Save the Economy By Saving the Climate

It's not just far worse than you think. It's getting increasingly worse increasingly faster.

David Atkins "thereisnospoon" at Hullabaloo:

Most of the political discourse in the country is focused on economics, taxes and spending. With so many people unemployed and the social safety under assault, that's mostly appropriate. But it's also worth remembering that the biggest legacy we have to leave to future generations isn't about money. It's about the planet.

About that? The news isn't good, per David Roberts at Grist:

SNIP

It might seem that, given the extraordinary difficulty of hitting 2 degrees C, we ought to lower our sights a bit and accept that we're going to hit 4 degrees C. It won't be ideal, but hitting anything lower than that is just too difficult and expensive.

It's seductive logic. After all, to hit 4 degrees C we would "only" have to peak global emissions in 2020 and decline thereafter at the relatively leisurely rate (ha ha) of around 3.5 percent per year.

Sadly, even that cold comfort is not available to us. The thing is, if 2 degrees C is extremely dangerous, 4 degrees C is absolutely catastrophic. In fact, according to the latest science, says Anderson, "a 4 degrees C future is incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond 'adaptation', is devastating to the majority of ecosystems, and has a high probability of not being stable."

Yeeeah. You'll want to read that sentence again. Then you'll probably want to pour yourself a stiff drink.

Obviously, "incompatible with an organized global community" is what jumps out, but the last bit, "high probability of not being stable," is equally if not more important. One of the most uncertain areas of climate science today has to do with feedbacks -- processes caused by climate change that in turn accelerate (or decelerate) climate change. For instance, heat can melt the Arctic permafrost, which releases methane, which accelerates climate change, which melts more permafrost, etc.

Based on current scientific understanding, positive climate feedbacks -- the ones that accelerate the process -- considerably outweigh negative feedbacks. At some level of temperature rise, some of those positive feedbacks are likely to become self-reinforcing and effectively unstoppable, no matter how much emissions are cut. These are the "tipping points" you hear so much about.

It is a revolting commentary on the shortsightedness of human nature that this issue is not the #1 subject of debate around the world every single day among responsible policy makers.

But what is doubly depressing is that this issue could and should be a perfect rationale for the sort of stimulus spending that is exactly what would be needed to pull the world out of a global recession. One of the two supposed benefits of the capitalist model beyond consumer freedom of choice is supposed to be systemic efficiency. But if the world's economic system were anything approaching efficient, all that money that is locked away uselessly and indeed counterproductively in the accounts of companies that play casino games in capital markets and crash economies, would be repurposed to invest in the sorts of jobs and research that would provide energy conservation yields and innovative breakthroughs to mitigate the climate crisis.

It should be a no brainer. Instead, the world is obsessed with austerity measures to please the already overfed bond market gods, in order to reignite a consumer economy dependent on fossil fuel manufacturing that is already killing the planet.

It's so depressing that sometimes I wonder why smart people even bother with public policy instead of waiting out the inevitable generational destruction with a solid community of friends and family. One has to at least try, right?

Breakthroughs, both political and technological, are within our reach. But only if we keep the pressure on.

And as winter arrives, keep reminding the doubters: climate change doesn't mean warmer weather; climate change means fucked up weather.