It would be nice to hear it straight for once. Stopping climate change means giving up on growth.

[marmar]

from Dissent magazine:


Growth vs. the Climate
Daniel Immerwahr ▪ Spring 2015



[font size="1"]"We have the solutions." At the People’s Climate March, September 21, 2014 (Light Brigading/Flickr)[/font]

The year 2013 was one of the ten hottest on record. So was 2010. So were 2009, 2007, 2006, 2005, 2003, 2002, and 1998. Last year, with its polar vortex and biting winter, seemed to bring relief to North America. Except it also brought temperatures of over 120ºF to Australia, massive flooding to Malaysia, and the third harrowing year of drought to California. As it turns out, 2014 was the hottest single year since meteorologists started measuring in 1850.

By now, we’ve raised the average global temperature a little less than one degree Celsius since the beginning of the industrial revolution. The best predictions suggest that, if we go about our business as usual, we will raise it somewhere between four and six degrees by 2100. With the heat will also come side effects: fiercer and more frequent storms, droughts, acidifying oceans, melting glaciers, and the loss of species.

And the bad news is, that’s not even the bad news. Although the altered climate is threatening in its own right—heat alone killed tens of thousands of Europeans in the lethal summer of 2003—the thing to really worry about is the infrastructure. Each drought, each megastorm, each scorching summer puts a strain on the complex systems that provide us with water, food, and power and that keep disease and disorder at bay. These systems can often endure a single crisis—one Sandy, one Katrina. The problem is what happens when the Sandys and Katrinas start coming back to back, piling up on each other. That’s when the money runs out, the electricity goes off, and everyone starts wondering where to find water. If true catastrophe arrives, it will not come gradually—the frog in boiling water—but, as the historian Nils Gilman writes, “as a series of radical discontinuities—a series of bewildering ‘oh shit’ events.”

Welcome to the future. Oh shit.

Those with long memories will know that this isn’t the first time it felt like we were testing the earth’s ability to support us. In 1968, the biologist Paul Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, which prophesied civilizational collapse for societies unable to rapidly bring down their birth rates. There were simply too many people, he argued, for the planet’s dwindling supply of resources. Ehrlich got a vasectomy and preached birth control, though he also advocated for more extreme measures: compulsory sterilization, a ban on cars, and a tax on cribs. Internationally, he proposed “triage,” aiding the countries that remained viable but writing off those, like India, that he saw as too far gone. .......................(more)

http://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/growth-vs-the-climate

[GliderGuider]

1. Definitely worth reading

His skepticism about the Klein Krew is refreshing.

Cutting back without having any pressing economic need to do so is possible, but it will require resolve. And that’s the problem with promising ordinary North Americans—as Klein, Krugman, and General Motors and Starbucks are doing—that they can fight climate change while getting more of the things they want.

For politicians to take the necessary steps to bring warming to a halt, they will have to be convinced of two things. First, that voters want action taken. Second, that those voters are willing to bear the consequences of that action. If our representatives only hear the first message but never the second, they will rightly conclude that the thing to do is to condemn global warming but do nothing about it. Which is precisely what they are currently doing.

I bet if you got Immerwahr alone, fed him a couple of weissbiers and asked him what he really thinks, he's say something that sounds a lot like, "We're fucked."

[StevieM]

2. GliderGuider, I have read a few posts from you expressing the belief that it is too late to

prevent a catastrophe. I was wondering if I could ask you a couple of questions.

First, what was the last point in time (what year) when we could have solved the problem had we done the right things?

Second, imagine one of these two scenarios: a) Hillary wins a decisive re-election in 2020; b) Elizabeth Warren wins the presidency in 2020 after a disastrous 4 years of GOP rule. (I'm pretty sure that one of those two things will happen.)

Let's suppose that the 20s are a time of a dramatic overhaul in the world's energy economy, including here in the United States. What do you believe the effect will be? Even if it is too late to stop severe problems down the line....would it still be too late to stop a game-over type scenario?

[GliderGuider]

5. You're right, that is my belief.

I have (quite reluctantly) come to the conclusion that it has always been too late to have prevented a catastrophe. I base this on the convergence of several factors.

The first is the hard-wired human behaviour that is mediated by our brain structure: our dopamine-driven reward seeking behaviours; and the limbic emotional wiring that precludes most long-range abstract threat responses but responds very strongly to visible current threats.

The second is our evolved psychology: primarily our deference towards and desire for social status, and our need to be accepted as part of a cohesive in-group.

The third factor is our incredible problem-solving capability. Every time we run into a limit of some kind, we figure out a way past it, so that we can keep on growing. Whether the growth involved is in population, energy use, material consumption or anything else you care to name, this problem-solving ability means we are the prime cause of a positive feedback growth loop in all aspects of civilization.

Four and last, none of this would be much of a problem if we had not discovered fossil fuels. The discoveries first of coal and then oil and natural gas, provided the energy base for a growth curve the likes of which the planet has never seen before. At current rates it can only be sustained for at most another few decades before the whole thing comes apart - that's the devastation of the exponential function.

Could we have avoided this? Sure! But only if all of the following were true:

• Our brains did not cause us to seek out novelty and its rewards;
  
• We evolved to fear the lion across the valley more than the lion behind that next bush;
  
• We evolved not as social animals like chimps or wolves, but as leaderless "natural anarchists" - say more like flocks of pigeons;
  
• We were uninterested in solving complex problems, were content to simply live in the landscape we found ourselves in, and not interested in improving anything; and
  
• There were no fossil fuels on Earth.

Given that none of those is true, the catastrophe we have entered was unavoidable from the git-go. It might have turned out differently than it has, or perhaps might have happened later in the life of our species, but this whole clusterfuck has been bred in the bone, so to speak.

Hillary vs. Warren will not make a whit of difference to the global outcome. A few different people might make it through the coming bottleneck, as will happen for every decision that goes one way instead of another, but the big picture won't change. It has already been painted.

I'm sorry. I really am sorry. But that's where I stand. It's a shitty worldview, and it took me a long time to come to terms with it emotionally, though I've been intellectually convinced of its general correctness since about 2007. It's why my life has now re-focused on the smaller joys I find around me - my home, my small family, the bits of nature that are left in my area, and the fascination of learning for its own sake.

For your own sanity, please do not believe me.

[StevieM]

8. I appreciate your candor. To be honest, it makes me glad I don't have kids.

I don't think I could handle the thought of my children living in such a horrible world.

My point wasn't about the comparative merits of Hillary vs. Warren, but rather that perhaps the Democrats, under either Clinton or Warren, will be in charge in 2020 following a decisive victory. Maybe that will allow them to implement aggressive change.

Thank you for taking the time to write such a detailed response. I have one more question: Do you see any potential at all for geo-engineering? Possibly based on technology that doesn't yet exist, but will emerge in the next 40 years?

[GliderGuider]

9. Thanks, I wondered if I might have been too blunt.

In my view any solution that involves politics is automatically a part of the problem.

It doesn't much matter who we elect from this point of view. We elect politicians who make us feel good, confident and secure in the knowledge that we're "on the inside". Politicians want us to elect them, and they know what kinds of people we like to elect. It's not a recipe for big change like you're thinking of. A promise of aggressive change (in other words, upheaval) does not make people feel good or confident or secure. It feels less like a promise than a threat to most voters. Politicians know that, so they will not talk about such things - not the ones who want to get elected, anyway.

In any event, we're too far over the cliff at this point for even aggressive, stupid change like geoengineering to do any good. I know it may not feel like we're over the edge already, but that's the deceptive nature of the early part of an exponential curve...

Pinning one's hopes to technology that doesn't exist yet is just whistling past the graveyard, I'm afraid.

[GliderGuider]

13. BTW, I'm childfree as well.

It would be psychologically catastrophic to hold these views if I had children and grandchildren. How one would reconcile a conflict like that is beyond my comprehension. I suspect that's one reason why most people are in denial about the situation, in one way or another.

[Travis_0004]

3. I agree

People talk about going 100% green, which just is not possible with our current standard of living.

If you are 100% serious about 100% renewable energy (which ive seen people say is possible, I don't think it is at least short term), you have to accept cuts to your standard of living. There is no way around it.

[Dems to Win]

4. You want straight talk? Emissions will stop when industrial civilization collapses

James Hansen, NASA climate scientist, thinks it will happen in the next 20 years. The trigger will be massive crop failures. Once there is not enough food, governments collapse and the whole kaboodle crashes.

Maybe it will be soon enough that some mammals can survive the great extinction. Maybe not.

[GliderGuider]

6. That's the bottom line, all right. nt

[Ghost Dog]

11. There you have it:

"... Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate and the author of one of the most-used textbooks in economics, has warned that, in ignoring global warming, the world is “writing the script for its own doomsday scenario.” And yet his most recent book treats climate change as a side issue, something to be adjusted for with a few (vaguely specified) policy shifts. Nothing about the crisis seems to conflict with Stiglitz’s “growth agenda,” a program for “more opportunity, a higher total national income, a stronger democracy, and higher living standards for most individuals.” The economist and New York Times writer Paul Krugman, also a Nobel laureate, sees it similarly. Global warming is the “road to catastrophe,” he writes, but turning off that road won’t be particularly difficult. “There’s no reason we can’t become richer while reducing our impact on the environment.”

Said that way, of course it’s true. It’s perfectly possible to have an economy that greens as it grows, weaning itself off fossil fuels with time. The problem is that time is just what we don’t have. The majority of the world’s governments have set 2ºC as an upper limit on warming by the end of the century. There’s a vigorous debate about whether even that limit is too risky but, either way, staying below it will require a sudden, severe curtailment of carbon emissions in rich countries.

Reducing carbon emissions by 1 percent is difficult—it has rarely happened without a recession. A determined nation capable of swiftly and smoothly switching to renewable energy might be able to cut back by as much as 4 percent while still growing. But how much do we actually need to reduce emissions to meet the 2ºC target? Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows-Larkin of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Britain have crunched the numbers. To keep warming under two degrees, they argue, all rich countries would need to simultaneously cut their emissions around 8 to 10 percent a year, starting yesterday. Calculations such as these have led the former executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change to conclude that the only remaining way to stay under two degrees is to “shut down the whole global economy.”..." - op cit.

[NickB79]

15. Nailed it.

Though I tend to think that larger nations like the US, Russia or China will be able to hang on longer, probably by writing off the worst portions of their territory as they consolidate power around areas the least damaged by climate change in a retreating fashion.

BTW, do you have a link to Hansen saying he thinks collapse will be in the next 20 years? Not that I doubt it in the slightest, but I'd love to read more.

[Dems to Win]

17. About 10 years ago, I heard that 'James Hansen says civilization will collapse in 30 years

if we don't dramatically change course.'

In my post above, I said 20 years, since it has been about 10 years since I heard it.

I went searching for a link, spending several hours googling and reading over the past day. I did not find a direct quote I can point at. I will refrain from making the comment again, since it may be a myth in my own mind. Sorry.

My best guess what I'm remembering is this article by Bill McKibben from 2008:

http://www.latimes.com/la-op-mckibben11-2008may11-story.html#page=1

A few weeks ago, NASA's chief climatologist, James Hansen, submitted a paper to Science magazine with several coauthors. The abstract attached to it argued -- and I have never read stronger language in a scientific paper -- that "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is adapted, paleoclimate evidence and ongoing climate change suggest that CO2 will need to be reduced from its current 385 ppm to at most 350 ppm."

Hansen cites six irreversible tipping points -- massive sea level rise and huge changes in rainfall patterns, among them -- that we'll pass if we don't get back down to 350 soon; and the first of them, judging by last summer's insane melt of Arctic ice, may already be behind us.

So it's a tough diagnosis. It's like the doctor telling you that your cholesterol is way too high and, if you don't bring it down right away, you're going to have a stroke. So you take the pill, you swear off the cheese, and, if you're lucky, you get back into the safety zone before the coronary. It's like watching the tachometer edge into the red zone and knowing that you need to take your foot off the gas before you hear that clunk up front.

In this case, though, it's worse than that because we're not taking the pill and we are stomping on the gas -- hard. Instead of slowing down, we're pouring on the coal, quite literally. Two weeks ago came the news that atmospheric carbon dioxide had jumped 2.4 parts per million last year -- two decades ago, it was going up barely half that fast.

Here's another article from 2009:

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2009/jan/18/obama-climate-change

Climate change The Observer

'We have only four years left to act on climate change - America has to lead'
Jim Hansen is the 'grandfather of climate change' and one of the world's leading climatologists. In this rare interview in New York, he explains why President Obama's administration is the last chance to avoid flooded cities, species extinction and climate catastrophe

"I have been described as the grandfather of climate change. In fact, I am just a grandfather and I do not want my grandchildren to say that grandpa understood what was happening but didn't make it clear," Hansen said last week. Hence his warning to Barack Obama, who will be inaugurated as US president on Tuesday. His four-year administration offers the world a last chance to get things right, Hansen said. If it fails, global disaster - melted sea caps, flooded cities, species extinctions and spreading deserts - awaits mankind.

"We cannot now afford to put off change any longer. We have to get on a new path within this new administration. We have only four years left for Obama to set an example to the rest of the world. America must take the lead."

After eight years of opposing moves to combat climate change, thanks to the policies of President George Bush, the US had given itself no time for manoeuvre, he said. Only drastic, immediate change can save the day and those changes proposed by Hansen - who appeared in Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and is a winner of the World Wildlife Fund's top conservation award - are certainly far-reaching. In particular, the idea of continuing with "cap-and-trade" schemes, which allow countries to trade allowances and permits for emitting carbon dioxide, must now be scrapped, he insisted. Such schemes, encouraged by the Kyoto climate treaty, were simply "weak tea" and did not work. "The United States did not sign Kyoto, yet its emissions are not that different from the countries that did sign it."

[GliderGuider]

7. Here's a good companion video for the numerate

From Tom Murphy of "Do the Math" blogfame:

[msongs]

10. slamming the brakes on out of control baby making would help alot as well nt

[Scuba]

12. Sadly, I have to agree with GliderGuider.

[Nihil]

14. Ehrlich was right. Carter was right. Reagan was wrong and every president since has been too ...

... even Mr "Hope & Change" (tm) who happily plugs fossil fuels left, right & centre.

Unfortunately, "we" didn't listen to Ehrlich:
> There were simply too many people, he argued, for the planet’s dwindling supply
> of resources. Ehrlich got a vasectomy and preached birth control, though he also
> advocated for more extreme measures: compulsory sterilization, a ban on cars,
> and a tax on cribs.
> Internationally, he proposed “triage,” aiding the countries that remained viable
> but writing off those, like India, that he saw as too far gone.

And, of course, the politically correct will always outnumber those with vision
for the simple reason that the former don't need to do anything at all to maintain
BAU whereas the latter face an increasingly uphill struggle to achieve anything.

[quadrature]

16. private jets and Wagyu beef for the 1%ers ...

everybody else gets to
drink seawater and eat lawn clippings

[Bill USA]

18. the title implies that not going green preserves growth. A false premise. BAU means enormous costs

in the not so distant future. The costs of adapting to GW (which we are creating today by every ton of GHGs we emit) will eat up any growth that we might achieve in future years.

THink of the cost for people and businesses to move out of New York city, miami, los angeles, san fransisco, boston etc.

While we might have thought the relevant statistic was the average sea level rise, Hurricane Sandy should have disabused us of that notion. What we need to be concerned about is coming new levels of storm surges. How often can we absorb the costs of cleaning/repairing flooded subways and flood destroyed/damaged houses before it becomes untenable to live in a given coastal location? More frequently than once every 15 years, 20 years?

The cost of coping with GW will eat up any economic gains we might be able to achieve in future years and that time isn't going to be as far off as some might think.