One British activist thinks "the end is nigh" approach on the dangers of abrupt climate change might be turning people off.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to turn to Simon Retallack, who is just in from Britain for the International Forum on Globalization conference. What is “climate porn”?
SIMON RETALLACK: Good question. It's a phrase that authors of a report that we commissioned in London came up with to describe the way in which some journalists, some environmentalists and even some politicians use alarmist language to talk about climate change, in a way that you might see headlined, certainly in British newspapers, saying almost “the end is nigh,” using biblical terms to describe the impacts of climate change. It's a phrase that is certainly not used to undermine the science. It certainly doesn't mean to do that. What it seeks to do is try to encourage people to think about what sort of language will be necessary to motivate the public to take action.
If we talk about climate change in a way that makes it appear that there's nothing we can do anymore about it, that it's too late, that it's happening, it's going to be devastating on a global scale, without giving people the option and making the solutions clear to act, then I think we're going to turn people off. So it's part of some research and a long-running project that we're engaged with to try to find ways of simulating climate-friendly behavior amongst the public.
JUAN GONZALEZ: Simon, in the previous segment, Vandana Shiva talked about what she called a fallacy of using fixes like trading in pollution credits in the United States. So you've analyzed what the EU is doing in terms of this kind of approach. Could you talk about that?
SIMON RETALLACK: Yes, certainly. I mean, one of the most commonly adopted solutions in the world for dealing with climate change has been the support for cap and trade schemes, where there’s a cap placed on emissions and companies get given quotas, and they can trade them to meet their reductions. The big problem with the European scheme, and I foresee a problem with potential US-wide schemes in the future, is that the caps placed on industry have been far too weak. Governments have over-allocated pollution permits to industry, which has meant that the cost of a ton of carbon on the European markets is far too low, and it isn't delivering the step change in investments that we need to see in renewable energy and energy efficiency to do our bit to avoid dangerous climate change.
We're at a critical point, not just in the EU, about here in the US now, where finally, with a Democratically controlled Congress, we're going to see this full attempt to pass a cap and trade bill through Congress. We've got to make sure, and anyone who's listening to this and watching this needs to do their part to ensure, that the right caps are put in place. At the moment, most of the bills before Congress only envisage far too little emission reductions by 2050. We need to see at least 80% cuts in emissions, at least, by 2050, with early action being critically important, too, if we're to avoid the most dangerous impacts from climate change. And we need to put pressure on our representatives and senators in the US to ensure that adequate action is taken at this critically important point.