Squeeze them till they squeak

Myth has it that if you put a frog in boiling water it will jump out (on the cruel presumption that you put the frog in the water alive) but if the water is colder when you toss the frog in and you turn the temperature up gradually the frog will boil without noticing.

There’s a hilarious myth-busting article on this in the Atlantic from 2006, which also discusses climate change and the scientific consensus on it. It’s hilarious in its outrage at the boiling frog myth and in its embrace of Al Gore’s instant hit An Inconvenient Truth.

What’s not hilarious is that while the myth is a myth, the metaphorical boiling frog situation widely used for various situations when people are being gradually pressured into doing something they are not exactly ready or willing to do is very true. And the water is getting hotter.

Last month, three interesting reports came out — one from a climate change think tank that has pompously named itself the Energy Transitions Commission, complete with a dozen commissioners, and another from climate change star IPCC. Both scream alarm. Both aim to scare. And both claim there is only one way to avoid catastrophe: speed up the transition, however much it may cost.

The third report was authored by a very different entity — Britain’s largest asset manager Legal & General Investment Management. Unlike the other two reports, this one aims to strike fear more subtly, focusing on the costs of failing to act on climate change.

According to the first report, by that think tank, the sped-up transition would cost around $3.5 trillion annually or a total $110 trillion by 2050. But, as the deputy director of the ETC told Recharge, “there are no big fundamental barriers to the energy transition.”

I’m sure we are all happy to hear this. Imagine the horror if there were big fundamental barriers to the transition such as, I don’t know, high battery storage costs or low efficiency factors in wind and solar power generation.

It’s great there aren’t any. We just need to find another $2.4 trillion annually for every year until 2050 after transition investment hit — and topped — $1 trillion last year.

Find this money we must, too, because things have gone so bad with our emissions that “Only swift, dramatic, and sustained emissions cuts will be enough to meet the world’s climate goals,” according to the MIT Technology Review, which reported on the IPCC report.

Such action is warranted by the fact that either we cut emissions by half over the next seven years or we watch global average temperature rise by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius from preindustrial levels — an image no doubt horrific enough to erase any thought of the 2-degree scenario, which was also on the table until about a couple of years ago. (It still is but we don’t talk about that to not hurt morale)

As to what this swift, dramatic emission-cutting action would actually be, feel free to enjoy the summary of the IPCC report or see the nice summary by MIT Technology Review.

Basically, it comes down to first, more wind and solar; two, lower methane emissions from oil and gas production; three, more efficient energy use; and four, protection of carbon sinks.

If you are starting to feel a little suffocated, I can relate. I am also fairly certain the idea of climate lockdowns will resurface before long as think tanks and governments continue to turn up the heat, pun unintended.

“We are walking when we should be sprinting,” as the IPCC’s chairman, Hoesung Lee said at the presentation of the latest report. It’s a now-or-never situation for humankind and for the planet. Unless we act now and we act big, and we give it everything we’ve got, we’re doomed. And the temperature keeps getting higher. The one in the pot, that it.

The language of climate alarmism has been evolving quickly of late, reflecting increasingly alarmist media language in general. The explanation of the latter is simple enough: fear sells. It sells better than sex. Fear is the ultimate click bait. And the media are using this generously. It’s a battlefield out there in people’s news feeds.

But while bluntly alarmist language sells news and reports, and makes people on social media feel alive as they argue with other people why we are doomed unless we do away with industrial farming and not let another drop of oil out of the ground, it’s the L&I report that might set off mental alarms. Because it sounds authoritative and lying with authority is a lot more dangerous than lying with emotions.

The L&I report, for instance, informs us that “what should have been a market-led, managed and orderly transition to net zero over a quarter of a century, instead risks being compressed into a chaotic and disorderly transition where the bulk of the decarbonisation effort needs to take place in little more than a decade.”

Troubling, right? The authors then go on to soberly warn that “the financial consequences of this sort of shock would be significant, with as much as 10% of global GDP estimated to be at risk by 20502 . The delayed transition will almost certainly lead to a sustained building of inflationary pressures which may start to materialise just as the current wave of energy price led inflation starts to recede.”

The reason this report is so dangerous is that it assumes beyond the shadow of a doubt that the transition as currently planned and hoped for will happen. Not may happen. Not should happen. Not even must happen. It will happen and the only question is how.

The good news: “The total economic cost when annualized over the next quarter century would be so low you would need a magnifying glass to see it,” according to L&I head of climate solutions.

It’s really a matter of register. While the Antionio Guterreses of the climate crusade world drown their audiences in threats for divine-like retribution for our emission sins, the asset manager folk can be a much more convincing force for a doomed transition by almost completely avoiding alarmist language. That’s low-register. The propaganda equivalent of, I don’t know, mediocre pop music.

While alarmist preachers turn up the fear heat faster and faster, risking the premature death of climate change beliefs, the financial industry climate doomers simply tell you, politely, how much it will cost to not invest your everything, mind, body, and wallet, in the transition. They’re the Bachs, Beethovens and Tchaikovskys of the propaganda machine.

Instead of boiling frogs, those transition crusaders are squeezing us like a small fluffy animal. You know how children sometimes enjoy their small fluffy animals so much they feel like squeezing them? I know I did. Still do, but that’s not this kind of post. It’s the same with the climate crusaders. Only they’re not children and their motives are a lot more materialistic than a child’s.