Three climate scientists walk into a bar … taking the climate crisis with humor? As Germany is getting ready for Carnival celebrations, we are taking an unusual angle this time. In today’s opinion piece, Eckart von Hirschhausen explains why humor can be a path to insight and reveal paradoxes and contradictions in climate policy. And Alexandra Endres spoke with communication scientists about it. They agree with Hirschhausen: Humor can create new awareness. But climate jokes seldom bring about a behavior change.
The struggles for results at climate conferences are generally no laughing matter. In today’s interview, Ottmar Edenhofer criticizes the lack of international discussion on carbon pricing as an instrument to decarbonize dirty economic sectors. The economist calls for a global waste collection system for CO2: those who emit must pay, and those who provide carbon sinks must be paid. The current EU debates on a carbon management strategy give these demands great weight.
Chinese authorities do not joke around – at least when it comes to emissions trading. A new regulation envisages harsher penalties. For the first time, carbon trading also mentions aviation – which surprises experts. However, a big flaw in Chinese emissions trading remains.
In today’s Profile, we introduce the new US climate czar, John Podesta. He succeeds John Kerry, who will resign in the spring.
One of the big issues at the COP was how to mobilize more money – for adaptation, financial aid and investment. And this topic will dominate the next COP. But there is only ever talk of raising money in the short term – and never of a systemic approach, such as introducing a global carbon price, something you have long been calling for.
The term carbon pricing is avoided. Instead, the narrative is: zero-carbon technologies must become cheaper, and we must subsidize them to this end. Then, the transition will succeed. But why aren’t we talking about carbon pricing? Because carbon pricing has several functions: It makes carbon-free alternatives profitable. Carbon pricing also taxes the fossil capital stock and reduces it. And that was highly controversial at the COP. Everyone wants to build up the green capital stock, nobody wants to reduce the brown one. That is concerning.
Now, you even call for a sort of global waste collection system for CO2. What do you mean by that?
There is always talk of being committed to the 1.5-degree target. However, in reality, it is no longer possible to maintain this limit of warming if this means that we must not exceed it. The best we can achieve is overshoot: Temporarily exceeding 1.5 degrees and then reducing it to below 1.5 degrees. However, we need to remove CO2 from the atmosphere to achieve this. These negative emissions require a new type of climate financing. In other words, it is a kind of compensation for waste disposal through negative emissions. If the world wants to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and stay within the 1.5-degree limit in the long term, we need to compensate for the residual emissions from the cement sector or agriculture, for example, which are difficult to avoid, using natural or technical means. Secondly, we must remove more emissions from the atmosphere in the second half of the century than we emit in order to reduce the overshoot.
How is that supposed to work?
There are two fundamental principles. The first: Whoever emits has to pay. The other: Those who provide carbon sinks must be rewarded. This applies just as much to farmers who permanently bind carbon in the Horn of Africa through their work in the soil as to people who use technical filters to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in geological formations.
And how is this to be paid for? We’re talking about billions.
Yes, because if we want to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees in the long term, we will have to remove 5 to 15 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere every year until 2050. Assuming prices of 100 to 300 US dollars per metric ton of CO2, that would mean we would have to spend around half a trillion to almost four trillion US dollars on this waste removal. That’s a gigantic sum, between 0.3 and three percent of global gross national income – and about as much as the 2.2 trillion military spending worldwide in 2022. This would create a gigantic economic sector. But nobody is talking about this type of climate financing at the COPs either.
Why is this debate not happening?
Because politics is not consistent. If you look at the Nationally Determined Contributions, you can see an improvement. But it’s only on paper for now.
But if you then look at what the governments are actually doing and compare it with what their ministers promise at the COP, the promises lose credibility. They are literally doing the opposite: At conferences, they talk about phasing out coal and oil, while making plans to expand production at home.
But that would all be stranded costs if politics gets its way.
I think the markets are betting that climate policy will not be implemented effectively because they don’t believe the government’s promises are credible. That is why I do not think that we are heading toward an oil and gas production peak, as the International Energy Agency (IEA) says. The markets have so far shown no willingness to abandon fossil fuels.
You mean the markets are unfazed by a passage that calls on countries to ‘transition away from fossil fuels’?
If governments want the markets to react differently, they must make more credible decisions now. Such credibility does not come from constantly setting new targets, such as tripling renewable energies, which has now been agreed in Dubai. The commitment to transition away from fossil fuels in the COP’s final document sends an important signal. However, it is now important that this move becomes a reality – for example, by the European Union implementing its European Green Deal. If, for instance, prices for oil and gas rise and imports into the EU fall under the second emissions trading system, which will be introduced in the EU in 2027 for the building and transport sectors, this would have an effect on the markets. To prevent this reduction from leading to increased consumption in Asia, for example, the USA would also have to join in.
How is that supposed to work?
The EU could form a kind of demand cartel with the United States: If the EU’s Green Deal and the US Inflation Reduction Act succeed, the demand for fossil fuels will fall credibly. Other countries could join in with carbon pricing. A look at the European Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) shows just how effective this can be. Its announcement alone has already had a significant impact. India is considering a national carbon tax, Turkey a national emissions trading system and even Republicans in the USA are considering it. Some countries in the Global South want to talk about it with the EU. We will see market reactions as soon as instruments are credibly implemented.
But why is it so difficult to introduce a carbon price, for example? You’ve argued before that politicians couldn’t actually come up with anything better: Reducing emissions and generating revenue that can then be used to finance social benefits. Why is this still not popular?
There are two ways of looking at the climate problem. You can say that we have known since Nicholas Stern’s 2006 climate report that action is cheaper than inaction. This is true, but the benefits of climate policy will be reaped in the future and elsewhere, while the costs are incurred here and now. And they are borne by very powerful groups. If you want to tax the fossil fuel capital stock, you immediately have the entire fossil fuel sector against you: the car industry or the construction industry, for example. You can only overcome this if you are willing to compensate the potential losers – such as home or car owners. The government should have started immediately with compensation for the Heating Act when it came to the largest component of the national economic capital stock.
That’s what the climate money should be for. Except that it’s not coming.
Exactly. The government has failed to do this. This is ultimately a political decision. But we as scientists have also done far too little to emphasize that climate policy places a greater burden on poorer households than richer ones. We need to do a much better job of communicating what this kind of relief for lower incomes could look like. We had a very good experience with this last winter with the so-called gas price brake. In my view, this was not properly appreciated at all. The name is completely wrong because we didn’t put the brakes on the price; we passed the price on to households in full and then compensated households based on their consumption. And we reduced consumption in Germany by 23 percent in the second half of 2022 and maintained social stability.
Do you also propose such compensation on an international scale?
In my view, this is essential. We need mechanisms that support countries in raising their carbon prices. A developing country cannot have the same carbon price as the EU. There must be funds for this. And climate development aid would have to be linked to the countries introducing a carbon price. Such conditional aid payments are a taboo, I realize that. But some kind of burden-sharing would be necessary and effective.
That would mean that developed countries would pay billions so that developing countries could apply a carbon price that is as high as ours?
We would benefit from this. Why? Firstly, because the others would then also pursue a climate policy. And secondly, we protect our industry from competitive disadvantages. It can be used to eliminate freeloaders. It would be a win-win cooperation.
People who talk about the climate crisis often do so with a tone of concern or fear. Jokes about heatwaves, mass extinctions and droughts – somewhat inappropriate? But could a little humor perhaps also help reach skeptics? Could humor, by entertaining and stimulating, inspire the audience to more social change? Research remains divided.
Humor is already being used in climate communication. “The earth is hotter than my imaginary boyfriend,” Fridays for Future activists joked at a protest in Australia. British comedian John Oliver makes well-founded jokes about the climate debate, the Green New Deal and carbon offsets on his late-night show. In Germany, satirical TV shows like “extra 3” and “Die Anstalt” deal with climate policy issues.
The climate crisis is also found in Germany’s Carnival: In 2019, a float with a gigantic Greta Thunberg figure rode through Duesseldorf’s Rose Monday parade, while a burning kangaroo symbolized the bushfires in Australia the following year.
Humor can help name grievances and make it easier to deal with them. This also applies to climate communication, according to Aaron Sachs, a natural and cultural historian at Cornell University in the USA. In his book “Stay Cool,” Sachs writes about the benefits of black humor and self-irony in the fight against the climate crisis.
Sachs said in a lecture that it is a tried and tested comedy strategy to laugh about yourself first so that you can then criticize others. “I think a good dose of self-directed humor could actually make us significantly less annoying and that would make our messages more likely to have an impact.” Humor is very helpful in delivering bad news.
However, Chris Skurka, media and communication scientist at Penn State University, says in an interview with Table.Media that the literature has no clear answer to the question of what humor can do for climate communication. “The question is more so under which conditions is humor effective or for which people is it effective, or what types of humor?”
In a review study that Skurka published with his colleague Julia Cunningham in “Current Opinion in Psychology,” both come to the following conclusion: Humor can bring attention to climate and environmental issues amidst the flood of news. “Humor seems to be pretty good at cutting through the noise,” says Skurka. That is “arguably half of the battle in the modern media landscape.”
To some extent, humor can also change the audience’s awareness or interest in climate action, says Skurka. Humor is most likely to reach young people between 18 and 25, as well as people who are less interested in the topic to begin with.
However, humor also carries a risk “because humor, almost by definition, is making light of a situation,” says Skurka. Jokes about environmental pollution or biodiversity loss run the risk of “leaving people with the impression that it’s not that big of a deal.”
Skurka recommends only using humor “when you know your audience is already favorable towards the issue. If you’re trying to reach the opposition, if you’re very, very cautious about it, and you do some message testing beforehand, then maybe you might be able to pull it off in terms of bringing the opposition on board.” But that is risky. Political satire in particular, which is often aimed at opponents of climate policy rather than making jokes about climate change itself, could alienate parts of the audience.
The function of humor is to change perspectives, writes climate journalist Christopher Schrader in the handbook “Über Klima sprechen.” (“Talking about climate”). The idea is to make the climate crisis, its dangers and possible solutions “not just a cognitive experience, but also an emotional one.”
Schrader has evaluated several studies on the topic and lists the advantages and disadvantages of humor in climate communication:
Schrader concludes that the possible disadvantages can be minimized and are no reason to forego the “great potential” of humor in climate communication.
“Humor is not going to save us on its own,” says cultural historian Sachs. “But when it comes to climate change, we clearly haven’t gotten very far with other strategies.” So why not give comedy a try?
Media psychologist Skurka cautions: Humor, despite its effectiveness in other ways, “may not necessarily be the best way to motivate behavior change.” He believes that in order to motivate people to take action against the climate crisis, communication that focuses on the threats of climate change is better suited.
“It seems to help if you can also convey solutions. Although threat messaging in and of itself seems to do a pretty decent job at motivating behavior change,” says Skurka. The research literature on such threat-based messaging “is much more supportive of the argument that climate messaging can be more effective than the humor literature is.”
China’s carbon trading system has been marked by repeated cases of fraud. Companies and consulting firms have forged emissions data and reports. The authorities have not sufficiently verified the reports and conditions at participating power plants. The penalties for falsification have so far been so low that fraud has been more lucrative than compliance and the purchase of carbon credits. “Penalties for non-compliance were ultimately just a business cost,” says analyst Cory Combs from the consulting firm Trivium China. This paradox will be resolved by recently introduced stricter regulations.
“One of the focuses of the new ETS regulation is certainly emphasizing combating data fraud and imposing stricter penalties,” says Qin Yan, ETS analyst at the London Stock Exchange Group. Now, penalties for rule violations have been drastically increased – from approximately 4,000 euros to at least 65,000 euros to 260,000 euros.
According to Zhibin Chen, Senior Manager for Carbon Markets and Pricing at the think tank Adelphi, the authorities can even impose bans “if the impact of the fraud is severe.” The regulation also comes from the Chinese State Council, giving it more weight. The previous regulation “lacked support from other ministries,” as Chen told Table.Media.
However, “stronger regulatory oversight and greater efforts by regulatory authorities are still needed to completely prevent data fraud,” says analyst Qin.
However, “stronger regulatory oversight and greater efforts by regulatory authorities are still needed to completely prevent data fraud,” says analyst Qin. The new rules also hint at a possible expansion of Chinese emissions trading to aviation. Qin believes that the aviation sector’s inclusion in the ETS is likely to happen sooner than expected. High-level politicians have shown interest in such an expansion.
Initially, a list of the sector’s major emitters will be compiled. Companies will also be required to submit reports on their emission data. According to Chen from Adelphi, “emission reporting and auditing for the aviation sector have been mandatory since 2016”. So, the sector is not entirely new to reporting in this area.
An earlier inclusion of Chinese aviation could also mean adaptation to a reform of European emissions trading. According to Tan Luyue, ETS analyst at the London Stock Exchange Group, it is likely that European CO2 trading will also include international aviation from 2027. If China’s ETS were to be expanded, its aviation sector would be prepared for the challenges posed by European emissions trading, Tan told Chinese media. Combs, however, is skeptical. “I find it hard to imagine the aviation industry joining the ETS in the near future,” he says. According to Combs, the sector will probably only do so after other sectors.
Currently, China’s CO2 trading covers 2,257 companies in the energy sector – primarily coal-fired power plants. Expansion to other sectors has long been planned and repeatedly postponed. Qin expects the aluminum and cement sectors to participate in emissions trading from 2025.
While the new regulation provides for harsher penalties and stricter monitoring of companies, the biggest criticism of China’s emissions trading remains unaddressed. In China, participating power plants do not have to buy emission credits when emitting carbon but only if they are less efficient than state-set benchmarks.
Participating power plants receive free emission offsets allocated based on a complex distribution formula. If some power plants emit less CO2, they can sell their credits. If they operate less efficiently, they must purchase credits on the market. Efficient power plants “have a negative carbon price”, says Lauri Myllyvirta, analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). The system is by no means comparable to the European one. “China’s ‘carbon trading’ is not carbon trading as usually understood and does not establish a CO2 price at all,” says Myllyvirta.
A departure from this “intensity-based” system is not foreseeable. “So far, there are no credible signs of such a change,” says Cory Combs of consultancy firm Trivium China. While the new regulation mentions the possibility of future “a combination of free and paid CO2 credits,” Myllyvirta finds it too vague. It is merely “a promise that a step forward will be taken at an unspecified time,” he told Table.Media.
Analyst Qin also believes that “the auctioning of carbon credits like in the European emissions trading,” i.e., replacing free allocation, is “inevitable.” However, the paid allocation of carbon credits “could still be a lengthy process, as the Ministry of Finance apparently is not fully cooperating,” says Qin.
A rapid introduction of a strict emission cap, as exists in other carbon trading systems, is unlikely without China declaring a carbon emission limit. Furthermore, there is little room to “raise the bar for participating power plants” because electricity producers cannot pass on the costs due to fixed electricity prices. “The regulatory authority will also refrain from setting strict ETS goals to avoid burdening the energy sector too much,” Qin concludes.
A skydiver jumps out of the plane and pulls the first line – nothing happens. Fortunately, there is still the reserve parachute, so he pulls the second ripcord in a slight panic. Nothing happens. He hurtles towards the ground. Suddenly, hardly believing his eyes, he sees a man flying towards him from the ground. His rescue? He calls out to him: “Do you repair parachutes?” The other man shouts back: “No, just gas pipes!”
I love this joke because, like all good jokes, it contains a very true core. We are in free fall. We violated six out of nine planetary boundaries last year, and with them, us. Johan Rockström emphasizes: We have moved from the linear into the exponential and increasingly unpredictable realm of the “great acceleration.” We could despair, go mad or laugh about it. And regain the ability to act.
The gas pipeline joke could make you think about Nord Stream 2, how confusing the world has become, or about how we will have new jokes after 2050, when the world will no longer need natural gas. Humor and the climate crisis are not mutually exclusive. Humor is nothing superficial, but a deep YES to the paradoxes, the contradictions in which we are all trapped – and from which we can temporarily free ourselves through mental judo.
A man walks through the street clapping his hands. Someone asks him: “What do you do?” The man’s answer: “I chase away elephants.” The other says: “There are no elephants here.” His answer: “It works!“
The human tendency towards false causality and overconfidence couldn’t be summed up more briefly. An example from the “Guide to Unhappiness” of how difficult it is to shake people in their preconceptions – if not through the brain, then perhaps through the diaphragm? Do messages become dubious just because you understand them? Like Paul Watzlawick, as a doctor, science journalist and founder of the Foundation Healthy Earth – Healthy People, I am convinced of the healing and enlightening effect of humor.
“If something doesn’t work – do something different.” There have been “limits to growth” for 50 years, the greenhouse effect for 200, 2023 was the hottest year in 125,000 years with an estimated 100,000 heat-related deaths in Europe – what more needs to happen? Or is what Prof. John Sterman says true: “Research shows that showing people research does not work.” It is all the more astonishing that we are still pursuing science and large parts of journalism according to the “knowledge deficit model”, as if the world would become more reasonable on its own if we published, researched and revealed even more. In the past, we had to believe what we couldn’t know. Today, we don’t believe what we know.
Even more persistent than climate deniers in the AfD is the German prejudice that humor is just a distraction. Wrong. It is a path to knowledge, every laugh a small enlightenment (Schopenhauer). I call it sustainable comedy, you laugh in the moment and change your perspective, have a haha and an aha experience.
Berlin (Archive) – Good news for children, winter sports enthusiasts and fans of a proper snowball fight! To counter the rising trend of winters with little snow, the national metrology institute of the Federal Republic of Germany announced today that the freezing point of water will officially be raised to 10 degrees Celsius during the night from Sunday to Monday. A lot of snow is therefore expected until April, at the least.
This fake fun fact from the German satire newspaper Postillon reminds me of a statement by Volker Wissing. When the “Father Rhine,” a lifeline of Germany and an important transport route for the economy, shrank to an impassable trickle last summer thanks to heatwaves and drought, the transport minister recommended deepening the navigation channel. As if not only cars but also rivers could be lowered. But the laws of nature are non-negotiable (Harald Lesch). Physics is still valid, even if you dropped out of physics in the 10th grade.
No human being thinks in just one way. For the vast majority of us, several systems of thought and belief exist side by side: The intuitive gut feeling and the cool-headed system that systematically questions things. This provides plenty of room for voluntary and involuntary comedy. The argument that when humor is involved, people don’t know what is “serious” and what is not, makes people dumber than they are. I recently read Neil Postman’s prophetic 1985 book “Amusing Ourselves to Death” again with a lot of “aha,” Netflix’s “Don’t look up” is similarly enlightening. What do we not want to see? According to the study by Maria and Lisa Furtwängler, the two greatest threats to our survival – irreversible overheating and the loss of species – take up less than two percent of all broadcast minutes on four major German TV channels. No joke.
Many believe that if a problem has existed for a long time, it must also take a long time to solve. Maybe, but it doesn’t have to. Like the drunk man fumbling in circles around an advertising column, shouting: “Help, I’m walled in!” It is obvious to any onlooker that he would only need to turn around to be free. But he is clinging to the seemingly endless wall and his “world view.”
Similarly absurd is clinging to fossil fuels, which are still being subsidized with billions of jointly generated money in order to squeeze the air out of us all. We would only need to turn around – or, in other words, turn our gaze and energy around!
It could be so much better than it is now. And healthier. With 100 percent renewables, air pollution would no longer be the world’s number one killer. But many decisions are not based on a lack of knowledge, but on maintaining power. The lobby of the past is well organized, funded and has its fingers in every pie, from the disinformation campaigns of the Koch brothers and Exxon to the current world climate conferences. Who will represent the interests of the future? When I became one of the co-founders of “Scientists for Future” overnight, I saw a lot of humor on the “Fridays” posters. “Short-haul flights for insects only,” “Fossil Fools,” “Why to get an education when no one listens to the educated,” and: “If you don’t act like adults – we will!”
It was a bit like “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” where a child pulls everyone out of their illusion of marveling at the emperor for his clothes. The naked truth is: There is no infinite growth on a finite planet. We don’t have to save “Earth” or “the environment”, we have to save ourselves. And anyone who believes that the economy alone can create prosperity is welcome to count their money while holding their breath. Without air to breathe, water to drink, plants to eat and tolerable temperatures, there can be no peaceful coexistence, no life that is in any way desirable or good. Wealth without biodiversity is abject poverty. As little edible food grows on gold as in gravel gardens. Biodiversity, fertile soil, cooling water – how do we become “shareholders” in what we all “share”? And which nobody cares about at the moment because it is not “priced in”, because pollution is so cheap, there is no business model for prevention, for preserving our livelihoods, or simply for preventing the next pandemic. We actually know all this, even without having to ask ChatGPT.
The oldest joke in human history? David versus Goliath. The hope in it: small against big, mind against brute force, the direct personal appeal of the daughter at the breakfast table might be more likely to change the mind of a powerful corporate leader than public attacks.
In the communication of “Healthy Planet – Healthy People,” we often try to contribute to a surprising change of perspective, not always talking about brakes and austerity measures, but about what it will cost us to carry. In one sentence: “The most expensive thing we can do now is nothing!” Or regarding the encouraging large protests for our democratic culture: “What the majority often doesn’t know is that they are the majority.”
Where do I personally recharge my “humor batteries?” With Sarah Bosetti, Marc-Uwe Kling, Ralph Ruthe, El Hotzo, the Science Busters or “Cranky Unkel vs Climate Change”, an American comedy format. And in the wonderful team at my foundation. It’s hard to save the world on a voluntary basis when others are destroying it full-time. We can’t tickle ourselves. Especially not online. There is no better antidepressant than having committed people around us. Self-efficacy is the magic word. Becoming active is the best way to combat helplessness. Everyone in their own place, with their own resources. Connected instead of alone.
You can’t laugh away what scares you, but you don’t have to cry away the tears you’ve laughed. Humor, cartoons, strong metaphors, images, art and culture must be incorporated if we wish to achieve external and internal transformation. And a better word for it. Culture gives us an idea that a good life doesn’t depend on how much CO2 we blow on it. We can travel kerosene-free with a good book in our heads, we can listen to music together that takes our breath away, that makes us listen and dance. We can form unusual alliances that not only touch the mind, but also the heart.
I had the pleasure of arranging an evening at the Elbphilharmonie for the Harbour Front Future Festival, with piano and poetry, violin and geoscience. Ricarda Winkelmann understands the dynamics of the melting of the supposedly “eternal” ice in the Antarctic like almost no other scientist. I asked her directly: “How do you not despair with everything you know?” Ricarda briefly pondered: “We don’t have time to despair!”
Dr. Eckart von Hirschhausen, doctor, science journalist and founder of the Foundation Healthy Planet – Healthy People. www.stiftung-gegm.de
The White House last week announced that Joe Biden’s senior clean energy advisor, John Podesta, will soon be named the top climate diplomat for the United States. The incumbent, John Kerry, will step down later this spring to assist with Biden’s reelection campaign. Unlike Kerry, Podesta will remain based at the White House rather than the State Department, so he will not require approval from the US Senate and can thus avoid a political fight.
Podesta, 75, is a familiar face in Washington, DC. He served as Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton and was an advisor to President Barack Obama. Between his White House posts, he founded the Center for American Progress, a prominent liberal think tank. In 2016, Podesta ran Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, during which time his emails were hacked and posted on WikiLeaks.
Biden picked Podesta to be his advisor in 2022, praising his “deep roots in climate and clean energy policy and his experience at senior levels of government.” During his time in government, Podesta worked on both domestic and international climate policy. He helped implement the clean energy provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act under Obama and the Inflation Reduction Act under Biden.
He also was part of the US team at big international climate meetings, including Copenhagen and Paris. One of his key roles was to help convince China to join a climate agreement and commit to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. “There was no higher priority than getting this right with China, because, again, if China didn’t get on track to begin to stabilize, peak its emissions, and begin to bring them down, then the rest of the world really couldn’t be successful,” he told the Obama Foundation in 2022.
Podesta hasn’t announced any specific agenda as he takes on the international climate portfolio, but he has called for more aggressive actions from countries to limit global warming. Umair Irfan, Washington
Three climate scientists walk into a bar … taking the climate crisis with humor? As Germany is getting ready for Carnival celebrations, we are taking an unusual angle this time. In today’s opinion piece, Eckart von Hirschhausen explains why humor can be a path to insight and reveal paradoxes and contradictions in climate policy. And Alexandra Endres spoke with communication scientists about it. They agree with Hirschhausen: Humor can create new awareness. But climate jokes seldom bring about a behavior change.
The struggles for results at climate conferences are generally no laughing matter. In today’s interview, Ottmar Edenhofer criticizes the lack of international discussion on carbon pricing as an instrument to decarbonize dirty economic sectors. The economist calls for a global waste collection system for CO2: those who emit must pay, and those who provide carbon sinks must be paid. The current EU debates on a carbon management strategy give these demands great weight.
Chinese authorities do not joke around – at least when it comes to emissions trading. A new regulation envisages harsher penalties. For the first time, carbon trading also mentions aviation – which surprises experts. However, a big flaw in Chinese emissions trading remains.
In today’s Profile, we introduce the new US climate czar, John Podesta. He succeeds John Kerry, who will resign in the spring.
One of the big issues at the COP was how to mobilize more money – for adaptation, financial aid and investment. And this topic will dominate the next COP. But there is only ever talk of raising money in the short term – and never of a systemic approach, such as introducing a global carbon price, something you have long been calling for.
The term carbon pricing is avoided. Instead, the narrative is: zero-carbon technologies must become cheaper, and we must subsidize them to this end. Then, the transition will succeed. But why aren’t we talking about carbon pricing? Because carbon pricing has several functions: It makes carbon-free alternatives profitable. Carbon pricing also taxes the fossil capital stock and reduces it. And that was highly controversial at the COP. Everyone wants to build up the green capital stock, nobody wants to reduce the brown one. That is concerning.
Now, you even call for a sort of global waste collection system for CO2. What do you mean by that?
There is always talk of being committed to the 1.5-degree target. However, in reality, it is no longer possible to maintain this limit of warming if this means that we must not exceed it. The best we can achieve is overshoot: Temporarily exceeding 1.5 degrees and then reducing it to below 1.5 degrees. However, we need to remove CO2 from the atmosphere to achieve this. These negative emissions require a new type of climate financing. In other words, it is a kind of compensation for waste disposal through negative emissions. If the world wants to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 and stay within the 1.5-degree limit in the long term, we need to compensate for the residual emissions from the cement sector or agriculture, for example, which are difficult to avoid, using natural or technical means. Secondly, we must remove more emissions from the atmosphere in the second half of the century than we emit in order to reduce the overshoot.
How is that supposed to work?
There are two fundamental principles. The first: Whoever emits has to pay. The other: Those who provide carbon sinks must be rewarded. This applies just as much to farmers who permanently bind carbon in the Horn of Africa through their work in the soil as to people who use technical filters to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it in geological formations.
And how is this to be paid for? We’re talking about billions.
Yes, because if we want to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees in the long term, we will have to remove 5 to 15 billion tonnes of CO2 from the atmosphere every year until 2050. Assuming prices of 100 to 300 US dollars per metric ton of CO2, that would mean we would have to spend around half a trillion to almost four trillion US dollars on this waste removal. That’s a gigantic sum, between 0.3 and three percent of global gross national income – and about as much as the 2.2 trillion military spending worldwide in 2022. This would create a gigantic economic sector. But nobody is talking about this type of climate financing at the COPs either.
Why is this debate not happening?
Because politics is not consistent. If you look at the Nationally Determined Contributions, you can see an improvement. But it’s only on paper for now.
But if you then look at what the governments are actually doing and compare it with what their ministers promise at the COP, the promises lose credibility. They are literally doing the opposite: At conferences, they talk about phasing out coal and oil, while making plans to expand production at home.
But that would all be stranded costs if politics gets its way.
I think the markets are betting that climate policy will not be implemented effectively because they don’t believe the government’s promises are credible. That is why I do not think that we are heading toward an oil and gas production peak, as the International Energy Agency (IEA) says. The markets have so far shown no willingness to abandon fossil fuels.
You mean the markets are unfazed by a passage that calls on countries to ‘transition away from fossil fuels’?
If governments want the markets to react differently, they must make more credible decisions now. Such credibility does not come from constantly setting new targets, such as tripling renewable energies, which has now been agreed in Dubai. The commitment to transition away from fossil fuels in the COP’s final document sends an important signal. However, it is now important that this move becomes a reality – for example, by the European Union implementing its European Green Deal. If, for instance, prices for oil and gas rise and imports into the EU fall under the second emissions trading system, which will be introduced in the EU in 2027 for the building and transport sectors, this would have an effect on the markets. To prevent this reduction from leading to increased consumption in Asia, for example, the USA would also have to join in.
How is that supposed to work?
The EU could form a kind of demand cartel with the United States: If the EU’s Green Deal and the US Inflation Reduction Act succeed, the demand for fossil fuels will fall credibly. Other countries could join in with carbon pricing. A look at the European Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) shows just how effective this can be. Its announcement alone has already had a significant impact. India is considering a national carbon tax, Turkey a national emissions trading system and even Republicans in the USA are considering it. Some countries in the Global South want to talk about it with the EU. We will see market reactions as soon as instruments are credibly implemented.
But why is it so difficult to introduce a carbon price, for example? You’ve argued before that politicians couldn’t actually come up with anything better: Reducing emissions and generating revenue that can then be used to finance social benefits. Why is this still not popular?
There are two ways of looking at the climate problem. You can say that we have known since Nicholas Stern’s 2006 climate report that action is cheaper than inaction. This is true, but the benefits of climate policy will be reaped in the future and elsewhere, while the costs are incurred here and now. And they are borne by very powerful groups. If you want to tax the fossil fuel capital stock, you immediately have the entire fossil fuel sector against you: the car industry or the construction industry, for example. You can only overcome this if you are willing to compensate the potential losers – such as home or car owners. The government should have started immediately with compensation for the Heating Act when it came to the largest component of the national economic capital stock.
That’s what the climate money should be for. Except that it’s not coming.
Exactly. The government has failed to do this. This is ultimately a political decision. But we as scientists have also done far too little to emphasize that climate policy places a greater burden on poorer households than richer ones. We need to do a much better job of communicating what this kind of relief for lower incomes could look like. We had a very good experience with this last winter with the so-called gas price brake. In my view, this was not properly appreciated at all. The name is completely wrong because we didn’t put the brakes on the price; we passed the price on to households in full and then compensated households based on their consumption. And we reduced consumption in Germany by 23 percent in the second half of 2022 and maintained social stability.
Do you also propose such compensation on an international scale?
In my view, this is essential. We need mechanisms that support countries in raising their carbon prices. A developing country cannot have the same carbon price as the EU. There must be funds for this. And climate development aid would have to be linked to the countries introducing a carbon price. Such conditional aid payments are a taboo, I realize that. But some kind of burden-sharing would be necessary and effective.
That would mean that developed countries would pay billions so that developing countries could apply a carbon price that is as high as ours?
We would benefit from this. Why? Firstly, because the others would then also pursue a climate policy. And secondly, we protect our industry from competitive disadvantages. It can be used to eliminate freeloaders. It would be a win-win cooperation.
People who talk about the climate crisis often do so with a tone of concern or fear. Jokes about heatwaves, mass extinctions and droughts – somewhat inappropriate? But could a little humor perhaps also help reach skeptics? Could humor, by entertaining and stimulating, inspire the audience to more social change? Research remains divided.
Humor is already being used in climate communication. “The earth is hotter than my imaginary boyfriend,” Fridays for Future activists joked at a protest in Australia. British comedian John Oliver makes well-founded jokes about the climate debate, the Green New Deal and carbon offsets on his late-night show. In Germany, satirical TV shows like “extra 3” and “Die Anstalt” deal with climate policy issues.
The climate crisis is also found in Germany’s Carnival: In 2019, a float with a gigantic Greta Thunberg figure rode through Duesseldorf’s Rose Monday parade, while a burning kangaroo symbolized the bushfires in Australia the following year.
Humor can help name grievances and make it easier to deal with them. This also applies to climate communication, according to Aaron Sachs, a natural and cultural historian at Cornell University in the USA. In his book “Stay Cool,” Sachs writes about the benefits of black humor and self-irony in the fight against the climate crisis.
Sachs said in a lecture that it is a tried and tested comedy strategy to laugh about yourself first so that you can then criticize others. “I think a good dose of self-directed humor could actually make us significantly less annoying and that would make our messages more likely to have an impact.” Humor is very helpful in delivering bad news.
However, Chris Skurka, media and communication scientist at Penn State University, says in an interview with Table.Media that the literature has no clear answer to the question of what humor can do for climate communication. “The question is more so under which conditions is humor effective or for which people is it effective, or what types of humor?”
In a review study that Skurka published with his colleague Julia Cunningham in “Current Opinion in Psychology,” both come to the following conclusion: Humor can bring attention to climate and environmental issues amidst the flood of news. “Humor seems to be pretty good at cutting through the noise,” says Skurka. That is “arguably half of the battle in the modern media landscape.”
To some extent, humor can also change the audience’s awareness or interest in climate action, says Skurka. Humor is most likely to reach young people between 18 and 25, as well as people who are less interested in the topic to begin with.
However, humor also carries a risk “because humor, almost by definition, is making light of a situation,” says Skurka. Jokes about environmental pollution or biodiversity loss run the risk of “leaving people with the impression that it’s not that big of a deal.”
Skurka recommends only using humor “when you know your audience is already favorable towards the issue. If you’re trying to reach the opposition, if you’re very, very cautious about it, and you do some message testing beforehand, then maybe you might be able to pull it off in terms of bringing the opposition on board.” But that is risky. Political satire in particular, which is often aimed at opponents of climate policy rather than making jokes about climate change itself, could alienate parts of the audience.
The function of humor is to change perspectives, writes climate journalist Christopher Schrader in the handbook “Über Klima sprechen.” (“Talking about climate”). The idea is to make the climate crisis, its dangers and possible solutions “not just a cognitive experience, but also an emotional one.”
Schrader has evaluated several studies on the topic and lists the advantages and disadvantages of humor in climate communication:
Schrader concludes that the possible disadvantages can be minimized and are no reason to forego the “great potential” of humor in climate communication.
“Humor is not going to save us on its own,” says cultural historian Sachs. “But when it comes to climate change, we clearly haven’t gotten very far with other strategies.” So why not give comedy a try?
Media psychologist Skurka cautions: Humor, despite its effectiveness in other ways, “may not necessarily be the best way to motivate behavior change.” He believes that in order to motivate people to take action against the climate crisis, communication that focuses on the threats of climate change is better suited.
“It seems to help if you can also convey solutions. Although threat messaging in and of itself seems to do a pretty decent job at motivating behavior change,” says Skurka. The research literature on such threat-based messaging “is much more supportive of the argument that climate messaging can be more effective than the humor literature is.”
China’s carbon trading system has been marked by repeated cases of fraud. Companies and consulting firms have forged emissions data and reports. The authorities have not sufficiently verified the reports and conditions at participating power plants. The penalties for falsification have so far been so low that fraud has been more lucrative than compliance and the purchase of carbon credits. “Penalties for non-compliance were ultimately just a business cost,” says analyst Cory Combs from the consulting firm Trivium China. This paradox will be resolved by recently introduced stricter regulations.
“One of the focuses of the new ETS regulation is certainly emphasizing combating data fraud and imposing stricter penalties,” says Qin Yan, ETS analyst at the London Stock Exchange Group. Now, penalties for rule violations have been drastically increased – from approximately 4,000 euros to at least 65,000 euros to 260,000 euros.
According to Zhibin Chen, Senior Manager for Carbon Markets and Pricing at the think tank Adelphi, the authorities can even impose bans “if the impact of the fraud is severe.” The regulation also comes from the Chinese State Council, giving it more weight. The previous regulation “lacked support from other ministries,” as Chen told Table.Media.
However, “stronger regulatory oversight and greater efforts by regulatory authorities are still needed to completely prevent data fraud,” says analyst Qin.
However, “stronger regulatory oversight and greater efforts by regulatory authorities are still needed to completely prevent data fraud,” says analyst Qin. The new rules also hint at a possible expansion of Chinese emissions trading to aviation. Qin believes that the aviation sector’s inclusion in the ETS is likely to happen sooner than expected. High-level politicians have shown interest in such an expansion.
Initially, a list of the sector’s major emitters will be compiled. Companies will also be required to submit reports on their emission data. According to Chen from Adelphi, “emission reporting and auditing for the aviation sector have been mandatory since 2016”. So, the sector is not entirely new to reporting in this area.
An earlier inclusion of Chinese aviation could also mean adaptation to a reform of European emissions trading. According to Tan Luyue, ETS analyst at the London Stock Exchange Group, it is likely that European CO2 trading will also include international aviation from 2027. If China’s ETS were to be expanded, its aviation sector would be prepared for the challenges posed by European emissions trading, Tan told Chinese media. Combs, however, is skeptical. “I find it hard to imagine the aviation industry joining the ETS in the near future,” he says. According to Combs, the sector will probably only do so after other sectors.
Currently, China’s CO2 trading covers 2,257 companies in the energy sector – primarily coal-fired power plants. Expansion to other sectors has long been planned and repeatedly postponed. Qin expects the aluminum and cement sectors to participate in emissions trading from 2025.
While the new regulation provides for harsher penalties and stricter monitoring of companies, the biggest criticism of China’s emissions trading remains unaddressed. In China, participating power plants do not have to buy emission credits when emitting carbon but only if they are less efficient than state-set benchmarks.
Participating power plants receive free emission offsets allocated based on a complex distribution formula. If some power plants emit less CO2, they can sell their credits. If they operate less efficiently, they must purchase credits on the market. Efficient power plants “have a negative carbon price”, says Lauri Myllyvirta, analyst at the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA). The system is by no means comparable to the European one. “China’s ‘carbon trading’ is not carbon trading as usually understood and does not establish a CO2 price at all,” says Myllyvirta.
A departure from this “intensity-based” system is not foreseeable. “So far, there are no credible signs of such a change,” says Cory Combs of consultancy firm Trivium China. While the new regulation mentions the possibility of future “a combination of free and paid CO2 credits,” Myllyvirta finds it too vague. It is merely “a promise that a step forward will be taken at an unspecified time,” he told Table.Media.
Analyst Qin also believes that “the auctioning of carbon credits like in the European emissions trading,” i.e., replacing free allocation, is “inevitable.” However, the paid allocation of carbon credits “could still be a lengthy process, as the Ministry of Finance apparently is not fully cooperating,” says Qin.
A rapid introduction of a strict emission cap, as exists in other carbon trading systems, is unlikely without China declaring a carbon emission limit. Furthermore, there is little room to “raise the bar for participating power plants” because electricity producers cannot pass on the costs due to fixed electricity prices. “The regulatory authority will also refrain from setting strict ETS goals to avoid burdening the energy sector too much,” Qin concludes.
A skydiver jumps out of the plane and pulls the first line – nothing happens. Fortunately, there is still the reserve parachute, so he pulls the second ripcord in a slight panic. Nothing happens. He hurtles towards the ground. Suddenly, hardly believing his eyes, he sees a man flying towards him from the ground. His rescue? He calls out to him: “Do you repair parachutes?” The other man shouts back: “No, just gas pipes!”
I love this joke because, like all good jokes, it contains a very true core. We are in free fall. We violated six out of nine planetary boundaries last year, and with them, us. Johan Rockström emphasizes: We have moved from the linear into the exponential and increasingly unpredictable realm of the “great acceleration.” We could despair, go mad or laugh about it. And regain the ability to act.
The gas pipeline joke could make you think about Nord Stream 2, how confusing the world has become, or about how we will have new jokes after 2050, when the world will no longer need natural gas. Humor and the climate crisis are not mutually exclusive. Humor is nothing superficial, but a deep YES to the paradoxes, the contradictions in which we are all trapped – and from which we can temporarily free ourselves through mental judo.
A man walks through the street clapping his hands. Someone asks him: “What do you do?” The man’s answer: “I chase away elephants.” The other says: “There are no elephants here.” His answer: “It works!“
The human tendency towards false causality and overconfidence couldn’t be summed up more briefly. An example from the “Guide to Unhappiness” of how difficult it is to shake people in their preconceptions – if not through the brain, then perhaps through the diaphragm? Do messages become dubious just because you understand them? Like Paul Watzlawick, as a doctor, science journalist and founder of the Foundation Healthy Earth – Healthy People, I am convinced of the healing and enlightening effect of humor.
“If something doesn’t work – do something different.” There have been “limits to growth” for 50 years, the greenhouse effect for 200, 2023 was the hottest year in 125,000 years with an estimated 100,000 heat-related deaths in Europe – what more needs to happen? Or is what Prof. John Sterman says true: “Research shows that showing people research does not work.” It is all the more astonishing that we are still pursuing science and large parts of journalism according to the “knowledge deficit model”, as if the world would become more reasonable on its own if we published, researched and revealed even more. In the past, we had to believe what we couldn’t know. Today, we don’t believe what we know.
Even more persistent than climate deniers in the AfD is the German prejudice that humor is just a distraction. Wrong. It is a path to knowledge, every laugh a small enlightenment (Schopenhauer). I call it sustainable comedy, you laugh in the moment and change your perspective, have a haha and an aha experience.
Berlin (Archive) – Good news for children, winter sports enthusiasts and fans of a proper snowball fight! To counter the rising trend of winters with little snow, the national metrology institute of the Federal Republic of Germany announced today that the freezing point of water will officially be raised to 10 degrees Celsius during the night from Sunday to Monday. A lot of snow is therefore expected until April, at the least.
This fake fun fact from the German satire newspaper Postillon reminds me of a statement by Volker Wissing. When the “Father Rhine,” a lifeline of Germany and an important transport route for the economy, shrank to an impassable trickle last summer thanks to heatwaves and drought, the transport minister recommended deepening the navigation channel. As if not only cars but also rivers could be lowered. But the laws of nature are non-negotiable (Harald Lesch). Physics is still valid, even if you dropped out of physics in the 10th grade.
No human being thinks in just one way. For the vast majority of us, several systems of thought and belief exist side by side: The intuitive gut feeling and the cool-headed system that systematically questions things. This provides plenty of room for voluntary and involuntary comedy. The argument that when humor is involved, people don’t know what is “serious” and what is not, makes people dumber than they are. I recently read Neil Postman’s prophetic 1985 book “Amusing Ourselves to Death” again with a lot of “aha,” Netflix’s “Don’t look up” is similarly enlightening. What do we not want to see? According to the study by Maria and Lisa Furtwängler, the two greatest threats to our survival – irreversible overheating and the loss of species – take up less than two percent of all broadcast minutes on four major German TV channels. No joke.
Many believe that if a problem has existed for a long time, it must also take a long time to solve. Maybe, but it doesn’t have to. Like the drunk man fumbling in circles around an advertising column, shouting: “Help, I’m walled in!” It is obvious to any onlooker that he would only need to turn around to be free. But he is clinging to the seemingly endless wall and his “world view.”
Similarly absurd is clinging to fossil fuels, which are still being subsidized with billions of jointly generated money in order to squeeze the air out of us all. We would only need to turn around – or, in other words, turn our gaze and energy around!
It could be so much better than it is now. And healthier. With 100 percent renewables, air pollution would no longer be the world’s number one killer. But many decisions are not based on a lack of knowledge, but on maintaining power. The lobby of the past is well organized, funded and has its fingers in every pie, from the disinformation campaigns of the Koch brothers and Exxon to the current world climate conferences. Who will represent the interests of the future? When I became one of the co-founders of “Scientists for Future” overnight, I saw a lot of humor on the “Fridays” posters. “Short-haul flights for insects only,” “Fossil Fools,” “Why to get an education when no one listens to the educated,” and: “If you don’t act like adults – we will!”
It was a bit like “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” where a child pulls everyone out of their illusion of marveling at the emperor for his clothes. The naked truth is: There is no infinite growth on a finite planet. We don’t have to save “Earth” or “the environment”, we have to save ourselves. And anyone who believes that the economy alone can create prosperity is welcome to count their money while holding their breath. Without air to breathe, water to drink, plants to eat and tolerable temperatures, there can be no peaceful coexistence, no life that is in any way desirable or good. Wealth without biodiversity is abject poverty. As little edible food grows on gold as in gravel gardens. Biodiversity, fertile soil, cooling water – how do we become “shareholders” in what we all “share”? And which nobody cares about at the moment because it is not “priced in”, because pollution is so cheap, there is no business model for prevention, for preserving our livelihoods, or simply for preventing the next pandemic. We actually know all this, even without having to ask ChatGPT.
The oldest joke in human history? David versus Goliath. The hope in it: small against big, mind against brute force, the direct personal appeal of the daughter at the breakfast table might be more likely to change the mind of a powerful corporate leader than public attacks.
In the communication of “Healthy Planet – Healthy People,” we often try to contribute to a surprising change of perspective, not always talking about brakes and austerity measures, but about what it will cost us to carry. In one sentence: “The most expensive thing we can do now is nothing!” Or regarding the encouraging large protests for our democratic culture: “What the majority often doesn’t know is that they are the majority.”
Where do I personally recharge my “humor batteries?” With Sarah Bosetti, Marc-Uwe Kling, Ralph Ruthe, El Hotzo, the Science Busters or “Cranky Unkel vs Climate Change”, an American comedy format. And in the wonderful team at my foundation. It’s hard to save the world on a voluntary basis when others are destroying it full-time. We can’t tickle ourselves. Especially not online. There is no better antidepressant than having committed people around us. Self-efficacy is the magic word. Becoming active is the best way to combat helplessness. Everyone in their own place, with their own resources. Connected instead of alone.
You can’t laugh away what scares you, but you don’t have to cry away the tears you’ve laughed. Humor, cartoons, strong metaphors, images, art and culture must be incorporated if we wish to achieve external and internal transformation. And a better word for it. Culture gives us an idea that a good life doesn’t depend on how much CO2 we blow on it. We can travel kerosene-free with a good book in our heads, we can listen to music together that takes our breath away, that makes us listen and dance. We can form unusual alliances that not only touch the mind, but also the heart.
I had the pleasure of arranging an evening at the Elbphilharmonie for the Harbour Front Future Festival, with piano and poetry, violin and geoscience. Ricarda Winkelmann understands the dynamics of the melting of the supposedly “eternal” ice in the Antarctic like almost no other scientist. I asked her directly: “How do you not despair with everything you know?” Ricarda briefly pondered: “We don’t have time to despair!”
Dr. Eckart von Hirschhausen, doctor, science journalist and founder of the Foundation Healthy Planet – Healthy People. www.stiftung-gegm.de
The White House last week announced that Joe Biden’s senior clean energy advisor, John Podesta, will soon be named the top climate diplomat for the United States. The incumbent, John Kerry, will step down later this spring to assist with Biden’s reelection campaign. Unlike Kerry, Podesta will remain based at the White House rather than the State Department, so he will not require approval from the US Senate and can thus avoid a political fight.
Podesta, 75, is a familiar face in Washington, DC. He served as Chief of Staff for President Bill Clinton and was an advisor to President Barack Obama. Between his White House posts, he founded the Center for American Progress, a prominent liberal think tank. In 2016, Podesta ran Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, during which time his emails were hacked and posted on WikiLeaks.
Biden picked Podesta to be his advisor in 2022, praising his “deep roots in climate and clean energy policy and his experience at senior levels of government.” During his time in government, Podesta worked on both domestic and international climate policy. He helped implement the clean energy provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act under Obama and the Inflation Reduction Act under Biden.
He also was part of the US team at big international climate meetings, including Copenhagen and Paris. One of his key roles was to help convince China to join a climate agreement and commit to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions. “There was no higher priority than getting this right with China, because, again, if China didn’t get on track to begin to stabilize, peak its emissions, and begin to bring them down, then the rest of the world really couldn’t be successful,” he told the Obama Foundation in 2022.
Podesta hasn’t announced any specific agenda as he takes on the international climate portfolio, but he has called for more aggressive actions from countries to limit global warming. Umair Irfan, Washington
