Mayer Hillman says “we are doomed”

From an Article by Julia Conley, The Guardian Newspaper (Common Dreams), April 26, 2018

“What legacies are we leaving for future generations?” asks the influential expert. “In the early 21st century, we did as good as nothing in response to climate change. Our children and grandchildren are going to be extraordinarily critical.”

Dr. Mayer Hillman, the influential social scientist known for producing research that has successfully led to policy changes to improve road safety, has declared humanity “doomed” due to its reliance on the burning of fossil fuels and the capitalist economic system that ensures that dependence will continue.

“We’re doomed,” Hillman told the Guardian in a recent interview. “The outcome is death, and it’s the end of most life on the planet because we’re so dependent on the burning of fossil fuels. There are no means of reversing the process which is melting the polar ice caps. And very few appear to be prepared to say so.”

While green campaigners and some politicians call for a reduced dependence on fossil fuels and a shift to sustainable energy, like wind or solar power, Hillman warned that such contributions by individual governments are essentially “minute.”

“Even if the government were to go to zero carbon it would make almost no difference,” Hillman said.

According to the Guardian, the only solution is moving “to zero emissions across agriculture, air travel, shipping, heating homes—every aspect of our economy—and [reducing] our human population too.”

But Hillman expressed grave doubts that this hope would be realized, as global leaders are unable or unwilling to lead a movement away from fossil fuels.

“I don’t think they can because society isn’t organized to enable them to do so,” Hillman said. “Political parties’ focus is on jobs and GDP, depending on the burning of fossil fuels.”

The warning of the senior fellow emeritus of the Policy Studies Institute comes as scientists raise alarm over the accelerated melting of the ice in Antarctica, driven by a “feedback loop” of warmer water melting glaciers, and as experts estimate that global warming has pushed one-third of the world’s bird species closer to extinction.

“We’ve got to stop burning fossil fuels,” he said. “So many aspects of life depend on fossil fuels, except for music and love and education and happiness. These things, which hardly use fossil fuels, are what we must focus on.”

In his interview with the Guardian, Hillman indicated that he was giving his final word of warning to the world population, calling his statement his “last will and testament.”

“I’m not going to write anymore because there’s nothing more that can be said,” he said.

For decades, Hillman’s warnings to policy-makers have resulted in changes that many now take for granted. He urged British politicians to stop the spread of sprawling shopping centers outside city limits due to their environmental impact—eight years before planning rules were changed. He also pushed for energy-efficient ratings for buildings and homes—adopted in the U.K. in 2007—starting in 1984, and for 20 mile per hour speed limits in urban areas.

Now, Hillman is recommending world citizens think past 2100—the year when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) warns the Earth’s temperature could rise up to 10.44 degrees Fahrenheit—when they think of the effects of the man-made climate crisis.

“Scientists warn that the temperature could rise to five degrees Celsius or eight degrees Celsius [nine degrees or 14.4 degrees Fahrenheit]. What, and stop there? What legacies are we leaving for future generations? In the early 21st century, we did as good as nothing in response to climate change. Our children and grandchildren are going to be extraordinarily critical,” said Hillman.

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“So many aspects of life depend on fossil fuels, except for music and love and education and happiness. These things, which hardly use fossil fuels, are what we must focus on.” —Dr. Mayer Hillman

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The Madhouse Effect – How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics, and Driving Us Crazy | Columbia University Press

The Madhouse Effect — CSPN Interview of Michael Mann

Getting Serious about Climate Change

We are facing a “make-or-break” election regarding climate change

From an Article by Michael Mann, EcoWatch.com, October 3, 2016

In just a matter of weeks, we will be confronted with a critical decision. It is not mere hyperbole to assert that we are facing a make-or-break election as far as climate change is concerned.

My co-author Tom Toles (the Pulitzer-winning editorial cartoonist for the Washington Post) and I put it this way in the concluding chapter of our new book, The Madhouse Effect: How Climate Change Denial Is Threatening Our Planet, Destroying Our Politics and Driving Us Crazy.

In the current presidential contest, we could not have a more stark choice before us, between a candidate who rejects the overwhelming evidence that climate change is happening and a candidate who embraces the role of a price on carbon and incentives for renewable energy.

If you care about the planet, the choice would seem clear.

If the appropriate catch-phrase for the 1992 election was “It’s The Economy Stupid!,” then this time around it ought to be “It’s the PLANET stupid!.” A Toles cartoon used in the Madhouse Effect conveys the point masterfully:

Preventing dangerous climate change remains a daunting challenge, but we’ve made some real progress in the past few years. Global carbon emissions are actually on the decline, renewable energy is dramatically on the rise, and we achieved a monumental international agreement in Paris last December that promises to help steer us onto a path that just may avert dangerous 2C planetary warming.

A pair of Toles cartoons from the Madhouse Effect conveys both the auspicious nature of these developments and their fragility in the current political environment:

In this next election, we need to decide whether we are going to build on the successes of the Obama administration—which has used a combination of bold executive actions and international diplomacy to achieve action on climate change even in the presence of intransigence, denial and outright hostility from congressional republicans—or whether we are going to retreat back into the energy-equivalent of the stone age, continuing to degrade our planet through the profligate burning of increasingly dangerous fossil carbon even as the rest of the world moves forward, embracing the renewable energy revolution destined to be the hallmark of the 21st century.

Once again, the decision comes down to a single election that is now just weeks away. In the first presidential debate, though the moderator disappointingly failed to ask a question about was is arguably the single most critical issue facing human civilization today—human-caused climate change—the Democratic nominee for President, Hillary Clinton, forced the issue herself by calling out Donald Trump for his denial of climate change, noting that he, for example, in a past tweet dismissed climate change as a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese (indeed Trump has posted at least a half-dozen climate change-denying tweets over the past few years).

Seemingly recognizing how self-discrediting it is to deny a phenomenon that people are now witnessing in their everyday lives, Trump denied having made the claim. But realizing that the damning evidence was available for everyone to see (via a tweet that remains in Trump’s twitter feed), his campaign sought to quickly clarify the next day that, despite what he might have stated in the past, he no longer believes climate change to be a hoax. Progress, right? Unfortunately not. Consider, for context, this Toles cartoon from the book:

The Trump campaign, it turns out, simply gave us a bait-and-switch, attempting to pivot from one patently absurd climate change denial talking point (“it’s not happening!”) to a seemingly more palatable, albeit equally indefensible one (“it’s natural, not human-caused!”).To be clear, Donald Trump and his campaign still firmly rejects the scientific evidence that climate change is human-caused, opposing the only action (a reduction of fossil fuel burning) that can save us from ever-more dangerous climate change impacts. A cartoon drawn exclusively for the Madhouse Effect captures the Trump worldview:

History will judge us by what we chose to do at the crucial moment in time. A group of scientists, including myself, have consequently decided that we must speak out about the irreparable harm that would be done by a climate change-denying, anti-science-driven Trump presidency. We have encouraged other members of the scientific community to join us:

It would nevertheless be a mistake to consider the problem to be limited to the Republican standard-bearer. It penetrates far more deeply. Whether to even accept the overwhelming evidence that climate change is real and human-caused has become a partisan political issue, thanks in large parts to the efforts of bad actors like the Koch Brothers to poison both our atmosphere and our public discourse. In the toxic environment that exists in today’s Republican party, even the most conservative Republican incumbents are subjected to well-funded primary challenges if they choose to admit that climate change is real and an issue we must contend with.

The one thing that every American voter can do to try to change that is to (a) vote in the upcoming election, and (b) vote CLIMATE, not just at the top of the ticket, but all the way down. The future of this planet could quite literally lie in the balance.