The Real Existential Threat

A trillion dollars down the shitter in Iraq and Afghanistan. If since 2001 we'd spent half that on a renewable energy Manhattan Project, climate change would be a manageable problem instead of unavoidable catastrophe.

Joe Romm at Think Progress: Secretary of State John Kerry gave perhaps his strongest climate speech in Indonesia Sunday. He called climate change the “world’s most fearsome” weapon of mass destruction and said “the science of climate change is leaping out at us like a scene from a 3D movie. It’s warning us; it’s compelling us to act.” At the same time, a must-read new analysis by Oil Change International finds that “all of the scenarios used by the State Department” in their Final Environmental Impact Study (EIS) of the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline “result in emissions that put us on a path to 6 degrees C (11°F) of global warming according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).” Talk about mass destruction! IEA Chief Economist Fatih Birol famously said of 11°F warming, “even school children know this will have catastrophic implications for all of us.” Kerry’s Jakarta climate speech, the first in a series on the urgency of action, would appear to be utterly irreconcilable with a decision to construct the Keystone XL pipeline, a decision that rests almost entirely on Kerry’s shoulders. Kerry explained: When 97 percent of scientists agree on anything, we need to listen, and we need to respond. Well, 97 percent of climate scientists have confirmed that climate change is happening and that human activity is responsible. These scientists agree on the causes of these changes and they agree on the potential effects. They agree that the emission of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide contributes heavily to climate change. They agree that the energy sources that we’ve relied on for decades to fuel our cars and to heat our homes or to air condition our homes, to — all the things that provide us electricity like oil and coal — that these are largely responsible for sending those greenhouse gases up into the atmosphere… And they agree that, if we continue to go down the same path that we are going down today, the world as we know it will change — and it will change dramatically for the worse. You can watch the whole speech here. SNIP Kerry needs to show that his words are more than words, that he actually believes climate change is the most fearsome WMD. Kerry must recommend to Obama that Keystone be killed. Kerry started as Secretary with clean hands on climate. But approving Keystone would be like dipping his hands into the dirtiest, stickiest tar imaginable — they could never be cleaned again. Meanwhile, in case you thought it couldn't get any stupider.