global warming

Last November I was lucky enough to be in Berlin when the newly founded Mercator Research Institute for Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) formally presented itself to the world.  I was initially impressed that a new scientific research institute with serious financial backing would make a commitment to studying climate change and the commons. The new Institute even regards the late Elinor Ostrom as a prime inspiration, to the extent of naming its auditorium for her.

I wondered if the new institute would be a fresh opening for some very different conversations about climate change.  I mused that perhaps the Mercator Research Institute could validate the eco-friendly practices of countless commoners around the world.  It might point the way to a different vision of “development” and more meaningful notions of “sustainability.”  It might even force the economics discipline to revisit some of its core assumptions about human cooperation and reinvent itself.

Alas, I now believe that few of these scenarios are likely.  After listening to the four speakers at the MCC’s inaugural one-day conference on November 15, “The Green Growth Dilemma,” the institute seems poised to explore modest, socially minded twists to the standard economic narrative.  In other words, a fairly tame, meliorist agenda within the crumbling edifice of neoclassical economic thought.

There will apparently be no deep critiques of the basic goals, assumptions and methodologies of economics as it is practiced today.  Nor does it seem that the potential of the commons as a form of participatory socio-ecological management will be probed.  That topic lies too far outside the framework of standard economics. Or at least, no one focused on such commons at the institute's inaugural conference.

It is amazing amidst all the media coverage of Hurricane Sandy that there is barely a peep about the likely role of global warming.  Neither President Obama nor Mitt Romney could be bothered to mention the issue during their three recent campaign debates. Nor have many public figures drawn the linkages between extreme weather events in the US this summer (drought, heat wave, wildfires) and global warming.  Of course, there are also the many ecological changes occurring around the world that scientists link to a hotter atmosphere.

Jeff Masters, a leading hurricane tracker and weatherman, has said that water temperature in the mid-Atlantic this year is 5°F warmer than average, according to the 350.org website.  This allows hurricanes to travel farther north and contributing to “an unusually large amount of water vapor available to make heavy rain.”

Since the governing classes are determined to look the other way, the burden of changing public opinion and mobilizing effective responses has fallen to ordinary commoners.  Yesterday, a few dozen activists with 350.org unfurled this succinct demand in New York City's Times Square as Hurricane Sandy chugged toward the estimated 66 million people in its projected path.

Update:  Bloomberg Business Week comes out with a "controversial" cover story days after the storm:

So another climate change summit (Durban, South Africa) has produced no action, even in the face of mounting evidence of the deterioration of the planet's atmosphere. Climate change denial has now moved from the right-wing, wacko fringe to the pinnacles of “respectable” power as top government officials refuse to take serious action in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence (see Mark Hertsgaard's account of the Durban talks in The Nation.)  Meanwhile, despite his 2008 campaign pledges to tackle global warming, President Obama has slipped into the shadows. He remains too indentured to corporatists, preferring to offer empty rhetorical feints of concern whenever the issue spikes into public consciousness.

How, then, might we save the atmospheric commons?

One of the most overlooked yet promising gambits is a series of “atmospheric trust” lawsuits that were filed in May 2011. This remarkable litigation campaign, which consists of lawsuits filed in all fifty state courts and in federal court on the same day, seek to force government to apply the venerable public trust doctrine to the atmosphere and protect it for future generations.  (For more on the lawsuits, see this piece on Grist.)

As I explained in an earlier blog post, the basic claim in these landmark lawsuits is that “all governments hold natural resources in trust for their citizens and bear the fiducairy obligaiton to protest such resources for future generations,” as University of Oregon law professor Mary Wood puts it. Wood is one of the key legal thinkers behind this application of public trust doctrine.  The Atmospheric Trust Litigation asks the courts to issue a declaratory judgment affirming this principle. It also wants the court to provide injunctive relief by drawing up a plan, based on authoritative scientific evidence, that would require mandatory reductions in carbon emissions.

The fight to stop global warming just got more interesting.  A newly formed activist group iMatter and its litigation partner, Our Children’s Trust, have launched an ingenious new strategy to use the public trust doctrine to protect the atmosphere in conjunction with a mass mobilization of young people.

The project seeks to rally young people around the world to protect their futures, quite literally, by organizing street protests and other citizen action.  But the project also casts young people as the lead plaintiffs in simultaneous common-law lawsuits against all fifty states as well as several federal agencies (EPA, USDA, Commerce, Defense, Energy and Interior) for failing to curb carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

It’s been 23 years since James Hansen, the eminent NASA climatologist, first raised alarms about global warming in testimony to Congress.  Since then, the U.S. government and international bodies have done precious little to take action even as the evidence of an impending planetary disaster continues to mount.  Bottom line:  the government has been grossly negligent in protecting our atmospheric commons, and must be held to account. 

One way to do so has been a series of marches in cities around the country, including Russia, Brazil, New Zealand, Great Britain and more than a dozen other countries. The iMatter campaign was launched on Mother’s Day (May 10) and will continue throughout the summer.  But a key tie-in to the protests is a litigation strategy based on the often-overlooked “public trust doctrine.”  The public trust doctrine is an ancient legal principle that declares that government must exercise the highest duty of care in managing property that is necessarily held in common by all – such as the atmosphere.