Fossil fuel companies gain access to children through education sponsorships, Barclays eyes opportunities from El Niño, while climate change brings increasingly destructive consequences to communities from the Himalayas to islands.

Fossil fuel industry pays for uncontrolled access to children

We are all well aware that there’s a very cosy relationship between the fossil fuel industry and governments across Australia, largely but not solely by virtue of the donations the industry makes to the larger political parties. Now we discover that the industry is also currying favour with our children through sponsorships and other initiatives involving organisations that educate them and shape their understanding of the world.

Major fossil fuel companies and their industry organisations and industry-funded education bodies engage with Australia’s children and young people through at least 260 publicly documented programs. Activities span early childhood settings, schools, career pathway programs, museums, science centres, sporting clubs and teacher professional development scholarships. And these are only the publicly documented programs. There is no information available about many other relationships.

Across six illustrative programs, major fossil fuel companies publicly disclosed funding of more than $54 million to educational organisations and activities in recent years. Examples include:

Some of the materials reviewed in this study provided information about the impacts of climate change but little about fossil fuel’s central role in causing the problems. Climate change was often framed primarily through adaptation measures, technological responses and the behaviours of individuals – downstream, non-contentious matters.

Australia currently has no oversight mechanism for industry programs in child-centred settings, no requirement for transparency of industry sponsorship relationships with schools, museums, etc., and little information about the cumulative exposure of young people to such programs.

The authors of the report conclude: “when industries whose products are harming us become embedded within trusted child-centred institutions, that relationship warrants scrutiny”. They recommend a ban on fossil fuel ads and sponsorship and a parliamentary inquiry into fossil fuel engagement in child-centred settings. No doubt governments will tackle these recommendations with the same enthusiasm and commitment as they tackle gambling.

Global fight for a fossil-free future: fast, fair, funded, feminist

The Global Fight for a Fossil-Free Future (the campaign’s ten demands are summarised above) is holding a global week of action from 14–20 September.

Shock horror! Barclays Bank helps its investors to make a profit

Disruption of fertiliser supplies as a result of the US–Iran war and high temperatures, droughts and wildfires caused by climate change and the developing El Niño are likely to disrupt crop yields and lead to food shortages and price hikes. While anywhere and everywhere might be affected, the communities most likely to experience the worst consequences are those already suffering droughts, poverty, food shortages, conflicts, etc.

In July, Barclays Bank in the UK sent a research note to investors about the disruptions and crises that may emerge during the current El Niño: “For investors, a very strong El Niño should be viewed as a source of market dispersion rather than a uniformly negative shock. While a stronger El Niño creates risk for some sectors and regions, it also creates opportunities, with historical events often driving significant price movements for weather-sensitive markets.”

This prompted criticism of Barclays along the lines of: you’ve helped create the current conditions by being one of Europe’s biggest funders of fossil fuels ($25 billion last year) and now you’re suggesting that your clients can make a profit from the impending food crisis that could well leave an additional 100 million people hungry.

Barclays responded: “Any suggestion that Barclays seeks to benefit from human suffering is wrong. Barclays recognises that climate change and extreme weather events can have serious consequences for communities around the world. [This research note] does not make a moral judgment on El Niño, climate change or food security issues; it assesses the potential impact of these developments on markets.”

Mention by Barclays of “a moral judgement on El Niño” (that naughty El Niño, causing all these problems for us) doesn’t do much to reassure me that it has a very firm grasp on the concept of morality (cynics might say “Well, they are a bank”). Barclays seems to have missed or is deliberately avoiding the possibility that highlighting opportunities to make money from crises that cause human suffering, particularly crises they have contributed to, may make them vulnerable to accusations of poor moral behaviour.

Such accusations may well be justified but Barclays is hardly unique in this regard. In fact, they are simply playing by the rules of the system and it could be argued that it would be negligent corporate behaviour to do otherwise.

Climate change floods Himalayan valleys as well as low-lying islands

It will take a while to fully understand what caused the astonishing events in Nepal that created the terrifying and compelling images that we have seen on our screens, but climate change seems to be at least partly implicated.

Global warming is occurring more rapidly at higher altitudes and glaciers at high altitudes are melting faster than those near sea level. Himalayan glaciers have lost almost a third of their volume in the past 30 years, with smaller ones at particular risk. In addition, when the permafrost that helps to hold the glaciers in place also melts, the glaciers begin to detach from the mountainsides, creating the conditions that lead to destructive torrents of water, ice, rocks, mud and debris.

It’s inevitable that disasters like the recent one will occur with increasing frequency. For the next few decades, there will be floods, flash floods and glacial lake outburst floods that lead to landslides but around 2050 most of the ice and snow in the mountains will have gone. Then there will be water shortages which will seriously damage farming and hydroelectricity output.

Pema Gyamtsho, director general of the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development, identified the threat last March: “This isn’t a distant problem; it’s a crisis unfolding in real-time, with new disasters every summer and monsoon […] We are in a critical decade for the cryosphere. These aren’t blind spots becoming surprises anymore; they are our new reality.”

In the Sydney Morning Herald, Nick O’Malley noted that “whatever the proximate cause, there is broad agreement that climate change is the catalysing force” and went on to remind us that “those that live high in the Himalayas are as vulnerable to the accelerating threat of climate change as those fighting off the seas on the world’s lowest-lying islands”.

The chain of events may differ from place to place but climate change will deliver destructive water to the beaches of low-lying islands, mountain villages and many other locations.

New York Times paints grim picture

I sometimes refer to articles from Climate Forward, the New York Times’s online climate stories. The pictures and article headings below from a recent edition do not provide much indication of the Big Apple’s famed optimism and vitality.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.