In the first part of his new book, Peter Taylor scrutinises the scientific research that underpins concern about global warming and finds that it is unconvincing. This extract, taken from the second part of the book, looks at the political dynamics that have promoted global warming to the top of the international agenda. As a life-long environmental campaigner Peter is well placed to consider the role that activist organisations have played in this process.
Many thanks to Peter for allowing Harmless Sky to use this material. Click on the image to find out more about Chill.
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In addition to the world of science institutions, governmental influence and media bias, there has also been a growing and powerful environmental lobby pressing for an unequivocal commitment from the scientists. NGOs well appreciated that governments will not move when there is major uncertainty and a lobby has evolved out of a coalition of interests on the part of environmental campaigners and those industries standing to gain from a shift in policy. Naturally, there is also an opposing lobby from oil, gas and coal interests. The nuclear lobby has remained somewhat hidden, but has benefited enormously from the climate issue. Some campaign groups have allied directly to renewable energy interests, especially wind turbine manufacturers and solar collectors, whereas others have remained independent of commercial interests but used the projections of technology and capability to underpin their campaigns.
In addition to these straightforward political alliances, there has been a growing corporatisation of the environmental sector. NGOS have grown from a few small back-street offices into a multi-million dollar international organisation – in the case of Greenpeace, with a fleet of ships, modern office suites, staff and pension funds. Such organisation requires a steady income stream and does not have the option, as for example at the end of a successful ocean pollution campaign to simply pack up and go home. When an organisation’s ethos is essentially combative, it seeks out problems and threats.
Which is fine, as long as there really are serious threats that cannot be dealt with by trusted government. But in my view, as a seasoned campaigner, the game changed significantly after Rio in 1992. The ‘enemy’ metamorphosed from being the dumpers and polluters ably supported by a science- industry alliance (including the modellers), to a more subtle menace. As a result of the shift to the Precautionary Principle, industry and the regulators began to move in another direction – Clean Development Mechanisms were set in motion and large amounts of money shifted toward preventative strategies. This shift required a different type of environmental organisation, and although the campaign groups made significant efforts to provide ‘solutions’, they were still ruled by the old ethos of campaign and combat.
The problem with combat is that there always has to be a threat, an enemy, something to be fought against. And such was the demand that campaigners became professionals, with books and manuals drawing from the expertise of the advertising industry and the experience of political lobby groups. Image and simplicity, together with achievable targets were essential tools of the trade. A corporate organisation answers to the shareholders, but an environmental pressure group answers to subscribers who need to feel something is being achieved, otherwise they remove their subscription.
This dynamic is not talked of openly and any suggestion that it has played a role in the climate debate is met with hostility. But to discuss this issue is not to impugn the integrity of any organisation, it is to draw attention to how a powerful and unacknowledged force can distort judgement. As in the case of Mark Lynas, if you have published a best-selling book on global warming and achieved some status as an environmental correspondent, you are not motivated to seek out those scientists who disagree with the IPCC orthodoxy. Likewise, if you are a large multi-national campaigning organisation with a decade long commitment to fighting climate change, you are going to listen more to the views of Mark Lynas and Al Gore, than to Dr Akasofu, Professor Christy and Professor Lindzen. And it helps that all of the world’s science institutions also (now) speak with one voice.
Thus, the environmental lobbyists become defenders of the orthodoxy, ably supported by all liberal-thinking environmentally conscious laypeople and journalists. And that leaves only the conservative, business-as-usual, economic optimists and free marketers to espouse the cause of the climate model’s dissenters!
It is with great sadness that I now witness the level of collusion operating within environmental NGOs. They had finally begun making an impression on the international process of environmental protection in the lead-up to the Rio Summit in 1992 and helped produce the ground-breaking Agenda for the 21st Century that supported connectivity and inter-dependence – a true ecology that included all aspects of human well-being and in particular, steps toward a global equity. Given the competitive nature of the world economy and the massive scale of inequity in wealth and economic power, these steps were never going to be easy, but I at least felt that environmental NGOs would be at the forefront of thinking.
Though this movement started out with great integrity of purpose, something has been lost. NGOs have embraced science to a greater extent but in the climate debate at least, have come to rely upon and uncritically accept the authority of scientific institutions. In no other area have NGOs been so uncritical – there is a long history of former critical analysis – on the risks of low level radiation; nuclear reactor hazards and waste disposal options; toxic discharges to the marine environment; incineration of toxic wastes at sea; the impact of acid rain; the deployment of GMO technology – in all these areas science institutions were part of the problem rather than the solution.
It was precisely the collusion between government, corporations and the science establishment that motivated NGOs to develop critical science expertise. The institutional science community has proven all too willing to accommodate government and business agendas and suppress or distort scientific assessments (there are many examples from pesticide studies, pharmaceutical trials, impact of GMOs, nuclear accident hazard analysis, the modelling of ocean dumping of nuclear waste and discharges of toxic chemicals such as PCBs). It was critical science, funded by the NGOs and supported by a very few progressive governments, that led to the crucial changes in the ‘burden of proof’ that led to the ‘precautionary principle’ being written in to international conventions.
I played a role in that work – and had the privilege to work closely with some of the best environmental scientists of our day. I hope therefore that the assessment I now make of the current situation will cause some reflection among my former allies. I have always held that we should work with the cutting edge of scientific truth – that whatever the short-term goals or campaign advantages, truth would ultimately serve our cause.
I am concerned now that – a ‘corporate creep’ has taken place whereby environmental NGOs have begun to behave like the large corporations we hitherto held to account. It is not hard to understand why this might happen – NGOs have grown in size and now command considerable resources. This requires a whole suite of corporate skills – from professional personnel management to accounting and investment, the handling of press, media, publicity and public relations, as well as lobbying and strategic development of policies. This requires specialist training and hence recruitment of staff from business schools and organisational realms not known for being well-attuned to the ethos of sustainability, nor for a commitment to scientific truths. Such specialists have to be represented at many levels of decision-making within the organisation – and it would be an act of naivety or denial to pretend this creeping effect cannot or does not now influence policy. This is not to say that anyone recruited from professional management and business circles lacks integrity, or feeling for the natural world, or concern for the overall well-being of humanity, rather it is a question of how these concerns are transformed into action and whether professional training can create blind-spots, particularly with regard to the ‘group-mind’ that evolves within corporate entities.
Corporate ‘creep’ and the culture of targets
I would argue that this corporate creep affects the kind of targets chosen and the simplicity of the messages put out by the campaigners. Targets are selected that are visibly achievable and because they convey a simple message that can have effect in the ‘market place’ of parliaments and government policy. Complex issues are avoided.
One such complexity can be illustrated by renewable energy developments – almost all of which require industrial development in the countryside. These locations affect rural communities, national recreational resources, and are often in wildlife rich and remote places. At present, almost all such operations are ‘developer-led’ – that is, the industrial developer selects the technology and the site. No alternatives or strategic assessments are available to the communities that must assess the proposal. This situation has changed little from the 1970s when the drive for more nuclear stations, chemical installations and motorways all benefited from the lack of strategic planning and the piecemeal approach to the great disadvantage of communities that bore the impact. In this age, environmentalists should be embracing a paradigm that supports and empowers local communities, not the same old developer-biased ‘trade-off’ that operated in the past – yet this would require campaigning for planning reforms and the empowerment of local communities – not an easy sell to the subscribers, nor welcomed by government agencies with whom modern NGOs do a lot of business.
In the latest proposals for ‘planning reform’ in the wake of the UK government’s most recent White Paper on energy policy there are disturbing announcements of the curtailment of individual and local democratic rights to both question government policy and, most disturbingly the appropriateness of the sites chosen by developers. Thus, the apparent urgency of tackling climate change is used as an argument to give developers greater power to select sites and technologies that reflect their reduced costs and profitability rather than considering the impact upon local communities.
Linguistic truth
The linguistic manipulation of ‘climate change’ has been an astute campaign-move for any organisation dependent upon public concern and support or government funding for research or implementation of solutions, because clearly, anything the climate now does can be interpreted as human induced. The issue of how much of the change is caused by greenhouse gas emissions hardly ever arises in any of the media treatments, nor in the alerts from the campaign groups. In the IPCC’s fourth assessment report, the authors even note that whereas in the Third report ‘climate change’ meant human-induced, it should now be taken to mean both human induced and natural. – the note, however, was barely visible.
As in all wars at whatever level of reality- truth is the first casualty – and we are now encouraged to join the ‘war on climate change’. It is not that I believe scientific truth can be totally pure, objective and unaffected by political worlds – but that it should strive to be so. If that aim is not there, then it begins to sink into the world of propaganda and persuasion, a mere tool in a wholly other agenda.
A polarised political environment now surrounds modern climate science – with even fellow scientists referring to their critics as sceptics rather than critical scientists engaged in one of the most fundamental aspects of the scientific method – that of questioning and testing prior assumptions. In this political world, it is easy to forget that global warming and ‘climate change’ are inventions of science – such is the level of propaganda and the implicit meaning of terms that many people assume the issue is self-evident. It was a scientific group that set the alarm and it is science that is charged with identifying the changes, predicting the future, and advising on what to do. This places scientists in a position of some power and influence.
There is virtually no debate now within the NGOs on the social and environmental sustainability issues raised by the expansion of renewable energy supplies. The WWF, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace have a website, for example, that urges factions who support wind turbines to write letters to the planning departments in areas where turbine clusters are proposed. The site does not discriminate and assumes all proposals should be supported. There is no comparable website urging community consciousness, responsibility and choice, and no data on the downside of applications in wild places – even sites where their organisations have balked at supporting proposals, such as the massive development that threatened the Hebrides.
There is an absence of the balance required by the principle of sustainability. This is an area in which I have first hand experience. I wrote the first political assessment of renewable energy strategies with Ian Sanderson way back in 1980 – for the Group of Independents in the European Parliament. With my fellow scientists and analysts we gave educative seminars to the European Commission – who at that time were still wedded to an expanding nuclear future. In the 1990s I wrote much of the Countryside Commission’s input to government’s consultations on energy policy, and until recently sat on the joint Department of Trade and Industry – Countryside Agency ‘Community Renewables Initiative’. The latter was a hard slog – to get the DTI to appreciate that a myriad small-scale initiatives would lead to greater sustainability than would a smaller number of mega-technologies such as turbine ‘farms’, tidal barrages and carbon capture from power stations.
It was readily apparent in those corridors of power that the industrial progressives had little comprehension of the 1970s ‘ethos’ of community, scale and appropriate technology. Nor had they any working knowledge of the ‘clean production’ and ‘waste minimisation’ methodologies developed in the 1980s and implemented, eventually in the 1990s. These were the models that worked: auditing and awareness, community responsibility (e.g. river-catchment based ‘identity’ for collective action to reduce wastewater, discharges and resource use) – all under what could be called ‘good housekeeping’. When the UN set up its Clean Production offices in Paris, the lead staff were female – and many of us reflected that the male ego was ill-suited to the task – for men there was not enough glamour, not enough ‘power’, not enough kudos for whatever ambitions they might have other than to clean up the mess.
Whilst our efforts to clean up rivers, estuaries, and coastal discharges have proven successful over time – and nuclear expansion held at bay, the renewable energy front seems to have lost all sense of balance and purpose. I have heard representatives of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and the Centre for Alternative Technology argue that the division of local communities, the over-riding of local democracy, the degradation of wildland and beauty – all of these should be sacrificed in the cause of renewable energy targets. When pressed, reasoning for this sacrifice is that we must save the ‘Bangladeshis’ of this world – those more vulnerable to climate change than ourselves, and then ultimately, to prevent ‘dangerous climate change’ – meaning the prospect of a runaway global warming driven by our excessive emissions of carbon dioxide.
Thus, in the name of ‘preventing climate change’ it now possible for large corporations to move in on Iceland’s pristine river-wilderness to harness the ‘renewable’ power for aluminium production with metalllic ores being shipped from Australia, or hydro-schemes pressing into SE Asia’s remote and highly biodiverse cloud-forest uplands, which also are refuge to indigenous tribal peoples. In Britain, the Hebrides, islands of ethereal beauty and home to endangered and recovering populations of sea eagles, are being mooted as the ‘renewable energy’ power house of Europe with 700 MW of wind turbines – far in excess of local needs and requiring long distance transmission to Scotland’s industrial belt. Similarly, the Greek island of Skyros, fabled for its wild beauty, indigenous ponies, sea eagles and Eleanora’s falcons, is threatened with a 300 MW turbine installation.
Further, the immediate imposition of ‘targets’ for biofuels in transport, will hasten the conversion of natural forest areas into agricultural production and compete with land for food (and raise food prices). The NGOs have belatedly awoken to the consequences of the policies they have advocated, and are now taking out full page press adverts saying biofuel development should take place only with appropriate safeguards. Unfortunately, the supply policies are in place well in advance of such safeguards. There is little chance that governments will impose ecological standards on biofuel production and every likelihood that multi-national energy and agribusiness corporations will seek out the cheapest and most profitable sources of production – threatening wildlife-rich marginal land and forests in South America, Eastern Europe and South East Asia.
There are two aspects of this situation that cause me increasing concern – the first is that environmentalists are now using the same language and reasoning of the ‘developers’ of the past. Beauty, feeling, continuity and community are dismissed as ‘subjective’ emotional responses: locality must be sacrificed for the wider good, if not as a national target, then as a global responsibility. And the second is that they have begun acting as corporate players – seeking alliances and moving into markets that generate cash flow for their organisation.
On the question of language, we have already witnessed the agenda of sustainability become hi-jacked by the development lobby – ‘sustainable economic growth’ had been added to the criteria by which any development was to be evaluated, despite the fact that no one had ever defined what that meant or come up with any examples of recent economic growth that were not ultimately dependent upon the exploitation of a cheap and finite source of fossil fuel. Such developers were able to use ‘sustainable economic growth’ as a trump card over all other aspects of sustainability.
The modern corporate NGO does not specifically ally itself to sustainable economic growth, but neither does it pursue rigorously a critique of economic growth in relation to consumption. Instead, the large corporate NGO, mindful of its cash flow and client base, now tailors its campaigns to sets of targets that exist within the current political economy.
This is illustrated most clearly in the uncritical support for onshore wind-farms. The targets and context are accepted and criticism, if it exists at all, is restricted to the choice only of siting. It is as if all of the lessons of the past two decades have been ignored – if the driving force of development and the absence of strategic planning are not tackled, no amount of critique on specific proposals will prevent the inevitable trade-off mentality inherent in corporate and governmental thinking – for example, as is now evident with the proposals for large-scale wind-farms on Lewis in the Hebrides.
In the latter case, the RSPB is now in active opposition to the Hebridean development, only to find its voice competing with powerful corporations offering local economic progress and in the name of global equity and national targets. The RSPB had hitherto rather uncritically supported wind power and even allied itself through corporate finance to renewable energy companies.
How far can corporate NGOs now pursue a strategic critique? Especially when, as in some cases, these groups have forged active business links with wind developers. The ‘green’ bank Triodos now holds substantial investments in wind energy and backs the developer Ecotricity who applied to build a large turbine in the Mendip Hills of England. This was opposed by the local community and voted against by the democratic planning authority on the grounds of damage to local quality of life – only to be appealed by the developer. The local community’s values were over-ruled by central government (such decisions being strongly influenced by the attitude of the DTI) in the name of government policy and national targets. It would appear that local democracy and community feeling – an essential element of sustainability, can be sacrificed in the name of an apparently ecological policy.
The point here is not just the corporate creep of attitudes to community and development, but that other aspect of business mentality – the focus upon goals and targets. These are arbitrary figures set to a timetable whose purpose has less to do with a rational assessment of the environmental dynamic (such as timescale of causes and effects, lead-times of technology and business cycles of capital renewal) – than with the need of the corporate entity (and governments work in this paradigm) to have purpose and goals by which to assess itself – this applies in particular to any corporation that has growth targets, but is applicable to all such entities that must have some measure of their performance.
This leads me to the second of my concerns. Environmentalists are not only adopting the language of corporate power, they have become players in that corporate world. Organisations have grown enormously in the last fifteen years such that they have large central, in some cases, international offices and staff – all of which require professional management. These professionals are recruited either from schools of corporate management or from the ranks of experienced practitioners. The organisation develops a corporate identity and presence. It is not uncommon for Chief Executive Officers to have little grass-roots connection to the environmental movement, little scientific knowledge, little feeling for community development, but a lot of experience in large corporate management. The problem is that the very size of the organisation and its formidable management tasks demands this professionalism. For the more overtly campaigning groups, the CEO may be parachuted in from the ranks of professional lobbyists, political advisors or public relations rather than coming up from the ranks of the organisation itself.
I am concerned that such corporate entities develop their own internal agenda that has as much to do with their own position in the ‘market place’ or the ‘political world’ as it does with the issues they were set up to tackle. The danger is that these internal process begin to direct the thinking and mentality of the organisation and it loses contact with its origins. It does not, however, lose sight of its ‘mission’ because in the position in which it operates that would obviously diminish its power – but it now occupies the dangerous political and corporate world where appearances are often as important as substance. It is a world of marketing and image. And it is in this new world that the ‘mission’ is redeveloped, packaged and marketed.
Thus, ‘climate change’ becomes a simple slogan – apparently meaningful, but in scientific terms quite vacuous. By absorbing the complexity of anthropogenic causation and its less than certain signal into a single phrase that now implies all such change is man-made, the propagandist pre-empts debate on uncertainties. The mission is taken further when any such critics are branded as ‘deniers’ of climate change itself – an apparently obvious reality, on a par with ‘flat-earthers’.
I see little sign that these processes are recognised or understood. On the contrary, NGOs are in knee-jerk reaction to any hint of collusion or criticism of their targets and general approach.
Deception: hidden agendas and marketing strategy
In this century we have become much more aware of how the political world has embraced shallow image and marketing to the point of blatant deceit. Many countries, including my own, have embarked upon a world-wide game of power and control of resources under a smokescreen of ‘the war on terror’ with such infamously doctored analyses as the ‘dodgy dossier’ on weapons of mass destruction.
This one single and unstoppable act of collusion with an obvious corporate agenda related to oil, armaments and reconstruction contracts has sequestered vast resources that could have been used effectively to secure clean water, sustainable communities, protected forests and wildlife across the globe. The ‘war on terror’ that ensued is widely criticised for creating more terror, as if its protagonists would not have been aware of this propensity at the outset. They were indeed so advised and chose not to listen and to fabricate and doctor evidence in a global drama that was disturbing in terms of how few intelligent politicians, civil servants and scientists raised issues concerning the truth. It was a classic example of ‘the emperor’s new clothes’, but with the further step that there were plenty of voices crying ‘he is naked’ only to be ignored by the masses of courtiers.
The ‘war on’ mentality
One could conduct similar analyses of collusion and intention in the ‘war on drugs’ and the ‘war on poverty’. In the former case, despite massive investment in military-style operations involving navy, airforce, army and police around the world, drug supply increases and prices fall. And a lot of uniforms, guns, helicopters and consultant contracts get sold and suitably conservative voting people empowered by the uniformed salaries. In the war on poverty, policies are pursued on the basis of a ‘trickle-down’ theory where the rich get richer – but poverty increases even in those countries where the overall wealth is still growing. The ‘war on climate change’ should be seen in the context of all ‘war on’ mentalities – the paradigm is military, and the military mind is not the best solution to any of these problems.
Firstly, the military mode of thought focuses on combat to deal with a symptom not a cause. It creates for itself unquestioned and simplistic goals and targets relating to control. It does not question the context. In particular, it does not question the nature of its alliance with the corporate business world that benefits from its ‘solutions’ to whatever problem it is directed, whether in relation to security, armaments or reconstruction. Such vested interests have no obvious commitment to outcomes that would lessen their business, but the military mind accepts the goals that are in large part derived from business agendas. Governments thus readily adopt the military mentality with its language of war and simple targets and excuse themselves any deeper analysis of causes and any real commitment to solutions. The real agendas – which relate to economic power, security and control, are not addressed.
There is now no question in my mind that environmental organisations have engaged in this global war game of markets, interests, power and propaganda with some considerable purpose, but not a lot of awareness or experience. They have sought to ally with other players – both government, inter-governmental and corporate. What I do not see is any kind of self-reflection and analysis regarding their role, their goals and their successes. What is far more visible is their adoption of corporate goals, the mentality of the market place and most disturbingly, the uncritical acceptance of political and economic realities. I call this collusion where others might use the term conspiracy. It is not a conspiracy because that implies conscious intent and manipulation. It is collusion from self-interest, lack of self-awareness, ignorance and naivety – and this is not to gainsay a genuine caring and desire to change the world in a better way.
Good analogy with the military. We are seeing a re-run of the Vietnam general: this time he’s saying:
“We had to destroy the environment to save the environment”.
Peter Taylor
Congratulations on an excellent article.
You have covered the gradual shift of the environmental movement from its original highly focused, if somewhat naïve, beginnings to its current status as a multi-billion dollar big business.
As an “environmentalist”, in the true sense of the world, yourself, it must be a bit sad to witness this shift from “great integrity of purpose” to “big business as usual”.
The collusion of interest between the powerful of this world is inevitable where extremely large sums of (taxpayer) money and a high level of political power are involved. As a result, the AGW behemoth is rolling with an enormous amount of momentum today.
Amazingly it has survived almost a decade of cooling temperatures, picking up the new brand name “climate change” (instead of “global warming”)in the process.
But for all its obvious political and economic strength today, the current AGW craze has one Achilles heel, as you have pointed out in your book.
The premise that AGW, caused principally by human CO2 emissions, is a potentially serious threat is based upon scientific support, which is at best conjectural and at worst flawed.
You comment:
We have the situation today that a UN committee, the IPCC, which is by definition a political body, has taken on the mantle of the “gold standard” scientific organization dealing with our planet’s climate. Yet the very brief of IPCC is to investigate the anthropogenic factors affecting our climate and the potential impact of these on our society.
No anthropogenic impact = no need for the IPCC to continue to exist.
Major negative anthropogenic impact = need for more funding to support IPCC efforts to further define these negative impacts and possible mitigating solutions.
This has opened the door for “agenda driven science”.
While we may not be at the level of “blatant deceit”, to which you allude, on the scientific side, we certainly see that IPCC has put together a very “slick” marketing report (Summary for Policymakers, 2007). Even worse, this report has ignored, rejected or refused to accept as correct those scientific studies and conclusions, which do not support the AGW premise, at the same time eagerly embracing questionable studies, which do (ex: Mann hockey stick and “spaghetti-copies”, which are still cited by IPCC, even though they have been comprehensively discredited as flawed).
A cursory check of the IPCC 2007 SPM report shows that the questionable claims in this report cover past climate trends, sea level rise, Greenland and Antarctic ice sheet mass balances, northern hemisphere snow cover, Arctic temperature increase compared to earlier periods, unprecedented 20th century warmth, relative importance of natural forcing factors including solar forcing, changes in cloud cover and ocean circulation patterns, discrepancies in measured temperatures between the surface and the troposphere, spurious upward distortion of the surface record due to the UHI effect, increased intense tropical storm activity and increased droughts, floods, heat waves and other extreme weather events.
In effect, this covers pretty much all of the claims of the IPCC relating to past and current climate.
The low-end projections for the future appear reasonable, but are not alarming. The high-end projections are alarming but unreasonable (and supported neither by the physics of the greenhouse theory, the radiative forcing values stated by IPCC nor the physically observed data on water vapor and cloud feedback, but simply by computer simulations). The projections concerning severe weather events are unfounded. The computer model “scenarios” include cases in which the projected atmospheric level of CO2 is higher than it would be if all optimistically estimated fossil fuel reserves on our planet were combusted.
I personally believe that only by exposing the Achilles heel of the AGW premise so that the public becomes aware of the shakiness of the scientific foundation supporting it can the AGW behemoth (and the government power grab plus corporate bonanza) be stopped in its tracks.
Your book has done a good job of highlighting the inherent weakness of the scientific support for the AGW premise.
I hope it ends up on the “best seller” lists of the English-speaking world (and then gets translated into German, French, Spanish and eventually Hindi and Mardarin).
Max
This fascinating chapter by Peter Taylor, and the comment by Manacker, raise a subject little discussed in the AGW debate: the vocabulary and debating style of many warmists, and the extraordinary prevalence of Marketspeak borrowed from the world of commerce.
The most frequently encountered sociological analysis of the warmists is the Watermelon theory, which holds that greens are reds in disguise, frustrated lefties latching on to a pseudo-scientific theory as a replacemant for Marxism, in order to further their programme of world domination.
I’ve long felt that a more convincing theory could be found by looking at the social and educational changes which have led to the number of university educated leaping from near nothing to 30% of the population in a couple of generations. The French sociologist Emmanuel Todd has remarked on the profound inegalitarian results of this. Whereas the acquisition of universal literacy had obvious democratic and egalitarian effects, the rise of a large university educated class has the opposite effect, leading to a proportion of the population inhabiting a kind of elitist cultural ghetto, cut off from the masses. He applied this analysis to the sorry state of the Socialist Party in France, but the same kind of analysis could be applied to the Green movement and its obsession with global warming.
My generation of the newly university educated often drifted into marketing and advertising. Being overpaid and over-educated, we aped our intellectual betters by adopting the posture of the social sciences, pretending to be psychologists or social anthropologists, and developing a pseudo-science of marketing jargon to justify our existence.
The current generation of environmental activists, journalists, NGOers etc. are following the same route. The old social structures of church, trade union and political party no longer attract, and a new social structure is being constructed around science (the only solid basis remaining). The Greens’ adoption of a business model and its associate jargon is due to their cargo-cult-like belief that the jargon is responsible for the success of the model (i.e. the modern technological capitalist world) rather than being an unimportant and irritating offshoot.
Max;
Re your comment on another thread here
I think that the point that Peter Taylor makes about the eNGOs developing a simple message on climate is an important one: ‘use fossil fuels and the world gets hotter’. Anyone can understand that.
On the other hand the perfectly sensible message that you formulated:
requires a certain amount of informed consideration. You can’t just pour it into people’s consciousness, even if it is obvious to anyone who has followed the controversy carefully.
But a simplistic message is very vulnerable if ever it is exposed to scrutiny. A cooling world combined with the restraints of a global recession could just cause the eNGOs message to be called into question. And if this happens then the corporatisation of the eNGOs will surely work against them, attracting the same suspicion and disapproval that other large corporations are subject to.
Geoff – your post is very interesting – I too have felt that ‘lefties in disguise’ doesn’t give any indication of what is going on. The cultural shift you mention makes sense. I can only surmise (and await any sociological analysis), though supported by one or two encounters, that the NGOs have recruited heavily from this new cultural cohort. But I also think there is another factor operating – up until 1992, the most consistent experience of NGOs in relation to government was ‘opposition’ and being excluded from decision making. This began to change (for me personally) in 1985, and by 1992 was more widespread – for example, the then DOE brought me in to advise on research strategies for nuclear waste, and in 1990, the IMO/UN on new ways to reduce toxic waste dumping – from that time onwards, NGOs began to re-orientate toward lobbying, gaining access to committees and commissions (I would think Jonathan Porritt’s career a good example). This would not appear to be a problem in itself – but something unexpected has emerged and is exemplified by the supine nature of NGOs in relation to acceptance of AGW theory, renewable energy targets, and cap-and-trade, all of which ought to have detailed critical review and do not.
I think the answer lies in the relation of the NGOs to their support base – FOE/WWF/RSPB/Greenpeace all rely upon millions of supporters, whom they keep informed by newsletter of their campaigns (how the money is spent). There is pressure to show results, whereas in the real world, results are thin on the ground and difficult to attribute. Thus, vacuous numbers take over – a success at Copenhagen, for example, relates to targets not achievements. Targets in this game will almost certainly be missed – hence, plenty more campaigning. Those targets are not only meaningless in relation to climate, they unleash forces that destroy the very things these groups care about. But then ‘caring’ has become an inappropriate word – the supporters really care, but their leaders have lost contact with the reality on the ground (the environment).
What surprises me is that alarm bells do not ring among the supporters! Especially when FOE, for example, put out a leaflet on AGW action that quotes Tony Blair (then Prime Minister), the government’s chief science adviser, Sir David King, and the President of the Royal Society.
Since Chill was published, not a single enquiry has come from any of the environmental groups – no invitations for discussion….silence. The only thing they are capable of doing was reflected in a note to the editor of ECOS (British Association of Nature Conservationists) who regular publishes a ‘climate watch’ column by me – and it said that ecologists, when faced with the complexity of climate, had little option but to refer to authority. Perhaps this is also a trait of the new generation of environmentalists – they refer (and defer) to authority in a way that would have been unthinkable in the 1970s and early 80s.
Having finished reading Chill about 10days ago I would just like to add my own congratulations to Peter Taylor for a very thought provoking book. Do I agree with it all? No, but in principle I accept all the arguments that have been put and maybe differ only in some of the solution areas, and perhaps I’m not quite so pessimistic about the future. However an explanation for this difference maybe is that I’m not as well informed about the biosphere so I may subconsciously glossing over certain areas.
This announcement here from the Government is interesting. I have generally welcomed Nuclear Power but had a nagging doubt that perhaps the current nonsensical “anti Carbon” stance by Labour, and the foolish pact that the environmental movement have made with the government would lead to poor decisions in the name of saving the planet, and a wholesale rush to new nuclear power was one that concerned me. And here we have it, the collusion of interest’s in action only we have lost our checks and balances with the environmental movement having contributed to this decision and trapped themselves into supporting it or giving up the anti carbon stance.
So we have an absence of a careful and steady evolutionary development of our nuclear power capability, and instead will rush headlong into building 10 new power plants which will cost 5 or more times what the current estimate is as they make all the mistakes at least ten times. Meanwhile we delay filling the gap with coal that we know is “relatively safe in the wider scheme of things and based on a well understood technology. Please tell me I’m wrong.
Peter is coming from a situation of great original sympathy with the eco-movement which I do not share. Thus for example his contention that nuclear has gained from the climate wars. In theory it certainly should have because it is the sole large scale effectively CO2 free power source & should be the absolute answer to all CO2 fears. In fact very few “environmentalists” acknowledge this & indeed people like Hugh Montefiore were specicaly expelled from FoE for this heresy.
I also think he enormously underestimates the role of government empire building in this. With the collapse of centrally planned socialism most government activity has come to be seen as, at best, ineffective at enhancing national wealth. The entire intellectual underpinnings of big government have gone. The public employees have not & as in Pournelle’s Iron Law government departments come to be run by those intent on extending power rather than achieving their alleged purposes. For that the war against global warming is tailor made. It has no success or failure standards & gives unlimited room for more taxes, regulations & regulators. The enthusiasm government has shown for “global warming” is out of all proportion to the previous influence of “environmentalists”, who didn’t used to be on TV nearly as often or to get all the government grants the organisations are now dependent on. My opinion is that it is not a case of government lobbied into fighting this “war” but of government co-opting the eco movement as a front for expanding their power.
Peter said
“I am concerned now that – a ‘corporate creep’ has taken place whereby environmental NGOs have begun to behave like the large corporations we hitherto held to account.”
They have a ‘product’ to sell. Salaries to enhance. Pensions to protect. Meetings to attend. Moral authority to exert. Status to enjoy. They are important and listened to, rather than marginalised and derided.
It is difficult to see why they should give this up, especially as they are on a bandwagon and it would be impossible to derail the bandwagon other than if a major and sustained cooling ocurred.
Consequently I can’t think why your former allies would want to discuss their possible voluntary demise with you.
As I demonstrated in my political article
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/10/20/revealed-the-uk-government-strategy-for-personal-carbon-rations/#comments
the UK govt has the opportunity to change the world to their desired image AND gather ever more taxes (which they can be very pious about) AND exert more control over our lives.
What’s not to like from their viewpoint?
Consequently climate change is an immensely powerful tool they will not want to give up and the NGo’s will be happy to be carried along in the slipstream.
Tonyb
It’s all of the above plus a newly-identified thing called “Now-ism”. This is part-fallacy and part-psychological condition.
In Now-ism, things that have worked well for hundreds or thousands of years will stop working – very soon.
Things that have never worked before will start to work – soon.
Everything is horribly unstable to the point that it’s almost a booby-trap. Everything. Today is the tipping point. Or maybe tomorrow morning.
A variation is “Peak X”. This goes like this: infinite X is not possible. Therefore we are, today, at the limit of X.
The underlying belief is that there is something special about today, now, this moment. This is true in one sense because we can only act in the present tense – not the future or the past. This truth gets cascaded into everything and becomes Now-ism.
Please say if Now-ism already has another name.
I don’t know whether now-ism has another name, but it does have another defintion:
But I think that your usage is much more interesting.
During the 20th century, the time-scales that people are comfortable with when considering things like trends seems to have shrunk, often to as little as the span of a human life. Hence a couple of decades of rising temperatures are seen to have great significance and any phenomena that has not occurred for the last hundred years of so is hailed as being ‘unprecedented’.
In a precious age, the concept of eternity was almost universally understood.
On Jack’s idea of “Now-ism”: Maurizio at Omniclimate once pointed out that every technical advance in data collection identifies a problem which it is uniquely qualified to deal with. Got a big computer? Let’s invent a monster number called “average global temperature”. A satellite which can measure polar ice extent? The icecap must be on the point of disappearing.
One of the big mysteries to me is why the historians didn’t protest when Mann’s hockeystick effectively told them they were talking rubbish. Why didn’t they reply: “Sorry, but the existence of the Mediaeval warming period proves that your tree rings are bad thermometers”?
Another name for Now-ism? Everyone’s studying some language or other in this household so I can never find a dictionary, but I think “ephemeralism” exists. It means having the attention span of a mayfly.
A few historians did protest that it was rubbish. Most of them probably never heard of it because climate science isn’t their bag & nobody asked them. Most of those who had heard probably decided it was not a career enhancer to speak out – they can’t be blamed for that since researchers in the physical sciences thought the same. And finally it doesn’t really matter what people say if the media are censoring anything that doesn’t fit the party line – if this were not so the warming scam could never have got established in the first place.
We lost two important historians at crucial points as the debate was unfolding, Hubert Lamb and John Daly.
I try to point out that everything in climate terms has historic precedents, but I guess reference to the Vkings or Romans or Thomas Jefferson is not as good as a beautifully drawn and easy to understand computer model, that shows our rulers exactly what they want to see.
Tonyb
Jack Hughes (and TonyN)
I am neither a student of the English language nor a philosopher, so I can only comment on the meaning of “now-ism”.
Your definition appears to sum it up very succinctly.
First of all, it seems to be based on the certainty that we are facing a self-imposed doomsday.
It is an extremely arrogant form of anthropocentric apocalyptic thought, where it is not only “man” that stands at the center of everything, but “today’s man”.
Yesterday’s man is dead. He did not have expensive computers, so he obviously had no notion of what is going on and can thus be ignored.
But strangely the emphasis is not really on “now”.
It is on some computer-projected doomsday in the future, when today’s man will have caused the computer-simulated apocalypse.
This apocalypse never really comes, of course, but this does not stop the doomsayers. It is always just around the corner (unless we act now).
It is even nicer when the doomsday predictions emanating from the supercomputers can be dressed up as “science”, and even more beautiful if it can be sold to the gullible public as a “consensus of the current scientific knowledge”.
But to the practical side of “now-ism”.
The ultimate “now-ists” are politicians. “In today, out tomorrow” is their very way of life, and a major part of their energy is directed at obtaining and maintaining personal political power.
History shows us that they have frequently used fear mongering as a way of keeping their power as well as motivating the public into supporting unpleasant agendas (as Mencken and others have noted).
“We must act now or it will be too late!” How many times in history have politicians (of all stripes) used these words? How many times has an unsuspecting public fallen for them?
Only, hey, it’s different “now”, right?
Max
A very perceptive and informative piece. A few years ago I was press officer for a local campaign group against landraise, which is landfill above ground. The Waste Local Plan also called for an incinerator in a local town.
Friends of the Earth actively opposed the incinerator, but couldn’t have cared less about the proposed landraise in the countryside.
As with the Labour government there is a town/country divide and the largest volume of subscriptions, (or votes), come from the largest population, that is the towns. So when a logical answer to waste disposal is proposed, i.e. incineration, FoE and Greenpeace target the population with dis-information and mis-information.
I spent my time fighting the so-called environmentalists, who wanted to destroy the countryside, as much as the County Council. To them, waste disposal was a case of out of sight out of mind.
Never mind the basic principle that you should dispose of your waste nearest to where it occurs, they were quite happy to have it trucked around the County. They told basic lies about Dioxins, which are not a problem from modern incinerators. They told lies about so-called toxic emissions and included filter captures as emissions. They dismissed the energy potential of energy from waste, preferring to expend energy on interminable re-cycling options.
In Europe, the Green parties successfully had incinerator products such as recovered metals and ash for aggregate use, (thereby reducing mineral extraction), disallowed for re-cycling figures.
The same thing is happening with wind farms. Wales is being over-run with these monstrosities and the landscape is decimated as the Welsh Assembly congratulate themselves on meeting “targets”.
They have 110% support from the so-called environmentalists. Because I oppose this and don’t believe the AGW mantras, I am obviously not interested in the environment.
Again, the population in the countryside is small and fragmented. In England, in more populated and affluent areas there is also a more diverse range of skills. Lawyers, doctors, city businessmen and the like, make very good adversaries and there have been successful challenges in some areas. Presumably this is why the government need to remove planning protection in order to steamroller more installations.
At government level, NGO’s have been very useful in promoting the government agenda. Thye receive funding via Defra and the EU.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2007/07/eu-pays-to-be-lobbied-on-global-warming.html
Friends of the Earth Europe, the group pre-eminent in lobbying the EU for tighter controls to combat global warming, received €635,000 in funding from the EU commission last year, (2007).
“last year” should have been 2006 of course.
Excellent article and comments by all. Re the “war on” mentality, as soon as war on something is declared, this seems to be the cue for governments and NGOs to take on the mindset of a yesteryear general in charge of a cumbersome, hidebound army in the field. The “adversaries” in these cases, be they drug-runners/users, criminals generally, terrorists, or inconvenient truths about the climate, then take on the mantle of guerillas, proving to be agile, unconventional and striking where least expected! Also we may reflect on what happens to the truth during wartime.
Re “Now-ism”, some of this reminds me a bit of Richard C Duncan’s very cheerful “Olduvai theory” or “transient-pulse theory of Industrial Civilization”, which I stumbled upon a couple of years back (note that the according to the theory, we go over the “Olduvai cliff” in iconic doomsday year 2012.) However, generally I think that most of it can be explained in terms of human psychology (massive over-generalisation follows): as each of us enter middle age, it becomes clear that the best is past and things are going rapidly to hell in a handbasket. Take music for example; it is well-known to middle-aged people everywhere that music was much better when we were young – all great music was composed/written/sung in the distant past and contemporary music is becoming progressively more rubbishy and awful. As for the future, it seems likely that the next decade will see contemporary music deteriorate swiftly to a point of no return, becoming totally bland/discordant/commercial/dreadful, etc. And this view would probably have been expressed by middle-aged Edwardians in 1909 and also their counterparts in 1809. Presumably in 2109 a future generation of middle-aged people will be saying very similar things, but thankfully we won’t be around then to hear these young whippersnappers whinge!
That’s a tongue-in-cheek example, but you can apply it to almost anything – species extinctions, skills, world languages, social mores, literacy, education, politics, the environment, resources of all kinds, and of course “climate change.” It’s all running out, getting worse, approaching a cliff edge etc., as we move inexorably away from the rosy-tinted golden years of youth, and it always has been. And I know what I’m talking about (for a change), being middle-aged myself – (just a few months older than George Monbiot, by the way. His grumpy railing against the whole world makes a kind of sense, psychologically. It’s his world that he’s talking about, of course, as is the case with all of us.)
Re the UK government’s energy policy (I’m being polite in calling it that), I’d agree with Peter Geany in that it appears ill-conceived. The recent decision to go for 10 new power stations, nuclear or otherwise, could have been taken at any time during the last decade but wasn’t, even though there has been report after report warning about the energy shortfall, over the years. And even now, it doesn’t seem to have much to do with addressing the shortfall (what shortfall?) but more a desperate last-minute move to meet the government’s own ridiculous CO2 emissions targets (having realised – finally – that “renewables” are not going to be enough?)
And their timing, I think, may prove to be off (as ever.) Although this hasn’t yet percolated completely through to the mainstream media, the next big energy source to be exploited, worldwide, may possibly be shale gas (I’m no energy expert, but I’ve read a number of online articles that have looked quite encouraging, recently.) It would be an irony if even as the UK government prepare for their long-delayed dash for nuclear, the rest of the world leave us behind and dash in a completely different direction!
Back to the “war on” thing – here’s a timely BBC article today in which the Institution of Mechanical Engineers says that the government’s CO2 targets are unachievable with wind or nuclear… and calls for a “war” on climate change. DECC, in turn, accuses them of having a “can’t do, won’t do attitude”, because of course the war’s going perfectly well and victory is in sight.
I too noticed the Institute of Mechanical Engineers had called for a declaration of war on climate change. This is because an engineer has invented an artificial ‘tree’ that will absorb carbon dioxide. They want hundreds of thousands of these ‘planted’ across the country, employing thousands of engineers, of course.
More generally – on the theme of environmental groups, whilst it is easy to be cynical about their modern agenda (and the amount of money they get from governments) – the issue is a lot deeper. Very large numbers of idealistic young people have jumped on board the climate change bandwagon. It has a powerful appeal. Targets are simple and they have a power – apparently – to right the world that is so obviously wrong to many young people. Environmentalism was and still is about making the world a better place to live – protecting forests, wetlands and coastlines for their beauty; cleaning up the air, rivers and oceans such that we can live healthier lives and that other creatures do also; protecting the rights of indigenous people to land and to cultural integrity; making technology safer to the public (offsite chemical and nuclear risks)…..these are all things that in my own experience, government and industry, if left to their own devices, would not care sufficiently – and hence, environmental NGOs have played a significant role in enhancing our quality of life.
There will be many ‘old hands’ still active and working for this same cause. Vast numbers of young people care about these issues and support the environmental cause. What we have to look to is the as-yet poorly appreciated way in which this great source of concern and creative energy has been ‘hi-jacked’ by the global warming bandwagon. And those words are inadequate to describe the depth of this phenomenon. Partly, it is the appeal of simple messages coupled to the need for a simple answer – if we all work to one achievable target – for example, 30% emission reduction by 2020…..etc etc.
The report by the Institute of Mechanical Engineers is interesting in one regard – it states quite clearly that the targets for renewable energy are not achievable – there are not enough engineers or engineering capacity to deliver, even if the money was available (which it won’t be!). Yet, the politicians dismiss this advice as pessimistic nonsense. They live in an unreal world – and cannot see it – or maybe they do, but have learned from Tony Blair, that if you repeat things often enough, even in the face of contradictory evidence, people get tired of trying to assert the truth.
The social phenomenon we are faced with is complex. The old descriptors of ‘eco-fascism’ will not lead us to unravelling the social engineering agenda of faceless bureaucrats – where technologies are selected as much for their capacity to maintain the bureaucracy as for what they can effectively deliver on the ground.
Re:Peter T, #18
What you say about young people is interesting.
Not long ago I sat beside a newly-graduated student of the University St Andrews during a lunch party. We discussed climate change and I was told that she had intended to write her dissertation on the conundrum of why people seem to want to believe in global warming. We agreed that it was very strange that those who are most concerned seemed to find any evidence to the contrary unwelcome. This plan for the dissertation had fallen through when her tutor became ill and the replacement had other ideas. After graduation she had found a good job in advertising.
When I tried to probe her opinions on AGW she told me that her views had changed and she thought that it didn’t matter whether there was credible scientific evidence of AGW, because in any case concern about it would make the world a better place. Up to this point she had discussed the matter quite calmly and rationally, but now she was becoming aggressive, presumably because she knew that what she was saying didn’t make sense.
As it was a very polite lunch party, and I was her host, I thought that I had better not ask how a rather bright psychology graduate could think that public policy and moral precepts founded on hysteria would improve all our lives. But perhaps I didn’t need to.
I would agree with most of what you say in your comment, particularly concerning the need to address very real – and solvable – environmental problems that are quite unrelated to AGW, but have been eclipsed by the urge to ‘stop climate change’. On the other hand, it is the environmental movement that must bear the responsibility for preparing the ground – over the last three or four decades at least – in which the kind of sloppy thinking that I came across during the lunch party has taken root. This has been achieved, to a great extent, by portraying the natural world as a discrete and fragile entity, quite distinct from humanity, which can now only survive if we give it a helping hand. Our forefathers knew better; the urbanised young of today have no reason to think otherwise.
It would seem to me to be wrong to point the finger at the ‘social engineering agenda of faceless bureaucrats’ without also asking where they got their ideas from.
TonyN
Thought your comment above was vert pertinent. In particular the last two paragrtaphs are spot on. The current situation didn’t arise in isolation.
Tonyb
This often puzzles me. I have seen 3 friends die from cancer now. In all 3 situations the friend had some treatment, made some kind of recovery, then got a bit worse, then a bit better and so on. For each friend and for his family it was a roller-coaster: bad/good/bad/good. For one it was 18 months of torture.
The point is that for all of us every single bit of good news gave us hope. We hoped against hope that the reprieve would be permanent or long-lasting.
Contrast the climate people who seem to delight in bad news. They rubbish any good news and always see good news as an omen that bad news is on the way. Yet they claim to love the planet.
In fact I also know people who had childhood leukaemia and have recovered 100% and put it behind them.
Jack Hughes #21
Your comment touches a personal chord and gives me a sudden revelation of my own motivations in wanting to combat the global warming mass hysteria – something staring me in the face yet invisible throughout 2 years of intensive blogging. Thanks for that.
On the “good news is bad news” theme, see my comment #8309 at Continuation of the NS blogs. Cheers.
I agree that the ‘fragile earth’ concept has come from the environmental wing – and long ago I wrote a piece debunking it – and also making a case for calling Planet Earth Planet Ocean instead – and that if we did that, and looked to the awesome power of the ocean – 70% of the surface, and its huge depth, mysteries, productivity and unassailable nature – we would gain a better perspective on our place in the scheme of things. But I think it was too mystical to have any impact on modern environmental campaigns!
One has to remember that ‘campaigners’ are not necessarily naturalists and may have only a limited feel for or understanding of nature. They start out as young people wanting to make a difference in the world. Most are genuine, bright and determined. I worked beside them for nearly two decades, and in that time was impressed by sincerity and courage – they took risks that many people would not take – with careers, money and even their lives.
The problem is a subtle one – where this energy is slowly co-opted by professionals who owe no allegiance to science (truth) and live in a world of ‘political’ truth (relative) – where propaganda takes over simply because it is effective (the ends determine the means).
Thus images of fragility and threat (rare species – usually cuddly, become icons)are used widely. When it comes to chemical threats, or radioactivity, the images are genetic.
I do believe that in the 1980 and 1990s the threats to biodiversity, genetic integrity and the balance of ecosystems (even ocean systems) was being savagely eroded – as an ecologist I could see that every day. But once government and business had agree there was a problem – the whole game shifted. In many cases government and business genuinely wanted to do the right thing – not in all cases. Then it was a case of environmental groups working WITH government. In some cases the threats became less severe and could genuinely be left to a more educated government and business community to deal with – after all, it needed skills that only they had.
The movement began to lose its way when the old threats were not enough to sustain their own growth. They HAD to find new demons. There then evolved the first strange collusion of interests between NGOs and esoteric climate science (James Hansen & Co) – a new enemy had been found. I did not question that science until about 2003! when I saw what the remedy would be like. By then it was too late for most of those NGOs to backtrack or even entertain uncertainty.
So – yes, fragile earth plays a part (they need a geology lesson) – but there is also a huge sense of responsibility for the beauty and diversity of the planet, and a fear that uncontrolled development will destroy that. The AGW story evolved and fed off all of these streams.
Peter:
I started to tap out a response to your comment, but it raises so many interesting issues that I think I’ll turn it into a post as soon as I get a chance.
This thread is about the corporatisation of the eNGOs, but I wonder whether some of the same influences that you identify apply also to the CRU?
Out of interest, and in a word, are you surprised by what is emerging from the hacked emails and other documents?
Good piece in theTimes Higher Ed Supplement: Beyond Debate?
This bit is especially relevant here:
I have seen the effects of this up close, witnessing how truth can go out of the window in the rush to save the planet. I was co-ordinator of a small Yorkshire Friends of the Earth group, charged with protecting, among other things, the local river, the Wharfe, from a water company. In 1995, Yorkshire experienced just slightly less rain than normal, and the local water company found itself faced with the prospect of empty reservoirs. As standpipes went up in the cities of Leeds and Bradford, and trucks brought water in from afar, it desperately turned to the local rivers to try to make up the shortfall. The national press featured large photos of dried-up reservoir beds, waxed lyrical about how British society would soon break down in water wars, and urged its readers to sympathise with Yorkshire Water.
But our local group was not sympathetic because we felt that the company had failed to invest in its reservoirs and infrastructure. We proposed to put an advert in the Yorkshire Post highlighting this. And at this point, an official of Friends of the Earth formally instructed us that this independent line could not be permitted because it was national policy to attribute the shortages of water in the county that summer to runaway climate change. The “small is beautiful”, “start locally” element of environmental tradition had disappeared. We were instructed that if we continued to argue that Yorkshire’s water shortages were the result of anything other than global warming, we had to do so outside Friends of the Earth.
This highlighted the dangerous tendency of pressure groups to make specific statements for some supposed worthy campaign end. …