Climate Change: Keep Accountability Focused on the Big Producers of Polluting Products
Hope & Justice Series Post #4.1
There are three important reasons to keep the climate accountability discussion focused on the Big Producers of Polluting Products.
First, for our purposes accountability refers to those collective entities and the decision-makers within them whose actions have caused, are causing, and will cause harm, or have allowed such harm. This is what the Big Producers of Polluting Products have done.
Responsibility, on the other hand, refers to everyone and every entity that can do something about the harm. As such, individuals aren’t accountable, but they are responsible, because if we join together we can do something about it. Here we are focused on accountability.
Second, pollution is too much of something in the wrong place causing harm. Before that point, before this harm threshold is reached, this something is tolerated. Too much causing harm, that’s when something becomes a pollution problem.
As human beings we breathe out CO2. But we aren’t breathing out pollution. That’s because it is part of the natural carbon cycle. It is in the right place and it isn’t causing harm; in fact, it is part of the balance of nature.
But when Big Producers dig up dead organic matter from millions of years ago and it is burned, pumping the transformed remains into the atmosphere where it doesn’t belong, then these emissions of CO2 and CH4 (methane), once they begin to cause climate change, i.e., once they have exceeded the harm threshold, have become a pollution problem. This CO2 and CH4 have gone from emissions to pollution. Emissions aren’t neutral; they are pre-pollution, moving us towards the harm threshold.
As the facts in my earlier post demonstrated — e.g. that historically 90 Big Producers of Polluting Products are responsible for 2/3rds of climate pollution — it is the Big Producers who have pushed pre-threshold climate emissions into becoming post-threshold climate pollution.1
Third, this is even more clear from the fact that climate change is a systemic aggregate problem. Pollution, in nearly all cases, is an aggregation of emissions from multiple sources that collectively have passed a threshold and are causing harm. Any one source is not enough to pass the harm threshold.
So we are dealing with a problem created by systems within society producing emissions that collectively exceed the harm threshold and become pollution.
Our focus is upstream and midstream.
Customizing a metaphor for our purposes often used to discuss supply chains, all of this explains why we are focused “upstream” and “midstream” on the Big Producers and not “downstream” on the customers and end users (individuals, businesses). We are focused upstream and midstream for three reasons.
First, systems like these cannot be created by an individual. The systems in question are societal ones. As such, this societal systemic problem can only be dealt with by the society and their governments that have created or allowed them. The Big Producers have had a major hand in creating, maintaining, and defending these systems through their political and economic power, while helping to keep individuals simultaneously powerless and guilt-ridden.2
Second, because this is an aggregate problem, any one particular end-use source (e.g., a vehicle) creates a meaningless amount.
Third, the facts clearly show that the Big Producers are accountable. Without them greenhouse gas emissions would not have become pollution. They are the ones who have pushed the world into exceeding the harm threshold.
These three reasons are why we are focused not simply on “upstream” fossil fuel producers — as some do — but also on “midstream” entities — utilities with fossil fuel power plants. While many don’t produce fossil fuels like upstream entities, they purchase them, primarily coal but also small amounts of oil and natural gas. They then burn them to boil water and produce steam that spins a turbine to create another product, electricity, which they then sell “downstream” to end users — industries, businesses, governments, and residential consumers.
Coal-burning utilities, as midstream entities, are producers of electricity from dirty sources that they then sell to downstream customers, many of whom have no idea the electricity powering their homes comes from burning coal. It is, in effect, hidden from them in this elaborate, monopolistic system with its wealth and subsidies and powerful protectors and co-dependent facilitators.
Downstream customers don’t want chunks of coal. If coal mining companies only sold directly to downstream customers they’d be out of business in a heartbeat. Nor do downstream customers really want what the midstream utilities produce and sell to them, i.e., raw electricity by itself, which can shock and even kill you. Rather, they want all the useful outcomes and amenities that are powered by electricity, such as: temperature-controlled buildings, lights, TV viewing, gaming, food kept cold and frozen, clean clothes from washers and dryers, a clean house aided by a vacuum cleaner, computers, tablets, and smartphones powered for all of their uses.
Considering the first reason, as centralized, regulated monopolies midstream utilities are a creation of the system with laws and regulations and subsidies that have been designed for them and serve to protect their status as monopolies by powerful vested interests and friendly politicians and regulators who act as their protectors. As such, they are the epitome of the system. This is true whether we are talking about the U.S. and other democracies or China and Russia.
Second, when we consider aggregation, coal-burning power plants around the world have been the largest source of climate pollution historically — and still are today. Without power plants most upstream coal producers wouldn’t exist, given that other uses for coal, mainly the production of steel, cement, and nickel, drives about 20% of coal production worldwide. Thus, without coal-burning power plants most upstream coal producers would go out of business or transform themselves into something else.
Third, coal-burning utilities by themselves have pushed the world into the climate crisis and therefore are accountable for it. Because, today, renewables are beating coal on market price alone in most situations — even without including in the price the costs associated with climate change and air and water pollution — utilities that burn coal have other options and are without excuse.
For these reasons, when it comes to accountability coal-burning power plants and their owners are Big Producers of a Polluting Product, dirty electricity.
To stop bad stuff, set wrong right, and make things better, the three actions of justice, there must be a focus on the Big Producers who are really accountable for the climate crisis. They are also responsible for helping to clean up the mess, make amends, and create a better world. But most won’t accept full responsibility, and so the rest of us must hold them accountable and have them accept their responsibility as part of the three actions of justice.
As individuals we can’t do this on our own. But together we can. As we reach into the future and pull our destiny into the present we make the impossible possible and the possible actual and the actual beautiful and our future come faster. And this gives us hope. We are the hope we’ve been waiting for. We are making hope happen together. Join us!
If you are new here, check out our Intro Series, and other posts in this Hope & Justice Series. If you like this post, please “like,” comment, and share. And thanks for all you’re doing.
More will be said about emissions and pollution and the threat emissions create in an upcoming post on Climate Justice.
Of course, to be both powerless and guilt-ridden is totally irrational, like a child who thinks they have caused their parents’ alcoholism. This helps keep us from claiming the power we do have — to choose to become a part of the Climate Movement. That is the only way we can counter the political power of the Big Producers.