and not transitory- a lasting alliance with serious political consequences and leads to serious policy- I will reevaluate my skepticism about religious influence. But since I'm skeptical that the U.S. will ever do anything serious about global warming I won't hold my breath. And to those who think I might be a little cynical, on this issue that's true, but I'm quite optimistic on many other fronts and-  know this is heresey to many on this site- I am not entirely convinced that the consequences of global warming will indeed be so dire anyway and not amenable to mitigation and adaptation.

J.S.

Assistant Professor, Monterey Institute of International Studies

I am also not convinced that the consequences of global heating are certain to be as devestating as sometimes pictured.  I hope that this is one of the ones where we get lucky rather than getting what we deserve.

On the other hand, I've got the sense to recognize that that's no basis for making policy choices about irreversible widespread threats to the entire global habitability infrastructure.

Hope is not a plan.  

The sane response to the threat of global heating is to plan for the worst and hope for the best --- where planning means taking action NOW to respond that is commensurate with the scale of the threat and its plausible worst case scenarios, not assuming that you can go through life like George W, always being rescued from your dissolute ways.

planning for the worst would require a 50-70% decrease in emissions within 20 years, which would cripple the world economy, prevent billions this generation from getting out of poverty, etc. and I am not willing personally to suggest such a course. You may disagree as well as others, but I don't think there is any political imperative to always do the maximum to stave off a worst-case scenario. Exmaple- worst-case scenario is that North Korea attacks us with long-rangle nuclear missiles or than Iran builds a bomb and uses it against us or Israel- according to your logic what does politics require that be do? More pre-emptive war? All of our resources on a missile-defense shield? Politics in many ways is about managing risks not eliminating them, which is not possible and often more dangerous. We are in the process of having that conversation on global warming and we'll see where it ends- my guess is that we will sign off on something that is mildly costly and mildly effective and cross our fingers.

J.S.

Assistant Professor, Monterey Institute of International Studies

to support this statement?

planning for the worst would require a 50-70% decrease in emissions within 20 years, which would cripple the world economy, prevent billions this generation from getting out of poverty, etc.

I hear this all the time, yet when I think of the options that are discussed to combat global warming, I think of creating jobs, creating industry, and spurring the economy. Why is it that the costs cannot reap benefits beyond the environmental ones?

The corporate line is that the necessary energy transition is a "cost" because our screwed up economics thinking runs the earth as if it were a liquidating asset to be plundered rather than a going concern to be preserved and handed down to our heirs in good condition.

The root cause of the problem is that our accounting methods are seriously mentally crippled:  if you tried to run a business without using a net worth statement, you could fail to notice that you were breaking even each year only at the cost of falling further and further into debt (or depleting your reserves more and more).  

Yet that is exactly what economists do--they say that we can't NOT drive off the cliff because it would cost too much, yet they never consider the cost to the future of failing to act.

Because of discounting, economic thinking says that an action today that would cost $1,000,000 and save a thousand lives in a hundred years is not worth doing.

The corporatist propaganda about "getting people out of poverty" is spin too, ignoring that it is precisely the poorest people who will suffer the most from our failure to do exactly what is needed to stabilize the climate--which, yes, is about a 75% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

But, hey, that's only about 3.25% a year between now and then, not an impossible goal by any means.  The only thing we lack to make that kind of cut is the willingness to escape the mental prison of economic dogma and use physical realities rather than economics to guide our actions.

This Grist site alone has published links to studies showing that the costs of NOT responding aggressively to global heating far exceed the costs of responding--especially since so many of the actions needed are of the "no regrets" variety . . . that is, they pay off whether global heating will be as bad as predicted or not.

The bottom line is that corporatists and their paid priests want you to think that There Is No Alternative to the endless growth economy.  If they can make you think that, then their job is easy . . . they no longer have to work hard to maintain their positions of power and wealth because the people oppressed by the endless growth ideology don't realize there is an alternative.

that coal power plant that China is opening up every week is just part of my corporatist/economics propoganda. And yeah, billions of people wanting a middle class lifestyle can be done while we decrease CO2 without any cost. In fact, we will all get richer and there will be more jobs and we can do it right away! You keep telling yourself that and see how far that gets you in the real world.

J.S.

Assistant Professor, Monterey Institute of International Studies

The US has plans for 150+ big pulverized coal units on the books now (See "Making Sense of the Coal Rush" by the US PIRG groups.)

So the US (whose people emit more carbon per capita than anyone on the planet) says to China (whose people emit far less carbon than even the global average per capita:

"Say, China, why don't you stop building all those nasty coal burners--we've got a maniac in Texas who wants to build 15 or 16 of them and we just changed the law to weaken the environmental reviews, so we're really hoping that you'll burn less coal so we can burn more. Gotta keep our economy growing, dont you know."

Yeah, that'll work.  Good thing we've got sharp people like you in the "real world" of academia and blogging to help enforce the party line that there is NOTHING ANYONE CAN DO to keep the world from shooting past its limits.

   Lacking will and imagination, we may fail.

   We could spend $400 billion a year converting to sustainable energy for both ourselves and other countries as much as possible (and it is not only China planning to build new coal powered plants, folks).

   We could mandate that all new cars be hybrid or fully electric or hydrogen by 2010 (and together with other countries put up the 100 billion or so it will cost to do so).

   After we converted to sustainable electrical production as much as possible, we could go on spending the 400 billion a year on energy efficiency and energy friendly mass transit worldwide.

   A bit of the money could go towards micro-loans, education, health care and clean water (say 60 billion or so a year).

   If we challenged the other developed countries to put up a similar amount (Europe and Japan combined), it wouldn't take that long, and we could really clean up and preserve the environment world wide.

   The United States is like Ebenezeer Scrooge.  We see the problems all around us, we have the ability to solve them, but it's none of our business we say.  Better to huddle under our sheets while the world ends than to save it.

   We need a Marley to wake us up.

patrick

  Jason,

    I read your paper, and pretty much agree with 2, 4, 5, and 6.

    (And suspect that most people here at least would agree with them, but go read them and see for yourselves.)

    Number 1 call for energy independence.  That is a nationalist issue, not an environmental issue in my mind.  I am against it because I see it becoming a substitute for doing something about global warming, which is the real issue.

    Number 3 (ending all resource related subsidies) is also problematic.  I watch the free market fires buring in Indonesia and wonder if subsidies could have been used to prevent them.  If we must have private property, then subsidies seem to me to be one of the tools we can use to regulate it's use.

    None of this is any surprise to you, we have been over it before (grin).

    But I put it here to fit in with the thread.

patrick

As Herman Daly has so eloquently showed, the insanity of economics is that its faithful see the environment as a subset of the economy, rather than the other way around.

So you get deranged thinking like "We could respond to the environmental threat of global heating but it would HURT THE ECONOMY" -- this reflects thinking that ignores the billions of people who, for all intents and purposes, are already entirely out of the global economy and who would only be helped by efforts to reverse environmental destruction.

When an economist says we have to accept environmental degradation because it would cost too much to respond, what he means is "it would cost the rich more than they care to spend."

Just as the Oil Depletion Protocol proposes for peak oil, the solution to acting unwisely with regard to carbon emissions is to simply stop.  

If the US said we are not going to build more coal plants and that we are going to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by 3.25% per year (which could easily start with the low-hanging fruit of gas taxes, speed limit reductions, and compact fluorescent bulbs/LED lights).

The way to influence ChIndia to reverse course on global heating is to use our massive wealth--captured through a century of profligate energy waste--to reverse course first, and then to spend a fraction of money we're pouring into arming for the wars over oil on paying for ChIndia to have the tools needed to skip the high-carbon fuel stage.  

But as long as President Chimpy is insisting that the only thing the US is willing to do is reduce its carbon intensity (in other words, we'll keep emitting more every year--just not quite as fast as our GDP grows) then the ChIndians are going to keep saying "we can triple and quadruple our energy use and still not be emitting as much CO2 per head as you do, so we're not going first."

The line that perfectly summed up Vietnam was the officer who said "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."  

To top that, the economists say "We have to destroy the environment in order to save economic growth."  

I'm just glad that I don't have kids who will have to live in the world made safe for economic growth long after we've blown past the environmental limits.