In November 1989, the world had a splendid opportunity to nip the global greenhouse emission challenge in the bud. At Noordwijk, Netherlands, a ministerial conference presided by government delegates from 60 nations assembled to trash out a binding agreement that proposed stabilising 1990 greenhouse emission levels by year 2000. Besides diplomats, the Dutch Government also invited a battalion of eminent scientists and members of UN-sponsored Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Despite all the scientific evidence that was presented the Noordwijk Climate Conference ended in a fiasco.
The Noordwijk collapse wasn’t an isolated event but rather a decade long pattern of failures that culminated in a very visible global setback. Although the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, the world had lost 26 precious years in the fight against climate change. It was in the late ‘70s that the phenomena of global warming and climate change had been understood and recognised by scientists across the globe sufficiently enough to raise a call to action. What followed in the decade ahead, however, was a story of remarkable brilliance and also downright foolishness, in short, a lost opportunity.
The Tail End of Jimmy Carter’s Presidency
It was in the last year of Jimmy Carter’s presidency that the United States Environmental protection Agency published a seminal report on the harmful effects of coal which caught the attention of climate activist Rafe Pomerance. Rafe soon came into contact with Gordon MacDonald, a geophysicist associated with Jasons, a group of elite scientists with close ties to the Pentagon and the US Government. The Jasons had shared a report on the potentially devastating impact of carbon emissions with every government agency, the White House as well as the largest oil and gas producers in the US.
The task of evaluating the Jasons report fell on Jule Charney, the father of modern meteorology and it was this task force that brought Rafe, Gordon and James Hansen, a climate scientist from NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies together. That time period witnessed some unparalleled collaboration between Big Oil and the scientist community. However, given the infancy of climate science a consensus was out of reach and a trail of indecision was left behind after every major discussion.
The Reagan – H.W. Bush Era
Close on the heels of these developments was the change in presidency and the inauguration of Ronald Reagan’s government. Given his zeal for deregulation, President Reagan declared a war on solar energy and rescinded many of President Carter’s environment-friendly policies. Paradoxically, it was under Ronal Reagan, that bipartisan support for a healthy environment became prominent. Conservative leaders thought the health of the environment made good business sense. Even Exxon committed to spend on global warming research and be a part of the solution.
Despite non-partisan support for this matter things didn’t pan out the way they could have. In the Fall of 1983, William Nierenberg, a Jason and a Presidential advisor on scientific matters presented the Changing Climate report produced by a commission that he was chairing. The 500 plus pages report delivered several warnings and invoked immediate remedial action before it was too late. But, at the accompanying press conference, he delivered a starkly contrasting message. He decried the need for urgent action and the tendency of some to build worst-case scenarios. He recommended caution, not panic and a watchful attitude that headed towards procrastination.
Nierenberg was an optimist and had enormous confidence in American ingenuity. He also aired his concerns about significant economic and social consequences of large-scale government interventions. His communication effectively buried the truth that the report had unearthed. This was a turning point for corporations like Exxon who then turned their back on a problem which in any case would surface only after the current cadre of employees had retired.
Ronald Reagan’s successor, George H.W. Bush, whose campaign promise of a ‘kinder, gentler America’, had on his campaign trail, made a pledge to combat greenhouse emissions. Whilst the world remained on a cusp, President Bush’s administration did everything possible to renege on this commitment.
On two separate occasions, James Hansen was asked to testify at Senate hearings on climate change. In June 1988, Hansen, a NASA and therefore a government employee, had been pressurised by the White House to modify his testimony. In an act of defiance, Hansen chose to testify in his capacity as a private citizen.
Again, in the Spring of 1989, Hansen was asked to testify at a Climate Change hearing convened by Senator Al Gore . As per protocol, his testimony had to be validated by the White House. John Sununu, President Bush’s Chief of Staff was alarmed by the contents and tone of his testimony and did everything to have it censored. Sununu, a Doctorate in Mechanical Engineering, from MIT held a deep mistrust for environmentalists and environmental science and considered climate as a pseudo-science. Hansen was told to testify and seek only climate regulation that could immediately benefit the economy. Hansen who had no choice, delivered his testimony but when questioned by Al Gore spilled the beans that his original point of view had been modified.
It was Sununu, who with the support of US allies, made sure that there would be no binding agreement at Noordwijk.
Lessons Learned
The events of the ‘80s serve as a profound case study on misadministration. What we saw in the Reagan-Bush era were less-visible but strong-arm tactics that would undermine the very spirit of deregulation that President Reagan championed. Lessons learned from this era still remain relevant today. Here are a few:
Lesson 1: Climate change is a geo-political one and not just an environmental problem
Climate change requires cross-border collaboration. This is an area of heightened complexity since politics is connected with culture, identity and serving narrow interests. Further, politics doesn’t move in a straight line and behind every political problem lies a publicity problem.
Lesson 2: Senate & Congressional hearings are not always adequate to bring about changes in public policy
What is needed are mass consciousness and movements. However, sizing climate change is a challenge in itself. Conventional protests have been triggered by visible and horrific events but the effects of climate change are invisible in the short and medium run and take much longer to manifest.
Lesson 3: Personal health is perceived to matter more than planetary health, but should it necessarily be this way?
During the Reagan-Bush decade, there were gains made on limiting global chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) emissions, which led to the signing of the Montreal Protocol in 1987, a rare instance of universal ratification of a treaty. Why did the global carbon emissions treaty fail while the treaty for CFCs was accepted? This was simply because when scientists discovered the depletion of Earth’s ozone layer, they established a strong connection between CFC emissions and skin cancer, blindness and compromised immune systems. It is far easier to move policy makers on matters that deal with personal health than on matters which are less visible and further into the future.
Lesson 4: A resolution to the climate problem depends on how much we value the future
Lord Maynard Keynes famously said, “In the long run, we are all dead.” Homo sapiens first appeared on planet Earth over half a million years ago but humankind has in a span of 200 years grossly and disproportionately consumed planetary resources that would leave future generations poorer off. Keynesian philosophy is yet deeply entrenched in global ways and means. What is needed now is a reassessment of how much we should value the future.
Lesson 5: It is not about epistemology but about ‘realisation’
Western philosophy and science are mired in epistemology or our relationship with knowledge. But as we have seen in the above case study, the knowledge of the greenhouse effect and its dire consequences did not move American leadership. This is simply because knowledge isn’t the same as realisation. If it was so, by now, there would be no trace of smokers anywhere.
Of Optimism and Systems Thinking
Both Nierenberg and Sununu were soaked in optimism so much so that they chose to ignore the severity of the climate threat. Would it be fair to say that their optimism was a hurdle to progress? And equally, is it reasonable to proclaim that systems thinking is shrouded in pessimism?
There is a mis-perception that since systems thinking concerns itself with the management of wicked problems, that it assumes a pessimistic outlook. The truth is that systems thinking provides you tools and methods to see reality for what it is and not for what we would like it to be. Systems thinking presents the practitioner with a view that encompasses the doughnut as well as the hole within. It is a sum total of reality, right and wrong, positive and negative.
To be fair to Nierenberg and Sununu, even though much progress was made in the ‘70s and ‘80s in the realms of socio-technical systems and the management of organisational and people complexity, this was confined to academia and way removed from mainstream thinking.
System science tells us that we cannot address complexity at the level at which it manifests itself and the only way to do so is to alter the rules or the web of causes that brings about the complexity. Imagine an oil tanker that is leaking and sinking at the same time. We need to plug the leak at source but the more it sinks, the harder it gets to do so.
If the climate change problem had been understood adequately way back in the ‘80s, our task today would have been relatively easier. To turn the spiral back in the direction of its source is a herculean task. Our world today is still characterised by specialisation. Scientists don’t adequately understand politics and politicians don’t fully comprehend science. For us to fully connect the dots, systems knowledge is essential but not enough. At the end of it, if we need to save ourselves and future generations we need to go beyond mere knowledge.
Heightened systems awareness is indispensable.
Shakti Saran is a systems thinker, writer, consultant, and the Founder of Shaktify, an initiative to power changemakers
Shakti would like to acknowledge the work of Nathaniel Rich, New York Times columnist for his investigation ‘Losing Earth: The Decade We Almost Stopped Climate Change’. A full account can be read here.