The Carbon Tea Party.

A Critique of Jeremy Leggett’s ‘The Carbon War’

Jeremy leggett was scientific director of greenpeace international’s climate campaign from 1990 to 1994 and then director of its solar initiative from 1995 to the end of 1996. ‘The Carbon War’ provides an insider’s view of climate negotiations during the 1990s. It covers greenpeace’s campaign for reducing global Carbon emissions, its adversaries in climate negotiations, anecdotes about the climate negotiation process, and extensive journeys around the world’s conference centres. Leggett comes over as more of a lobbyist to the rich and powerful than a campaigner trying to shift public opinion. The book also contains snippets of science about climate change.

Leggett’s Tactics.

Leggett’s work with greenpeace entailed various tactics and assumptions - whether all of these were entirely his own is difficult to say but he doesn’t dissent from them.

Firstly, he focused on climate disasters.

Secondly, he outlined a scientific worst case scenario for global climate change.

Thirdly, following on from his analysis of climate disasters, he attempted to persuade the insurance industry to take global burning seriously.

Fourthly, he focused almost exclusively on the tactic of reducing greenhouse emissions - as distinct from opposing deforestation or supporting Reforestation in order to extract Carbon emissions from the atmosphere.

Fifthly, he seemed preoccupied with reducing just one greenhouse gas, Carbon dioxide, rather than all greenhouse gases.

Sixthly, he believed that, for the sake of global justice, the world’s over-industrialized nations should be the first to reduce CO2 emissions before the rest of the world joined in.

Finally, he believed that solar power could replace fossil fuels. These are leggett’s seven main tactics and assumptions. The following sections evaluate these assumptions.

Background to Leggett’s Tactics.

It is not difficult speculating on how leggett came to acquire some of these views. For eleven years he was a lecturer in science and technology at the royal school of mines at the imperial college of science, technology and medicine .. "an elite training house for oil and mining companies". He helped .. "to turn out petroleum geologists and petroleum engineers in their hundreds." He attained a phd, won a professorship and had considerable prospects for a prestigious and rewarding career which would have brought him a lavish lifestyle. However, in the late 1980s, as scientific concerns about global burning began to surface, he went through a dramatic reappraisal of his increasingly fossilized ideas. In early 1989 he decided to quit his job and, within a matter of weeks, joined what many of his former colleagues would have regarded as ‘the enemy’. He gave up a glittering academic career and a lavish lifestyle to become climate science director at greenpeace. This decision shows considerable intellectual integrity and huge moral courage.

Despite his growing understanding of the environment, leggett took an enormous amount of intellectual baggage with him to greenpeace. It is surprising that greenpeace didn’t help him to offload more of it before appointing him to such an important position. As far as leggett was concerned the solution to global burning was technological. He believed it was necessary for governments to adopt limits to Carbon dioxide emissions but the primary requirement was that the world’s colossal multinational, fossil fuel, corporations should realize their long term interests entailed switching to solar power and making huge profits by selling solar energy. Whether leggett ever suspected that global burning needed to be solved by geophysiological factors is not known but he dismissed the idea very early in his environmental career. One of the most striking omissions in his book is the absence of any mention of gaia, lovelock, or geophysiology. This is surprising in the work of any green. And yet with leggett there is a strong suspicion that he mutated from being a high priest of cutting edge, fossil fuel technologies to a high priest of cutting edge, solar technologies without ever understanding the Earth on which this energy was to be used. It was as if he believed all that was required was a switch in technologies. Nothing else needed to change except technology. This impression could be wrong. It could be that leggett has a deep understanding of geophysiology, the new science of the Earth - but there is no evidence in this book of such an understanding. On the contrary, his dismissal of Reforestation as a means of combating global burning suggests no such understanding. Is it really surprising that this geologist, who’d spent most of his formative years in the glamorous and exciting world of frontier, fossil fuel technology, should reject such a green approach to combating global burning?

Just How many Climate Disasters Have there Been?

Leggett tried to publicize global burning by ignoring slow, imperceptible changes in the climate e.g. rises in global temperatures, the concentration of atmospheric Carbon, and sea levels, etc, in favour of the drama of extreme climate disasters. In 1994 this led to the publication of ‘The Climate Time Bomb’. This generated considerable publicity about the threat posed by climate change. Even though it is now outdated it is still one of the key documents in climate politics during the 1990s. In the history of global burning campaigns, this is the tactic for which leggett is perhaps most famous. When greens talk about the threat posed by climate catastrophes they invariably refer, whether inadvertently or not, to leggett’s work on the remarkable sequence of catastrophes over the last decade or so.

It was hoped that one of the minor benefits of reading leggett’s book would be to find a precise list of the billion dollar insurance disasters. Leggett has written many articles on climate disasters but, unfortunately, he’s never bothered to provide a clear list of these disasters. For someone who spent eight years creating hard-hitting sound bites for greenpeace this is unexpected. The numbering of the disasters never matches up from one publication to the next. In addition, in one publication he claims there have been ‘w’ disasters over the last ‘x’ years, whilst in the next it is ‘y’ disasters over ‘z’ years. For years he proclaimed there hadn’t been any billion dollar disasters before 1987 but, in this book, he casually mentions there have been five - but gives no details, "The u.s. property claims services division made an initial estimate of $1.6 billion in insured losses, making (hurricane) fran the 10th biggest weather-related loss ever, and bringing the number of all time billion-dollar weather cats to 20. Fifteen of these had now been since 1987." This is frustrating. How is it possible to use such handy propaganda when it’s surrounded by such confusions? In conclusion, leggett’s tactic for highlighting climate related disasters can be counted as an enormous publicity success - albeit with annoying drawbacks.

A Worst Case Climate Disaster Scenario.

Following on from his focus on climate disasters, leggett advocated the need for the formulation of a worst case scenario for global burning. This is a scientific issue even if the results could be exploited politically. Scientists worth their salt have to evaluate a worst case scenario as well as ‘business as usual’ and ‘best case’ scenarios. Ipcc scientists have tried to portray themselves as independent, objective, and impartial, but they have been playing politics by ignoring the worst case scenario for global burning. Perhaps they were frightened that outlining such a scenario would displease their paymasters. Perhaps they were embarrassed about highlighting the gross inadequacies of their general circulation models. As bunyard points out, "Models used to justify a business-as-usual approach are fundamentally flawed because they treat the Earth’s land surface as it would be had we not destroyed great tracts of natural vegetation. The models therefore ignore the impact of global agriculture on the climate ..." Perhaps they were fearful that if politicians realized how inadequate their models were then they wouldn’t take seriously the conclusions drawn from such models. Leggett quotes the views of two scientists on this issue, ""I have a problem with this,’ he (bob watson of nasa) said. "We mustn’t give policy makers the impression that there’s no point. We don’t win that way." Houghton seized on his point. "Yes," he said. "The media will pick up this kind of thing and use it as a stick."" These considerations have nothing to do with science.

Leggett can count this tactic as a moral victory even if he has not yet succeeded in getting ipcc scientists to behave like scientists. However, he states, somewhat optimistically, "Finally, it seems, scientists are losing their reluctance to articulate the worst case analysis. As steven schneider told new scientist, "We used to discuss these scenarios privately. Now we are being more open’."

The Insurance Business.

Leggett’s third main tactic was to persuade the insurance industry to appreciate the risks posed by global burning, "In buying insurance for its own future markets, the insurance industry would be buying insurance for the planet, and the wider risk-community thereon." During his time researching climate disasters, leggett realized how vulnerable the insurance industry is to the damage caused by extreme climate disasters. It might have been thought that it shouldn’t have been difficult persuading the industry about this threat considering the billions of dollars it had paid out almost every year during the 1990s - especially when the industry was making an elemental mistake by using historical models of the climate to predict the scale of future disasters thereby ignoring oomans’ role in disrupting the climate.

From the very start of climate negotiations, the coal, oil, and gas, industries set up front organizations (collectively called the Carbon club) to protect their interests and, much more significantly, to sabotage the negotiations. They didn’t just query every aspect of climate science, they dismissed the threat posed by global burning and sought the abandonment of climate negotiations. They were archetypal mad oomans - blame somebody else. The Carbon club received lavish funding and were able to send 30-60 lobbyists to every climate conference to undermine the negotiations. These pugnacious, bellowing, bullying shysters put government officials and ipcc scientists under enormous pressure to tone down their reports. Ngos simply did not have the resources to counter-act these corporate loonies. Leggett was desperate to cultivate the support of the insurance and, much more importantly, the banking, industries to act as a counterweight to these mindless thugs.

Even though leggett persuaded unep to take on the burden of cultivating the interest of the insurance industry, the tactic was one of leggett’s biggest failures .. "the world’s biggest reinsurer had still not joined the unep insurance initiative to lobby for progress at the climate negotiations." Leggett has the decency to confront this failure, "The sad truth was that the insurance industry, for all my hopes - and the promise of events in 1995 - had not evolved into a force capable of exerting any serious pressure on the kyoto process." The most that could be expected from the insurance industry was that it would send a small delegation to climate negotiations, lecture everyone on the need for action, and then disappear, unwilling to counter the vicious lobbying antics of the fossil fuelled zombies, "But i already knew that the most i could hope for in kyoto was another short flying visit by a handful of insurers." Today, the global insurance industry is as locked into the system of financing geophysiological devastation as it ever was - even though there are individuals in the industry who have become outspoken environmentalists. Leggett’s expectations of the insurance industry have never materialized.

It has to be stated that this failure was not unpredictable. The following is a quote from the mundi club’s review of ‘The Climate Time Bomb’ written in september 1994, "The second major problem in persuading the insurance industry to take a stand against global warming is the competitive nature of the industry. Whilst some insurance companies might want to fix their premiums to take into account the risks posed by global warming, other companies are bound to continue ignoring the risks, or might be willing to take on the risks, and offer smaller premiums - thereby putting the former out of business. In the short run what matters is who offers the cheapest insurance premium." The reinsurance business is a highly competitive market where each company has to undercut their rivals to survive. They are trapped in geocidal competition from which they show no signs of escaping. Even leggett had to admit .. "The industry rate-cutting competition continued." The idea that ‘what is good for lloyds is good for the Earth’ is ludicrous. After similar such claims by other multi-national corporations, it should be blatantly obvious that the world’s leading multi-national corporations are Earth rapists incapable of doing anything but representing their own short term interests. Lobbying the insurance industry to take action against global burning is even more useless than calling on the nuclear power industry to combat rising temperatures.

Leggett’s endeavour to woo insurance companies showed little understanding of the social basis of the insurance industry. Lloyd’s is made up of names who finance the re-insurance business and, in the past, made lucrative profits. These names consist of the tory politicians, tory judges, tory civil servants, tory coppers, the monarchy etc. So, despite the tiny handful of individuals in the insurance industry who agreed with his views, he was basically trying to persuade people who supported, and in many cases enacted, Earth-wrecking policies to adopt measures in the insurance industry based on the opposite rationale. It wasn’t going to happen.

The mundi club went on to suggest that leggett’s endeavour to woo insurance companies also showed little understanding of the sheer corruption rampant in the insurance industry .. "the blatant insider dealing, massive graft and breathtaking corruption involving billions of pounds ..." This self-regulated industry is just the sort of self regulation admired by green wallies like bunyard. Into this cauldron of depravity steps jeremy suffuse with that marvellous middle class politeness talking amiably, and probably even sincerely, about lloyds’ integrity. Trying to win the support of the insurance industry isn’t that much different from trying to win the support of the mafia - the global criminal organization that is, not the mass murdering criminals in the ministry of food, fishing and agriculture.

The Focus on Greenhouse Gas Emissions and the Dismissal of Reforestation.

Leggett has spent his entire environmental career trying to persuade governments and multi-national corporations to reduce Carbon emissions. He has never shown the slightest interest in promoting Reforestation as a means of combating global burning. Indeed in this book there are only two mentions of Reforestation - both dismissing the idea, "Such a mechanism for suppressing global warming would be a finite process - it couldn’t go on forever. As some trees reach the limit to which they can store carbon, while others succumb to the spread of drying soils, the fertilization effect could become a thing of the past." Leggett recounts the time he’d been invited to speak, on behalf of greenpeace, at a shell meeting in november 1991 and someone in the audience asked him why biomass couldn’t soak up greenhouse gases, "I gave the standard answer. Growing and regrowing forests could make an important contribution, but only a marginal one. There was no magic bullet, no substitute for the deep cuts that will be needed in fossil-fuel burning." Such glibness from a one of the world’s foremost green organizations.

During the 1990s a number of governments around the world quite sensibly demanded their voluntary reductions in Carbon emissions should be offset by including the Carbon absorbed through Forests. Leggett expresses his annoyance over such a tactic, "New zealand - a huge disappointment to environmentalists - seemed fixated on using its forests to avoid making C02 cuts, and was now the principal defender at the climate negotiations of the ‘net approach’ - allowing emissions credits for carbon soaked up by forests." Such is his contempt for the inclusion of Forests in climate negotiations that the only other time he refers to this important debate which had been taking place for many years was when he mentioned the united states’s variation on the net approach - a ‘gross-net’, "In this scheme, countries would calculate their emissions beginning with the gross total for 1990 (not including sinks) and then deduct their national sink storage of carbon from the emissions budget period. Adopting this method would result in a 7% increase in u.s. emissions." For leggett, climate negotiations should be primarily about emissions’ reductions - hardly a surprising view for someone who believes solar power is the answer to global burning.

It is appalling that leggett, like so many other greens, has never bothered to discuss or outline his objections to Reforestation. He just dismisses the idea. He mentions his wining and dining activities far more than he does Reforestation. It has to be suggested that a part of the reason he blocked out any consideration of this issue was his time in a fossil fuel institute. Perhaps even more pertinent is that leggett’s lobbying brought him into frequent contact with the Carbon club’s anti global burning zombies. He talks about don pearlman, the arch anti-global burning loon, continually throughout his book. It is as though he feared expressing his support for Reforestation because pearlman and his cronies would have ridiculed him. If anything there was more likelihood of pearlman supporting Reforestation than leggett. It is a tragedy when anti-greens are more green than greens!!!!!

This aspect of leggett’s work is a pure disaster. Whatever other successes leggett might justifiably claim during his time with greenpeace they pale into insignificance in comparison to this failure. For years he carried greenpeace along with him in this rejection of Reforestation and greenpeace carried along many other organizations in the so-called green movement. This has been a disaster for the Earth.

The Focus on Carbon Dioxide.

In the early days of climate campaigning, many campaigners wanted to focus solely on reductions in Carbon dioxide emissions. They were frightened that incorporating other greenhouse gases would dilute action against this particular greenhouse gas - that governments would claim their reductions of ozone depleting chemicals should be included as part of their greenhouse reductions. This attitude is found in leggett’s work.

Easterbrook provides an illuminating material basis of such an attitude. He argues that europe relies heavily for power on natural gas, which releases methane, whilst the united states relies primarily on coal and oil which releases primarily Carbon dioxide. In effect, green campaigners promoting the focus on Carbon dioxide were being pro-european and anti-american. Such are the dangers of taking a partial perspective in climate campaigns. True, Carbon dioxide is currently the most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas but it should be considered as only one of many greenhouse gases. Leggett’s tactic was a mistake. Thankfully, it has been swept away during the course of climate negotiations in the late-1990s.

Getting the Polluters to Act First.

Another tactic adopted by leggett was insisting that, for the sake of global justice, the world’s industrialized nations should be the first to reduce CO2 emissions before the industrializing world. At the start of climate negotiations this tactic was relevant but the longer it has persisted the more it has become a good excuse for both sides to do nothing. In the beginning there was the prospect that if the over-industrialized world forced the rest of the world into reducing their Carbon emissions they would abandon climate negotiations. The Carbon club hoped this would happen, "If the usa could be persuaded to make action on their part contingent on action by the developing countries, the anger of the developing countries would know few bounds. This was a dynamic that the Carbon club knew gave them a chance one day of tearing the negotiations apart from within." And yet leggett, and many other climate campaigners, became so fixated on this idea it has turned climate negotiations into a nightmare and almost led to their collapse. The real issue isn’t that the over-industrialized nations ought to go first but that each country should curb their pollution in proportion to the pollution they have emitted. But leggett never perceived the issue in this form. If the over-industrialized world had agreed to go first in reducing their emissions then there would have been no problem, the industrializing world could have joined in later, but when the american congress objected to this tactic and insisted that all countries should contribute, green campaigners should have recognized the tactic wasn’t worth fighting over and should have adopted the more comprehensive approach. Unfortunately, many greens tried to make a stand and wasted inordinate efforts pressuring the over-industrialized world into acting first. This has been a political disaster and leggett was one of the main culprits. He treated the bryd-hgel resolution as a disaster, "The carbon club’s victory could not be hidden" when he could have turned it around as an opportunity to introduce a more comprehensive, and equally as just, tactic.

Solar Power.

Given his background as a lecturer in fossil fuel technology it is not surprising that leggett should regard the shift to a new high-tech source of power, solar energy, as being the prime solution to global burning. He may even have harboured suspicions that it was possible to transform the world without hassles over Carbon negotiations if only multinational corporations adopted solar energy and helped the rest of the world to do the same. The problem is that leggett has made no attempt to evaluate the geophysiological impact of solar power. He doesn’t show the slightest anxiety about the damage that could be caused by the spread of this so-called clean source of energy. It has been noted in the critique of the ecologist’s ‘Climate Crisis’ that leggett’s view of solar power paralleled the nuclear power industry’s early promise that ‘nuclear energy would be too cheap to meter’ - "Indeed, solar pv could in principle supply all the world’s energy demands many times over, cutting global energy related greenhouse gas emissions close to zero." It is absurd to believe that solar power will reduce greenhouse emissions close to zero. Such a statement gives no confidence that leggett has any appreciation of the geophysiological damage that could be inflicted on the Earth’s Photosynthetic capacity by solar power.

Conclusions.

Green Reformism.

During his years as an academic high flier, leggett’s peers included directors and managers of the world’s multi-national, fossil-fuel corporations. He doubtlessly regarded them as highly intelligent and maybe even good hearted people. It is hardly surprising he should believe that reason could persuade them to take an interest in environmental issues. His book is filled with references to his wining and dining of some of the world’s wealthiest and most powerful figures in the insurance and banking worlds. He encourages the activities of the various global, corporate, green organizations set up in the 1990s such as the world business council for sustainable development (wbcsd), the business council for a sustainable energy future (bcsef), and the union of industrial and the employers’ confederation of europe (unice).

Leggett is a reformist. He believes it is vital to collaborate with the world’s biggest Earth rapists to save the Earth. He mentions that, in 1992, greenpeace attacked the wbcsd’s predecessor, the bscd, "The bscd and greenpeace locked horns in public relations battle, and I was in the heart of it. But, he admits, "I engaged in that struggle with reservations." He hoped the wbcsd would bring about substantial environmental reforms amongst some of the world’s biggest Earth-wreckers but it has produced no such changes. Unfortunately, leggett’s reformism has now become almost institutionalized because he has created a solar power pressure group, ‘new solar century ‘ which is funded by various billionaires and multi-national corporations.

Leggett is what could be called a new green. He is taking a similar route to green reforms as jonathon porritt, an adviser to charles windsor; amory lovins, who supports the creation of green markets; and gregg easterbrook who regards himself as a green cornucopian and cosmic space traveller (but who, unfortunately, dismisses the threat posed by global burning). Leggett’s promotion of solar power will invariably push him towards green cornucopianism.

The fundamental problem with green reformism is that hope triumphs over reality. The naiveté of green reformists can be breathtaking. To give but one example; leggett celebrated the speech given by tony blair soon after becoming prime minister, "In one of the strongest speeches i have ever heard a leader make on the environment ." since when blair has been enthusiastically promoting Earth-wrecking activities around the globe.

A Scientific Worst-Case Scenario but not a Political Worst-Case Scenario

And yet it would be unfair to dismiss leggett as a mere reformist. There is a dichotomy within his work between the radical and the reformist. This can be seen at its most blatant when he supports the formulation of a scientific worst case scenario for understanding global burning but ignores a worst case scenario for the world’s 6 billion eco-nazis. This dichotomy runs through his book. He constantly hopes for progress in climate negotiations but is honest about its miserable failures. He dismisses the 1992 rio Earth summit .. "the toothless nature of the framework convention on climate change" and is realistic about its consequences, "For many, hope was running out fast as a result of the five years of failure since rio." This is refreshing honesty for a reformist.

Quite unusually for a reformist, leggett accuses some anti-global burning loons of being evil and, in supporting the destabilization of the climate, committing crimes against humanity. But, this accusation is aimed not at the managers and leaders of the world’s multi-national corporations but at the minions in the Carbon club lobby, "Exxon, mobil, texaco and the other residually unrepentant thugs of the corporate world look like continuing to sign the cheques that bankroll the carbon club’s crimes against humanity, along with their kindred spirits in the automobile, coal and utility industries."

Leggett’s book is entitled, ‘The Carbon War’. However, the book does not revel in such a war. What it describes is more of a tea party where the guests mingle together even if, occasionally, they have to grit their teeth when they meet people they didn’t like.

Can’t See the Forests for the Smog.

Leggett was one of the first climate campaigners and one of the most original. His tactics provided the basis for greenpeace’s climate campaigns during much of the 1990s. He was a significant influence over the green movement during this period. Whilst many of his contributions were substantial, his limitations were even more so. The early development of his campaign tactics became a disadvantage when they became set in concrete. As climate negotiations evolved during the 1990s more and more new ideas were absorbed into the process - some of which happened to be good ideas introduced for malicious reasons. Leggett increasingly seems to have become an anachronism by objecting to these new ideas even when they moved toward a more comprehensive solution for the climate. In july 1997 during one of the sessions preparing the ground for the kyoto agreement, he shows his increasing disenchantment with the more comprehensive direction of the negotiations, "More and more countries now favoured the ‘comprehensive’ approach - targets for a number of greenhouse gases, not just carbon dioxide, or gas by gas targets. Similarly, net accounting seemed to be enjoying a growing tacit acceptance." Behind this failure to develop his climate tactics was his dismissal of Reforestation as a means of combating global burning. He condemns the fossil fuel industries for releasing Carbon emissions but he doesn’t seem to have the slightest clue that the world’s biggest Earth wrecker is the Animal exploitation industry. He never mentions the vast geophysiological damage being caused by pharmers. He doesn’t seem to have absorbed any part of lovelock’s philosophic revolution. He remains an anthropogenic utilitarian. He doesn’t seem to have any appreciation of the scale of the political revolution required if there are to be land reforms, global institutions, and regional Wood economies, to stabilize the climate.

Leggett complains the members of the Carbon club did not listen to environmentalists’ arguments about the climate. But, to greens who believe firstly, that Reforestation is the vital means for combating global burning, and, secondly, that it is pharmers who are mainly responsible for global burning not the fossil fuel industries, he is just as guilty of not listening as they are. To such greens, leggett is indistinguishable from don pearlman. This is not so much of an insult as it might seem - given that the same also applies to many other conventional, greenless greens. Tony juniper seems indistinguishable from leonard bernstein (of mobil). Aubrey meyer seems indistinguishable from gail macdonald (of the global climate coalition). Peter bunyard seems indistinguishable from clem malin (of texaco). And edward goldsmith seems indistinguishable from john schiller (of ford).