voted against it. Then President George W. Bush pulled the United States out entirely. Fifth, __joint Arctic marine research is an arena with much promise. Joint oceanographic research between the U.S. and China would attain **global attention** and herald an era of **close collaboration** in Arctic Ocean **research highly relevant to global climate change**. Joint icebreaking research ship operations in Arctic ice-covered waters could provide **unique and lasting cooperative experiences** for the Chinese and American operating agencies, as well as key links between our research funding organizations. China and the U.S. have an obligation and opportunity to work together on a range of cooperative issues to maintain the Arctic’s future as a peaceful, safe and secure region, as that new frontier opens. Both nations must be proactive in Arctic matters within their already existing dialogue and in international organizations including the Arctic Council.__ __The China-U.S. relationship is a daily and recurring____, sometimes dominant, news story. Select news has been positive and indicates close collaboration__, such as the November 2014 joint announcement on climate and energy initiatives. __Other news is more worrisome and ominous__. Recent concerns for China’s actions in the South China Sea, cybersecurity, and devaluation of the yuan are serious matters of domestic and international security. With China’s presence more visible on every continent including Antarctica, __is there room for Sino-U.S. areas of cooperation at the top of the world? The Nordic states and Canada have already established Arctic policy and research ties to China. With the U.S. chairing the Arctic Council through May 2017, **now is the opportune occasion** for the U.S. to develop a **collaborative strategy**, on a range of Arctic research and policy issues. There are three approaches for engagement. One, add focused, strategic Arctic issues to the established U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue__, a longer-term approach. __Second, and potentially effective in the near-term, **leverage the opportunity** to strengthen our relationship with China on Arctic affairs while the U.S. is Arctic Council chair. Third, hold enhanced dialogue on Arctic issues between the two national delegations at meetings of the International Maritime Organization, World Meteorological Organization, and International Hydrographic Organization, among other institutions.__ Five key __areas of cooperation can enhance Arctic cooperation between the U.S. and China__: First, __since the Arctic is at the **epicenter** of climate change, Arctic climate change research and policy is a **natural area of cooperation** between our two countries. We are already addressing global climate change issues in our formal dialogue, so inserting Arctic issues such as black carbon from ship emissions and sea ice and glacier research should **resonate with our ongoing discussions**. Working together on WMO Arctic initiatives and the linkages of the polar regions to global change is another **fruitful course ahead**__
 * __ US-China cooperation __**** on warming is key – they’re the __two largest emitters__ and __drive multilateral action__ – __renewed cooperation__ is vital **
 * Hongzhou, 15 **—Zhang, Associate Research Fellow with the China Programme @ S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore). “China-US Climate Change Cooperation: Beyond Energy,” The Diplomat, Oct 13, [] --br
 * China’s not backing Arctic warming initiatives now, __decking broader US-China warming cooperation__ – __supporting Beijing’s Arctic status__ is key **
 * Tiezzi, 15 **—Shannon, Editor at The Diplomat, previously served as a research associate at the U.S.-China Policy Foundation, MA @ Harvard, also studied at Tsinghua University in Beijing. “Why Did China Opt Out of the Arctic Climate Change Statement?” The Diplomat, Sept 1, [] --br
 * Cooperation is on the __brink__ – China’s carefully assessing US __signals of commitment__ **
 * Davenport, 16 **—Coral, covers energy and climate change policy at The New York Times, previously a fellow with the Metcalf Institute for Marine and Environmental Reporting and covered energy and the environment for National Journal, Politico, and Congressional Quarterly. “Supreme Court’s Blow to Emissions Efforts May Imperil Paris Climate Accord,” New York Times (NYT), Feb 10, [] --br
 * Only the plan can revive cooperation – it spurs __highly-visible__, __lasting change__ to combat warming **
 * Slayton and Brigham, 15 **—David Slayton is research fellow, co-chair and executive director of the Arctic Security Initiative at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Lawson W. Brigham is distinguished professor of geography and Arctic policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, a fellow at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy’s Center for Arctic Study & Policy, and a member of Hoover’s Arctic Security Initiative. “Strengthen Arctic cooperation between the US and China,” Aug 27, Alaska Dispatch News (ADN), [] --br
 * Acting now is key to reviving US-China Arctic cooperation – it’s try or die **
 * Slayton and Brigham, 15 **—David Slayton is research fellow, co-chair and executive director of the Arctic Security Initiative at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Lawson W. Brigham is distinguished professor of geography and Arctic policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, a fellow at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy’s Center for Arctic Study & Policy, and a member of Hoover’s Arctic Security Initiative. “Strengthen Arctic cooperation between the US and China,” Aug 27, Alaska Dispatch News (ADN), [] --br
 * __ Arctic cooperation __**** is __vital__ to combatting warming – it’s the __epicenter__ of wider US-China climate efforts **
 * Slayton and Brigham, 15 **—David Slayton is research fellow, co-chair and executive director of the Arctic Security Initiative at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Lawson W. Brigham is distinguished professor of geography and Arctic policy at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, a fellow at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy’s Center for Arctic Study & Policy, and a member of Hoover’s Arctic Security Initiative. “Strengthen Arctic cooperation between the US and China,” Aug 27, Alaska Dispatch News (ADN), [] --br

Although most of us worry about other things, __climate scientists have become increasingly worried about the survival of civilization. For__ example, Lonnie Thompson, who received the U.S. National Medal of Science in 2010, said that **__virtually all climatologists "are now convinced that global warming poses a clear and present danger to civilization."__** Informed journalists share this concern. __The climate crisis "threatens the survival of our civilization," said Pulitzer Prize-winner Ross Gelbspan. Mark Hertsgaard agrees__, **__saying that the continuation of global warming "would create planetary conditions all but certain to end civilization as we know it."__** These scientists and journalists, moreover, are worried not only about the distant future but about the condition of the planet for their own children and grandchildren. James Hansen, often considered the world's leading climate scientist, entitled his book "Storms of My Grandchildren." __The threat to civilization comes primarily from the increase of the level of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere__, due largely to the burning of fossil fuels. Before the rise of the industrial age, CO2 constituted only 275 ppm (parts per million) of the atmosphere. But it is now above 400 and rising about 2.5 ppm per year. __Because of the CO2 increase, the planet's average temperature has increased 0.85 degrees Celsius (1.5 degrees Fahrenheit). Although this increase may not seem much, it has already brought about serious changes.__ The idea that we will be safe from "dangerous climate change" if we do not exceed a temperature rise of 2C (3.6F) has been widely accepted. But many informed people have rejected this assumption. In the opinion of journalist-turned-activist Bill McKibben, "the one degree we've raised the temperature already has melted the Arctic, so we're fools to find out what two will do." His warning is supported by James Hansen, who declared that "a target of two degrees (Celsius) is actually a prescription for long-term disaster." __The burning of coal, oil, and natural gas has made the planet warmer than it had been since the rise of civilization 10,000 years ago. Civilization was made possible by the emergence about 12,000 years ago of the "Holocene" epoch, which turned out to be the Goldilocks zone - not too hot, not too cold.__ But now, says physicist Stefan Rahmstorf, "We are catapulting ourselves way out of the Holocene." **__This catapult is dangerous, because we have no evidence civilization can long survive with significantly higher temperatures__**. And yet, the world is on a trajectory that would lead to an increase of 4C (7F) in this century. In the opinion of many scientists and the World Bank, this could happen as early as the 2060s. __What would "a 4C world" be like? According to Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research (at the University of East Anglia), "during New York's summer heat waves the warmest days would be around 10-12C (18-21.6F) hotter [than today's]." Moreover, he has said, above an increase of 4C only **about 10% of the human population will survive.**__Believe it or not, __some scientists consider Anderson overly optimistic__. __The main reason for pessimism is the fear that the planet's temperature may be close to a tipping point that would initiate a "low-end runaway greenhouse," involving "out-of-control amplifying feedbacks." This__ condition would result, says Hansen, if all fossil fuels are burned (which is the intention of all fossil-fuel corporations and many governments). **__This result "would make most of the planet uninhabitable by humans."__** __Moreover, many scientists believe that runaway global warming could occur much more quickly, because the rising temperature caused by CO2 could release massive amounts of methane (CH4), which is, during its first 20 years, 86 times more powerful than CO2__. Warmer weather induces this release from carbon that has been stored in methane hydrates, in which enormous amounts of carbon -- four times as much as that emitted from fossil fuels since 1850 -- has been frozen in the Arctic's permafrost. And yet now the Arctic's temperature is warmer than it had been for 120,000 years -- in other words, more than 10 times longer than civilization has existed. According to Joe Romm, a physicist who created the Climate Progress website, methane release from thawing permafrost in the Arctic "is the most dangerous amplifying feedback in the entire carbon cycle." The amplifying feedback works like this: The warmer temperature releases millions of tons of methane, which then further raise the temperature, which in turn releases more methane. __The resulting threat of runaway global warming may not be merely theoretical. Scientists have long been convinced that methane was central to the fastest period of global warming in geological history, which occurred 55 million years ago. Now a group of scientists have accumulated evidence that methane was also central to the greatest extinction of life thus far: the end-Permian extinction about 252 million years ago.__ Worse yet, whereas it was previously thought that significant amounts of permafrost would not melt, releasing its methane, until the planet's temperature has risen several degrees Celsius, recent studies indicate that a rise of 1.5 degrees would be enough to start the melting. __What can be done then? Given the failure of political leaders to deal with the CO2 problem, it is now too late to prevent terrible developments. **But it may -- just may -- be possible to keep global warming from bringing about the destruction of civilization. To have a chance, we must, as Hansen says, do everything possible to "keep climate close to the Holocene range" -- which means, mobilize the whole world to replace dirty energy with clean as soon as possible.**__
 * Warming is real, anthropogenic, and threatens extinction **
 * Griffin, 15 – **Professor of Philosophy at Claremont, David, “The climate is ruined. So can civilization even survive?”, 4-14, []

It’s reversible, but how policy design is key
Lemoine 2016 - Assistant Professor of Economics University of Arizona

Derek and Christian Traeger, "Economics of tipping the climate dominoes," Nature Climate Change 6, 514–519 (2016) The threat of climate tipping points plays a major role in calls for aggressive emission reductions to limit warming to 2 °C (refs 1,2,3,4). The scientific literature is particularly concerned with the possibility of a ‘domino effect’ from multiple interacting tipping points5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. For instance, reducing the effectiveness of carbon sinks amplifies future warming, which in turn makes further tipping points more likely. Nearly all of the preceding quantitative economic studies analyse optimal policy in the presence of a single type of tipping point that directly reduces economic output11, 12, 13, 14. This type of tipping point affects the potential for further tipping points only indirectly: the resulting reduction in emissions will generally reduce the likelihood of triggering further tipping points. So far, only a single paper analyses optimal climate policy in the presence of tipping points that alter the physical climate system15, specifically a temperature feedback tipping point and the carbon sink tipping point described above. These two tipping points could interact directly; however, that paper considers only a single type of tipping point at a time. The present study synthesizes the tipping point models from the previous literature to provide the first analysis of optimal climate policy when tipping points can directly interact. Our study integrates all three types of previously modelled tipping points into a single integrated assessment model that combines smooth and reversible changes with irreversible regime shifts. Each tipping point is stochastically triggered at an unknown threshold. We solve for the optimal policy under Bayesian learning. Optimality means that resources within and across periods are distributed to maximize the expected stream of global welfare from economic consumption over time under different risk states. The optimal policy must anticipate all possible thresholds, interactions and future policy responses. The anticipation of learning acknowledges that future policymakers will have new information about the location of temperature thresholds and can also react to any tipping points that may have already occurred. Learning over the threshold location also avoids the assumption implicit in ref. 14 that tipping will eventually occur with certainty if temperatures stay permanently above the level where tipping points are possible. Finally, going beyond the conventional focus on optimal policy, we also calculate the welfare cost of delaying optimal climate policy. We demonstrate the value of monitoring for tipping points that have already been triggered, so that policy can adjust and reduce the probability of a single tipping point turning into a domino effect.

Warming outweighs and turns all of their impacts
Herzog 2016 - Citing a World Economic Forum Survey

Katie, "Surprise, surprise: Climate change is risky business", Jan 14, grist.org/climate-energy/surprise-surprise-climate-change-is-risky-business/?utm_source=syndication&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=feedgrist Congratulations, climate change! You’re officially the biggest threat to the most important thing in the world — the international Jenga game that we like to call “the global economy .” According to a recent survey of 750 risk experts conducted by the World Economic Forum, the failure to mitigate and adapt to climate change tops the list of threats to the global economy. The planet’s number one enemy ranks above food and water shortages, infectious disease, cyberattacks, unemployment, terrorism, and involuntary mass migration. That’s because — surprise! — climate change contributes to all of those things. From the WEF’s report: Environmental risks have come to prominence in the global risks landscape in 2016, despite the presence on the horizon of a large number of other, highly visible risks. Income disparity, which was highlighted by the report in 2014, is this year reflected in the growing interconnections involving profound social instability and both structural unemployment and underemployment and adverse consequences of technological advances. […] Knowledge of such interconnections is important in helping leaders prioritize areas for action, as well as to plan for contingencies. “ We know climate change is exacerbating other risks such as migration and security, but these are by no means the only interconnections that are rapidly evolving to impact societies, often in unpredictable ways. Mitigation measures against such risks are important, but adaptation is vital, ” said Margareta Drzeniek-Hanouz, Head of the Global Competitiveness and Risks, World Economic Forum. Well, shit! Who’s going to take on that whole “mitigation and adaptation” thing? (Robin- National Foundation Fellow at the Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship, Spring, “Narrating the Environmental Apocalypse: How Imagining the End Facilitates Moral Reasoning Among Environmental Activists” Ethics and the Environment, Vol 17 No 1, ProjectMuse) Environmental Apocalypticism and Activism As we saw in the introduction, critics often argue that apocalyptic rhetoric induces feelings of hopelessness or fatalism. While it certainly does for some people, in this section I will present evidence that __ apocalypticism __ also __ often goes hand in hand with activism __.¶ Some of the strongest evidence of a connection between environmental apocalypticism and activism comes from a national survey that examined whether Americans perceived climate change to be dangerous. As part of his analysis, Anthony Leiserowitz identified several “interpretive communities,” which had consistent demographic characteristics but varied in their levels of risk perception. __ The group who perceived the risk to be the greatest __, which he labeled “alarmists,” __ described climate change __ [End Page 5] __ using apocalyptic language, such as __ “Bad…bad…bad…like __ after nuclear war…no vegetation __,” “Heat waves, it’s gonna kill the world,” __ and “Death of the planet __” (2005, 1440). Given such language, this would seem to be a reasonable way to operationalize environmental apocalypticism. __ If ____ such apocalypticism encouraged fatalism, we would expect alarmists to be less likely to have engaged in environmental behavior __ compared to groups with moderate or low levels of concern. **__To the contrary__**, however, __ Leiserowitz found that alarmists “were significantly more likely to have taken personal action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions __” (ibid.) __ than respondents who perceived climate change to pose less ____ of a threat __. Interestingly, while one might expect such radical views to appeal only to a tiny minority, Leiserowitz found that __ a respectable eleven percent of Americans fell into this group __ (ibid).¶ Further supporting Leiserowitz’s findings, __ in a separate national survey __ conducted in 2008, Maibach, Roser-Renouf, and Leiserowitz found that __ a group __ they __ labeled “the Alarmed __” (again, due to their high levels of concern about climate change) “__ are __ the segment __ most engaged in ____ the issue of global warming. They are very convinced it is happening, human-caused, and a serious and urgent threat. The Alarmed are already making changes in their own lives and support an aggressive national response __” (2009, 3, emphasis added). __ This group was far more likely than people with lower levels of concern over climate change to have engaged in consumer activism __ (by rewarding companies that support action to reduce global warming with their business, for example) or to have contacted elected officials to express their concern. Additionally, the authors found that __ “[w]hen asked which reason for action was most important __ to them personally, __ the Alarmed were most likely to select preventing the destruction of most life on the planet __ (31%)” (2009, 31)—a finding suggesting that for many in this group __ it is specifically the desire to avert catastrophe, rather than some other motivation, that encourages pro-environmental behavior __. Taken together, these and other studies (cf. Semenza et al. 2008 and DerKarabetia, Stephenson, and Poggi 1996) provide important evidence that __ many of those who think environmental problems pose a severe threat practice some form of activism, rather than giving way to fatalistic resignation __.¶ National surveys give a good overview of the association between apocalypticism and activism among the general public, but they do not [End Page 6] provide sufficient ethnographic detail. To complement this broader picture I now turn to case studies, which provide greater insight into how adherents themselves understand what motivates their environmental behavior.¶ When seeking a subset of environmentalists with apocalyptic beliefs, the radical wing is an obvious place to look. For example, many Earth First!ers believe that the collapse of industrial society is inevitable (Taylor 1994). At the same time, the majority are actively committed to preventing ecological disaster. As Earth First! co-founder Howie Wolke acknowledged, the two are directly connected: “As ecological calamity unravels the living fabric of the Earth, environmental radicalism has become both common and necessary” (1989, 29).3 This logic underlies efforts to preserve wilderness areas, which many radical environmentalists believe will serve as reservoirs of genetic diversity, helping to restore the planet after industrial society collapses (Taylor 1994). __ In addition to encouraging activism to preserve wilderness, apocalyptic beliefs also motivate __ practices such as “monkeywrenching,” or ecological sabotage, civil disobedience, and the more conventional “__ paper monkeywrenching” (lobbying, engaging in public information campaigns to shift legislative priorities __, or using lawsuits when these tactics fail). Ultimately, while there are disagreements over what strategies will best achieve their desired goals, for most radical environmentalists, apocalypticism and activism are bound closely together.¶ The connection between belief in impending disaster and environmental activism holds true for Wiccans as well. During fieldwork in the southeastern United States, for example, Shawn Arthur reported meeting “dozens of Wiccans who professed their apocalyptic millenarian beliefs to anyone who expressed interest, yet many others only quietly agreed with them without any further elaboration” (2008, 201). For this group, the coming disaster was understood as divine retribution, the result of an angry Earth Goddess preparing to punish humans for squandering her ecological gifts (Arthur 2008, 203). In light of Gaia’s impending revenge, Arthur found that Wiccans advocated both spiritual and material forms of activism. For example, practices such as Goddess worship, the use of herbal remedies for healing, and awareness of the body and its energies were considered important for initiating a more harmonious relationship with the earth (Arthur 2008, 207). As for material activism, Arthur notes [End Page 7] that the notion of environmental apocalypse played a key role in encouraging pro-environmental behavior:¶ images of immanent [sic] ecological crisis and apocalyptic change often were utilized as motivating factors for developing an environmentally and ecologically conscious worldview; for stressing the importance of working for the Earth through a variety of practices, including environmental activism, garbage collecting, recycling, composting, and religious rituals; for learning sustainable living skills; and for developing a special relationship with the world as a divine entity. (2008, 212)¶ What these studies and my own experiences in the environmentalist milieu4 suggest is that __ people who make a serious commitment to engaging in environmentally friendly behavior, people who move beyond making superficial changes to making substantial and permanent ones, are quite likely to subscribe to some form of the apocalyptic narrative __.¶ All this is not to say that apocalypticism directly or inevitably causes activism, or that believing catastrophe is imminent is the only reason people become activists. However, it is to say that __ activism and apocalypticism are associated __ for some people, __ and __ that __ this association is not arbitrary __, for __ there is something ____ uniquely powerful and compelling about the apocalyptic narrative __. Plenty of people will hear it and ignore it, or find it implausible, or simply decide that if the situation really is so dire there is nothing they can do to prevent it from continuing to deteriorate. Yet __ to focus only on the ability of apocalyptic rhetoric to induce apathy, indifference or reactance is to ignore the evidence that it also fuels quite the opposite __—grave concern, activism, and sometimes even outrage. It is also to ignore the movement’s history. From Silent Spring (Carson [1962] 2002) to The Limits to Growth (Meadows et al 1972) to The End of Nature (McKibben 1989), apocalyptic arguments have held a prominent place within environmental literature, topping best-seller lists and spreading the message far and wide that protecting the environment should be a societal priority. Thus, while it is not a style of argument that will be effective in convincing everyone to commit to the environmental cause (see Feinberg and Willer 2011), there does appear to be a close relationship between apocalyptic belief and activism among a certain minority. The next section explores the implications of that relationship further. [End Page 8]¶ The Apocalyptic Narrative as a Framework for Moral Deliberation¶ In discussing how apocalypticism functions within the environmental community, it will be helpful to analyze it as a type of narrative. I do so because the domain of narrative includes both the stories that people read and write, as well as those they tell and live by. By using narratives as data, scholars can analyze experiential and textual sources simultaneously (Polkinghorne 1988; Riessman 2000).¶ To analyze environmental apocalypticism as a type of narrative is not to suggest that apocalyptics’ claims about the future are fictional. Rather, it is to highlight that the facts to which __ environmentalists appeal have been organized with particular goals in mind __, goals which have necessarily shaped the selection and presentation of those facts. __ Compelling environmental writers do not simply list every known fact pertaining to the natural world, but instead select certain findings and place them within a larger interpretive framework. Alone, each fact has little meaning, but when woven into a larger narrative, a message emerges. This process of narrativization is essential if a message is to be __**__persuasive__** (Killingsworth and Palmer 2000, 197), and has occurred not only in the rapidly expanding genre of environmental nonfiction, but in much scientific writing about the environment as well (Harré, Brockmeier, and Mühlhäusler 1999, 69).¶ __ What defines narratives as such is their beginning-middle-end structure __, their ability to “describe an action that begins, continues over a well-defined period of time, and finally draws to a definite close” (Cronon 1992, 1367). Here I will focus on the last of these elements, the ending, because anything we can learn about how endings function within narratives in general will be applicable to the apocalypse, the most final ending of all.¶ An ending is essential in order for a story to be complete, but there is more to it than this. Endings are also key because they establish a story’s moral, the lesson it is supposed to impart upon the reader. In other words, to know the moral of the story, auditors must know the consequences of the actions depicted therein, so there can be no moral without an ending. To take a simple example, when we hear the story of the shepherd boy who falsely claims that a wolf is attacking his flock of sheep in order to entertain himself at his community’s expense, what makes the lesson clear is that when a wolf does attack his flock, the disenchanted town members refuse to come to his aid. By clearly illustrating how telling lies can have [End Page 9] unpleasant consequences for the perpetrator, the ending reveals the moral that lying is wrong. As Cronon explains, it is “[t]he difference between beginning and end [that] gives us our chance to extract a moral from the rhetorical landscape” (1992, 1370).¶ Endings play a similar role in environmental stories. In Al Gore’s book Earth in the Balance (1992), for example, he devotes over a third of the book’s pages to presenting scientific evidence that disaster is imminent.5 As he sums it up, “Modern industrial civilization…is colliding violently with our planet’s ecological system. The ferocity of its assault on the earth is breathtaking, and the horrific consequences are occurring so quickly as to defy our capacity to recognize them” (1992, 269). He builds this argument so carefully precisely because if the ending does not seem credible, the moral he wants readers to draw from the story will not be compelling. __ If __ his __ readers are not convinced that the ending to this story of ecological misbehavior will be a debacle of colossal proportions, they will not become convinced that they need to dramatically alter their ecological behavior __. Thus the vision of future catastrophe that Gore presents provides a crucial vantage point from which the present environmental situation can be understood as the result of a grand moral failure, and Gore’s readers are made aware of their obligations in light of it. Gore himself appreciates the importance of this recognition, arguing that “whether we realize it or not, we are now engaged in an epic battle to right the balance of our earth, and the tide of this battle will turn only when the majority of people in the world become sufficiently aroused by a shared sense of urgent danger to join an all-out effort” (1992, 269, emphasis added). Here, as in so many other stories, the ending must be in place for the moral to become clear.¶ To say that endings are essential in order for stories to have morals is already to hint that __ stories ____ alter behavior, __ that __ they can encourage action in the real world even as they invoke an __**__imaginary__**__ one __. This much is clear from Earth in the Balance (1992): Gore does not just want people to grasp a moral, to perceive some ethic in the abstract—he wants them change their behavior in the here and now. In constructing a narrative with this goal in mind, he is banking on the ability of powerful stories to motivate social change, to be, as Cronon puts it, “our chief moral compass in the world” (1992, 1375).¶ Mark Johnson’s insightful synthesis of cognitive science and philosophy helps explain further how this process of moral guidance occurs. For [End Page 10] Johnson, narrative is fundamental to our experience of reality, “the most comprehensive means we have for constructing temporal syntheses that bind together and unify our past, present, and future into more or less meaningful patterns” (1993, 174). __ Narratives are also critical to our ability to reason morally, an activity which __ Johnson asserts __ is fundamentally imaginative __. In this view, __ we use stories to imagine ourselves in different scenarios, exploring and evaluating the consequences of different possible actions in order to determine the right one __. Moral deliberation is thus¶ …an imaginative exploration of the possibilities for constructive action within a present situation. __ We have a problem to solve here and now __ (e.g., ‘What am I to do?’…. ‘How should I treat others?’), __ and we must try out various possible continuations of our narrative in search of the one that seems best to resolve the indeterminacy of our present situation __. (1993, 180)¶ Put another way, what cognitive science has revealed is that __ from an empirical perspective the process of moral deliberation entails constructing narratives rooted in our unique history and circumstances, rather than applying universal principles __ (such as Kant’s categorical imperative) __ to particular cases. That we use narratives to reason morally is not a result of conscious choice but of how human cognition works __. That is, insofar as we experience ourselves as temporal beings, a narrative framework is necessary to organize, explain, and ultimately justify the many individual decisions that over time become a life. Formal principles may be useful in unambiguous textbook cases, but in real life “we can almost never decide (reflectively) how to act without considering the ways in which we can continue our narrative construction of our situation” (Johnson 1993, 160). Empirically speaking, “our moral reasoning is situated within our narrative understanding” (Johnson 1993, 180, italics in original).¶ The observation that people use narratives to reason morally may help explain the association between environmental apocalypticism and activism. __ The function of the apocalyptic narrative may be that it helps adherents determine how to act by __**__providing a storyline__**__ from which they can imaginatively sample, enabling them to assess the consequences of their actions __. In order to answer the question, “Should I drive or walk to the store?” for example, they can reason, “If I walk, that will reduce my carbon footprint, which will help keep the ice caps from melting, saving humans and other species.” It is their __ access to this narrative of impending __ [End Page 11] __ disaster __ that __ makes such reasoning possible, for it provides a simple framework within which people can consider and eventually arrive at some conclusion about their moral obligations __.6 More broadly, it can guide entire lives by providing a narrative frame of reference that imbues the individual’s experiences with meaning. For example, it is the context of looming anthropogenic apocalypse which suggests that dedicating one’s life to achieving a healthier relationship with the natural world is a worthwhile endeavor. __ Absent the apocalypse, choices such as limiting one’s travel to reduce greenhouse gas emissions __, becoming vegetarian, working in the environmental sector (often for less compensation), or growing one’s own food __ could seem to be meaningless sacrifices __. Within this context, on the other hand, such choices become essential features of the quest to live a moral life.¶ __ The apocalyptic narrative __ is but one of many ways to tell the environmental story, yet it is one that __ seems __**__particularly well-suited__**__ to encouraging __**__pro-environmental behavior__**. First, __ the apocalyptic ending discloses certain everyday decisions as moral decisions. Without the narrative context of impending disaster, decisions such as whether to drive or walk to the store would be merely matters of convenience or preference __. In the context of potentially disastrous consequences for valued places, people, and organisms, by contrast, such decisions become matters of right and wrong. Second, __ putting information about the environment into narrative form enables apocalyptics to link complex global environmental processes to their own lives __, a perceptual technique Thomashow describes as “bringing the biosphere home” (2002). Developing this skill is essential because __ without that felt sense of connection to their own lived experience, people are much less likely to become convinced that it is incumbent upon them to act __ (2002, 2). Finally, the sheer magnitude of the impending disaster increases the feeling of responsibility to make good on one’s moral intuitions. By locating individuals within a drama of ultimate concern, the narrative frames their choices as cosmically important, and this feeling of urgency then helps to convert moral deliberation into action. With this conceptual overview in place, we can now examine more closely what the relationship between apocalypticism and moral reasoning looks like in practice. [End Page 12]
 * Representations of warming is motivating and spurs individual activism **
 * Veldman 12 ** – PhD Candidate Religion and Nature at U of Florida
 * The United States federal government should offer to support and pursue full member status in the Arctic Council for China if China agrees to participate in bilateral cooperative agreements regarding Arctic scientific research, environmental monitoring and environmental policy issues. **

**__ --Framing Contention __** Underlying his plan is an overlooked but crucial subsidiary benefit that he outlined: __offloading rich-nation toxins onto the world’s poorest continent would help ease the growing pressure from rich-nation __ environmentalists who were campaigning against garbage dumps and industrial effluent that they condemned as health threats and found aesthetically offensive. Summers thus rationalized his poison-redistribution ethic as offering a double gain: it would benefit the United States and Europe economically, while helping appease the rising discontent of rich-nation environmentalists. Summers’ arguments assumed a direct link between aesthetically unsightly waste and Africa as an out-of-sight continent, a place remote from green activists’ terrain of concern. In Summers’ win-win scenario for the global North, the African recipients of his plan were triply discounted: discounted as political agents, discounted as long-term casualties of what I call in this book “slow violence,” and discounted as cultures possessing environmental practices and concerns of their own. I begin with Summers’ extraordinary proposal because it captures the strategic and representational challenges posed by slow violence as it impacts the environments—and the environmentalism—of the poor. Three primary concerns animate this book, chief among them my conviction that __we urgently need to rethink ____—politically, imaginatively, and theoretically—what I call “slow violence. __” By slow violence I mean __a violence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a violence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional violence that is typically not viewed as violence at al __l. Violence is customarily conceived as an event or action that is immediate in time, explosive and spectacular in space, and as erupting into instant sensational visibility. __We need __, I believe, __<span style="font-family: Cambria,serif;">to engage a different kind of violence ____<span style="font-family: Cambria,serif;">, a violence that is neither spectacular nor instantaneous, but rather incremental and accretive, its calamitous repercussions playing out across a range of temporal scales. In so doing, we also need to engage the representational, narrative, and **strategic challenges** posed by the relative invisibility of slow violence.Climate change, the thawing cryosphere, toxic drift, biomagnifi cation, deforestation, the radioactive aftermaths of wars, acidifying oceans, and a host of other slowly unfolding environmental catastrophes present formidable representational obstacles that can hinder our efforts to mobilize and act decisively __<span style="font-family: Cambria,serif; font-size: 10pt;">. The long dyings—the staggered and staggeringly discounted casualties, both human and ecological that result from war’s toxic aftermaths or introduction [3] climate change—are underrepresented in strategic planning as well as in human memory. Had Summers advocated invading Africa with weapons of mass destruction, his proposal would have fallen under conventional definitions of violence and been perceived as a military or even an imperial invasion. Advocating invading countries with mass forms of slow-motion toxicity, however, requires rethinking our accepted assumptions of violence to include slow violence. Such a rethinking requires that we complicate conventional assumptions about violence as a highly visible act that is newsworthy because it is event focused, time bound, and body bound. __<span style="font-family: Cambria,serif;">We need to account for ____<span style="font-family: Cambria,serif;"> how the temporal dispersion of slow violenceaffects the way we perceive and respond to a variety of social afflictions—from domestic abuse to posttraumatic stress and, **in particular, environmental calamities** __<span style="font-family: Cambria,serif; font-size: 10pt;">. A major challenge is representational: how to devise arresting stories, images, and symbols adequate to the pervasive but elusive violence of delayed effects. __<span style="font-family: Cambria,serif;">Crucially, slow violence is often not just attritional but also exponential, operating as a major threat multiplier; it can fuel long-term, proliferating conflicts in situations where the conditions for sustaining life become increasingly but gradually degraded __<span style="font-family: Cambria,serif; font-size: 10pt;">. Politically and emotionally, __different kinds of disaster possess unequal heft__<span style="font-family: Cambria,serif; font-size: 10pt;">. Falling bodies, burning towers, exploding heads, avalanches, volcanoes, and tsunamis have a visceral, eye-catching and page-turning power that tales of slow violence, unfolding over years, decades, even centuries, cannot match. Stories of toxic buildup, massing greenhouse gases, and accelerated species loss due to ravaged habitats are all cataclysmic, but they are scientifically convoluted cataclysms in which casualties are postponed, often for generations.
 * <span style="font-family: Cambria,serif; font-size: 13pt;">Prioritize solutions to warming-its impacts are underrepresented in decision calculus **
 * <span style="font-family: Cambria,serif; font-size: 13pt;">Nixon 11 **<span style="font-family: Cambria,serif; font-size: 8pt;">(Rob Nixon is the Rachel Carson Professor of English, University of Wisconsin-Madison, NY Times Contributor and former is an affiliate of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies the Harvard University Press 2011 “Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor” Pg 2-3 http://www.elimeyerhoff.com/books/nixon-rob--slow-violence-and-the-environmentalism-of-the-poor.pdf)

__Next year will be the seventieth anniversary of the end of the last global conflict. There have been points on that timeline__ — such as the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, and a Soviet computer malfunction in 1983 that erroneously suggested that the U.S. had attacked, and perhaps even the Kosovo War in 1999 __— when a global conflict was a real possibility. Yet today__ — __in the shadow of a flare up which some are calling a new Cold War between Russia and the U.__ S. — I believe __the threat of World War III has__ __almost faded into nothingness.__ That is, __the probability of__ __a world war is the lowest it has been in decades, and perhaps the lowest it has ever been since the dawn of modernity__. ¶ __This is certainly a view that current data supports. Steven Pinker's studies into the decline of violence reveal that deaths from war have fallen and fallen since World War II__. But we should not just assume that the past is an accurate guide to the future. Instead, we must look at the factors which have led to the reduction in war and try to conclude whether the decrease in war is sustainable. ¶ __So what's changed?__ Well, the first big change after the last world war was __the arrival of mutually assured destruction__. It's no coincidence that the end of the last global war coincided with the invention of atomic weapons. __The possibility of complete annihilation provided a huge disincentive to launching and expanding total wars.__ Instead, __the great powers now fight proxy wars like Vietnam and Afghanistan (the 1980 version, that is), rather than letting their rivalries expand into full-on, globe-spanning struggles against each other__. Sure, __accidents could happen, but the possibility is incredibly remote____.__ More importantly __, nobody in power wants to be the cause of Armageddon.__ ¶ __But what about a non-nuclear global war? Other changes — economic and social in nature — have made that highly unlikely too.__ ¶ __The world has become much more economically interconnected__ __since the last global war__. __Economic cooperation treaties and free trade agreements have intertwined the economies of countries around the world__. This has meant there has been a huge rise in the volume of global trade since World War II, and especially since the 1980s. ¶ __Today consumer goods__ like smartphones, laptops, cars, jewelery, food, cosmetics, and medicine __are produced on a global level, with supply-chains criss-crossing the planet__. An example: The laptop I am typing this on is the cumulative culmination of thousands of hours of work, as well as resources and manufacturing processes across the globe. It incorporates metals like tellurium, indium, cobalt, gallium, and manganese mined in Africa. Neodymium mined in China. Plastics forged out of oil, perhaps from Saudi Arabia, or Russia, or Venezuela. Aluminum from bauxite, perhaps mined in Brazil. Iron, perhaps mined in Australia. These raw materials are turned into components — memory manufactured in Korea, semiconductors forged in Germany, glass made in the United States. And it takes gallons and gallons of oil to ship all the resources and components back and forth around the world, until they are finally assembled in China, and shipped once again around the world to the consumer. ¶ __In a global war, global trade becomes a nightmare__. Shipping becomes more expensive due to higher insurance costs, and riskier because it's subject to seizures, blockades, ship sinkings. Many goods, intermediate components or resources — including energy supplies like coal and oil, components for military hardware, etc, may become temporarily unavailable in certain areas. Sometimes — such as occurred in the Siege of Leningrad during World War II — the supply of food can be cut off. This is why countries hold strategic reserves of things like helium, pork, rare earth metals and oil, coal, and gas. These kinds of breakdowns were troublesome enough in the economic landscape of the early and mid-20th century, when the last global wars occurred. But in today's ultra-globalized and ultra-specialized economy? The level of economic adaptation — even for large countries like Russia and the United States with lots of land and natural resources — required to adapt to a world war would be crushing, and huge numbers of business and livelihoods would be wiped out. ¶ In other words, __global trade interdependency has become,__ to borrow a phrase from finance, __too big to fail__. ¶ It is easy to complain about the reality of big business influencing or controlling politicians. But __big business has just about the most to lose from breakdowns in global trade. A practical example__ : __If Russian oligarchs make their money from selling gas and natural resources to Western Europe, and send their children to schools in Britain and Germany, and lend and borrow money from the West's financial centers, are they going to be willing to tolerate__ Vladimir __Putin starting__ a regional war in Eastern Europe (let alone a __world war)? Would the Chinese financial industry be happy to see their multi-trillion dollar investments in dollars and U.S. treasury debt go up in smoke? Of course, world wars have been waged despite international business interests, but the world today is far more globalized than ever before and well-connected domestic interests are more dependent on access to global markets, components and resources, or the repayment of foreign debts__. __These are huge disincentives to global war____.__ ¶ But what of the military-industrial complex? While other businesses might be hurt due to a breakdown in trade, surely military contractors and weapons manufacturers are happy with war? Not necessarily. As the last seventy years illustrates, it is perfectly possible for weapons contractors to enjoy the profits from huge military spending without a global war. And the uncertainty of a breakdown in global trade could hurt weapons contractors just as much as other industries in terms of losing access to global markets. That means weapons manufacturers may be just as uneasy about the prospects for large-scale war as other businesses. __Other changes have been social__ __in nature__. Obviously, democratic countries do not tend to go to war with each other, and the spread of liberal democracy is correlated against the decrease in war around the world. But __the spread of internet__ __technology and social media has brought the world much closer together__, too. __As late as the last world war, populations were separated from each other__ by physical distance, by language barriers, and __by lack of mass communication tools__. __This means that it was easy for war-mongering politicians to sell a population on the idea that the enemy is evil.__ It's hard to empathize with people who you only see in slanted government propaganda reels. __Today, people from enemy countries can come together in cyberspace and find out that the "enemy" is not so different, as occurred in the Iran-Israel solidarity movement of 2012.__ ¶ More importantly, violent incidents and deaths can be broadcast to the world much more easily. __Public shock and disgust at the brutal reality of war__ broadcast over YouTube and Facebook __makes it much more difficult for governments to carry out large scale military aggressions__. __For example, the Kremlin's own pollster today released a survey showing that 73 percent of Russians disapprove of Putin's handling of the Ukraine crisis,__ with only 15 percent of the nation supporting a response to the overthrow of the government in Kiev. There are, of course, a few countries like North Korea that deny their citizens access to information that might contradict the government's propaganda line. And __sometimes countries ignore mass anti-war protests — as occurred prior to the Iraq invasion of 2003 — but generally a more connected, open, empathetic and democratic world has made it much harder for war-mongers to go to war__. ¶ __The greatest trend, though, may be that the world as a whole is getting richer__. Fundamentally, __wars arise out of one group of people deciding that they want whatever another group has__ — land, tools, resources, money, friends, sexual partners, empire, prestige — and deciding to take it by force. __Or they arise as a result of grudges or hatreds from previous wars of the first kind. We don't quite live in a superabundant world yet, but the long march of human ingenuity is making basic human wants__ like clothing, water, food, shelter, warmth, entertainment, recreation, and medicine __more ubiquitous throughout the world. This means that countries are less desperate to go to war to seize other people's stuff.__
 * No war---deterrence, interdependence, social changes, and political and business elites **
 * Aziz 14 ** (John Aziz is the former economics and business editor at TheWeek.com, Don't worry: World War III will almost certainly never happen, 3/6/14, http://theweek.com/article/index/257517/dont-worry-world-war-iii-will-almost-certainly-never-happen)

(Christian Parenti, former visiting fellow at CUNY's Center for Place, Culture and Politics, as well as a Soros Senior Justice Fellow, teaches in the Liberal Studies program at New York University, interview with Vincent Emanuele, writer, activist and radio journalist who lives and works in the Rust Belt, “Climate Change, Militarism, Neoliberalism and the State,” May 17, 2015, http://ouleft.sp-mesolite.tilted.net/?p=1980) You mention mutual aid and how it was overhyped by the left in the aftermath of Katrina. I’m thinking of the same thing in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. You’ve been critical of the left in the US for not approaching and using the state apparatus when dealing with climate change and other ecological issues. Can you talk about your critique of the US left and why you think the state can, and should, be used in a positive manner?¶ Just to be clear, I think it is absolutely heroic and noble what activists have done. My critique is not of peoples’ actions, or of people; it’s of a lack of sophistication, and I hold myself partly accountable, as part of the US left, for our deficiencies. __With Hurricane Sandy, the Occupy folks did some amazing stuff. Yet, at a certain level, their actions became charity__. People were talking about how many meals they distributed. That’s charity. __That is__, in many ways, __a neoliberal solution__. That’s exactly what __the capitalist system in the US would like__: __US citizens not demanding their government redistribute wealth from the 1% to the 99%__. **__The capitalists love to see people turn to each other for money and aid__**. Unwittingly, that’s what the anarcho-liberal left fell into.¶ __This is partly due a very American style of **anti-state rhetoric**__ that transcends left and right. __The state is **not just prisons or the military**__. It’s also Head Start, quality public education, the library, clean water, the EPA, the City University of New York system – a superb, affordable set of schools that turns out top-notch, working-class students with the lowest debt burdens in the country. There’s a reason the right is attacking these institutions. __Why does the right hate the EPA and public education__? __Because they don’t want to pay to educate the working class, and they don’t want the working class educated. They don’t want to pay to clean up industry__, and that’s what the EPA forces them to do. **__When the left embraces anarcho-liberal notions of self-help and fantasies of being outside of both government and the market, it cuts itself off from important democratic resources.__** __The state should be seen as an arena of__ __class struggle__.¶ __When the left turns its back on the social democratic features of government__, stops making demands of the state, and fails to reshape government by using the government for progressive ends, __it risks playing into the hands of the right__. __The central message of the American right is that government is bad and must be limited. **This message is used to justify austerity**__. However, in most cases, neoliberal austerity does not actually involve a reduction of government. Typically, restructuring in the name of austerity is really just a transformation of government, not a reduction of it.¶ Over the last 35 years, the state has been profoundly transformed, but it has not been reduced. The size of the government in the economy has not gone down. __The state has become less redistributive, more punitive__. Instead of a robust program of government-subsidized and public housing, we have the prison system. Instead of well-funded public hospitals, we have profiteering private hospitals funded by enormous amounts of public money. Instead of large numbers of well-paid public workers, we have large budgets for private firms that now subcontract tasks formerly conducted by the government.¶ __We need to defend the progressive work of government__, which, for me, means immediately defending public education. To be clear, I do not mean merely vote or ask nicely, I mean __movements should attack government and government officials__, target them with protests, __make their lives impossible until they comply__. This was done very well with the FCC. And my hat goes off to the activists who saved the internet for us. __The left should be thinking about__ the __ways__ in which __it can leverage government. The utility of government was very apparent in Vermont during the aftermath of Hurricane Irene. The rains from that storm destroyed or damaged over a hundred bridges, many miles of road and rail, and swept away houses.__ Thirteen towns were totally stranded. There was a lot of incredible mutual aid; people just started clearing debris and helping each other out. But within all this, town government was a crucial connective tissue.¶ Due to the tradition of New England town meeting, people are quite involved with their local government. Anarchists should love town meetings. It is no coincidence that Murray Bookchin spent much of his life in Vermont. Town meetings are a form of participatory budgeting without the lefty rigmarole. More importantly, the state government managed to get a huge amount of support from the federal government. The state in turn pushed this down to the town level. __Without that federal aid, Vermont would still be in ruins__. Vermont is not a big enough political entity to shake down General Electric, a huge employer in Vermont. __The Vermont government can’t pressure GE to pay for the rebuilding of local infrastructure__, but the federal government can.¶ __Vermont would still be a disaster if it didn’t get a transfer of funds and materials from the federal government.__ Similarly in New York City, the public sector does not get enough praise for the many things it did well after super storm Sandy. Huge parts of the subway system were flooded, yet it was all up and running within the month.¶ As an aside, one of the dirty little secrets about the Vermont economy is that it’s heavily tied-up with the military industrial complex. People think Vermont is all about farming and boutique food processing. Vermont has a pretty diverse economy, but agriculture plays a much smaller role than you might think, about 2 percent of employment. Meanwhile, the state’s industrial sector, along with the government, is one of the top employers, at about 13 percent of all employment. Most of this work is in what’s called precision manufacturing, making stuff like: high performance nozzles, switches, calibrators, and stuff like the lenses used in satellites, or handcrafting the blades that go in GE jet engines. But I digress … __As we enter the crisis of climate change, it’s important to be aware of the **actually existing legal and institutional mechanisms** with which we can contain and control capital__.¶ I often joke with my anarchist and libertarian friends and ask if their mutual-aid collectives can run Chicago’s sanitation system or operate satellites. Of course, on one level, I’m joking, but on another level, I’m being quite serious. I __don’t think activists on the left properly understand the complexity of modern society. A simple example would be how much sewage is produced in a single day in a country with 330 million people__. How do people expect to manage these day-to-day issues? In your opinion, is there a lack of sophistication on the left in terms of what, exactly, the state does and how it functions in our day-to-day lives?¶ It’s sobering to reflect on just how complex the physical systems of modern society are. And though it is very unpopular to say among most American activists, __it is important to think about the hierarchies and bureaucracies that are necessarily part of technologically complex systems__. A friend of mine is a water engineer in Detroit, and he was talking to me about exactly what you’re mentioning. __The sewer system in Detroit is mind-bogglingly enormous and also very dilapidated and very expensive. To not have infrastructure publicly maintained, even though the capitalist class might not admit this, would ultimately undermine capital accumulation__.¶ You asked if there is a lack of sophistication. Look, I’m trying to make helpful criticisms to my comrades on the left, particularly to activists who work so hard and valiantly. I’ve criticized divestment as a strategy, yet I support it. I criticized the false claims that divesting fossil fuels stocks would hurt fossil fuel companies. The fossil fuel divestment movement started out making that claim. To its credit, the movement has stopped making such claims. Now, they say that it will remove the industries "social license," which is a problematic concept that comes from the odious world of "corporate social responsibility." However, now, __students__ are becoming politicized, and that’s always great news.¶ For several years, some of us have been trying to get climate activists, the climate left, to take the EPA and the Clean Air Act seriously. The EPA has the power to actually de-carbonize the economy. The divestment logic is: Schools will divest, then fossil fuel companies will be held in greater contempt than they are now? Honestly, they’re already hated by everybody. That does what? That creates the political pressure to stop polluting? We already have those regulations: the Clean Air Act. There was a Supreme Court Case, Massachusetts v. EPA, that was ruled on in 2007. It said the EPA must regulate greenhouse gas emissions. Lots of professional activists in the climate movement, at least up until very recently, have been totally unaware of this.¶ Consequently, __they are not making demands of the EPA. They are not making demands of their various__ local, state and federal __environmental agencies. These entities should be enforcing the laws. They have the power. It’s not because the people in the climate movement are bad people or unintelligent__. They’re dedicated and extremely smart. **__It’s because there’s an anti-state ethos__** __within the environmental movement and a romanticization of the local.__ On a side note, I don’t think __all of this stuff about local economies__ is helpful. Sometimes I think this sort of thinking __doesn’t recognize how the global political economy works__. The comrades at Jacobin magazine have called this anarcho-liberalism. I think that is a great way to describe __the dominant ideology of US left__, which is both anarchist and liberal in its sensibilities. This ideology __is fundamentally about ignoring government__, and __instead__, being __obsessed with__ scale, size, and, by extension, **__authenticity__**. __Big things are bad. Small things are good. Planning is bad. Spontaneity is good. It is as insidious as it is ridiculous. But it is the **dominant worldview** among the US left__.¶ Do you really think that this is the best way to approach the industry, through mobilizing state resources?¶ Look, __the fossil fuel industry is the most powerful force the world has ever seen__. Be honest, __what institution could possibly stand up to them? The state__. That doesn’t mean it will. Right now, government is captured by these corporate entities. But, it has, at least in theory, an obligation to the people. And __it__ also __has the laws that we need to wipe out the fossil fuel industrial complex__. This sounds fantastical and nuts, but I don’t think it is. I’ve been harping on this in articles and a little bit at the end of Tropic of Chaos. According to the Center for Biological Diversity, Nixon-era laws can be used to sue developers, polluters, etc. You might not be able to stop them, but you can slow them down. The __Clean Air Act basically says that if science can show that smoke-stack pollution is harmful to human health, it has to be regulated__.¶ __If there was a movement really pushing the government__, and making the argument that the only safe level of CO2 emissions is essentially zero … __We have the laws in place. We have the enabling legislation to shut down the fossil fuel industry. We should **use the government to** levy astronomical fines on the fossil fuel companies for pollution__. And we should impose them at such a level that it would undermine their ability to remain competitive and profitable.¶ Part Two:¶ Vincent Emanuele: Much of the green washing, or capitalism’s attempt to brand itself as green, focuses on localism and anti-government, market-driven programs. Do you think this phobia of the state among the US left is a result of previous failed political experiments? How much of this ideology is imposed from outside forces?¶ Christian Parenti: Some state phobia comes from the American political mythology of rugged individualism; some comes from the fundamentally Southern, Jeffersonian tradition of states’ rights. Fear of the federal government by Southern elites goes back to the founding of the country. The Hamiltonian versus Jeffersonian positions on government are fundamental to understanding American politics. I wrote about this for Jacobin magazine in a piece called "Reading Hamilton from the Left."¶ Lurking just beneath the surface of states’ rights is, of course, plantation rights. Those plantations, places like Monticello, were America’s equivalent of feudal manors where, in a de facto sense, economic, legal and military power were all bound up together and located in the private household of the planter. Those Virginian planters were the original localistas.¶ Nor did that project end with the fall of slavery, or the end of de jure segregation in the 1960s. Southern elites didn’t want Yankees telling them what to do; how to treat their slaves, how to organize their towns, how to run their elections, how to treat the environment – none of that! The South is a resource colony and its regional elites, some of them now running multinational corporations and holding important posts in the US government, believe they have a right to do what they wish with the people and landscape. Historically, that’s a large part of what localism and local democracy meant in the South. It meant that White local elites were "free" – free to push Black people around, free to feed racist fantasies to the White working class. They didn’t want interference from the outside. So, some of that anti-statist ideology comes from that plantation tradition. Another part of it comes from the real failures and crimes of state socialism, though state socialism also had, and in Cuba still has, many successes. The social welfare record of what we used to call "actually existing socialism" was pretty impressive. But there were also the problems of repression, surveillance and bureaucratization, which were partly the result of capitalist encirclement, partly the result of the ideological hubris rooted in ideological overconfidence in the allegedly scientific power of Marxism, partly the result of simple corruption among socialism’s political class. These real problems were central themes in the Cold War West’s educational and ideological apparatus of (generally right-wing) messaging from the press and the political class. In this discourse, communism was the state, while freedom was the private sector. Thus, the United States and freedom became embodied in popular notions of the private sector and individualism.¶ Of course, the great, unmentioned contradiction in this self-fantasy is the fact that American capitalism has always been heavily, heavily dependent on the state. Modern society, despite its fantasies about itself, is intensely cooperative and collective. Look at how complex its physical systems are; that cannot be achieved without massive levels of coordination and collective cooperation, much of it provided by the rules and regulations of government. The knee-jerk __anti-statism__, what the folks at Jacobin call "anarcho-liberalism," __is__ also __rooted in experience. The less social power you have, the more the state is experienced as an invasive, demeaning, oppressive and potentially, very violent bureaucracy__. Neoliberalism would not have gotten this far if there wasn’t an element of truth to this critique of its bureaucracy and regulation. It has also used ideas that have old cultural tractions, like freedom.¶ __Such are the contradictions of the modern__ democratic __state__ in capitalist society. __Government__ is rational, supportive, humane, [and __offers] redistribution__ in the form of Social Security, __high-quality public schools, environmental regulation, the Voting Rights Act and other federal civil rights laws that have helped break hegemonic power of local and regional bigots__. __But government is also militarized policing, the bloated prison system, spying on a vast scale__; it is child protective services taking children from loving mothers on the basis of bureaucratic traps, corrupt corporate welfare at every level from town government to federal military contracting. The racist, sexist, plutocratic and techno-bureaucratic features of the state create fertile ground for people to turn their backs on the whole idea of government. What has been the impact of the right’s ability to effectively propagandize the White working class in the US?¶ Rightist intellectuals, academics, journalists, media tycoons, university presidents and loudmouth politicians work diligently to capture and form the raw experience of everyday oppression into an ideological common sense. To be clear, I use that term in the Gramscian sense, in which common sense refers to ruling class ideology that is so hegemonic as to be absorbed and naturalized by the people. The constant libertarian assault on the radio, in newspapers, on the television, __this drumbeat of anti-government discourse is an old story__ – but still very important for understanding the anarcho-liberal sensibility. Just tune in to AM radio late on a weekday evening and listen to the anti-government vitriol. It’s sort of wild.¶ Someone could do an interesting study, Ph.D., in unpacking the cultural history of all this. It is tempting to speculate that deindustrialization, having disempowered and made anxious many huge sections of the working class, opens the way for fantasies of empowerment. __The anti-statist__, rugged individualist __common sense is__ also always simultaneously __a fantasy of empowerment__. White men are particularly vulnerable to these fantasies. The classic guy who calls into the batshit crazy, late night, right-wing talk radio show is a middle-aged White man. Listen closely to the rage and you hear fantasies of independence. In this rhetoric, guns and gun rights become an obviously phallic symbol of individual empowerment, agency, self worth, responsibility etc. But most importantly, we have to think about how all of this anti-state ideology is being stirred up with investments from elites. __The neoliberal project is to transform the state through anti-statist rhetoric and narratives. They sell the idea that people need to be liberated from the state. But then push policies that imprison people while liberating and pampering capital. It is hard for the left to see itself in this sketch__ – the angry, beaten-down, middle-aged White guy calling in from his basement or garage. But I think these much-documented corporate efforts to build neoliberal consent permeate the entire culture and infect us all, if even just a little bit.¶ __This is the intellectually toxic environment in which young activists are approaching the question of the climate emergency. Young activists should be approaching the climate crisis the way the left approached the economic crisis during the Great Depression. We need to__ drastically **__restructure the state. We need it mobilized__** and able to transform the economy. The New Deal was imperfect, of course. It left domestic workers and farm workers out of the Fair Labor Standards Act. It was inherently racist. It dammed rivers and was environmentally destructive. However, the New Deal was radical in its general empowerment of labor; its distributional outcomes were progressive and it achieved a modernizing transformation of American capitalism. Not to overstate the case, but __the New Deal could be a reference point for thinking about the beginning of a green transformation that seeks to euthanize the fossil fuel industry__. We have to precipitously reduce greenhouse gas emissions and build a new power sector. That much is very clear.¶ However, let me be clear: Shutting down the fossil fuel industry – mitigating the climate crisis – is not a solution for the environmental crisis. Climate change is only one part of the multifaceted environmental crisis. Shutting down the fossil fuel industry would not automatically end overfishing, deforestation, soil erosion, habitat loss, toxification of the environment etc. But carbon mitigation is the most immediately pressing issue we face. The science is very clear on this. Climate change is the portion of the overall crisis that must be solved immediately so as to buy time to deal with all the other aspects of the crisis. Because I take the political implications of climate science very seriously, I am something of a carbon fundamentalist. __This__ short advisory __paper__ collates a set of recommendations about how best to shape mass public communications aimed at increasing concern about climate change and motivating commensurate behavioural changes. ¶ Its __focus is not upon motivating small private-sphere behavioural changes on a piece-meal basis__. __Rather, it marshals evidence about how best to motivate the__ ambitious and **__systemic behavioural__****__change__** that is **__necessary__** – **__including, crucially__**, **__greater public engagement with the policy process__** (through, for example, lobbying decision-makers and elected representatives, or participating in demonstrations), as well as major lifestyle changes. ¶ __Political leaders__ themselves __have drawn attention to the imperative for more **vocal public pressure to create the ‘political space’ for them to enact more ambitious policy interventions**__. 1 While this paper does not dismiss the value of __individuals making small private-sphere behavioural changes__ (for example, adopting simple domestic energy efficiency measures) it is clear that such behaviours __do **not**____,__ in themselves, __represent a proportional response to__ the challenge of __climate__ change. As David MacKay, Chief Scientific Advisor to the UK Department of Energy and Climate change writes: “ __Don’t be distracted by the myth that ‘every little helps’. **If everyone does a little, we’ll achieve only a little**__ ” (MacKay, 2008). ¶ **__The task of__** campaigners and **__communicators__** from government, business and non-governmental organisations **__must__** therefore **__be to motivate__** both (i) widespread adoption of ambitious private-sphere behavioural changes; and (ii) widespread acceptance of – and indeed **__active demand for__** **__– ambitious new policy interventions__**. ¶ Current public communication campaigns, as orchestrated by government, business and non-governmental organisations, are not achieving these changes. This paper asks: how should such communications be designed if they are to have optimal impact in motivating these changes? The response to this question will require fundamental changes in the ways that many climate change communication campaigns are currently devised and implemented. ¶ This advisory paper offers a list of principles that could be used to enhance the quality of communication around climate change communications. The authors are each engaged in continuously sifting the evidence from a range of sub-disciplines within psychology, and reflecting on the implications of this for improving climate change communications. Some of the organisations that we represent have themselves at times adopted approaches which we have both learnt from and critique in this paper – so some of us have first hand experience of the need for on-going improvement in the strategies that we deploy. ¶ The changes we advocate will be challenging to enact – and will require vision and leadership on the part of the organisations adopting them. But without such vision and leadership, we do not believe that public communication campaigns on climate change will create the necessary behavioural changes – indeed, there is a profound risk that many of today’s campaigns will actually prove counter-productive. ¶ Seven Principles ¶ 1. Move Beyond Social Marketing ¶ We believe that too little attention is paid to the understanding that psychologists bring to strategies for motivating change, whilst undue faith is often placed in the application of marketing strategies to ‘sell’ behavioural changes. Unfortunately, in the context of ambitious pro-environmental behaviour, such strategies seem unlikely to motivate systemic behavioural change. ¶ Social marketing is an effective way of achieving a particular behavioural goal – dozens of practical examples in the field of health behaviour attest to this. Social marketing is really more of a framework for designing behaviour change programmes than a behaviour change programme - it offers a method of maximising the success of a specific behavioural goal. Darnton (2008) has described social marketing as ‘explicitly transtheoretical’, while Hastings (2007), in a recent overview of social marketing, claimed that there is no theory of social marketing. Rather, it is a ‘what works’ philosophy, based on previous experience of similar campaigns and programmes. Social marketing is flexible enough to be applied to a range of different social domains, and this is undoubtedly a fundamental part of its appeal. ¶ However, social marketing’s 'what works' status also means that it is agnostic about the longer term, theoretical merits of different behaviour change strategies, or the cultural values that specific campaigns serve to strengthen. Social marketing dictates that the most effective strategy should be chosen, where effective means ‘most likely to achieve an immediate behavioural goal’. ¶ This means that elements of a behaviour change strategy designed according to the principles of social marketing may conflict with other, broader goals. What if the most effective way of promoting pro-environmental behaviour ‘A’ was to pursue a strategy that was detrimental to the achievement of long term pro-environmental strategy ‘Z’? The principles of social marketing have no capacity to resolve this conflict – they are limited to maximising the success of the immediate behavioural programme. This is not a flaw of social marketing – it was designed to provide tools to address specific behavioural problems on a piecemeal basis. But it is an important limitation, and one that has significant implications if social marketing techniques are used to promote systemic behavioural change and public engagement on an issue like climate change. ¶ 2. Be honest and forthright about the probable impacts of climate change, and the scale of the challenge we confront in avoiding these. But avoid deliberate attempts to provoke fear or guilt. ¶ There is no merit in ‘dumbing down’ the scientific evidence that the impacts of climate change are likely to be severe, and that some of these impacts are now almost certainly unavoidable. Accepting the impacts of climate change will be an important stage in motivating behavioural responses aimed at mitigating the problem. However, deliberate attempts to instil fear or guilt carry considerable risk. ¶ Studies on fear appeals confirm the potential for fear to change attitudes or verbal expressions of concern, but often not actions or behaviour (Ruiter et al., 2001). The impact of fear appeals is context - and audience - specific; for example, for those who do not yet realise the potentially ‘scary’ aspects of climate change, people need to first experience themselves as vulnerable to the risks in some way in order to feel moved or affected (Das et al, 2003; Hoog et al, 2005). As people move towards contemplating action, fear appeals can help form a behavioural intent, providing an impetus or spark to ‘move’ from; however such appeals must be coupled with constructive information and support to reduce the sense of danger (Moser, 2007). The danger is that fear can also be disempowering – producing feelings of helplessness, remoteness and lack of control (O’Neill and Nicholson-Cole, 2009). Fear is likely to trigger ‘barriers to engagement’, such as denial2 (Stoll-Kleemann et al., 2001; Weber, 2006; Moser and Dilling, 2007; Lorenzoni, Nicholson-Cole & Whitmarsh, 2007). The location of fear in a message is also relevant; it works better when placed first for those who are inclined to follow the advice, but better second for those who aren't (Bier, 2001). ¶ Similarly, studies have shown that guilt can play a role in motivating people to take action but can also function to stimulate defensive mechanisms against the perceived threat or challenge to one’s sense of identity (as a good, moral person). In the latter case, behaviours may be left untouched (whether driving a SUV or taking a flight) as one defends against any feelings of guilt or complicity through deployment of a range of justifications for the behaviour (Ferguson & Branscombe, 2010). ¶ Overall, there is a need for emotionally balanced representations of the issues at hand. This will involve acknowledging the ‘affective reality’ of the situation, e.g. “We know this is scary and overwhelming, but many of us feel this way and we are doing something about it”. ¶ 3. Be honest and forthright about the impacts of mitigating and adapting to climate change for current lifestyles, and the ‘loss’ - as well as the benefits - that these will entail. Narratives that focus exclusively on the ‘up-side’ of climate solutions are likely to be unconvincing. While narratives about the future impacts of climate change may highlight the loss of much that we currently hold to be dear, narratives about climate solutions frequently ignore the question of loss. If the two are not addressed concurrently, fear of loss may be ‘split off’ and projected into the future, where it is all too easily denied. This can be dangerous, because accepting loss is an important step towards working through the associated emotions, and emerging with the energy and creativity to respond positively to the new situation (Randall, 2009). However, there are plenty of benefits (besides the financial ones) of a low-carbon lifestyle e.g., health, community/social interaction - including the ‘intrinsic' goals mentioned below. It is important to be honest about both the losses and the benefits that may be associated with lifestyle change, and not to seek to separate out one from the other. ¶ 3a. Avoid emphasis upon painless, easy steps. ¶ Be honest about the limitations of voluntary private-sphere behavioural change, and the need for ambitious new policy interventions that incentivise such changes, or that regulate for them. People know that the scope they have, as individuals, to help meet the challenge of climate change is extremely limited. For many people, it is perfectly sensible to continue to adopt high-carbon lifestyle choices whilst simultaneously being supportive of government interventions that would make these choices more difficult for everyone. ¶ The adoption of small-scale private sphere behavioural changes is sometimes assumed to lead people to adopt ever more difficult (and potentially significant) behavioural changes. The empirical evidence for this ‘foot-in-thedoor’ effect is highly equivocal. Some studies detect such an effect; others studies have found the reverse effect (whereby people tend to ‘rest on their laurels’ having adopted a few simple behavioural changes - Thogersen and Crompton, 2009). Where attention is drawn to simple and painless privatesphere behavioural changes, these should be urged in pursuit of a set of intrinsic goals (that is, as a response to people’s understanding about the contribution that such behavioural change may make to benefiting their friends and family, their community, the wider world, or in contributing to their growth and development as individuals) rather than as a means to achieve social status or greater financial success. Adopting behaviour in pursuit of intrinsic goals is more likely to lead to ‘spillover’ into other sustainable behaviours (De Young, 2000; Thogersen and Crompton, 2009). ¶ People aren’t stupid: they know that if there are wholesale changes in the global climate underway, these will not be reversed merely through checking their tyre pressures or switching their TV off standby. An emphasis upon simple and painless steps suppresses debate about those necessary responses that are less palatable – that will cost people money, or that will infringe on cherished freedoms (such as to fly). Recognising this will be a key step in accepting the reality of loss of aspects of our current lifestyles, and in beginning to work through the powerful emotions that this will engender (Randall, 2009). ¶ 3b. Avoid over-emphasis on the economic opportunities that mitigating, and adapting to, climate change may provide. ¶ There will, undoubtedly, be economic benefits to be accrued through investment in new technologies, but there will also be instances where the economic imperative and the climate change adaptation or mitigation imperative diverge, and periods of economic uncertainty for many people as some sectors contract. It seems inevitable that some interventions will have negative economic impacts (Stern, 2007). ¶ Undue emphasis upon economic imperatives serves to reinforce the dominance, in society, of a set of extrinsic goals (focussed, for example, on financial benefit). A large body of empirical research demonstrates that these extrinsic goals are antagonistic to the emergence of pro-social and proenvironmental concern (Crompton and Kasser, 2009). ¶ 3c. Avoid emphasis upon the opportunities of ‘green consumerism’ as a response to climate change. ¶ As mentioned above (3b), a large body of research points to the antagonism between goals directed towards the acquisition of material objects and the emergence of pro-environmental and pro-social concern (Crompton and Kasser, 2009). Campaigns to ‘buy green’ may be effective in driving up sales of particular products, but in conveying the impression that climate change can be addressed by ‘buying the right things’, they risk undermining more difficult and systemic changes. A recent study found that people in an experiment who purchased ‘green’ products acted less altruistically on subsequent tasks (Mazar & Zhong, 2010) – suggesting that small ethical acts may act as a ‘moral offset’ and licence undesirable behaviours in other domains. This does not mean that private-sphere behaviour changes will always lead to a reduction in subsequent pro-environmental behaviour, but it does suggest that the reasons used to motivate these changes are critically important. Better is to emphasise that ‘every little helps a little’ – but that these changes are only the beginning of a process that must also incorporate more ambitious private-sphere change and significant collective action at a political level. ¶ 4. Empathise with the emotional responses that will be engendered by a forthright presentation of the probable impacts of climate change. ¶ Belief in climate change and support for low-carbon policies will remain fragile unless people are emotionally engaged. We should expect people to be sad or angry, to feel guilt or shame, to yearn for that which is lost or to search for more comforting answers (Randall, 2009). Providing support and empathy in working through the painful emotions of 'grief' for a society that must undergo changes is a prerequisite for subsequent adaptation to new circumstances. ¶ Without such support and empathy, it is more likely that people will begin to deploy a range of maladaptive ‘coping strategies’, such as denial of personal responsibility, blaming others, or becoming apathetic (Lertzman, 2008). An audience should not be admonished for deploying such strategies – this would in itself be threatening, and could therefore harden resistance to positive behaviour change (Miller and Rolnick, 2002). The key is not to dismiss people who exhibit maladaptive coping strategies, but to understand how they can be made more adaptive. People who feel socially supported will be more likely to adopt adaptive emotional responses - so facilitating social support for proenvironmental behaviour is crucial. ¶ 5. Promote pro-environmental social norms and harness the power of social networks ¶ One way of bridging the gap between private-sphere behaviour changes and collective action is the promotion of pro-environmental social norms. Pictures and videos of ordinary people (‘like me’) engaging in significant proenvironmental actions are a simple and effective way of generating a sense of social normality around pro-environmental behaviour (Schultz, Nolan, Cialdini, Goldstein and Griskevicius, 2007). There are different reasons that people adopt social norms, and encouraging people to adopt a positive norm simply to ‘conform’, to avoid a feeling of guilt, or for fear of not ‘fitting in’ is likely to produce a relatively shallow level of motivation for behaviour change. Where social norms can be combined with ‘intrinsic’ motivations (e.g. a sense of social belonging), they are likely to be more effective and persistent. ¶ Too often, environmental communications are directed to the individual as a single unit in the larger social system of consumption and political engagement. This can make the problems feel too overwhelming, and evoke unmanageable levels of anxiety. Through the enhanced awareness of what other people are doing, a strong sense of collective purpose can be engendered. One factor that is likely to influence whether adaptive or maladaptive coping strategies are selected in response to fear about climate change is whether people feel supported by a social network – that is, whether a sense of ‘sustainable citizenship’ is fostered. The efficacy of groupbased programmes at promoting pro-environmental behaviour change has been demonstrated on numerous occasions – and participants in these projects consistently point to a sense of mutual learning and support as a key reason for making and maintaining changes in behaviour (Nye and Burgess, 2008). There are few influences more powerful than an individual’s social network. Networks are instrumental not just in terms of providing social support, but also by creating specific content of social identity – defining what it means to be “us”. If environmental norms are incorporated at this level (become defining for the group) they can result in significant behavioural change (also reinforced through peer pressure). ¶ Of course, for the majority of people, this is unlikely to be a network that has climate change at its core. But social networks – Trade Unions, Rugby Clubs, Mother & Toddler groups – still perform a critical role in spreading change through society. Encouraging and supporting pre-existing social networks to take ownership of climate change (rather than approach it as a problem for ‘green groups’) is a critical task. As well as representing a crucial bridge between individuals and broader society, peer-to-peer learning circumnavigates many of the problems associated with more ‘top down’ models of communication – not least that government representatives are perceived as untrustworthy (Poortinga & Pidgeon, 2003). Peer-to-peer learning is more easily achieved in group-based dialogue than in designing public information films: But public information films can nonetheless help to establish social norms around community-based responses to the challenges of climate change, through clear visual portrayals of people engaging collectively in the pro-environmental behaviour. ¶ The discourse should be shifted increasingly from ‘you’ to ‘we’ and from ‘I’ to ‘us’. This is starting to take place in emerging forms of community-based activism, such as the Transition Movement and Cambridge Carbon Footprint’s ‘Carbon Conversations’ model – both of which recognize the power of groups to help support and maintain lifestyle and identity changes. A nationwide climate change engagement project using a group-based behaviour change model with members of Trade Union networks is currently underway, led by the Climate Outreach and Information Network. These projects represent a method of climate change communication and engagement radically different to that typically pursued by the government – and may offer a set of approaches that can go beyond the limited reach of social marketing techniques. ¶ One potential risk with appeals based on social norms is that they often contain a hidden message. So, for example, a campaign that focuses on the fact that too many people take internal flights actually contains two messages – that taking internal flights is bad for the environment, and that lots of people are taking internal flights. This second message can give those who do not currently engage in that behaviour a perverse incentive to do so, and campaigns to promote behaviour change should be very careful to avoid this. The key is to ensure that information about what is happening (termed descriptive norms), does not overshadow information about what should be happening (termed injunctive norms). ¶ 6. Think about the language you use, but don’t rely on language alone ¶ A number of recent publications have highlighted the results of focus group research and talk-back tests in order to ‘get the language right’ (Topos Partnership, 2009; Western Strategies & Lake Research Partners, 2009), culminating in a series of suggestions for framing climate-change communications. For example, these two studies led to the suggestions that communicators should use the term ‘global warming’ or ‘our deteriorating atmosphere’, respectively, rather than ‘climate change’. Other research has identified systematic differences in the way that people interpret the terms ‘climate change’ and ‘global warming’, with ‘global warming’ perceived as more emotionally engaging than ‘climate change’ (Whitmarsh, 2009). ¶ Whilst ‘getting the language right’ is important, it can only play a small part in a communication strategy. More important than the language deployed (i.e. ‘conceptual frames') are what have been referred to by some cognitive linguists as 'deep frames'. Conceptual framing refers to catchy slogans and clever spin (which may or may not be honest). At a deeper level, framing refers to forging the connections between a debate or public policy and a set of deeper values or principles. Conceptual framing (crafting particular messages focussing on particular issues) cannot work unless these messages resonate with a set of long-term deep frames. ¶ Policy proposals which may at the surface level seem similar (perhaps they both set out to achieve a reduction in environmental pollution) may differ importantly in terms of their deep framing. For example, putting a financial value on an endangered species, and building an economic case for their conservation ‘commodifies’ them, and makes them equivalent (at the level of deep frames) to other assets of the same value (a hotel chain, perhaps). This is a very different frame to one that attempts to achieve the same conservation goals through the ascription of intrinsic value to such species – as something that should be protected in its own right. Embedding particular deep frames requires concerted effort (Lakoff, 2009), but is the beginning of a process that can build a broad, coherent cross-departmental response to climate change from government. ¶ 7. Encourage public demonstrations of frustration at the limited pace of government action ¶ **__Private-sphere__** **__behavioural change is not enough, and may__** even at times **__become a diversion from__** **__the more important process of bringing political pressure to bear on policy-makers.__** __The importance of public demonstrations of frustration at__ both __the lack of political progress on climate__ change and the barriers presented by vested interests __is widely recognised__ – __including by government itself__. **__Climate change communications__**, including government communication campaigns, **__should work to normalise public displays of frustration with the slow pace of political change__****__.__** Ockwell et al (2009) argued that **__communications can play a role in fostering demand for__** **__- as well as acceptance of – policy__** [Robert N., The Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government, 4/8/2010, “What’s the Proper Role of Individuals and Institutions in Addressing Climate Change?”, [], 7/11/14, TYBG] Decisions affecting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions, for example, are made primarily by companies and consumers. This includes decisions by companies about how to produce electricity, as well as thousands of other goods and services; and decisions by consumers regarding what to buy, how to transport themselves, and how to keep their homes warm, cool, and light. However, __despite the fact that these decisions are made by firms and individuals, government action is clearly key, because climate change is an externality__, __and it is rarely__, if ever, __in the self-interest of__ __firms or individuals to take unilateral actions__. That’s why the climate problem exists, in the first place. __Voluntary__ __initiatives__ – no matter how well-intended – __will not only be insufficient, but insignificant__ __relative to the magnitude of the problem.__ So, the question becomes how to shift decisions by firms and individuals in a climate-friendly direction, such as toward emissions reductions. Whether conventional standards or market-based instruments are used, meaningful government regulation will be required. __But where does this leave the role and responsibility of individuals and institutions?__ Let me use as an example my employer, a university. __A couple of years ago, I met with students advocating for a reduced “carbon foot-print” for the school. Here is what I told them.“I was asked by a major oil company to advise on the design of an internal, voluntary tradable permit systems for CO2 emissions. My response to the____company was ‘fine, but the emissions from your production processes__ — largely refineries — __are trivial compared with the emissions from the use of your products__ (combustion of fossil fuels). If you really want to do something meaningful about climate change, the focus should be on the use of your products, not your internal production process.’ (My response would have been different had they been a cement producer.) __The oil company proceeded with its internal measures, which – as I anticipated – had trivial, if any impacts on the environment__ (and they subsequently used the existence of their voluntary program as an argument against government attempts to put in place a meaningful climate policy).” __My view of a university’s responsibilities in the environmental realm is similar. Our direct impact on the natural environment — such as in terms of CO2 emissions from our heating plants — is absolutely trivial compared with the impacts on the environment__ (including climate change) of our products: knowledge produced through research, informed students produced through our teaching, and outreach to the policy world carried out by faculty. So, I suggested to the students that if they were really concerned with how the university affects climate change, then their greatest attention should be given to priorities and performance in the realms of teaching, research, and outreach. Of course, __it is also true that work on the “greening of the university” can in some cases play a relevant role in research and teaching. And, more broadly — and more importantly — the university’s actions in regard to its “carbon footprint” can have symbolic value. And symbolic actions — even when they mean little in terms of real, direct impacts — can have effects in the larger political world.__ This is particularly true in the case of a prominent university, such as my own. __But, overall,____my institution’s greatest opportunity — indeed, its__ **__greatest responsibility__** __— with regard to addressing global climate change is and will be through its research, teaching, and outreach to the policy community.____Why not focus equally on reducing the university’s carbon foot-print while also working to increase and improve relevant research, teaching, and outreach? The answer brings up a phrase__ that will be familiar to readers of this blog – __opportunity cost__. Faculty, staff, and __students__ __all have limited time; indeed, as in many other professional settings, time is the scarcest of scarce resources.__ Giving more attention to one issue inevitably means – for some people – giving less time to another. So my advice to the students was to advocate for more faculty appointments in the environmental realm and to press for more and better courses. After all, it was student demand at my institution that resulted in the creation of the college’s highly successful concentration (major) in environmental science and public policy. My bottom line? __Try to focus on actions that can make a real difference, as opposed to actions that may feel good or look good but have relatively little real-world impact, particularly when those feel-good/look-good actions have opportunity costs, that is, divert us from focusing on actions that would make a significant difference. Climate change is a real and pressing problem. Strong government actions will be required, as well as enlightened political leadership at the national and international levels.__
 * Actively engaging and pressuring institutions is necessary to counter climate change **
 * Parenti & Emanuele 15 **
 * Institutions are key to solve warming—individual action fails and trades off **
 * CAG 10 **—Climate Change Communication Advisory Group. Dr Adam Corner School of Psychology, Cardiff University - Dr Tom Crompton Change Strategist, WWF-UK - Scott Davidson Programme Manager, Global Action Plan - Richard Hawkins Senior Researcher, Public Interest Research Centre - Professor Tim Kasser, Psychology department, Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, USA. - Dr Renee Lertzman, Center for Sustainable Processes & Practices, Portland State University, US. - Peter Lipman, Policy Director, Sustrans. - Dr Irene Lorenzoni, Centre for Environmental Risk, University of East Anglia. - George Marshall, Founding Director, Climate Outreach, Information Network - Dr Ciaran Mundy, Director, Transition Bristol - Dr Saffron O’Neil, Department of Resource Management and Geography, University of Melbourne, Australia. - Professor Nick Pidgeon, Director, Understanding Risk Research Group, School of Psychology, Cardiff University. - Dr Anna Rabinovich, School of Psychology, University of Exeter - Rosemary Randall, Founder and director of Cambridge Carbon Footprint - Dr Lorraine Whitmarsh, School of Psychology, Cardiff University & Visiting Fellow at the, Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. (Communicating climate change to mass public audience, http://pirc.info/downloads/communicating_climate_mass_audiences.pdf)
 * Institutional action is the only way to stop warming **
 * Stavins, **Harvard Environmental Economics Program Director,** 10 **

=__Negative__= __The only thing that we have gone for is the Elections DA,__ __We have ran T-QPQ, CP's (the one's in the case negs), containment (or appeasement whatever you call it), and the Japan DA.__

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