This Changes Everything (11 page)

It’s rational for right-wing ideologues to deny climate change—to recognize it would be intellectually cataclysmic. But what is stopping so many who reject that ideology from demanding the kinds of powerful measures that the Heartlanders fear? Why aren’t liberal and left political parties around the world calling for an end to extreme energy
extraction and full transitions to renewal and regeneration-based economies? Why isn’t climate change at the center of the progressive agenda, the burning basis for demanding a robust and reinvented commons, rather than an often for
gotten footnote? Why do liberal media outlets still segregate stories about melting ice sheets in their “green” sections—next to viral videos of cuddly animals making
unlikely friendships? Why are so many of us not doing the things that must be done to keep warming below catastrophic levels?

The short answer is that the deniers won, at least the first round. Not the battle over climate science—their influence in that arena is already waning. But the deniers, and the ideological movement from which they sprang, won the battle over which values would govern
our societies. Their vision—that greed should guide us, that, to quote the late economist Milton Friedman, “the major error” was “to believe that it is possible to do good with other people’s money”—has dramatically remade our world over the last four decades, decimating virtually every countervailing power.
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Extreme free-market ideology was locked in through the harsh policy conditions attached
to much-needed loans issued by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. It shaped the model of export-led development that dotted the developing world with free trade zones. It was written into countless trade agreements. Not everyone was convinced by these arguments, not by a long shot. But too many tacitly accepted Thatcher’s dictum that there is no alternative.

Meanwhile, denigration
of collective action and veneration of the profit motive have infiltrated virtually every government on the planet, every major media organization, every university, our very souls. As that American Geophysical Union survey indicated, somewhere inside each of us dwells a belief in their central lie—that we are nothing but selfish, greedy, self-gratification machines. And if we are that, then
what hope do we have of taking on the grand, often difficult, collective work that will be required to save ourselves in time? This, without a doubt, is neoliberalism’s single most damaging legacy: the realization of its bleak vision has isolated us enough from one another that it became possible to convince us that we are not just incapable of self-preservation but fundamentally
not worth saving
.

Yet at the same time, many of us know the mirror that has been held up to us is profoundly distorted—that we are, in fact, a mess of contradictions, with our desire for self-gratification coexisting with deep compassion, our greed with empathy and solidarity. And as Rebecca Solnit vividly documents in her 2009 book,
A Paradise Built in Hell
, it is precisely when human
itarian crises hit that
these other, neglected values leap to the fore, whether it’s the incredible displays of international generosity after a massive earthquake or tsunami, or the way New Yorkers gathered to spontaneously meet and comfort one another after the 9/11 attacks. Just as the Heartlanders fear, the existential crisis that is climate change has the power to release these suppressed values on a global and sustained
scale, to provide us with a chance for a mass jailbreak from the house that their ideology built—a structure already showing significant cracks and fissures.
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But before that can happen, we need to take a much closer look at precisely how the legacy of market fundamentalism, and the much deeper cultural narratives on which it rests, still block critical, life-saving climate action on virtually every front. The green movement’s mantra that climate is not about left and right but “right and wrong” has gotten us nowhere. The traditional political left
does not hold all the answers to this crisis. But there can be no question that the contemporary political right, and the triumphant ideology it represents, is a formidable barrier to progress.

As the next four chapters will show, the real reason we are failing to rise to the climate moment is because the actions required directly challenge our reigning economic paradigm (deregulated capitalism
combined with public austerity), the stories on which Western cultures are founded (that we stand apart from nature and can outsmart its limits), as well as many of the activities that form our identities and define our communities (shopping, living virtually, shopping some more). They also spell extinction for the richest and most powerful industry the world has ever known—the oil and gas industry,
which cannot survive in anything like its current form if we humans are to avoid our own extinction. In short, we have not responded to this challenge because we are locked in—politically, physically, and culturally. Only when we identify these chains do we have a chance of breaking free.

I
. Much of this confidence is based on fantasy. Though the ultra-rich may be able to buy a measure of protection
for a while, even the wealthiest nation on the planet can fall apart in the face of a major shock (as Hurricane Katrina showed). And no society, no matter how well financed or managed, can truly adapt to massive natural disasters when one comes fast and furious on the heels of the last.

II
. In early 2011, Joe Read, a newly elected representative to the Montana state legislature, made history
by introducing the first bill to officially declare climate change a good thing. “Global warming is beneficial to the welfare and business climate of Montana,” the bill stated. Read explained, “Even if it does get warmer, we’re going to have a longer growing season. It could be very beneficial to the state of Montana. Why are we going to stop this progress?” The bill did not pass.

III
. In a telling
development, the American Freedom Alliance hosted its own conference challenging the reality of climate change in Los Angeles in June 2011. Part of the Alliance’s stated mission is “to identify threats to Western civilization,” and it is known for its fearmongering about “the Islamic penetration of Europe” and similar supposed designs in the U.S. Meanwhile, one of the books on sale at the Heartland
conference was
Going Green
by Chris Skates, a fictional “thriller” in which climate activists plot with Islamic terrorists to destroy America’s electricity grid.

“We always had hope that next year was gonna be better. And even this year was gonna be better. We learned slowly, and what didn’t work, you tried it harder the next time. You didn’t try something different. You just tried harder, the same thing that didn’t work.”

—Wayne Lewis, Dust Bowl survivor, 2012
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“As leaders we have
a responsibility to fully articulate the risks our people face. If the politics are not favorable to speaking truthfully, then clearly we must devote more energy to changing the politics.”

—Marlene Moses, Ambassador to the United Nations for Nauru, 2012
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During the globalization wars of the late nineties and early 2000s, I used to follow international trade law extremely closely. But I admit
that as I immersed myself in the science and politics of climate change, I stopped paying attention to trade. I told myself that there was only so much abstract, bureaucratic jargon one person could be expected to absorb, and my quota was filled up with emission mitigation targets, feed-in tariffs, and the United Nations’ alphabet soup of UNFCCCs and IPCCs.

Then about three years ago, I started
to notice that green energy programs—the strong ones that are needed to lower global emissions fast—were increasingly being challenged under international trade agreements, particularly the World Trade Organization’s rules.

In 2010, for instance, the United States challenged one of China’s wind
power subsidy programs on the grounds that it contained supports for local industry considered protectionist.
China, in turn, filed a complaint in 2012 targeting various renewable energy programs in the European Union, singling out Italy and Greece (it has also threatened to bring a dispute against renewables subsidies in five U.S. states). Washington, meanwhile, has launched a World Trade Organization attack on India’s ambitious Jawaharlal Nehru National Solar Mission, a large, multiphase solar
support program—once again, for containing provisions, designed to encourage local industry, considered to be protectionist. As a result, brand-new factories that should be producing solar panels are now contemplating closure. Not to be outdone, India has signaled that it might take aim at state renewable energy programs in the U.S.
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This is distinctly bizarre behavior to exhibit in the midst
of a climate emergency. Especially because these same governments can be counted upon to angrily denounce each other at United Nations climate summits for not doing enough to cut emissions, blaming their own failures on the other’s lack of commitment. Yet rather than compete for the best, most effective supports for green energy, the biggest emitters in the world are rushing to the WTO to knock down
each other’s windmills.

As one case piled on top of another, it seemed to me that it was time to delve back into the trade wars. And as I explored the issue further, I discovered that one of the key, precedent-setting cases pitting “free trade” against climate action was playing out in Ontario, Canada—my own backyard. Suddenly, trade law became a whole lot less abstract.

Sitting at the long
conference table overlooking his factory floor, Paolo Maccario, an elegant Italian businessman who moved to Toronto to open a solar factory, has the proud, resigned air of a captain determined to go down with his ship. He makes an effort to put on a brave face: True, “the Ontario market is pretty much gone,” but the company will find new customers for its solar panels, he tells me, maybe in Europe,
or the United States. Their products are good, best in class, and “the cost is competitive enough.”
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As chief operating officer of Silfab Ontario, Maccario has to say these
things; anything else would be a breach of fiduciary duty. But he is also frank that the last few months have been almost absurdly bad. Old customers are convinced the factory is going to close down and won’t be able to honor
the twenty-five-year warranty on the solar panels they purchased. New customers aren’t placing orders over the same concerns, opting to go with Chinese companies that are selling less efficient but cheaper modules.
^I
Suppliers who had been planning to set up their own factories nearby to cut down on transport costs are now keeping their distance.

Even his own board back home in Italy (Silfab is
owned by Silfab SpA, whose founder was a pioneer in Italian photovoltaic manufacturing) seemed to be jumping ship. The parent company had committed to invest around $7 million on a custom piece of machinery that, according to Maccario, would have created solar modules that “have an efficiency that has not been reached by any manufacturer in China and in the Western world.” But at the last minute,
and after all the research and design for the machinery was complete, “It was decided that we cannot spend the money to bring the technology here,” Maccario explains. We put on hair nets and lab coats and he shows me an empty rectangle in the middle of the factory floor, the space set aside for equipment that is not coming.

What are the chances he would choose to open this factory here today,
given all that has happened, I ask. At this, all attempts at PR drop away and he replies, “I would say below zero if such a number exists.”

With his finely tailored wool suit and trim salt and pepper goatee, Maccario looks as if he should be sipping espresso in a piazza in Turin, working for Fiat perhaps—not stuck in this concrete box with an unopened yogurt on his desk, across the street from
Imperial Chilled Juice and down the road from the ass end of an AMC multiplex.

And yet in 2010, the decision to locate the company’s first North American solar manufacturing plant in Ontario seemed to make a great deal of sense. Back then the mood in Ontario’s renewable sector was positively giddy. One year earlier, at the peak of the Wall Street financial crisis, the
province had unveiled its
climate action plan, the Green Energy and Green Economy Act, centered on a bold pledge to wean Canada’s most populous province completely off coal by 2014.
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The plan was lauded by energy experts around the world, particularly in the U.S., where such ambition was lagging. On a visit to Toronto, Al Gore offered his highest blessing, proclaiming it “widely recognized now as the single best green
energy [program] on the North American continent.” And Michael T. Eckhart, then president of the American Council on Renewable Energy, described it as “the most comprehensive renewable energy policy entered anywhere around the world.”
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The legislation created what is known as a feed-in tariff program, which allowed renewable energy providers to sell power back to the grid, offering long-term
contracts with guaranteed premium prices. It also contained a variety of provisions to ensure that the developers weren’t all big players but that local municipalities, co-ops, and Indigenous communities could all get into the renewable energy market and benefit from those premium rates. The catch was that in order for most of the energy providers to qualify, they had to ensure that a minimum percentage
of their workforces and materials were local to Ontario. And the province set the bar high: solar energy developers had to source at least 40–60 percent of their content from within the province.
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The provision was an attempt to revive Ontario’s moribund manufacturing sector, which had long been centered on the Big Three U.S. automakers (Chrysler, Ford, and General Motors) and was, at that time,
reeling from the near bankruptcy of General Motors and Chrysler. Compounding these challenges was the fact that Alberta’s tar sands oil boom had sent the Canadian dollar soaring, making Ontario a much costlier place to build anything.
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