Miss-messaging and how to resist it
Certain phrases keep popping up in the context of the climate emergency. These seem, on first blush, to be what politicians like to describe as “simple common sense” and they are used to close down the conversation. As they keep appearing, and are used almost mantra like, I can’t help thinking they are part of a co-ordinated comms strategy. This is why I want to call some of them out here and help tune our collective antennae to spot similar others which will doubtless be aired in the future.
The way I have come to think of it is DP = PD.
This stands for Dangerous Platitudes lead to Predatory Delay. The platitudes are the phrases being rolled out and predatory delay is Alex Steffen’s term for the practice of the fossil fuel industry, their financiers and others clinging to their coat-tails of trying to resist the changes they know are inevitable for as long as possible so they can make as much money as possible in the meantime. What follows are some examples of statements designed to embed predatory delay. We need to recognise and resist them.
“We have to keep the lights on”
This was a phrase popular last year, notably with financiers and lawyers supporting the fossil fuel industry. It was used to imply don’t even suggest cutting back on fossil fuels because Russia-Ukraine means we need all the energy we can get our hands on. It was used indiscriminately, even to justify investing in new oil and gas fields, which may or may not prove productive and will not be delivering energy anyone can use for many years, if at all.
"Transitions don't happen overnight"
These are the words of the President of COP28, Sultan Al Jaber, and represent a development of the same theme. Al Jaber used his version to frame an argument that the phasedown of fossil fuels can only happen when there is sufficient renewable capacity to meet demand. This is classic predatory delay: if the fossil fuel companies had used their vast profits over recent decades to develop renewable capacity, then the transition we need would already be happening. However, he is arguing that this failing on their part is the reason they must be allowed to carry on with that failing.
His argument also presumes it is impossible to reduce energy demand so that there is less need for energy. This patently needs to happen more broadly if we are to live within our planetary boundaries (as we must) but it is one more inconvenient truth never knowingly acknowledged. Further, the result of the delay that has occurred already, combined with the kernel of truth in his statement when taken at face value, tells us that we have to look beyond transition, which we no longer have time for, and towards transformation. This can happen overnight (or, at least, more speedily) and it must, given the evidence all around us of the effects of 1.2°C of global heating. A transformation away from fossil fuel dependency, that is.
“We cannot limit increases to 1.5°C, so we should drop it as a target”
This is a view which has been cropping up in conversations increasingly of late. It is consistent with polling carried out by Edie, when it surveyed businesses on their attitudes ahead of COP28. This might be an approach familiar to company directors who, when it becomes evident that their budget projection will not come good, simply replace one self-concocted target with another. Following that approach, in a few more years, we would be ditching 2°C as the target, but arguing 2.5°C might just be achievable.
The IPCC is clear, however: every fraction of temperature change has significant real world implications. This matters in both directions. So yes, global temperatures will overshoot the target of 1.5°C, but that is not a reason to ease off. Rather it cause to double down on policies and actions which will reverse such increases as quickly and effectively as possible, before tipping points and their unpredictable consequences are triggered.
“It is not the place of a lawyer to take a political stance”
This has bubbled up a few times lately, the implication being that to express any view on what clients are doing represents suspicious, “activist” behaviour which is unprofessional. Instead, lawyers should just do as they are instructed and not be concerned with the consequences that flow from that.
Firstly, of course, this is a very Janus like approach, even for a profession which is trained to argue any position it is asked to adopt. Ask a lawyer to bid for work and they will be full of all the added value they bring over and above providing competent legal advice, so why suddenly so constrained?
There is also a faux naivety in suggesting that law is somehow above, or at least apart from, politics. In the US in particular, politicians are treating the law like heavy artillery, threatening litigation to any and all with the temerity to suggest a collective response to the climate threat may be in the public interest, or that ESG is a sane recognition by businesses of their interdependence with the rest of the world and the value in taking those relationships into account. Once again, the pattern is beginning to repeat in the UK, as I recently noted. To resist or not to resist such interventions amounts to a political position, whichever you choose to do. Similarly, electing to ignore the foreseeable harms that flow from the activities of clients who behave as if the IPCC’s warnings only apply if you believe they do, is as much a political choice as deciding that they are not the sort of client you want to invest your time, knowledge and expertise in helping to flourish.
Usually, when phrases like these mentioned above are deployed, the speaker quickly moves on and it can seem querulous to go back and pick up on them. It is important to do so though, so that by repetition they do not become accepted as some kind of “truth” and so that the fallacies on which they rest are exposed.
Be vigilant – and shine the light on and call out the others which are and will be out there in the months and years to come.