Category: The environment

Atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, etc – everything about life and the state of this planet

Metrics of activist success

The fossil fuel divestment campaign at the University of Toronto is still dealing with the disappointment of President Gertler announcing such an uninspiring response to the social injury and financial risk associated with fossil fuel investments.

One early response from the campaign was to hold a creative direct action outside Simcoe Hall, home to the Office of the President and the Governing Council.

The action made me think about different ways in which acts undertaken to provoke social or political change can be evaluated. At least two possibilities come to mind: evaluation in terms of the subjective experience of participants, and evaluation in terms of the effect on the thinking or behaviour of the mass public or elite decision-makers.

Subjective experiences (AKA “feelings”) are not trivial. I think the biggest challenge activist groups face is maintaining the health and motivation of their members and key organizers. Indeed, when it comes to big marches like the People’s Climate March and March for Jobs, Justice, and the Climate I have reached the conclusion that they are more important in terms of energizing participants than in terms of changing public opinion. Not least, this is because the media tends to wildly under-report them.

That being said, I think activism by definition is an effort to change how the world works and that doing that requires changing the thinking and behaviour of the mass public and decision-makers. To be effective in that, we need to think hard about why people believe what they believe and make the choices they make, and what kinds of interventions can change those things. As activists resolutely focused on achieving positive change, we need to focus on producing good outcomes which would not have happened without us.

From the second perspective, I am less confident about how productive the action outside Simcoe Hall was. For the random student wandering by – or the random administrator listening through their window – did it improve the odds of them supporting fossil fuel divestment? The more militant members of the campaign often talk about “building power”, but we ultimately cannot force the administration to do anything. We need to convince them, which takes us back to serious strategic thinking about how to change the beliefs and behaviours of non-activists.

Fossil fuel divestment on As It Happens

Responding to an earlier interview with U of T President Meric Gertler (in which the host was impressively spirited and well-informed while pushing back), UofT350.org media representative Amanda Harvey-Sanchez was on CBC’s As It Happens today.

She highlights a key point about how the proposed ESG approach is less effective than divestment: it will be implemented by the people at the University of Toronto Asset Management Corporation (UTAM) who have preferred to do nothing all along.

U of T President Meric Gertler rejects fossil fuel divestment

Back in December, an expert committee appointed by President Gertler recommended divestment from fossil fuel companies based on a range of criteria.

Today, that approach was rejected by President Gertler, who proposed instead a vague eventual screening of investments based on “environmental, social, and governance” factors.

Toronto350.org has a press release, and is working on a broader response.

Between the committee’s recommendation and the president’s decision, we issued a Community Response, which is essentially not addressed in the president’s decision.

2016 Walter Gordon Symposium — Indigenous reconciliation

The 2016 Walter Gordon Symposium (Word document) was about indigenous reconciliation in Canada, following the report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

I attended every panel, and I am working on processing and uploading my photos.

A complex confluence of factors seem to have combined to make indigenous issues critically important politically all around the world. In particular, the resurgence of aboriginal peoples is deeply bound up with our best hopes for avoiding destroying human flourishing and life as we know it through climate change.

Jeffrey Goldberg on Obama’s foreign policy

The Atlantic has a long and interesting article about Barack Obama’s foreign policy.

It discusses the use of chemical weapons in Syria; Obama’s take on Churchillian rhetoric; Obama’s appreciation for elements of the George H. W. Bush foreign policy; disagreements within the Obama foreign policy team; Obama’s views on Israeli security; Obama’s “secret disdain” for the Washington foreign policy establishment; his limited respect for foreign leaders (aside from Angela Merkel); a bit of his perspective on climate change (a “comparatively slow-moving emergency” and “a potential existential threat to the entire world if we don’t do something about it”); Obama’s views on ISIS (which he compares to the Joker in The Dark Knight); his perspective of the central role of U.S. leadership in international cooperation; the use of drones with “near-certainty of no collateral damage”; Pakistan as a “disastrously dysfunctional country” and questionable U.S. ally; the impact of tribalism and misogyny in the Middle East; America’s misunderstanding of Reagan and the Iran hostage crisis; America’s overblown fear of terrorism (“Obama frequently reminds his staff that terrorism takes far fewer lives in America than handguns, car accidents, and falls in bathtubs do”); his frustration with “free rider” allies who don’t contribute to the costs of U.S. foreign policy objectives they support; and his views on the scope of executive power in foreign policy.

It describes the resentments which Obama had developed by 2013:

He resented military leaders who believed they could fix any problem if the commander in chief would simply give them what they wanted, and he resented the foreign-policy think-tank complex. A widely held sentiment inside the White House is that many of the most prominent foreign-policy think tanks in Washington are doing the bidding of their Arab and pro-Israel funders. I’ve heard one administration official refer to Massachusetts Avenue, the home of many of these think tanks, as “Arab-occupied territory.”

On climate change, Obama is quoted saying:

“As I survey the next 20 years, climate change worries me profoundly because of the effects that it has on all the other problems that we face,” he said. “If you start seeing more severe drought; more significant famine; more displacement from the Indian subcontinent and coastal regions in Africa and Asia; the continuing problems of scarcity, refugees, poverty, disease—this makes every other problem we’ve got worse. That’s above and beyond just the existential issues of a planet that starts getting into a bad feedback loop.”

The article also includes some interesting analysis of how Obama adjusted his strategy in response to particular events, as well as interpersonal disagreements among his key advisors.

Another interesting comment is that Obama sees the Middle East as “soon be of negligible relevance to the U.S. economy” “thanks to America’s energy revolution”. It would be interesting to know if he means the noble course of improved efficiency and the deployment of climate-safe energy sources, or the massive expansion of oil and gas production which he has helped drive.

Managing volunteers

I am finding myself frustrated with the primary challenge associated with trying to produce political change using groups of volunteers, which I would judge to be maintaining accountability and motivation. If the groups aspire to be democratic, that brings a set of challenges too. (The third biggest challenge is probably avoiding and managing interpersonal conflicts.) Still, I think the greatest challenge is the tendency of volunteers to abandon projects half-finished and informally vacate positions of responsibility which they have sought (without handing them over to others in an effective way).

One potential solution is to move from volunteers to employees. This arguably gives you more oversight, perhaps makes them feel more responsible, and allows those who couldn’t normally afford to work so much for free the opportunity to pay their rent, etc. There are lots of effective staff-run NGOs (from the Pembina Institute to Environmental Defence), and taking on a few staff is often an aspiration for any serious group.

Regardless, most people who contribute their labour to grassroots-style environmental groups do so as volunteers, and it’s the effective or ineffective recruitment, retention, and management of volunteers that largely determines an organization’s effectiveness. The other main factor is the competence of key organizers, who must themselves be recruited, retained, and managed.

It’s often tempting to imagine a group in which all members are and remain strongly committed, and who manifest that commitment in consistent and professional work. It’s certainly logically possible that a group could have rules and a formal structure that encourages participation of this sort and diverts the less committed to other organizations that are also doing good work. Such a group could limit the amount of resources that need to be devoted to fundraising, and avoid the hassles, limitations, and democratic challenges of formal incorporation.

The time commitments would have to be manageable – to limit the main problem that afflicts key organizers.

Another question is how to effectively brand such a group and define its role. Being independent would cost the support of organizations with pre-existing name recognition and bases of support, but it would also allow for more of an experimental structure.

Repairs

In addition to the standard advice about reducing the amount of environmental harm you’re imposing on others (limit driving, avoid flying, avoid meat, etc), a recent Grist article suggests that you “use everything you own for so long that it turns into dust”.

As a general philosophy, I am trying out the following:

  • Avoid acquiring entirely new types of things, especially those that require a lot of resource use to support.
  • Where possible, repair gear that has become damaged.
  • When necessary, replace gear. If it’s gear in frequent use, replace it with something tougher

Recently, I sent my 10+ year old hiking boots off to be re-soled. I have decided to keep using my five year old iPhone 4 until it suffers a critical failure. Today, I was able to replace the battery (which had only been good for 30 minutes of talk time and prone to fail instantly in the cold) at the Apple Store for $111.87. Strangely, Apple will not replace the battery in a 160 GB iPod Classic. Instead, they will replace the whole device for the cost of the battery, something I also did today for $84.75. The charging cables for both my iPod and iPhone have nearly completely fallen apart, but I will keep using them until the last one fails. I need to replace my iPhone case, since it is falling apart. No physical stores sell such old cases, so I will need to find one online.

My collection of inexpensive watches is down to a single usable item. The Eddie Bauer watch my grandparents gave me in high school won’t run even with a brand new battery. The Mondaine watch I bought at the MoMA now loses about eight minutes per hour, making it useless. The Marathon watch with tritium tubes, which they have already repaired once, has a loose tube (full of radioactive gas) shaking around in the case and needs to go back again. My Timex Expedition‘s plastic face is all scratched up (like the Marathon watch) but it still functions perfectly.

Yesterday, I replaced one of my FEIT Electric 1600 lumen (100 watt equivalent) LED bulbs with a new one that doesn’t buzz all the time. My Barbour Beaufort jacket has growing holes in the waxed cotton along the bottom of the sleeves, as well as lots of damage along the back where I often sit on it (despite several prior repairs). My MEC merino wool long johns have big holes in the bottoms, and both of my pairs of MEC cargo pants have at least one failed zipper. I already replaced my Hedgren laptop bag with a Briggs & Riley verb bag because replacing all the failed zippers would have been costly and impractical.

There are a lot of other bits of gear with issues. The headphone out port on my nine year old iMac is dodgy, but the computer as a whole has worked remarkably well. The iPad Mini on extended loan from my brother Sasha has a cracked screen, but it doesn’t cause any problems. My Canon 5D Mk II still suffers from the consequences of its tragic injury. In particular, the shutter release on the battery grip doesn’t work. My used 5D Mk III has stranger problems. Sometimes it refuses to release the shutter, apparently because it doesn’t realize that autofocus has already happened. Sometimes, focusing on something closer and then switching back fixes the problem. Sometimes it requires a power cycle. Oddest of all, it sometimes produces corrupted RAW files, something I have never experienced with any other digital camera.

All my lenses are in good working order, as are my flashes and the radio triggers for them. My MacBook Pro and Fuji X100s are similarly at full capacity. My Sennheiser HD595 headphones are working, along with my Pro-Ject headphone amp and my Shure SE-215 earbuds (having already replaced the cable once).

One new thing I definitely need is the largest possible bookshelf for my new room. Until I can find something that I will be able to get up the three flights of stairs, my books are sitting in a stack of 15 banker’s boxes. I also want to fix the hinge on my wardrobe. In the longer term, I am thinking ahead to the research trip for my PhD. Whether I end up subletting my room for those weeks/months or not, I will want somewhere secure to store photo and computer gear, as well as backups, when I am away. Maybe I can modify the wardrobe to lock, or add a locking compartment.

I will also eventually need to replace the creaking complaining futon which I bought from the previous inhabitant of this room – ideally, with a bed which includes built-in storage underneath.

(Note: There is an extensive earlier discussion about abstinence from harmful activities and resistance against the societal structures that permit them as alternative approaches to mitigating environmental problems.)

Divestment and “The Toronto Principle”

An article in The Harvard Crimson focused on the recent report of the president’s divestment committee at U of T:

Last December, a committee at the University of Toronto released a report on the issue of divestment, drawing a clear line by aligning itself with the needs of the Paris agreement. It recommended that the university not finance companies whose “actions blatantly disregard the international effort to limit the rise in average global temperatures to not more than one and a half degrees Celsius above pre-industrial averages by 2050…These are fossil fuels companies whose actions are irreconcilable with achieving internationally agreed goals.”

Hopefully, this principle will be re-affirmed when President Gertler makes the final decision. We expect that at the end of March.