Articles by: Bill Henderson

Phasing out fossil fuels

Phasing out fossil fuels

What would our vulnerable descendants choose: phasing out fossil fuels or a regulated managed decline of fossil fuels globally? Phasing out fossil fuels is rightfully the all important climate change topic this Fall. After decades of failure to even peak greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions and with escalating damage from climate events, it is imperative that emissions be reduced rapidly. But[Read More…]

by 15/09/2023 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Our Rapidly Changing Climate Mitigation Situation

Our Rapidly Changing Climate Mitigation Situation

The persistent La Niña of the past three years is rapidly cycling into the El Niño phase. There are indications that it could become a major El Niño which could push GMT warming to record levels – perhaps even exceeding a 1.5C rise while escalating climate impacts and damage. While this surge of impacts and damage will hopefully not be[Read More…]

by 03/05/2023 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Positive Tipping Point Disinformation

Positive Tipping Point Disinformation

Dr. Tim Lenton is one of my fav climate scientists. His work on the physics and maths of tipping points and the implications of tipping points within the earth systems science understanding of how our climate could change is both fascinating and cliff edge scary. Now a new report delivered at Davos by Dr. Lenton’s Exeter university team and the[Read More…]

by 26/01/2023 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Disinformation about the energy transition

Disinformation about the energy transition

Karl Burkart is deputy director of the ENGO One Earth and a prolific writer on environmental issues. Recently he has published two opeds defending the energy transition (here and here). These opeds are well intentioned but still disinformation at a crucial time for climate mitigation. I have written a critique of Mr. Burkart’s perspective, tried to find an address for him but[Read More…]

by 16/12/2022 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Climate Change: Canada’s Continuing denial and appeasement

Climate Change: Canada’s Continuing denial and appeasement

From my vantage point out here in the boonies, it’s easy to see that most of my fellow Canadians and citizens of at least the developed world are in society-wide implicatory denial on climate. (The climate science facts are not denied or re-interpreted, but instead “the psychological, political or moral implications that conventionally follow” from these facts are denied or[Read More…]

by 08/11/2022 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
The Inflation Reduction Act – just more time-wasting pretend mitigation?

The Inflation Reduction Act – just more time-wasting pretend mitigation?

“(T)he technological and institutional status quo is a precarious predicament from which societies need to escape….If we act wisely, the coming century will be defined by the recognition of what we owe the future, and our grandchildren will look back at us with gratitude and pride. If we mess up, they might never see the light of day.”  William MacAskill[Read More…]

by 12/08/2022 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
The IPCC Mitigation report – another plan to fail?

The IPCC Mitigation report – another plan to fail?

Just before the release of the IPCC Working Group Three (WGIII) report on mitigation, this long time climate activist asked: Will the new IPCC report on mitigation detail and recommend supply-side pathways and policies to mitigate climate change? Will the report even mention regulating a phase out of fossil fuel production? Or will supply-side pathways and policies and their supporters[Read More…]

by 14/04/2022 1 comment Climate Change
The upcoming IPCC report on mitigation and reality

The upcoming IPCC report on mitigation and reality

Will the new IPCC report on mitigation detail and recommend supply-side pathways and policies to mitigate climate change? Will the report even mention regulating a phase out of fossil fuel production? Despite the increasing severity of climate impacts and the daunting timeline for mitigation needed to have even a fifty-fifty chance of staying climate safe? Or will supply-side pathways and[Read More…]

by 03/04/2022 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
The energy transition is not fit for purpose

The energy transition is not fit for purpose

Image by Thomas Homer-Dixon The second part of the IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6) has just been released and “climate breakdown is accelerating rapidly, many of the impacts will be more severe than predicted and there is only a narrow chance left of avoiding its worst ravages”. The Working Group 11 report focuses upon local as well as global impacts[Read More…]

by 05/03/2022 1 comment Climate Change
 Climate Mitigation: ’21 into ’22

 Climate Mitigation: ’21 into ’22

We’re on a trajectory to crash the futures of most people on the planet and finalize the irreversible annihilation of a big chunk of the natural world because of a mix of predatory delay and terminal entitlement.  Climate futurist Alex Steffen Climate wise it’s clear that as we limp from ‘21 to ‘22 those who want to protect the economy[Read More…]

by 30/12/2021 1 comment Climate Change
We need government, we need democracy back

We need government, we need democracy back

  In a very insightful essay published a couple of weeks before Canada’s election call, Senator Rosa Galvez called for a seachange from neoliberal government to building government back better to handle the recovery from Covid and to mitigate climate change: “We need democracy back—stronger, wiser, and more open to new ideas—with all its checks and balances restored. Governments must[Read More…]

by 11/09/2021 Comments are Disabled World
The Clean Energy Transition Is a Big Time-Wasting Lie

The Clean Energy Transition Is a Big Time-Wasting Lie

“(W)e haven’t even started to talk about what might be ‘possible’ and are still mostly arguing about what is ‘feasible without compromising economic growth.’ These are of course extremely different things, and the latter will not get us anywhere near the 1.5 degrees C target.” Damon Matthews Although last weeks court cases and shareholder battles have been (rightly) called a[Read More…]

by 07/06/2021 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Only Allowed Solutions?

Only Allowed Solutions?

Covering Climate Now, CCNow, is a consortium of publications and journalists dedicated to better climate journalism; I’m a climate activist not a climate journalist but I subscribe to the CCNow newsletter as a good source of climate news as well as an insight to the world of climate journalism. In the April 21st edition I found a link to ‘what[Read More…]

by 02/05/2021 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Bill Gates’ Climate Plan: leadership and continuing denial

Bill Gates’ Climate Plan: leadership and continuing denial

“(T)he most obvious, ubiquitous, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about.”   David Foster Wallace Bill Gates has both a new book and education campaign on mitigating climate change. Mr. Gates personifies successful, transforming innovation. His book is just coming out now but he has been following the evolution of our climate problem[Read More…]

by 13/03/2021 1 comment Climate Change
 The world is trapped in a spiral to climate catastrophe

 The world is trapped in a spiral to climate catastrophe

Ed Yong is a very insightful science journalist. In an article published in The Atlantic in September Yong lists what he calls nine errors of intuition, conceptual errors that still hamstring the US pandemic response. Remarkably many of Yong’s errors of intuition offer valuable insight into the global failure to enact effective climate mitigation. The successful and not very successful[Read More…]

by 15/12/2020 1 comment Climate Change
 The Green New Deal as Climate Denial

 The Green New Deal as Climate Denial

Climate activists all over the world have been working to try and use the huge Covid opportunity to help to finally transition off fossil fuels. Most have been piggybacking on the Green New Deal  framework proposed by the Democrats in the US. How could a plan to invest in a Green New Deal for Australia be serious mis-education of Australians[Read More…]

by 16/10/2020 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
 Canada is a global bad example

 Canada is a global bad example

“This probably doesn’t need to be said but planning for low probability, high impact, worst case scenarios is looking pretty smart right now.”  Gavin Schmidt The building climate change dangers promise to make the coronavirus pandemic look like a day off work with a cold. Increasing global temperature means rising sea levels, worsening extreme weather, more forest fires, and widening[Read More…]

by 10/05/2020 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland takes part in a NATO Engages Armchair Discussion at the NATO Summit in Brussels, Belgium on Wednesday, July 11, 2018. The United States says it's firing back at the Canadian government's recent retaliatory tariffs on American imports by launching a formal challenge with the World Trade Organization. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Perverse leadership in ‘immunity via collective failure’ globally

An open letter to Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland Minister Freeland, an open letter regarding ‘there’s nothing inconsistent about the federal government’s commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions while promoting a thriving oil and gas sector on the Prairies’. Climate change is a suite of potential dangers. Canadian governments have agreed in international treaties going back three decades to try[Read More…]

by 04/03/2020 1 comment Climate Change
Effective climate mitigation: 2020 vision

Effective climate mitigation: 2020 vision

Neoliberalism has put the blinders on public imagination, hindering our ability to envision, and thus build, a world free from fossil fuels. Fremstad and Paul It’s the beginning of a new year and decade. 2020 beckons. Life is good, better than the human condition has ever been, but climate change is happening, is accelerating and has become an existential danger[Read More…]

by 04/01/2020 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Photo by woodleywonderworks

Climate needs real business leadership

Climate change is real, happening. It is human caused – mostly through our use of fossil fuels, and could be catastrophic, could be a tragic end to our present evolution. Without effective mitigation. But we’ve gone three decades of failure to even slow the increase in burning coal, oil and natural gas, with consequential greenhouse gases (GHGs) increasing in the[Read More…]

by 23/11/2019 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Effective climate mitigation – What we aren’t talking about in Canada’s election

Effective climate mitigation – What we aren’t talking about in Canada’s election

Energy transitions have historically taken many decades, half centuries. But now, to stay under even a 2C (and not the much safer 1.5C) global rise in temperature, greenhouse gas emissions must be halved in each of the upcoming decades. Climate change is now a sprint with heavy emission reduction needed as quickly as possible. A carbon pricing aided decarbonization where[Read More…]

by 24/08/2019 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
 Climate Change and the Upcoming Federal Election – Managed Decline

 Climate Change and the Upcoming Federal Election – Managed Decline

There is a Canadian federal election on the horizon. The campaigning has already begun. I’m a long time climate activist who thinks that you should know a very important perspective on climate change and, in particular, mitigation strategies in Canada (election issue).   But what I have to tell you is out of the box, outside the Overton Window, heretical;[Read More…]

by 02/08/2019 4 comments Climate Change
Neoliberalism, Solution Aversion, Implicatory Denial and Predatory Delay | Bill Henderson

Neoliberalism, Solution Aversion, Implicatory Denial and Predatory Delay | Bill Henderson

Below is a selection of quotes from a long essay explaining how neoliberalism, solution aversion, implicatory denial and predatory delay have frustrated needed effective climate mitigation. Hey you XR kids, these quotes (and the docs they are from) explain why we have failed to implement effective treatment for at least three decades; this is why you are instead on a[Read More…]

by 03/05/2019 Comments are Disabled World
What Happens in the Arctic…

What Happens in the Arctic…

We’re dead men walking. Last summer a group of eminent climate scientists published a warning that we were close to a threshold where human induced warming could set off a cascade of positive feedbacks which would increase temperatures to Hothouse Earth, a 5-7C rise in temperature, the end of civilization and maybe even humanity. They warned that “Incremental linear changes[Read More…]

by 20/03/2019 1 comment Climate Change
Getting to Effective Mitigation: Forcing Trudeau’s Resignation

Getting to Effective Mitigation: Forcing Trudeau’s Resignation

“A fast,emergency-scale transition to a post-fossil fuel world is absolutely necessary to address climate change. But this is excluded from consideration by policymakers because it is considered to be too disruptive. The orthodoxy is that there is time for an orderly economic transition within the current short-termist political paradigm.Discussion of what would be safe—less warming that we presently experience—is non-existent.[Read More…]

by 07/12/2018 1 comment Climate Change
Hothouse Earth – A Last Missed Opportunity?

Hothouse Earth – A Last Missed Opportunity?

Hothouse Earth is this summer’s Uninhabitable Earth, a chilling reminder of how close we are to possibly fatal climate change. The Steffen et al PNAS paper is a review of the climate science concerned with the interplay of ten potential tipping points which when triggered by temperature rise due to anthropogenic warming could potentially push the Earth out of it’s[Read More…]

by 05/09/2018 2 comments Climate Change
Cancer Metaphor Lessons For Climate Mitigation

Cancer Metaphor Lessons For Climate Mitigation

This spring I was diagnosed with cancer and I have just finished a treatment consisting of seven weeks of radiation aided by chemo therapy. Things look good now. I had a very treatable cancer; I have had effective treatment as quickly as possible. As a long time climate activist totally preoccupied with trying to get to effective climate mitigation my[Read More…]

by 16/10/2017 1 comment Climate Change
Effective Climate Mitigation: An Open Letter To Prime Minister Trudeau

Effective Climate Mitigation: An Open Letter To Prime Minister Trudeau

Hello Justin, I hope you understand that while I must be critical of you and your government I have a great deal of empathy for everyone involved in this wicked problem climate change. I recognize that there are severe constraints upon you and every other national leader. But we still need effective mitigation urgently or climate change promises to become[Read More…]

by 02/10/2017 1 comment Climate Change
Climate Change Could Be Fatal: An Open Letter To Canada’s Business Community

Climate Change Could Be Fatal: An Open Letter To Canada’s Business Community

This third essay on my new metaphor for effectively treating climate change is about climate change being potentially fatal for all we know and love, potentially fatal for civilization as we know it, maybe even for humanity itself. Do we need to consider a major disruption in our society and economy for effective treatment of what could be a fatal disease?[Read More…]

by 11/09/2017 Comments are Disabled Climate Change
Dear ENGOs: Stop Supporting Fake Climate Mitigation

Dear ENGOs: Stop Supporting Fake Climate Mitigation

Continuing my new metaphor for effectively treating climate change (I’ve been traveling into town everyday: ferry, bus, Canada Line to the Cancer Agency and same back from treatment) – this quote was in my post-Canada Day Guardian Weekly: “I can’t believe how long I’ve been on hold,” says the Canadian who’s been on hold for the length of time it takes a kettle to[Read More…]

by 29/07/2017 1 comment Climate Change
Effective Climate Mitigation – Or Just Pretend? An open letter to Pam Goldsmith-Jones, MP

Effective Climate Mitigation – Or Just Pretend? An open letter to Pam Goldsmith-Jones, MP

Hello again Ms. Goldsmith-Jones, At a climate meeting you arranged at Gibsons Yacht Club before the election I said I thought you were in what Kari Norgaard describes as implicatory denial:  climate change itself is not denied but “the psychological, political and moral imperatives that conventionally follow”. And then again after you were elected MP I talked with you after[Read More…]

by 03/07/2017 1 comment Climate Change
Trudeau:  Climate Leadership Failure

Trudeau:  Climate Leadership Failure

Human caused global warming increasingly threatens all we love and care about.  Climate change from this warming caused (mostly) by greenhouse gases (GHGs) from our use of fossil fuels is a potent growing risk to our families, our kids and their kids, our communities and country. This radical change threatens most of the species and ecosystems with which we share[Read More…]

by 05/02/2017 3 comments Climate Change
Trudeau Sleeping While The Arctic Melts In Winter

Trudeau Sleeping While The Arctic Melts In Winter

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau should resign. That’s laughable presently. The Trudeau government is still enjoying an extra long honeymoon; Canadians are still as happy about the change to ‘sunny ways’ as Americans are distraught with the specter of at least four years of slime, sleeze and shame. But our PM is a dead man walking. Trudeau and his government[Read More…]

by 23/12/2016 1 comment Climate Change
 The Climate Activist Mistake And What Is Needed Now

 The Climate Activist Mistake And What Is Needed Now

John Michael Greer has written a provocative essay: Climate Change Activism: a Postmortem. His list of activist mistakes should be interesting to many of you but Greer makes the same tactical error as the activists he derides in his ‘postmortem’. Greer is still concerned about winning political and economic battles instead of getting to necessary emergency government as quickly as[Read More…]

by 04/08/2016 7 comments Climate Change
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