Influential climate denialA massive human rights violation?

Richard ParncuttUniversity of Graz, Austria

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Denialism and Human Rights22 & 23 January 2015Maastricht, NL

Influential climate denial: A massive human rights violation?Richard Parncutt, Centre for Systematic Musicology*, University of Graz

Abstract submission, Denialism and Human Rights, Maastricht, 22-23 January 2015Oreskes and Conway (2010) showed how distinguished scientists can be persuaded by a combination of fame, political attitude (e.g. belief in self-regulation of global markets), and financial reward to actively deny global scientific consensus on crucial issues such as the link between DDT and ecosystem damage, tobacco and cancer, the ozone hole and CFCs, forest dieback and acid rain, or global warming and carbon dioxide. All such topics involve human rights. Cigarettes cause five million deaths globally per year - more than AIDS and malaria. Smokers are informed of the consequences, but tobacco corporations profit from their addiction. The current death rate associated with poverty (hunger and preventable/curable disease - not including tobacco-related) is about ten million per year. By 2100, global warming could double this death rate, indirectly causing ten million additional deaths per year, by reducing food and fresh water supplies (species extinction, desertification, ocean acidification) and causing wars over diminishing resources and mass migration from areas rendered uninhabitable by rising seas.If the size of a major human rights violation is proportional to the number of people who die as a consequence, climate denial that significantly slows progress toward global solutions such as the Kyoto accord may be the biggest human rights violation of our generation. Our legal systems (e.g. the International Criminal Court) should be accepting the scientific consensus on climate change and responding to this new category of crime, to defend the rights of future generations in developing countries.Cited literature: Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway (2010). Mercants of doubt: How a handful of scientists obscured the truth on issues from tobacco smoke to global warming. London: Bloomsbury.*Systematic Musicology includes the physics, neuroscience, computer science, psychology, sociology, politics, economics and philosophy of music. This presentation will be similarly interdisciplinary, combining insights from several parent disciplines of systematic musicology.

Apologies and disclaimers

I’m from physics, psychology, musicCross-disciplinary insights?

I totally oppose the death penaltyDon’t believe what you read in the internet

Je n’accuse pasI am defending the rights of the “bottom billion”: people living in poverty in developing countries

Mea culpaMy emissions from countless international flights may already have indirectly killed a future person

(Climate) Denial (or Trivialisation)

By that I mainly mean:• Denial of global expert consensus• Motivated mainly by financial self-interest

I also mean:• Denial of responsibility toward less fortunate; empathy

This kind of denial is characterised by:• Repeatedly demanding and rejecting “proof” • Failure to understand scientific procedures (that only

international expert communities can evaluate evidence)

Climate denial

by non-experts or pseudo-experts

= denial of the need to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions (GHG)

An example from Forbes magazine, 27 Sep 2012:

What DARA really is• Independent international organization

• Assesses the impact of humanitarian aid

• Recommends changes in policies and practices

• Home of Humanitarian Response Index, Climate Vulnerability Monitor, Risk Reduction Initiative

• Reports to UN agencies, Red Cross, EC

• Funded by UNICEF, the World Food Programme, United Nations Development Programme

The George C. Marshall InstituteAn early example of climate denial

1984: Founded by prominent physicists: Frederick Seitz, Robert Jastrow, William Nierenberg

1980s: Supported Reagan’s “Star Wars”

1990s: Mainly attacked climate science

Climate denial budget: $1bn/year?“conservative billionaires, often working through secretive funding networks”

“About 3/4 of the funds were routed through trusts or other mechanisms that assure anonymity to donors”

“They hire people to write books (and) go on TV and say climate change is not real.”

Source: “Conservative groups spend up to $1bn a year to fight action on climate change” (Guardian, 20 Dec 2013)

Influential climate denial

DefinitionPublicly presented arguments that significantly slow progress toward sustainable global reduction in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions

AssumptionGuilt depends mainly on foreseeable HR consequences

HR = human rights

Do climate deniers really slow progress toward global reduction

of GHG emissions?

Example:“ExxonMobil has a long history of funding climate denial, and has given in total around $23m to organisations aiming to undermine climate science. … In 1997 the Global Climate Information Project ran an advertising campaign in the USA against the Kyoto agreement, reported by the Los Angeles Times to have cost $13m.”

Source: Campaign Against Climate Change: “The funders of climate disinformation”. campaigncc.org, 21.1.2015

Restrictions on freedom of speech• Libel, slander, obscenity, incitement to crime...• A HR is limited if exercising it violates another HR

UDHR Article 29 (2): “In the exercise of his (sic.) rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.”

Should we limit freedom of speech on climate issues?

Yes, if it seriously violates HRs for future generations in developing countries:The right to life UDHR Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.

The right to freedom from hunger, preventable disease, curable disease, conflict…UDHR Article 25 (1): Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his (sic.) family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his (sic.) control.

Annual global death rate due to poverty

Hunger 3 000 000* AIDS 1 500 000Tuberculosis 1 300 000Pneumonia 1 100 000Malaria 600 000 Diarrhea 800 000NTDs** 500 000Cholera 300 000Childbirth 250 000Measles 100 000Meningitis 100 000

Multiple causes of death • e.g. poor nutrition is linked

to diarrhea, malaria, pneumonia, measles

The numbers partially overlap

We cannot simply addBut the list is incomplete! Total deaths due to poverty:

≈ 10 million/year*children under 5 years only!**neglected tropic diseases

Annual global death rate due to poverty

A result of the failure of rich countries to spend 0.7% of GDP on official development assistance for the past 20 years,* even though:• They promised to do so repeatedly • It is reasonably possible (S, N, DK, LU, UK have achieved it)

*Source: Jeffrey Sachs (2005). The End of Poverty.

Death rate attributable to global warmingA very rough first approximation

Additional deaths attributable to GW• Population increases in many developing countries• Reduced agricultural yields in warmer countries

due to drought and desertification, unpredictable ecological interactions following species extinctions

• Less fish (ocean acidification, pollution)• Mass migration due to rising sea levels in some

countries, e.g. Bangladesh• Migration of disease and limited ability to respond• Storms: More frequent and intense• Wars over limited resources• Poverty (inability to respond or adapt)

Example: In 1983-85, a minor drought in Ethiopia triggered a massive famine

How serious is it?A journalist’s view

“This is terrifying. The decades ahead will witness our planet become progressively uninhabitable for hundreds of millions of people because of either drought or floods. The weather will become ever more volatile. Ocean currents will be disturbed and dwindle. There will be mass movements of people trying to escape the consequences; no country will be untouched.”

Will Hutton, “Our planet needs us to fight for its survival”, Guardian Weekly, 27.9.2013

Clive HamiltonRequiem for a Species (2010)

• It’s already too late - even if global emissions growth stopped by 2020 and emissions stopped by 2070

• Earth’s climate will enter a chaotic period lasting thousands of years.

• There will be far fewer humans, if we survive at all.

The probability of existential risks to humanity

Informal poll among academic experts “How likely will humans be extinct by 2100?” median result 19% (Sandberg & Bostrom 2008)

Stern Review on Economics of Climate Change Assumed an extinction probability of 0.1%/year

9.5% over 100 years (Stern, 2006)

A common logical fallacy:“Risk is hard to quantify, therefore it is negligible”

Risk assessment theorySize of threat

=Anticipated damage

xProbability of it happening

The probability of global warming killing one billion this century is roughly 10%.

That is comparable with 100m really dying!

The biggest catastrophe everThe biggest challenge ever

The death toll from global warmingA tentative semi-quantitative model – a first approximation

1000 tons carbon one future death!

Example: Australian coal130m tons/year exported from Newcastle NSW? ≈ 100m tons pure carbon burned/year≈ 100 000 future deaths caused/year

Example: Long jet flightsModern jumbo carries 200 000 liters jet fuel 2.5 kg CO2 per litre 500 tons of CO2 per long flight

= 130 tons carbon per flightMultiply by 3 to get total equivalent GW effect* 400 tons effective of carbon per long flight 3 long flights kill one future person

*IPCC (1999). Aviation and the global atmosphere

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Global warming and the Holocaust

Holocaust comparisons: distasteful, not taboo• “Never again!” includes not forgetting the Holocaust

Comparison with future, not past/present• “Never again!” is about preventing such events

Similarities• Those causing it are well informed but indifferent• Enormous death toll

The Holocaust comparison problem is dicussed in:Maier, C. S. (2009). The unmasterable past: History, Holocaust, and German national identity. Harvard University Press.

Laws against denial

Laws against denial/trivialisation of genocide• Stakeholders: genocide survivors and their families • Consequences: insult, racism

Future laws against influential climate denial?• Stakeholders: current and future poor in developing

countries (low political power; role of altruism)• Consequences: hundreds of millions of deaths

Why criminalise Holocaust denial but not climate denial?

Pro: The Holocaust certainly happened. Global warming is only probable. But: dangerous global warming causing at least tens of millions of deaths is now virtually certain

Contra: Prevention is better than cureFuture deaths can be prevented. The dead cannot be brought back to life.

The duty to rescue

Person A can be liable for not rescuing person B in peril if:• Person A contributed to the hazardous situation• The rescue attempt is not very dangerous

Application to global warming:• Global poor are currently “in peril”• Rich countries are (kind of) trying to rescue them• Climate deniers are impeding rescue efforts • Deniers are well informed of the consequences

The trolley problem in ethics

Scenario 2. You can stop the train by pushing a fat man in front of it, killing him.

Scenario 3. Like 2, but the fat man is the one who tied the 5 to the track.

Scenario 4. One healthy person has organs that are needed by 5 others. Without them they will die.

Scenario 1. A rail trolley is heading toward 5 people. They are tied to the track and will die unless you switch the trolley to another track, where 1 person is tied.

The trolley problem: Summary

Should we kill 1 to save 5? It depends:1. Yes, if the death of the 1 is unintended.2. No, if there is intention to harm the 1.3. Yes, if the 1 had risked the lives of the 5. 4. No, if the 5 were already at risk of dying.

Human rights implications

Genocide of 6m≈ allowing 30m to die

if they could reasonably have been saved

Psychic numbingreduced sensitivity to the value of human life

as the number of deaths increases

In HR, the value of a human life is absolute • but we perceive it relatively!• and the ratios we perceive are too small!

Example: 100 versus 1000 deaths• Objectively, 1000 deaths are 900 more than 100• Subjectively, 1000 deaths are 2…3 times worse than 100*

*David Featherstone et al. (1997). Insensitivity to the value of human life: A study of psychophysical numbing. Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, 14, 283-300.

The two cultures

• Scientists are in denial about the role of humanities

• Humanities scholars are in denial about the role of science

Legal research is dominated by humanities Legal researchers should consider scientific

approaches!E.g. approximate quantification of legal concepts

in crime and punishment?

Criminalise influential climate denial?

If likely outcome is millions of future deaths• A big, controversial, interdisciplinary research project• Many experts must participate• Judges must recognize expertise

A “show trial” would:• Improve public & political awareness• Slow or stop climate denial

Is criminal law the right legal tool?

International Criminal CourtProsecutes individuals for international crimes• genocide• crimes against humanity• war crimesAdd: failure to rescue millions?

Does the ICC need clearer prioritisation?Start with the biggest crimes! Depends on:(i) Approx. number of deaths caused (ii) Whether or not active, deliberate, informed…

The case against influential climate deniers

A complex chain of causality

1. Climate denial literature2. Opinions of politicians, the public3. Failure of global climate talks4. Failure to reduce emissions 5. Global warming6. Increase in preventable death rate

Is the legal difficulty counterbalanced by the enormous consequences?