This Changes Everything (77 page)

Quotations
that come from interviews conducted by the author or her researchers (usually Rajiv Sicora or Alexandra Tempus) or from the documentary film accompanying this book (directed by Avi Lewis) appear in the endnotes as “personal interview.”

If there is a source for a footnote, it is cited in the numbered endnote most closely following the asterisk in the text; such sources are marked FOOTNOTE.

Web
addresses for news articles available online are not included because of the transient nature of Web architecture. In cases where a document is available exclusively online, the home page where it appears is cited, not the longer URL for the specific text, once again because links change frequently.

All dollar amounts in the book are in U.S. currency.

EPIGRAPHS

1
. “Rebecca Tarbotton,” Rainforest
Action Network,
http://ran.org/becky
.

2
. Kim Stanley Robinson, “Earth: Under Repair Forever,”
OnEarth
, December 3, 2012.

INTRODUCTION

1
. Mario Malina et al., “What We Know: The Reality, Risks and Response to Climate Change,” AAAS Climate Science Panel, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2014, pp. 15–16.

2
. “Sarah Palin Rolls Out at Rolling Thunder Motorcycle Ride,” Fox News,
May 29, 2011.

3
. Martin Weil, “US Airways Plane Gets Stuck in ‘Soft Spot’ on Pavement at Reagan National,”
Washington Post
, July 7, 2012; “Why Is My Flight Cancelled?” Imgur,
http://imgur.com
.

4
. Weil, “US Airways Plane Gets Stuck in ‘Soft Spot’ on Pavement at Reagan National.”

5
. For important sociological and psychological perspectives on the everyday denial of climate change, see: Kari Marie
Norgaard,
Living in Denial: Climate Change, Emotions, and Everyday Life
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011); Rosemary Randall, “Loss and Climate Change: The Cost of Parallel Narratives,”
Ecopsychology
1.3 (2009): 118-29; and the essays in Sally Weintrobe, ed.,
Engaging with Climate Change
(East Sussex: Routledge, 2013).

6
. Angélica Navarro Llanos, “Climate Debt: The Basis of a Fair and Effective
Solution to Climate
Change,” presentation to Technical Briefing on Historical Responsibility, Ad Hoc Working Group on Long-term Cooperative Action, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, Bonn, Germany, June 4, 2009.

7
. “British PM Warns of Worsening Floods Crisis,” Agence France-Presse, February 11, 2014.

8
. “Exponential Growth in Weather Risk Management Contracts,” Weather Risk
Management Association, press release, June 2006; Eric Reguly, “No Climate-Change Deniers to Be Found in the Reinsurance Business,”
Globe and Mail
, November 28, 2013.

9
. “Investor CDP 2012 Information Request: Raytheon Company,” Carbon Disclosure Project, 2012,
https://www.cdp.net
.

10
. “Who Will Control the Green Economy?” ETC Group, 2011, p. 23; Chris Glorioso, “Sandy Funds Went to NJ Town
with Little Storm Damage,” NBC News, February 2, 2014.

11
. “ ‘Get It Done: Urging Climate Justice, Youth Delegate Anjali Appadurai Mic-Checks UN Summit,” Democracy Now!, December 9, 2011.

12
. Corinne Le Quéré et al., “Global Carbon Budget 2013,”
Earth System Science Data
6 (2014): 253; “Greenhouse Gases Rise by Record Amount,” Associated Press, November 3, 2011.

13
. Sally Weintrobe, “The Difficult
Problem of Anxiety in Thinking About Climate Change,” in
Engaging with Climate Change
, ed. Sally Weintrobe (East Sussex: Routledge, 2013). 43.

14
. For critical scholarship on the history and politics of the 2 degree target, see: Joni Seager, “Death By Degrees: Taking a Feminist Hard Look at the 2 Degrees Climate Policy,”
Kvinder, Køn og Foraksning
(Denmark) 18 (2009): 11-22; Christopher Shaw,
“Choosing a Dangerous Limit for Climate Change: An Investigation into How the Decision Making Process Is Constructed in Public Discourses,” PhD thesis, University of Sussex, 2011, available at
http://www.notargets.org.uk
; Christopher Shaw, “Choosing a Dangerous Limit for Climate Change: Public Representations of the Decision Making Process,”
Global Environmental Change
23 (2013): 563-571. COPENHAGEN:
Copenhagen Accord, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, December 18, 2009, p. 1; “DEATH SENTENCE”: “CJN CMP Agenda Item 5 Intervention,” speech delivered by activist Sylvia Wachira at Copenhagen climate conference, Climate Justice Now!, December 10, 2009,
http://www.climate-justice-now.org
; GREENLAND: J. E. Box et al., “Greenland Ice Sheet,” Arctic Report Card 2012, National
Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, January 14, 2013; ACIDIFICATION: Bärbel Hönisch et al., “The Geological Record of Ocean Acidification,”
Science
335 (2012): 1058-1063; Adrienne J. Sutton et al., “Natural Variability and Anthropogenic Change in Equatorial Pacific Surface Ocean
p
CO
₂
and pH,”
Global Biogeochemical Cycles
28 (2014): 131-145; PERILOUS IMPACTS: James Hansen et al., “Assessing
‘Dangerous Climate Change’: Required Reduction of Carbon Emissions to Protect Young People, Future Generations and Nature,”
PLOS ONE
8 (2013): e81648.

15
. “Climate Change Report Warns of Dramatically Warmer World This Century,” World Bank, press release, November 18, 2012.

16
. 
Ibid.
; Hans Joachim Schellnhuber et al., “Turn Down the Heat: Why a 4°C Warmer World Must Be Avoided,” A Report for
the World Bank by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics, November 2012, p. xviii; Kevin Anderson, “Climate Change Going Beyond Dangerous—Brutal Numbers and Tenuous Hope,”
Development Dialogue
no. 61, September 2012, p. 29.

17
. For general overviews synthesizing scientific research on the likely impacts of a 4 degrees C world, refer to Schellnhuber et al., “Turn
Down the Heat,” as well as the special theme issue entitled “Four Degrees and Beyond: the Potential for a Global Temperature Increase of Four Degrees and its Implications,” compiled and edited by Mark G. New et al.,
Philosophical Transactions of The Royal Society A
369 (2011): 1-241. In 2013, the World Bank released a follow up report exploring the regional impacts of a 4 degree temperature rise,
with a focus on Africa and Asia: Hans Joachim Schellnhuber et al., “Turn Down the Heat: Climate Extremes, Regional Impacts, and the Case for Resilience,” A Report for the World Bank by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research and Climate Analytics, June 2013. Even for the most emissions-intensive scenarios that could lead to 4 degrees of warming, IPCC global sea level rise projections
are lower than those cited here, but many experts regard them as too conservative. For
examples of research informing this passage, see Schellnhuber et al., “Turn Down the Heat,” p. 29; Anders Levermann et al., “The Multimillennial Sea-Level Commitment of Global Warming,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
110 (2013): 13748; Benjamin P. Horton et al., “Expert Assessment of Sea-level
Rise by AD 2100 and AD 2300,”
Quaternary Science Reviews
84 (2014): 1-6. For more information about the vulnerability of small island nations and coastal areas of Latin America and South and Southeast Asia to sea level rise under “business as usual” and other emissions scenarios (including more optimistic ones), refer to the Working Group II contributions to the 4th and 5th Assessment Reports
of the IPCC, both available at
http://www.ipcc.ch
See chapters 10, 13, and 16 of M.L. Perry et al., ed.,
Climate Change 2007: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, Contribution of Working Group II to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); and chapters 24, 27, and 29 of V.R. Barros et al., ed.,
Climate Change
2014: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability, Part B: Regional Aspects, Contribution of Working Group II to the Fifth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). On California and the northeastern United States, see Matthew Heberger et al., “Potential Impacts of Increased Coastal Flooding in California Due to Sea-Level Rise,”
Climatic Change
109, Issue 1 Supplement (2011): 229-249; and Asbury H. Sallenger Jr., Kara S. Doran, and Peter A. Howd, “Hotspot of Accelerated Sea-Level Rise on the Atlantic Coast of North America,”
Nature Climate Change
2 (2012): 884-888. For a recent analysis of major cities that may be particularly threatened by sea level rise, see: Stephane Hallegatte et al., “Future Flood Losses in Major
Coastal Cities,”
Nature Climate Change
3 (2013): 802-806.

18
. For an overview of regional temperature increases associated with a global rise of 4 degrees C or more, see: M.G. Sanderson, D.L. Hemming and R.A. Betts, “Regional Temperature and Precipitation Changes Under High-end ( ≥4°C) Global Warming,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A
369 (2011): 85-98. See also: “Climate Stabilization
Targets: Emissions, Concentrations, and Impacts over Decades to Millennia,” Committee on Stabilization Targets for Atmospheric Greenhouse Gas Concentrations, National Research Council, National Academy of Sciences, 2011, p. 31; Schellnhuber et al., “Turn Down the Heat,” pp. 37–41. TENS OF THOUSANDS: Jean-Marie Robine et al., “Death Toll Exceeded 70,000 in Europe During the Summer of 2003,”
Comptes Rendus Biologies
331 (2008): 171-78; CROP LOSSES: “Climate Stabilization Targets,” National Academy of Sciences, pp. 160–63.

19
. ICE-FREE ARCTIC:
Ibid
., pp. 132–36. VEGETATION: Andrew D. Friend et al., “Carbon Residence Time Dominates Uncertainty in Terrestrial Vegetation Responses to Future Climate and Atmospheric CO
₂
,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
111 (2014): 3280;
“4 Degree Temperature Rise Will End Vegetation ‘Carbon Sink,’ ” University of Cambridge, press release, December 17, 2013; WEST ANTARCTICA STUDY: E. Rignot et al., “Widespread, Rapid Grounding Line Retreat of Pine Island, Thwaites, Smith, and Kohler Glaciers, West Antarctica, from 1992 to 2011,”
Geophysical Research Letters
41 (2014): 3502–3509; “APPEARS UNSTOPPABLE”: “West Antarctic Glacier Loss
Appears Unstoppable,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA, press release, May 12, 2014; “DISPLACE MILLIONS” AND STILL TIME: Eric Rignot, “Global Warming: It’s a Point of No Return in West Antarctica. What Happens Next?”
Observer
, May 17, 2014.

20
. “World Energy Outlook 2011,” International Energy Agency, 2011, p. 40; “World Energy Outlook 2011” (video), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace,
November 28, 2011; Timothy M. Lenton et al., “Tipping Elements in the Earth’s Climate System,”
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
105 (2008): 1788; “Too Late for Two Degrees?” Low Carbon Economy Index 2012, PricewaterhouseCoopers, November 2012, p. 1.

21
. Lonnie G. Thompson, “Climate Change: The Evidence and Our Options,”
The Behavior Analyst
33 (2010): 153.

22
. In the U.S., Britain,
and Canada, terms for “victory gardens” and “victory bonds” differed between countries and from World War I to World War II; other terms used included “war gardens” and “defense bonds,” for example. Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska,
Austerity in Britain: Rationing, Controls, and Consumption, 1939–1955
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 54–55; Amy
Bentley,
Eating for Victory: Food Rationing and
the Politics of Domesticity
(Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998), 138–39; Franklin D. Roosevelt, “Statement Encouraging Victory Gardens,” April 1, 1944, The American Presidency Project,
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu
.

23
. Pablo Solón, “Climate Change: We Need to Guarantee the Right to Not Migrate,” Focus on the Global South,
http://focusweb.org
.

24
. Glen P. Peters et al., “Rapid Growth
in CO
₂
Emissions After the 2008–2009 Global Financial Crisis,”
Nature Climate Change
2 (2012): 2.

25
. Spencer Weart,
The Discovery of Global Warming
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), 149.

26
. Corrine Le Quéré et al., “Trends in the Sources and Sinks of Carbon Dioxide,”
Nature Geoscience
2 (2009): 831, as cited in Andreas Malm, “China as Chimney of the World: The Fossil Capital
Hypothesis,”
Organization & Environment
25 (2012): 146; Glen P. Peters et al., “Rapid Growth in CO
₂
Emissions After the 2008–2009 Global Financial Crisis,”
Nature Climate Change
2 (2012): 2.

27
. Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows, “Beyond ‘Dangerous’ Climate Change: Emission Scenarios for a New World,”
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A
369 (2011): 35; Kevin Anderson, “EU 2030 Decarbonisation
Targets and UK Carbon Budgets: Why So Little Science?” Kevin Anderson.info, June 14, 2013,
http://kevinanderson.info
.

28
. Gro Harlem Brundtland et al., “Environment and Development Challenges: The Imperative to Act,” joint paper by the Blue Planet Prize laureates, The Asahi Glass Foundation, February 20, 2012, p. 7.

29
. “World Energy Outlook 2011,” IEA, p. 40; James Herron, “Energy Agency Warns
Governments to Take Action Against Global Warming,”
Wall Street Journal
, November 10, 2011.

30
. Personal interview with Henry Red Cloud, June 22, 2011.

31
. Gary Stix, “Effective World Government Will Be Needed to Stave Off Climate Catastrophe,”
Scientific American
, March 17, 2012.