A future of abundant, affordable, sustainable energy is achievable—if politics doesn’t stand in the way.
Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and star American climatologist Michael E. Mann are united in their conviction that existing technologies are robust enough to create an energy future that avoids the worst consequences of global warming—and in their distaste for Rupert Murdoch and his media empire for promoting climate change denial in both the US and Australia.
Those were among the takeaways at Rising to the Global Climate Challenge: Australia’s Leadership, the keynote session to the 2022 Global Order Colloquium at Perry World House in September. The event doubled as the launch of Penn’s new Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media, headed by Mann, who joined Penn’s faculty this year as the Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth and Environmental Science, with a secondary appointment at the Annenberg School for Communication, after many years at Penn State University.
In his opening remarks, Turnbull—who had mixed success advancing sustainable energy production and climate policies against stiff partisan opposition as Australia’s 29th prime minster from 2015 to 2018—was emphatic about the need for action now.
“The bad news is, if we don’t cut out burning fossil fuels, we’re going to wreck this planet and make it uninhabitable. The good news is we have the means to do it,” he said. “Technology will improve, efficiencies will improve, but we have the means to have abundant energy at affordable prices delivered in a reliable manner with zero emissions.”
Wind and solar energy are already the cheapest forms of generating electricity “pretty much anywhere in the world,” and storage methods, from batteries to pumped hydro projects, are available. “We have the tools to do the job, but what we need to do is get cracking with it,” Turnbull insisted. “We have been bedeviled by crazy politics and crazy media—none crazier than Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News here in the United States, which regrettably is even more influential in Australia.
“Fundamentally, science denial, climate change denial is the biggest problem that we have—and of course the vested interests, the fossil fuel lobby,” he continued. “So, if we can replace ideology and idiocy with engineering and economics, we can get the job done—and that’s what we should all be seeking to do.”
Mann recalled traveling to Sydney, Australia, while on sabbatical in 2019 to work with scientists at the University of New South Wales only to “come face to face with the impacts of climate change” as the country experienced its “Black Summer,” in which “Australia witnessed unprecedented heat and drought and these bushfires, these wildfires, that literally blanketed the continent,” he said.
This was also when he got to know Turnbull, which he called “one of the more delightful opportunities that came my way,” and the two bonded over their “mutual dislike” of Murdoch “and our willingness to call out bad actors in the media.”
Expressing his pleasure that the first event of his new center would also feature Turnbull, Mann said, “I think we are both here at a very important time in history where we are seeing the devastating consequences of climate change play out in real time. There’s no question about that, but we’ve also seen progress that we didn’t expect to see at this point.”
Australia and the US are back in leadership positions on climate change, he added. “That doesn’t mean we’re doing everything we need to do, but we are getting onto that path now. We can see a path forward to where we keep warming below a truly catastrophic three degrees Fahrenheit—where we do commit to the worst consequences of climate change.”
Reaching net zero carbon emissions by 2050 is essential, but “that’s kicking the can very far down the road,” Mann noted. “Governments love to make commitments to targets in 2050 because they’re not going to be held accountable for whether or not those targets are met. That’s why it’s so important to talk about the near-term target, 2030. We’ve got to bring carbon emissions down by 50 percent by 2030.”
One lesson from Australia, he said, was that despite the dominance of Fox, Australians “have been somewhat resistant and indeed they elected a government that defied Murdoch’s climate denialism and delay.” Currently, according to Turnbull, the country is “installing more renewables—by which I mean solar and solar PV [photovoltaics] and wind—per capita than just about anywhere else in the world.”
In the US, climate provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, passed over the summer, “probably gets us to about 40 percent” reduction in emissions, Mann said. That constitutes important progress, but “it doesn’t go far enough.” Further progress, he added, hinges on a larger US Senate majority that has the will to pursue more aggressive legislation.
A hotter planet is one of greater extremes in weather, as can be seen in Australia, where years of devastating droughts and wildfires are “now being followed by years that have been the wettest on record,” Turnbull noted. “We’re seeing the consequences of global warming in all of their extremes, but so are many other parts of the world. The bottom line is when people say they believe or disbelieve in global warming, it’s about as intelligent as saying you believe or disbelieve in gravity.”
Modeling the future of the climate is dauntingly complicated and involves a type of uncertainty that should motivate us to act fast, Mann said. Contemporary computer models do a good job projecting linear changes—things like how warm or dry it might get under certain scenarios. “What we don’t do so well is thinking about how these different changes may interact with each other in a nonlinear way to produce things that we might not have thought about,” he added. “In some respects these impacts are actually playing out sooner and with greater magnitude than we expected. That’s true with these very persistent extreme weather events, it’s true with the collapse of the ice sheets and their contribution to sea level rise. When somebody tells you that uncertainty is somehow cause for inaction, it’s just the opposite—uncertainty is a reason for even greater action.” —JP
Michael E. Mann is a presidential distinguished professor of earth and environmental science and director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania. He is author of the recently released book, The New Climate War: The Fight to Take Back our Planet
In mid-October, a pair of climate activists from the group “Just Stop Oil” garnered substantial international media attention when they threw tomato soup across Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in London’s National Gallery. “Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?” they asked the shocked and visibly distraught crowd of onlookers.
Now I have devoted much of my time and effort over the past several decades to the cause of meaningful climate action. And as someone who also studies what makes for effective climate communication, I worried that events like this could harm the cause to which I (and so many) have devoted my life. I thought about the way the event would be framed by the media—the viral spread of a terrible photo of what certainly appears to be the defacement of an iconic and priceless piece of art, accompanied by damning headlines of wonton destruction.
My fears were realized. Characteristic of much of the media coverage, the New York Timesran an article headlined “Climate Protesters Throw Soup Over van Gogh’s ‘Sunflowers’” featuring the offending photo of the soup-splattered painting. Only if you made it to the end of the sixth paragraph did you learn that the painting was protected by a glass pane and not damaged.
The public outrage was palpable. The reliably progressive Dan Rather, a consistent advocate for urgent climate action, opined: “It’s destructive to protest the destruction of our planet by trying to destroy beautiful art.” Activists complained that Rather got it wrong—that the painting wasn’t actually destroyed. But the vast majority of the public, who like Rather were subject only to a photo and a headline, wouldn’t know that. They would only see a damning headline and photo. That could and should have been predicted by the architects of the protest. I weighed in on twitter: “If you’ve lost Dan, maybe rethink your strategy folks.”
Yet advocates of disruptive non-violent direct actions have argued that I and other critics were all wrong. We just didn’t get it! Our criticism was tantamount to attacking the youths themselves! Some compared the intervention to celebrated acts of civil protest by Gandhi and Martin Luther King (though conceding that a favorable view of the protest was contingent upon knowing that the painting wasn’t actually damaged).
But those actions at least made sense. Anti-war protests took place on college campuses among young people who were being drafted. Lunch counter sit-ins were protesting white-only policies. The painting protest, by contrast, seemed bizarre and pointless, with no obvious message about the climate crisis. Who was the target? Van Gogh? Oil paintings (get it)? From a communications standpoint, the protest seemed like an even bigger mess than the soup-splattered painting.
So was it? That’s what we attempted to assess using a recent survey of public opinion about this and other similar protests. We asked respondents three questions. First, does the public approve of using tactics like shutting down traffic or seemingly defacing rare art to raise attention to climate change? Second, do these tactics affect public beliefs surrounding human-driven climate change? And third, does the framing of these tactics (e.g. whether or not the art was actually damaged) influence that support?
The survey confirmed what many had suspected. The public, overall, just doesn’t like this sort of stuff. A plurality of respondents (46%) reported that these tactics decrease their support for efforts to address climate change. A whopping 27%, in fact, said they greatly decrease their support. Only 13% reported increased support.
Some might suspect that the negative response is driven by older, out-of-touch folks reacting negative to the actions of the “young whipper-snappers.” It is true that younger respondents (18-29) were less likely to decrease support (39%) than the oldest (65+) respondents (53%). But all age groups showed decreased support.
Some observers have expressed incredulity over the notion that a non-violent protest could lead someone who cared about the future of the planet to no longer do so. It’s just not rational, they point out. And they’re right, it’s not rational. Because people aren’t always rational. Presumably these actions, at least for some individuals, create an affective rather than cerebral response, generating negative associations with climate activists. And that negative association translates to decreased support for their cause.
Given the political polarization that exists today on climate, we might not be surprised that Republicans reported the largest (69%) decrease in support. It is noteworthy however that even Democrats were more likely to report a decrease (27%) than an increase (21%). And independents, who might be critical in establishing majority support for aggressive climate policies expressed strong disapproval, with 43% reporting a decrease in support and only 11% reporting an increase.
The vitriol we experienced when we posted our findings on social media was perhaps not surprising given the anger toward critics at the time of the protests. But even academic proponents of these protests criticized and dismissed our findings, insisting the poll questioning was somehow loaded or misleading. My colleague Kathleen Hall Jamieson who helped design the survey has commented on the poll design: “The question is a neutral description of actions that occurred and were reported in news. A rationale for the actions is included in the question.”
The reader can judge for themselves. We first used a baseline question to assess respondents’ views of the climate crisis, asking whether or not they agreed with the statement: “Human use of fossil fuels creates effects that endanger public health.” More than 62% of the respondents answered in the affirmative, indicating that the group was predisposed, overall, to be concerned about fossil fuel burning and climate change.
They were then asked: “To raise awareness of the need to address climate change, some advocates have engaged in disruptive non-violent actions including shutting down morning commuter traffic and pretending to damage pieces of art. Do such actions decrease your support for efforts to address climate change, increase your support for efforts to address climate change or not affect your support one way or another?”
By describing protesters as “pretending” to damage art, we granted them the benefit of the doubt; we informed respondents, a priori, that the art wasn’t actually damaged. If anything, that should have primed an overly favorable response.
Critics of our study quickly brandished another recent (online) poll in the UK that purports a 66% level of support for nonviolent protests. They insisted it contradicts our findings. But that poll asked “Would you support taking non-violent direct action to protect the UK’s nature?” It didn’t even describe the disruptive acts in question, which means respondents weren’t confronted with the negative imagery of those acts. Furthermore, respondents were primed to give a positive response by being somehow promised that these protests would “protect the UK’s nature.” Were that environmental protection was that simple!
It takes substantial motivated reasoning to accept the findings of the UK survey and reject the findings of ours. And unfortunately, just as with climate change denial, there seems to be way too much motivated reasoning on the part of proponents when it comes to the topic of disruptive non-violent climate protests.
And what about the issue of whether or not the art was damaged. Did it matter to people? To investigate if that mattered to respondents, we split our poll sample. Half the sample was instead asked a slightly different version of the question, where “pretending to damage pieces of art” was changed to “damaging pieces of art.” The results were virtually identical, suggesting—somewhat surprisingly—that knowing that the art wasn’t actually damaged was not actually a mitigating factor with respect to public opinion. It didn’t matter. Presumably, it was the “thought” rather than the “act” that truly counted.
So, do our results suggest that there is no role for non-violent protest by climate advocates and activists? No. There are bad actors and villains in the climate space: Fossil fuel companies engaged in greenwashing campaigns, plutocrats who fund dark-money climate denial and delay campaigns, makers of gas-guzzling vehicles, the list goes on. A public opinion survey earlier this year by researchers at Yale and George Mason University finds that direct actions that target the bad actors (e.g. billionaires who fly fossil fuel-guzzling private jets) garner substantial support.
But actions that subject ordinary commuters to delays when they’re just trying to get to work in the morning, or subject art gallery visitors to the unpleasant, wanton apparent destruction of iconic artwork, are simply choosing the wrong targets. They are alienating potential allies in the climate battle. And protests that simply make no sense at all when reduced to a photo and a headline—which is what the vast majority of the public will see—are potential public relations disasters.
The youth protesters have their heart in the right place. But the organizations behind these protests need to do right by them by being smart about the design of any public interventions. That means, among other things, choosing sensible actions and appropriate targets. If we are to win the battle against polluters and their enablers, we will need public opinion on our side not theirs.
Note: The survey was designed in consultation with Kathleen Hall Jamieson, the founding director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) and founder of factcheck.org. It was as part of a larger project examining public opinion on climate change and human health. The polling was conducted by SSRS, the same firm that conducted the late-breaking CNN polls that contradicted the “red wave” wrongly predicted by many other pollsters in the recent midterms. Analysis of the results was conducted by Ken Winneg, APPC’s Managing Director of Survey Research and APPC Research Analyst, Shawn Patterson Jr. (details can be found online).
Stroud Water Research Center has bestowed the 2022 Stroud Award for Freshwater Excellence upon Michael E. Mann, one of the world’s leading voices on climate change. The award was presented at the 20th annual The Water’s Edge gala at the Delaware Museum of Nature & Science.
Mann, Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth and Environmental Science and Director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, also holds a secondary appointment in the Annenberg School for Communication. His research interests include the study of Earth’s climate system and the science, impacts, and policy implications of human-caused climate change. Mann was lead author on the Observed Climate Variability and Change chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Third Scientific Assessment Report in 2001, and was organizing committee chair for the National Academy of Sciences Frontiers of Science in 2003. He has received numerous honors and awards including the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s outstanding publication award in 2002 and selection by Scientific American as one of the 50 leading visionaries in science and technology in 2002. In all, Mann has authored more than 200 peer-reviewed and edited publications, numerous op-eds and commentaries, and five books.
“Water is the primary medium through which we feel the impacts of climate change, and Michael Mann is a leading voice on climate change. His groundbreaking research and masterful science communication have given weight and shape to the conversations needed to initiate climate action,” says David Arscott, Executive Director of Stroud. “We look forward to working with him to increase awareness of how climate action can support healthy streams and rivers and the clean fresh water they provide.”
Approximately 200 guests attended the gala, where Mann presented on his research on climate variability and extremes, including 1,000 years of temperature data that produced the hockey stick graph, so named because of its pronounced upward curve. The data, which combined decades of work by paleoclimate scientists, served as a smoking gun in the case proving human-induced climate change.
“It means a lot to me to receive this award from Stroud, not just because they’ve been such an important voice in the water and sustainability space, but because they are a key partner in the environmental education community here in eastern Pennsylvania,” says Mann. “I look forward to working closely with Stroud in the years ahead as we collectively seek to inform the sustainability conversation in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
Stroud Water Research Center advances knowledge and stewardship of freshwater systems through global research, education, and restoration. It helps businesses, landowners, policymakers, and individuals make informed decisions that affect water quality and availability around the world.
Since its inception in 2003, The Water’s Edge has featured noteworthy contributors to the world of science, fresh water, and conservation. Previous speakers and Stroud Award for Freshwater Excellence recipients have included luminaries such as Jane Goodall; Olivia Newton-John and John Easterling; American Rivers and its president, Bob Irvin; His Serene Highness Prince Albert II of Monaco; The Redford Center; Alexandra Cousteau; Melissa D. Ho of World Wildlife Fund; and others.
Climatologist Michael Mann speaks with with Newsy and The Washington Post about the politics, nuance and trends of climate messaging.
This week, Election ’22: What Matters examines how climate change is impacting the midterm vote.
A new Washington Post – ABC News poll finds 51% of voters now say climate change is one of the most important issues driving their vote. And though the environment is not getting as much attention as things like the economy, crime and abortion rights, it will need to be a top priority for elected leaders around the country.
We speak with Michael Mann, a climatologist at the University of Pennsylvania, about the political nuance of climate messaging and how people can move the political needle on climate issues.
With nearly 30 events planned for Oct. 10-14, Penn’s Climate Week invites the Penn community to ‘find your place in the climate movement.’
Hands-on events for Climate Week include a tour of Penn Park Farm, a bioblitz at the Biopond, and planting sessions at Penn Park and the Andrew Hamilton School.
In its third iteration this year, Climate Week at Penn will kick off on Oct. 10, also Indigenous People’s Day. That timing inspired the organizers to collaborate with alumni and students to frame a key event that highlights Indigenous knowledge and its role in addressing the emergency that climate change presents.
Talon Bazille, a Penn alum and a member of the Crow Creek Dakota and Cheyenne River Lakota tribes, is a rap artist and poet. His performance the afternoon of Oct. 10 under a tent on College Green, part of the “Native Lands, Native Knowledge” event, will be “a little different from a traditional hip hop performance,” he says. He hopes to hammer home the ways in which Indigenous people’s voices have been overlooked, dismissed, and devalued while pointing to the sacrifices and shifts in values that must occur to protect future generations from environmental harm.
“Often in my undergraduate days at Penn people were asking me what it’s like growing up on a reservation, what it’s like to be Native, all of these questions,” says Bazille. “This is my opportunity to show them through a performance: This is what it really is, no sugarcoating.”
Penn alum Talon Bazille, a member of the Crow Creek Dakota and Cheyenne River Lakota tribes and a rap artist and poet, will perform in Climate Week’s “Native Lands, Native Knowledge” event on Oct. 10. (Image: Michael Ramey)
Bazille’s offering will complement a keynote speech by another Penn alum, Megan Red Shirt-Shaw, a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, director of Native student services at the University of South Dakota, and a noted educator, writer, and researcher. A panel discussion will follow, moderated by Toyce Holmes, the staff advisor for campus group Natives at Penn.
Launching the event-filled week by lifting up voices that are frequently not given platforms to be heard is appropriate, says Melissa Brown Goodall, senior director of the Environmental Innovations Initiative, which serves as the administrative lead for Climate Week.
“We want to highlight the opportunity for each discipline, for every member of the community, to connect to the climate challenge,” Brown Goodall says. “Climate Week is an amazing chance for people to explore how they can get involved and find their voice in ways that resonate authentically with who they are.”
While the first two Climate Weeks at Penn, in 2020 and 2021, took place in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, this year, lifted restrictions and falling case counts are allowing most events to convene in person, some with Zoom options.
Groups across campus contributed programming with little prompting, says Simon Richter, the Class of 1942 Endowed Term Professor of German in the School of Arts & Sciences, who has helped organize each Climate Week and will be presenting this year on his work related to “floating cities” in the Netherlands.
“I continue to notice that people just spring into action when they hear about the opportunity to participate,” he says. “There’s a pretty high level of awareness on campus of both the importance of understanding climate change and of the need for climate action.”
A marquee event will be the 1.5 Minute Climate Lectures on College Green, a spin on the School of Arts & Sciences’ 60 Second Lectures that draws attention to the important target of keeping climate warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius on average to avoid the worst harm from heat, storms, fires, droughts, and floods.
In a slightly new format this year, the 1.5 Minute Lectures will include not only intentionally brief remarks from each speaker but also a panel discussion that will allow presenters to dive more fully into the issues they raise on how climate change dovetails with their academic fields. Faculty will offer talks on Wednesday, Oct. 12, with students giving their own talks on Friday, Oct. 14.
The planned events offer immersive activities, including a bioblitz in the BioPond and work days at Penn Park and Andrew Hamilton School in West Philadelphia, providing opportunities for hands-on action. Meanwhile scientific and academic-oriented talks, such as a lecture by climate scientist Michael Mann and a panel on electric vehicles hosted by the Penn Program on Regulation, will dive deep into timely environmental issues.
The 1.5 Minute Climate Lectures return this year to College Green. Last year, Susanna Berkouwer of Wharton spoke to a gathered crowd about how climate policy is anti-poverty policy.
The week offers numerous other ways to get involved, such as:
On Tuesday, Oct. 11: Penn alums whose work intersects with climate change in the corporate world will participate in a panel, organized by the Wharton Undergraduate Energy Group;
On Thursday, Oct. 13: Philadelphia public school students and teachers will convene and share personal climate stories in an event organized by the Penn Program in Environmental Humanities;
And on Friday, Oct. 14: a tour of Penn Park Farm sponsored by Penn Food and Wellness Collaborative, Natives at Penn, and the Greenfield Intercultural Center will engage participants in a conversation about the future of food and farming in the wake of climate crises.
The climate emergency is everyone’s business. Join us during Climate Week at Penn to find your place in the climate movement.
From October 10 through October 14, you can find a plethora of climate-related lectures and activities throughout Penn’s campus. PCSSM and the Earth & Environmental Science Dept. will be participating through Dr. Mann’s lectures and Earth & Environmental Science Dept. activities. Please see below for a list of activities and links to more information.
Perry World House’s 2022 Global Order Colloquium hosted experts from government, the media, and across the University to tackle the topic of the state of globalization
(Left to right) Former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Michael E. Mann discussed Australia’s leadership in fighting climate change at Perry World House’s 2022 Global Order Colloquium.
What does the future of globalization look like in a world that is increasingly fractured? Perry World House’s 2022 Global Order Colloquium explored that question in a series of panels featuring experts from government, media, and across the University.Starting the two-day colloquium was a conversation between Penn climate scientist Michael E. Mann and former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull—moderated by Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center—looking at how Australia has become a leader in fighting climate change.
Penn President Liz Magill, in introducing the panel, noted that “the topics they will tackle could not be more urgent or more global in scope.” Recent headlines, from devastating droughts in Europe and sub-Saharan Africa, to record-breaking heat, storms and wildfires in the United States, highlight the increasing threats of climate change.
President Liz Magill introduced the first panelists at the 2022 Global Order Colloquium.
“These grave challenges are increasingly the norm,” Magill said. “Much like a pandemic, climate change does not respect international borders, does not distinguish among cultures or languages, and is a global fact. If we want to weather what is coming, then we need a global response. We also need the very best and brightest that great universities like Penn can provide.”
Turnbull told the audience that nations around the globe already have the means and tools “to have abundant energy at affordable prices delivered in a reliable manner with zero emissions,” pointing to wind and solar energy and batteries that can store it all. However, he said, climate change denial is standing in the way.
“We have been bedeviled by crazy politics and crazy media,” he said, citing Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News as the main contributor to the problem. “If we can replace ideology and idiocy with engineering and economics, we can get the job done. And that’s what we should be seeking to do.”
Mann recounted his sabbatical in Australia a few years ago, which coincided with one of the most profound climate-driven extreme weather events in Australian history.
Kathleen Hall Jamieson (left) and climate scientist Michael E. Mann.
“I first came face to face with the impacts of climate change in Sydney during what is now known as the Black Summer, the summer where Australia witnessed unprecedented heat and drought and wildfires that literally blanketed the continent,” he said.
He said he didn’t do as much research as he’d planned during his stay, but rather spent much of his time talking about the context for the extreme weather events, explaining how climate change was behind the real-time disasters that were playing out. That’s also when he first met Turnbull.
“I think what bonded us was our mutual dislike of Rupert Murdoch and News Corp. and our willingness to call out bad actors in the media,” he said. “As Malcolm explained, we have the technology to address the climate crisis. We can do it now with the energy technologies we have. The obstacles aren’t technological; they are political.”
Australia offers a lot of lessons that the U.S. could heed, especially just two months out from the midterms, Mann said. Of particular note is Australia’s resistance to Murdoch’s dominant media narrative and the country’s ability to elect a government that defied that narrative of climate denialism and delay.
He said it’s not overstating things to say that the upcoming midterm elections will determine the course of future action on climate in the United States and therefore globally.
“If we don’t lead on this issue, it is unlikely that we can bring other nations, especially developing nations, to the table to join in this effort,” he said. “This is a really critical moment. If we don’t have a functioning democracy, we’re not going to be able to address any of the major challenges we face, including the climate crisis. This is a moment of great opportunity but also of great peril.”
Mann and Turnbull went on to discuss how Australia appeared designed to be maximally impacted by climate change and how the U.S., the largest cumulative carbon emitter, needs to own up to its legacy. They also pointed to how the current gatekeeper of American climate policy is one lone coal-state Democrat, Joe Manchin of West Virginia. They also highlighted voting rules in Australia that helped enable the nation’s climate change agenda: compulsory voting, no gerrymandering, and ranked-choice voting.
Wrapping up the event, Jamieson asked them what they hoped attendees would take away from the discussion.
For Turnbull, it was simple: “Vote.”
“Urgency and agency,” said Mann. “We need dramatic action. It’s not too late.”
Day 2 started off with an ambassadors’ roundtable featuring Ashok Kumar Mirpuri, Singapore’s ambassador to the U.S.; Hilda Suka-Mafudze, permanent representative of the African Union to the U.S.; and Uruguay’s ambassador to the U.S., Andrés Augusto Durán Hareau. The conversation was moderated by Edward Wong, diplomatic correspondent at The New York Times who reports on foreign policy from Washington, D.C.
A roundtable discussion featuring (left to right) Ashok Kumar Mirpuri, Singapore’s ambassador to the U.S.; Hilda Suka-Mafudze, permanent representative of the African Union to the U.S.; and Uruguay’s ambassador to the U.S., Andrés Augusto Durán Hareau; and Edward Wong, diplomatic correspondent at The New York Times.
The group explored how deglobalization is affecting their individual nations and the wider global economy and how the international community can still work together on economic issues.
Lessons from the pandemic, the U.S. and China’s involvement in their nations, and the ongoing war in Ukraine and its effect on the movement of grain around the globe were among the topics discussed.
“The pandemic has taught us in Africa that we have to manufacture our own vaccines,” Suka-Mafudze said, noting Africa-based companies are now making vaccines themselves in various regions across the continent. She also noted that Africa responded well to the pandemic because of its experience battling Ebola.
Wong asked the group if the idea of moving supply chains nearer to home is a good thing for free trade.
“For our country, it is good in the sense that we see more opportunities that we didn’t have before, and we are positioning ourselves as an innovation hub, as a technology hub, and as a health care hub in in South America and working on how can we leverage our partnerships so that the U.S. and U.S. companies can be more engaged,” said Durán Hareau. “In that sense, it’s positive. Obviously, this pandemic has shifted many things, and it’s inevitable. We are making the most of the opportunities that this brings.”
They discussed how, for many countries, the future of globalization may be more globalization, as some nations do not have an alternative.
“Singapore is a country without any resources. We have to import our energy, we import our water, we import our food,” Mirpuri said. “When you tell us that we’re looking at a fractured world, a bifurcated world, that is not a happy outcome for us because every one of us, in all of Asia, want the people to be successful. And that really comes, we think, through economic interdependence, through economic links, through following the rules.”
The final session featured Wharton School Dean Erika James in discussion with Rana Foroohar, global business columnist and an associate editor at the Financial Times.
Wharton School Dean Erika James (right) in discussion with Rana Foroohar.
They looked at how the COVID-19 pandemic has transformed the global economy, the shift of some nations toward deglobalization, and who the winners of deglobalization might be.
“The last few years, from the financial crisis to the pandemic to war in Ukraine, have been a bit like a scrim that has been pulled up on the vulnerabilities of our existing system, in particular the kind of globalization that we’ve seen,” Foroohar said. “I define that neoliberal globalization as the IMF does, which is the assumption that there will be a globally free movement of capital, goods ,and people to wherever it is most productive. The assumption is that those things can move across borders and that movement will always end up in a kind of a win-win.”
But throughout the globalization process, there were big areas of hollowing out in countries around the globe, even though the global economy was growing faster than ever before, Foroohar said. There was a huge growth in inequality, which she sees as having led to greater political polarization.
Foroohar said there is a deep social question for global citizens: Are we consumers or citizens?
“We’ve had 40 years of being consumers, and our entire economic policy has been run around that, everything from labor rights to corporate monopolies and antitrust policy to the way the SEC thinks about issues,” she said. “We’re now seeing a Biden administration that is pushing back against all of that and really making quite a pivot in a way that I think has been dramatically underreported. If you look back to the executive order that the president signed in July of 2021, saying, ‘Guess what, it’s not all about consumers anymore. It’s about citizens, and it’s about stakeholders. It’s about communities. It’s about a better balance between public and private.’ That’s a big deal.”
But whether this regionalization or localization will in the end be a good or bad thing is up for debate, she said. An example she gave was working from home. If American workers can do their jobs from home, why couldn’t that job be outsourced to people working from home in places like India?
Before turning to audience questions, James asked Foroohar what she hoped the audience took away from the discussion.
“Even though our system of neoliberal globalization has created a lot of wealth in the last 40 or 50 years, we also have a global economy that has run so far ahead of national politics that there are fractures in the system,” she said. “We have to think a little bit more, no matter where we are—at a community level, at a state level, at a country level—about localism in order to save what’s best about globalism.”
Australia has become a leading actor in the global fight against climate change. As increasingly extreme weather events swept the country – such as the devastating wildfires of early 2020 – local advocates and activists contested widespread climate disinformation and mobilized people power to achieve meaningful governmental action. These efforts helped to bring about the groundbreaking Climate Change Bill, which pledges to cut the country’s emissions 43% by 2030.
Climate change remains a highly divisive issue across the globe, but Australia’s gradual move toward this progressive new law is an example of cohesion in a fracturing world. It demonstrates that national governments are acknowledging the extent of this shared global problem and are enacting policies that make a difference.
Join Perry World House, the School of Arts and Sciences, the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC), the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media, and the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy for a conversation on these developments with former Prime Minister of Australia Malcolm Turnbull and Penn’s Michael E. Mann, moderated by Annenberg’s Kathleen Hall Jamieson.
This keynote conversation, part of Perry World House’s 2022 Global Order Colloquium, “A Fracturing World: The Future of Globalization,” also serves as the launch event for the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media (PCSSM), which will be led by Professor Mann. This new School of Arts and Sciences-based center is a partner organization of APPC, with its postdoctoral fellows program housed at APPC. University of Pennsylvania President M. Elizabeth Magill provided introductory remarks for the program.
It should be enough to know climatologist Michael E. Mann for his groundbreaking research on global warming. In 1998, he co-authored a study that tracked temperatures in the northern hemisphere from 1400 AD that showed the Earth started to sharply heat up in the early 20th Century. The study, published in Nature, was illustrated by perhaps the most famous graph in science, what became known as the “hockey stick” for how it portrayed the sudden temperature rise of the planet.
The red curve shows the global mean temperature, from 1850 onwards using the most recent data. In blue is the original hockey stick of Mann, Bradley and Hughes (1999 ) with its uncertainty range (light blue). Graph by Klaus Bitterman.
That study — and that graph — did not go down easy. Even as the United Nations used the research a few years later in their 2001 report on climate change, Mann and his colleagues were pilloried by global warming deniers. He spent much of the next two decades defending his work in the face of death threats to him and his family; calls for a Congressional investigation; attacks on his character and research known as “Climategate”; and doubts about his motives.
Mann was proven right, over and over. But in the process, he became known for something more than his science. He is now one of the most famous science communicators, explaining to all of us on TV and in popular books what the research says; what it means about how we should live and what we should demand of our leaders; and what the extreme weather we all experience foretells about the future of the earth.
The fight has shifted — it’s no longer possible for any rational person to deny climate change — but it is not over. Today Mann directs his considerable media attention towards convincing climate doomsayers that all is not lost. “Polluters,” he says, “want you to just give up.” Mann will not stand for that.
In September, Mann — for years the director of Penn State’s Earth Systems Science Center — will become director of the University of Pennsylvania’s new Science, Sustainability and the Media program, leading Penn’s push to become a leader in climate change communications.
Earlier this year, you co-published an article called the Best Climate Science You’ve Never Heard Of, in which you said “the best climate science you’ve probably never heard of suggests that humanity can still limit the damage to a fraction of the worst projections if — and, we admit, this is a big if — governments, businesses, and all of us take strong action starting now.” Why did you feel that was important to say?
This has been an emerging theme. I’ve been in the climate wars for a couple decades now. When we published the hockey stick curve, I became the target of attacks. That threw me into the center of the ring and ultimately I embraced that as an opportunity to communicate the science. So I’ve watched that playing field move over two decades.
The reason I wrote my most recent book, The New Climate War, was because I saw this shift in the tactics away from outright denialism. At this point, there has to be some pathology behind somebody who still denies it — they are so dug in their heels when it comes to ultra-right political ideology, Trumpism, Maga-tism — and those folks are largely unreachable.
“There are some bad actors who would happily fan the flames of doomism, because it takes those who would be the most engaged, those who would be on the front lines, and it puts them on the sidelines,” says Mann.
But there’s still a fair number of people in the “confused middle”, I call them. They’re not ideologically opposed to climate action; they’re just not yet convinced that it’s so bad that we need to do something about it, or think it’s too late and that we can’t do anything about it.
And so, what I call the inactivists, the forces of inaction — polluters, and those who promote their agenda— they’ve turned to these other tactics, and one of them, ironically, is doomism. There are some bad actors who would happily fan the flames of doomism, because it takes those who would be the most engaged, those who would be on the front lines, and it puts them on the sidelines. That is something I’ve really been fighting against.
Look, the reality is, if the science told me that we are f’ed, and there’s nothing we can do about it, I would have to be truthful about that. But the fact is, we can very much do something about it. You’ve got on the one hand, all these people saying it’s too late, we can’t stop the meltdown, we have to plan for the end of human civilization.
Yet, on the policy front, we’re on the verge of truly meaningful climate action here.
I was going to ask you about that. You have said that you feel optimistic about the climate bill [just passed] by the Senate, even though it’s not everything you would have wanted. Why is that?
Well, people that I really trust, who are experts at crunching the numbers — including some folks at Penn in the Wharton School who did some of the research that was drawn upon in that bill — they’ve vetted the numbers and said, it’s real. This would lead to a 40 percent reduction [in carbon emissions], roughly.
That’s great; that’s huge progress, if we can do that. A, it’s not enough; we’ve got to do more than that. So that’s an important caveat. And B, words are easy, right? What we have to see is the actual action behind that. But there’s some real reason for optimism. This is, by far, the boldest climate legislation ever proposed in the U.S. Congress.
Michael Mann speaking at the climate change science panel held by Sydney Environmental Institute. (Mar 2, 2020)
I’m intrigued by the name of the program that you are going to be heading up at Penn: “Science, Sustainability and the Media.” That last bit is curious to me.
So that’s where my interests lie these days. I mean, I still do fundamental science; I still enjoy doing that. And part of what I will continue to do is basic climate science. But, in part because of my experiences over the decades, I’ve become very engaged on the communication and outreach front. And to me, one of the really exciting things about Penn, what lured me away from the Happy Valley, is the Annenberg School and Annenberg Public Policy Center, all of that infrastructure for science communication. Annenberg in particular has played such an important role in pushing back against disinformation. I love the fact that factcheck.org originated there. I’ve had quite a few experiences with people there on the issue of climate change.
I really think that the critical piece now is our communication of climate risk to the public and the collaboration that involves, between scientists, science communicators, journalists, etc. Our focus really will be on the nexus of those. There won’t be a lot of science seminars in our series.
Do you find that other scientists are open to your efforts to improve science communication?
You know, I grew up watching Cosmos. Carl Sagan was a trailblazer, frankly, and he was sort of pilloried by many of his colleagues for stooping to dumb it down. He was a popularizer, and he was blackballed, actually, by the National Academy of Sciences. There were others along the way, but just like one or two individuals. Now there’s this ecosystem of science communicators — Jane Goodall, Bill Nye, who’s a good friend of mine — and there’s a lot more encouragement of that, a lot more funding for that, and less of a stigma within the scientific community.
I think that’s in part because of the attacks on the science, which have opened the eyes of scientists to be, like, You know what? We can’t just stay in the laboratory; we’ve got to be out there defending the science and promoting it. And that’s not everybody, right? I have colleagues who are best left alone in the laboratory, trust me; not everybody can be the communicator. We need to provide the opportunities for those who have the inclination. That’s one of the things that I’m really excited about with the younger generation of scientists who really grew up in the social media world. Communication is more natural to them.
Related from The Citizen
Philly’s Climate Change Progress Report Card. How Far Have We Come?
By Courtney DuChene
Why Penn, and why now?
When I was visiting Penn last October for my official interview, it was Climate Week. And there were just, there was so much energy and passion among the students, and all of these events. And I’m checking the news back at Penn State. And, in comparison, there was almost nothing going on. The demand for moving in this direction is really coming from the bottom up at Penn — it’s the students telling the faculty, telling the administration, we want to prioritize climate, justice, climate action.
It just seemed perfect to be part of that environment. Penn is really working to step up their game on climate, like her sister institutions, which have really led on this issue, Harvard and Yale and Columbia.
I also have a lot of native Philadelphia heritage. My grandparents lived in South Philly, on Ritner Street, when I was growing up. We spent a lot of time visiting them. It was like a second home. And my dad actually went to Penn, my grandfather and my uncle went to Penn. And so there’s some real family history there. So in a sense, it’s a logical place for me to end up. My dad was very excited, you know, I took the position there.
You mentioned your basic climate science research. What is that research now?
The research that I’m doing in a lot of ways informs my outreach and communication. You know, one of the areas that I’ve been working in recently is the impact of climate change on extreme weather events. And, in particular, how climate change is altering the behavior of the jet stream in the summer, so that we get these very persistent extreme weather events.
One of the interesting things about that is, it sort of gets to where critics love to talk about the climate models being imperfect, and we can’t trust them, as if that’s a reason for inaction. But it turns out where the models seem to be wrong is often in the direction of underestimating some of the impacts. This is definitely true with ice sheet collapse, for example.
One of the things we’ve shown is that the climate models are not capturing some of the subtle behavior that is behind these weather extremes. And so I’m looking in more detail at that understanding, and finding if the models aren’t quite up to speed, how we can project the impact on these extreme weather events.
This is important because it’s important for us to be able to say, we would not be seeing this event in the absence of climate change. But also, where are we headed? What do we need? How bad will it get? What do we need to adapt to all of these questions?
The better we can convey the risk we’re facing now, the more likely we will make enlightened choices and render invalid our worst predictions. We are among the few fields of science where we would love to be proven wrong.
“Remember that 70 percent of carbon emissions worldwide come from 100 companies worldwide. We can’t forget that,” says Mann.
I have to ask: Are you a climate change hero in your personal life? How do live your values?
Fair enough. It’s always a delicate issue, in part because the fossil fuel industry wants to frame this as one of individual responsibility. I get into this a lot in my latest book. I talk about the “Crying Indian” commercial [whose tagline is “People start pollution; people can stop it.”]. The Coca-Cola company is trying to convince us we don’t need bottle bills, we just need to pick up those cans.
This type of deflection campaign has been done over and over; the NRA has done that really well — “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” And the fossil fuel industry runs with that playbook. BP energy did the very first, widely-publicized, individual carbon footprint calculator. They want us so focused on our individual emissions that we don’t focus on theirs.
Yeah, that includes some state-owned businesses, like Russia’s Rosneft OAO.
The delicate balance is, we should all be the best stewards we can. There are always things we can do to minimize our environmental impact. Many things save us money, make us feel better, are healthier, set a good example…they are all good things to do.
We should do all those things but we shouldn’t allow polluters to convince us that somehow that’s where responsibility stops. They would love to frame this entirely in terms of individual responsibility and continue to work to prevent any policy interventions.
That’s a nice framing, rather than the scolding I feel like we sometimes get from climate change activists.
Yes. You can continue to operate within the system and be working to change that system for the better. I don’t see any inconsistency there. We’d all love to see the decarbonization of the aviation sector, for example; aviation is responsible for only 3 percent of global carbon emissions — it’s a small amount that gets a lot of attention.
Yes, we can cut back on nonessential travel where we can. But I think it backfires if we start telling people you can’t visit grandma for the holidays. We don’t want it to be about austerity; that’s where you get the backlash. The opponents of action recognize that and they play on that. If you watch Fox News, they say things like, They’re going to take away your hamburgers.
We saw that during Covid.
Absolutely. That’s exactly right.
We also saw during Covid that lifestyle changes brought us a slight reduction for a year in carbon emissions, but it didn’t make the dent we need it to. We need to make systemic changes.
Related from The Citizen
A lesson from Helsinki about fighting climate change at home
By Bruce Katz
Can you talk to me a little bit about your message to cities? Like, what should Philly be doing in this moment?
It’s going to have to be at least on two fronts: There’s the adaptation. Look at the flooding that Philadelphia is experiencing now. We have to build more resilient infrastructure. Frankly, we have a large, very vulnerable population and these are the most vulnerable people when it comes to climate impacts, because that’s where the floodwaters collect. That’s where it gets hottest in the summer. So that’s a big part of it.
But we’ve got to stop digging the hole. So mitigation is the other part. No amount of adaptation is going to be adequate if we don’t stop digging this hole. I think the most important thing we can do is political, and that’s true at the local level, at the state level, the national level. At every level, we need to prioritize climate-friendly policies, that take us off fossil fuels, and move us towards renewable energy, and lead us in the direction of increased energy efficiency. Some of it can happen from the top down [federally]. But much of the progress we’ve made is from the bottom up.
And that’s where there’s some exciting developments here. I remember when Mayor Nutter was mayor here, there were a relatively small number of cities that had taken a real leadership position on climate in their policies. Pittsburgh is one of them. And Philly was one of them. Mayor Nutter was one of those mayors who was saying we’re going to do everything we can. And so when we say we need action at the municipal level, Philly historically has been there.
Penn is often criticized for — and I think they’ve done a better job lately — not being as engaged with the city that they are in, considering all the expertise, like yours, that’s there. Are you going to engage with the City?
I can’t speak for the administration, although my understanding is, the sustainability institute is trying to prioritize some of those town-gown relationships. Penn’s Water Center, I know, is actually very interested in urban flooding problems. So I think there is an effort to connect up.
Certainly, just by virtue of my mission, I will be looking to do that. You know, I want Penn and Philly, a city that I love as a second home, to have that connection. Obviously, I’m at Penn; but I also feel like I’m at Philly. Like, this is part of my mission.
Welcome. I look forward to all the great things you can do here.
The reservoirs of the Tibetan Plateau, which covers much of southern China and northern India, are fed by monsoons and currently supply most of the water demand for nearly two billion peopleParvaiz BUKHARI AFP/File
Paris (AFP) – The Tibetan Plateau will experience significant water loss this century due to global warming, according to research published Monday that warns of severe supply stress in a climate change “hotspot”.
The reservoirs of the Tibetan Plateau, which covers much of southern China and northern India, are fed by monsoons and currently supply most of the water demand for nearly two billion people.
But the plateau’s complex terrain has made it difficult for scientists to predict how warming temperatures and altered weather patterns linked to climate change will affect the region’s water stores.
Researchers based in China and the United States used satellite-based measurements to determine the net change in water and ice mass over the past two decades.
They added in direct measurements of glaciers, lakes and sub-surface water levels to estimate changes in the water mass, then used a machine learning technique to predict storage changes under scenarios such as higher air temperature and reduced cloud cover.
They found that due to an increasingly warm and wet climate, the Tibetan Plateau has lost just over 10 billion tonnes of water a year since 2002.
Writing in the journal Nature Climate Change, the team projected changes in water storage across the plateau under a middle-of-the-road emissions scenario, where levels of carbon pollution stay roughly at current levels before falling gradually after 2050.
They found two river basins were particularly vulnerable to water loss.
For the Amu Darya, central Asia’s largest river, water loss could be equivalent to 119 percent of the current demand.
Communities reliant on the Indus basement for water supply could see a loss equivalent to 79 percent of current demand, the study showed.
The authors recommended that governments begin to explore alternative water supply options, including more groundwater extraction, to make up for the anticipated shortfall.
Michael Mann, director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media, said “substantial reductions in carbon emissions over the next decade” would limit global warming and the “predicted collapse of the Tibetan Plateau water towers”.
“But even in a best-case scenario, further losses are likely unavoidable, which will require substantial adaptation to decreasing water resources in this vulnerable, highly populated region of the world. Just what that would look like is hard to say — we’re in unchartered waters,” Mann, a study co-author, told AFP.
“Suffice it to say, some amount of suffering is locked in.”
Hands-on events for Climate Week include a tour of Penn Park Farm, a bioblitz at the Biopond, and planting sessions at Penn Park and the Andrew Hamilton School.
