Climate change and activism: time for protests to rival those against the Vietnam war

In late 2014 I was arrested at the Maules Creek mine, opposing coal exports, becoming the first Australian contributor to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) to be arrested for coal disobedience. I don't regret that (even though it effectively ended my chances to go to the US again), but it has clearly been woefully inadequate.

Even Cory Bernadi should now be able to connect the dots

I originally wrote "Blind Freddy" instead of "Cory Bernadi" (an ultra conservative Australian politician) but it was pointed out me that this discriminates against the blind; apologies for that. The evidence of trouble from adverse environmental change is now overwhelming; but (to use another metaphor) we appear to collectively stand frozen, like a kangaroo in the headlights.

In recent days (continuing as I write at 03.30) there has been another infernal heat wave in much of Australia. In parts this has been compounded by blackouts. It's not only unpleasant, but can be highly dangerous and disabling, including to people with chronic cardiac, renal and neurological illnessses, including dementia, multiple sclerosis and epilepsy. Not to mention to people who are homeless, poor and in other ways vulnerable, including many who work outside, the elderly and some with mental illness. Added to this is the risk of devastating bushfires, including urban.

Note too that urban temperatures are often higher than officially recorded, due to the heat island effect, made worse by the killing of urban trees for cars and trams. Perth in Western Australia had its coldest February day ever, followed by an almost record deluge. That may seem paradoxical, but in fact climate change is not just about heating; it's also about the jetstream deforming (leading to paradoxical cold) and heavier rain, including "rainbombs". Parts of interior Australia have also been affected by significant extreme heat-associated infrastructure failure, including of mobile phones, the internet and the access to electronic cash. 

Australia: shooting itself in the brain

As civilisation gets closer to its apparent end we collectively seem to be functioning with less intelligence; just like a human being with advancing dementia. Part of civilisation is still alive and well - but those who can see the problems most vividly are probably aged between about 15 and 40 - and they lack the power to bring about real change. (Though this age cohort was very effective in ending our involvement in Vietnam.)

A scientific paper in Nature Climate Change has recently lamented the bias (I would say flagrant negligence) by Australia's National Health and Medical Research Council (NH&MRC) against funding research on climate change and health, most plausibly because they don't want to risk their political capital.  (Disclosure: when still an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, in 2014 - before I was arrested at Maules Creek - I led a research bid to establish a "centre of excellence" on global environmental change and health. It was the third NH&MRC climate and health related attempt I was involved with in 3 years, we paid great attention to the feedback from the bid in 2013, yet one review we received in 2014 was almost contemptuous.)

Three of our 15 proposed research projects concerned heat and health, others concerned conflict and climate change and the rest were about biodiversity loss, heat, infectious diseases, disasters and climate change. The Australian Defence Force was a willing partner, something I thought would at least make the NH&MRC take our bid seriously. The Australian Red Cross and two state health departments were also involved, as were the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Veterinary Officer.

However, Tony Abbott ("coal is good for humanity") was then newly elected as Australian Prime Minister. I don't think it is paranoid to consider that the NH&MRC dared not risk offending "Captain Abbott" when the NH&MRC was itself vulnerable to further funding cuts?

South Australia's investment in renewable energy, which is a courageous step to protect us against extreme weather events, has been perversely blamed for blackouts, which are in fact more to do with climate change exacerbated storms and private enterprise profiteering. Federal ministers have even carried lumps of coal into the Australian parliament, which they seem to worship like icons. Professor Clive Hamilton has resigned from the Climate Change Authority. I don't blame him.

Even Mark Butler, the ALP shadow minister for environment, has failed to endorse the emergency phasing out of coal. We phased out asbestos; coal is even worse.

Do Australian politicians collectively lack leadership and courage, or do they inhabit such a bubble that they do not understand the immense risks the world now faces?  Or, perhaps, both?

In the US, a thoughtful article in the Atlantic, by David Frum, argues that protests, on their own, will shore up Trump's power. (The wilder the US political environment, the more his supporters in rustbucket states will appreciate Trump's autocracy.)

But Australia is a little more democratic. Just watching the world heat up, the weather to turn even wilder, and crops and animals to suffer is not going to do much good. 

Massive civil disobedience is needed - I wish it were more likely

I'm not sure that massive civil disobedience (on the scale of that against the Vietnam war) about coal in Australia will do any good, but just sitting in the frypan is futile. Such disobedience seems unlikely to occur, however, for several reasons:

1. Australians have many other stresses and priorities.

2. This heat wave will pass, and so will memory of it.

3. Globally, we are not like Syria or Yemen; we can afford food price rises, (see my open access chapter about food prices and climate change here) and we are already spending a significant sum deterring asylum seekers. Australians are not among the worst affected by climate change; we are still among the least affected. Here I disagree with some academics who point out our vulnerability - we are vulnerable, but we have the means to protect ourselves from the worst for a few more decades, though large urban bushfires scare me the most in Australia's near future. 

4. As inequality grows, so too does Australian public acceptance of the dreadfully named "harvesting effect" of heat on the vulnerable. 

5. The "eco-social" links between catastrophes such as in Yemen, Syria and South Sudan and adverse environmental change are substantially suppressed. (That is, these causes are ecological as well as social.) Since many academics deny, or fail to understand, such links what chance does the Australian media have of publicising them? Without widespread understanding of these factors, how will enough people be motivated to protest?

6. The Australian Federal and state governments will be increasingly draconian (I was initially threatened by the police with having to pay over $40,000 in compensation to the mine). The situation in Tasmania (where I was also arrested, opposing the Franklin dam) is also draconian, though Bob Brown is courageously challenging this. However the courts will probably be more sympathetic.

7. Finally, the massive (and entirely justified) protests in Australia and elsewhere against our participation in the 2003 invasion of Iraq were completely unsuccessful. That is discouraging.

Trying to end more positively

We truly are behaving like a slowly boiling frog. I wish I could be more positive. We need a new compact, a new economy, new leadership. President Trump may be replaced by Senator Warren. Like so many Australians I once had hope for Malcolm Turnbull, who I met in about 2011 - we talked then for ten minutes then solely about what I call the "tertiary" - civilisation wrecking - effects of climate change, and he seemed to understand. I think he probably still does, but he still feels he cannot dare risk the wrath of the Australian right.

I attended a moving funeral service for the late Professor Basil Hetzel two days ago (in the heat).  Basil was a very important mentor for the late Professor Tony McMichael. Basil devoted himself to public service and medical research, but had some understanding of the peril of the Anthropocene - the modern age. Tony, even more so, appreciated this. Former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke attended the funeral, and it was great to see him (at a distance). At the tea and sandwiches I spoke to a pastor who mentioned that Bob Hawke's accord was founded on a less adversarial approach to politics which had evolved in (convict-free) South Australia.

There is certainly something wrong with Federal politics at the moment, and not just here. We need more of what Thich Nhat Hahn calls "deep listening". Could this emerge as the world goes deeper in crisis? I think it might just be possible. In any case, despair does not help. Action to try to bend the world towards more justice is probably despair's best antidote. And, if anyone under 40 does read this, I hope you will contribute to the organisation of massive - but peaceful - protests. That is still a democratic right in Australia. Not everyone needs to get arrested.
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Colin Butler is an adjunct professor of Public Health at the University of Canberra, Australia, and co-founder of the NGOs BODHI and BODHI Australia. He is founding co-chair of Health Earth and lead author for the section on health in the forthcoming flagship Global Environmental Outlook report of the United Nations Environment Programme, called Healthy Planet, Healthy People.

The Sustainable Development Goals: leading to a "global Brexit"?

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Although the concept of sustainable development was first clearly expressed in the report Our Common Future, published three decades ago, (with earlier precedents) the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) paid little attention to sustainability. Of the ten MDGs, the seventh, which relates to environmental protection, was a spectacular failure. Hastily conceived, and almost overlooked by Mark Malloch Brown, then administrator of the United Nation Development Programme, this Goal sought to “ensure environmental sustainability.” One of its targets was to “integrate principles of sustainable development into country policies and programmes” and “reverse the loss of environmental resources.” While its other targets (improve water access and the lives of slum dwellers) are more on track, the failure of the main theme is extremely serious, threatening not only to worsen the lives of future slum dwellers, but to destroy civilization within a century.

In a welcome re-awakening of high level concerns that development must be sustainable, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) took effect in 2015. Claimed by its supporters to herald a new phase of international development, the 17 SDGs exhort all countries, rich and poor, to work towards genuinely sustainable, inclusive development. Critics contend, however, that the SDGs demonstrate profound cognitive dissonance, and provide a façade behind which global injustice will continue, and where “eco-social” determinants of universal human wellbeing will deteriorate.

The SDGs, in fact, are riddled with cognitive dissonance. Their reliance on conventionally defined economic "growth" is a fatal flaw. They remind me of the false promises that globalisation would bring health and prosperity for all. For example, SDG 8 endorses rapid economic growth, including at least 7% per annum in the least developed countries. But economic growth is not, as far as I can tell, defined to include externalities, negative and positive. Can this be achieved without undermining the natural environment, and thus undermining human development?

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to me are a fantasy, conjoured by elites living safe within the global fortress, in order to reassure themselves of their own morality and compassion, and to reassure the poor that all will be well. (Not that the poor are likely to have ever heard of the SDGs). 

The problem with living inside a fortress (rather than the kind of world the SDGs imagine, and which, to be fair, many of its promoters work for) is that, eventually, the walls crumble. Well before that point, mentality changes within the fortress, as people think more and more of defence rather than assistance; other people become threats rather than potential friends. This is certainly the case in Australia and the US, as support for migration falters. 

A fairer world is actually safer, happier, less fearful, and healthier. But how do we make it fairer? The SDGs need a path to be partly realised, as well as a less utopian framing, which would make them more credible. Such a path is barely sketched. It cannot be achieved in an intensifying fortress world. It requires more academic honesty about limits to growth, and its implications, including for freedom.

Could the arc of the universe bend toward justice?

Somehow, in this dark night, we have to find some light. Martin Luther King is said to have said "the arc of the universe bends toward justice” (mentioned in this video). (This phrase is attributed to abolitionist Theodore Parker, writing in 1853.) One glimmer of hope I have is the knowledge and increasing realisation that globalisation and neoliberalism have failed.

While a reformed, moderated form of economics and power distribution currently seems unlikely to emerge, I doubt this would have arisen in a US administration led by Hilary Clinton. Were I a US citizen, I would have voted for Bernie Sanders - but neither the power elite nor the people in the rustbucket states were ready for that (though this article claims Sanders would have defeated Trump in these states. It also shows a tweet by Trump where he seems to indicate he regarded Sanders as a more formidable opponent).

--> Perhaps four years of Trump's erratic behaviour will erode his support, even in the rusty states, away from the US coast. Perhaps Senator Elizabeth Warren (who seems to have some characteristics of Sanders) will then be elected. Perhaps Marine Le Pen's influence will wane and Angela Merkel will hang on.
Both the UK and Germany show evidence of understanding that poor eco-social determinants underpin the growing refugee crisis. Germany is acting through the UN institutions. Britain, however, seems to be acting more via its own intervention. Both approaches have a place (and China's too) - but it is also essential that the US play a better role. This will not happen with the US government under President Trump. The big US aid groups such as the Gates and Clinton Foundations are also neoliberal; perhaps the backlash  against globalisation will cause them to reconsider. Let us hope!
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About the author: Adjunct Professor Colin Butler is co-founder of two development-promoting NGOs, each of which promote old fashioned strategies for development such as health care and education. In 2014 he became the first Australian IPCC contributor to be arrested for climate disobedience.

Regional overload, planetary health and population displacement

On the same day that President Trump was inaugurated, the BMJ blog published a version of this as "Regional overload and the consequences it has for health".

This is a rather bland title, but at least they kept "regional overload" in the title. It was originally called "Regional overload, planetary health and population displacement". I had submitted it as an opinion piece. It got reviewed, and I hoped they would then publish it in their journal. It increasingly looks as if the BMJ thought it was too controversial, which is a pity. Some dialogue with the anonymous reviewer is here.

The version in the BMJ blog is very short - there was a 600 word limit. I'm slowly adding links.

I'll also gradually annotate this, in bold red.

Almost 1% of the world population, mostly children, is forcibly displaced (including 11.7 million Syrians), an increase of over 50% from 2011. [1]  

This should be regarded as one of the biggest public health problems in the world, as well as a humanitarian and a security problem. However, violence and health, especially state violence and health, has long been on the periphery of public health. Many doctors are uncomfortable about mixing politics with public health, however, public health and social medicine are inextricably political.

Here I propose that the public health catastrophe in Syria be conceptualized as a canary (or sentinel) case of “regional overload,” relevant to the emerging public health sub-specialty of planetary health. [2,3,4].

Planetary health has been defined as "the health of the human civilisation and the state of the natural systems on which it depends. I have published the central ideas in this essay many times before, starting in 1991, but not in a high impact journal for several years.

However, it is only recently that I thought of the term "regional overload", which I first used in a paper now under review for several months for Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, and then in a book chapter, also still under review, co-written with Dr Kerryn Higgs. Kerryn, like Ian Dunlop, is an Australian member of the Club of Rome. She is the author of "Collision Course: Endless Growth on a Finite Planet", reviewed here by Ian Lowe. The chapter is called "Health, population, limits and the decline of nature", for the Sage Handbook of Nature.

I submitted a longer version of the blog published in the BMJ to the Lancet. It was rejected without review, but the forthcoming journal Lancet Planetary Health expressed interest in publishing a longer version, but only if I pay US$5,000. This is more than I can afford, though I am sympathetic to the dilemmas of making academic publishing viable; eg see "Predatory publishers in science" and "A call for publishers to declare their conflicts of interest" in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, in 2007.”

In 1990, Maurice King warned, in a prominent article in the health literature, of “demographic entrapment.” [5]

I first met Maurice in London, in early 1990, when I was studying for a diploma in tropical medicine and hygiene, and he was working on this paper. I had known of Maurice's foundational work in primary health care since being advised to read his edited book “Medical Care in Developing Countries", which I still recall buying, second hand, near the Newcastle (NSW) railway station, in 1984. I took it with me when I first went to Africa, in 1985.

Maurice and I got on so well in 1990 (Maurice was born in the late 1920s, just before my father) that soon after I visited him and his family, in Leeds. I stayed overnight with them - and again, in 1994). I remember him talking of the hopes and fears he had for his paper. These fears were well-founded, as Maurice soon found himself vilified. My first paper in the Lancet, in 1994, in part defended Maurice concerning these attacks. I wrote, in part:

"Verkuyl did not claim that contraception alone will solve Third World problems, any more than King(4) proposed the denial of medical care to children in developing countries as a means of avoiding closure of the demographic trap."

At that stage I was bemused by the fact that King's critics had not only not given him the benefit of the doubt, but had not even read it carefully. His character and intent were attacked by people who seemed to have no idea of his very large contribution, sustained over decades, to improving health in developing countries.

Soon after, the leading epidemiologist Tony McMichael wrote of “planetary overload.” [6] 

Tony, who was my most important teacher and mentor, from 1993 until his death in 2014, published a book by this tile in the same year that I first met him. It was influential in public health circles.

Both concepts are related to Malthusian thought, and thus to the theory of evolution, which accepts, as fundamental, competition for finite resources, often between co-operating groups. [3,7] 

It has long been fashionable to ridicule Malthus, yet the theory of evolution remains widely accepted. Each of the two main scientists (Darwin and Wallace) who developed this theory acknowledged their debt to Malthus. Malthus is ridiculed for ideological reasons, not that different to the reason the BMJ appear to have declined to publish this (it would be nice if I am wrong about this!)

Demographic entrapment is argued to occur in extreme cases when population growth outpaces that of development, triggering population “checks” including from conflict, famine, epidemics, and out-migration. [5] Examples include in Ireland (mid-19^th century), Rwanda (1994), and, arguably South Sudan and Syria today. [6]

My paper in the Lancet in 1994 was published in the same month as the Rwandan genocide, a 

chilling coincidence which has strengthened my interest in that part of Africa, and these demographic factors in general.

Annotations to be continued, when I find time.

Planetary overload posits that the human impact on Earth is non-sustainable. [3,7] Planetary overload is unlikely to be homogenous; some regions will be overloaded before others. Plausible contemporary examples of regional overload include Yemen, the Sahel and Bangladesh; here I focus on Syria, given the magnitude of its current situation.

Two key papers have reviewed substantial evidence to conclude that climate change has aggravated the recent Syrian drought, unprecedented in severity, and, in turn, this contributed to food price shocks, rapid internal migration, and ultimately its civil war and population displacement crisis. [8,9] Analysts in support of the link between environmental stressors and conflict stress violence emerges in a “milieu” whose elements in Syria include rivalry, grievance, inequality and outside interference. Importantly, this is not “environmental determinism,” as some critics have asserted. Instead, climate change acts as a “threat multiplier” of conflict. [3,10]

The total fertility rate in Syria before the war was falling, but far above replacement. [2] High Syrian population growth reduced the “demographic dividend,” which helps to promote economic and human development in low-income settings with high population growth. A consequence of Syria’s high fertility rate was growing youth unemployment, reported as 48% in 2011, a five-fold increase from 2000. [2] Large numbers of young, underemployed, under-fulfilled men (“youth bulges”) often accompany high population growth, and have long been linked to violence. The need for economic growth to reduce Syrian poverty, accelerated depletion of groundwater, another key resource. [8,9]

The Planetary Health Commission argued that many health gains are achieved by eroding Earth’s natural systems that provide essential services “on which human civilisation depends”. It suggested that if populations attain health by exploiting the environment unsustainably then this is likely to be at the expense of other populations, now or in the future. [4]

Although humans have always modified nature, today, too many humans are feasting on the ecological underpinnings of global and planetary health. Those with ample “feed” thrive, but at an increased cost to others, including many of the Syrian population, whether killed, living in fear, or displaced.

I have argued that the population displacement from Syria can be conceptualised as a form of regional overload, in turn related to planetary health. But not all causes of regional overload are from overconsumption by the rich. Conditions in Syria, much of the Sahel, Burundi and elsewhere will be greatly improved by education, human rights, slower population growth, and greater scientific acknowledgement of these imperatives.

The problems besetting planetary health are formidable. Scientists and medical practitioners cannot, themselves, alter human destiny, yet have a duty of care to be as accurate and dispassionate as possible. A proper diagnosis may yet enable the remedies which can alleviate much future human suffering.

Colin Butler is an adjunct professor of Public Health at the University of Canberra, Australia, and co-founder of the NGOs BODHI and BODHI Australia. He is founding co-chair of Health Earth and lead author for the section on health in the forthcoming flagship Global Environmental Outlook report of the United Nations Environment Programme, called Healthy Planet, Healthy People.

Not commissioned, Peer reviewed.

References: 

1. UNHCR. Global Trends Report. Forced Displacement in 2015: UNHCR 2016.
2. Taleb ZB, Bahelah R, Fouad FM, et al. Syria: health in a country undergoing tragic transition. International Journal of Public Health 2015;60(1):63-72. doi: 10.1007/s00038-014-0586-2
3. Butler CD. Planetary overload, limits to growth and health. Current Environmental Health Reports 2016;3(4):360-69.
4. Whitmee S, Haines A, Beyrer C, et al. Safeguarding human health in the Anthropocene epoch: report of The Rockefeller Foundation–Lancet Commission on planetary health. The Lancet 2015;386:1973–2028. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(15)60901-1
5. King M. Health is a sustainable state. The Lancet 1990;336:664-67.
6. McMichael AJ. Planetary Overload. Global Environmental Change and the Health of the Human Species. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1993.
7. Butler CD. Human carrying capacity and human health. Public Library of Science Medicine 2004;1(3):192-94.
8. Gleick P. Water, drought, climate change, and conflict in Syria. Weather, Climate, and Society 2014;6:331–40. doi: 10.1175/wcas-d-13-00059.1
9. Kelley CP, Mohtadi S, Cane MA, et al. Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA) 2015;112(11):3241-46. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1421533112
10. Schleussner C-F, Donges JF, Donner RV, et al. Armed-conflict risks enhanced by climate-related disasters in ethnically fractionalized countries. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2016;113(33):9216-21. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1601611113