Archive for the ‘climate change’ Category

This one’s a little dark. You’ve been warned.

I’m amazed at how little attention is paid to climate change in the U.S. Sure, we talked about the Copenhagen summit for a news cycle, and we loved chirping about the dastardly U.K. scientists and their suspicious emails. But given the potential costs of climate change, it’s alarming how little attention it gets. Future historians will be utterly bewildered as they sift through the clues we leave behind and wonder how we so willingly brought collapse upon ourselves. We have completely failed at weighing the relative costs and benefits and have likely sealed our own fate.
Climate change critics generally start by [drastically] overstating the level of disagreement within the scientific community regarding the anthropogenic causes of climate change. I won’t waste much text here, but to be clear, there is no disagreement. Climate change is happening and humans are causing a large part of it; the only debate remaining is whether our share of the blame is 95% or 96%.

Once the seed of doubt is placed, the critics then scare us with dire predictions of a possible future. Dealing with climate change would require significant changes to the way we live, it would require significant investment in new infrastructure and technologies, and would alter the institutions we’ve been familiar with for the past century. Therefore, the theory goes, we should do nothing.

For the sake of argument, let’s assume there is a legitimate debate within the scientific community (remember, there’s not). I’ll even be so generous as to assume a 50/50 split. If that were the case, how should we respond?

The costs of unmitigated climate change are immense. The path we are on leads to massive population displacement, food shortages caused by flooding and draughts, accelerated species extinction, and (eventually) economic and civilization collapse. Yes, collapse.

What about the costs of attempting to stem the tide of climate change? These, too, would be large. The standard of living for developed nations would be altered forever. Air travel would no longer be available to the public. Nor would personal automobiles. Meat would be a luxury instead of a staple. Our cities and towns would contract and the massive suburban developments would transition back to agricultural land. The number of farmers would increase 10-fold (at least). Many industries would cease to exist and those that remained would look completely different. Our national wealth would have to go into buying things like wind turbines and solar panels instead of HDTVs and fancy cars. Make no mistake, life would be very very different. But we would have a real fighting chance at staving off the total collapse of our civilization.

When presented in these terms, is there really any question of which path to take? I’m so tired of hearing about the “energy tax” and the costs of transitioning to a carbon neutral energy mix. Money won’t buy you much if the global economy fractures under the strain of climate change.

[ . . . ]

Easter Island (the place with the giant stone heads) was once covered in thick forrest. Poor resource management and fanatical obsession with erecting the giant stone heads lead to 100% deforestation of the island. At some point, some one cut down the very last tree left standing. What do you suppose that felt like?

Soon, we all will know.

Filed under climate change, culture, economics, energy, politics : Comments (0) : Feb 27th, 2010

Minnesota takes aim at North Dakota

Minnesota (my beloved home state) has just fired a shot across their western border towards North Dakota. From Scientific American:

To encourage the switch to clean renewable energy Minnesota plans to add a carbon fee of between $4 and $34 per ton of carbon dioxide emissions to the cost of coal-fired electricity, to begin in 2012, to discourage the use of coal power; the greatest source of greenhouse gas emissions.

To provide some context, North Dakota is a state with dwindling population and abundant cheap coal. There are a number of coal-fired power plants that export electricity across their borders to the more populated (and less coal-rich) Minnesota.

Continuing the article,

State officials in North Dakota are mounting a legal battle against Minnesota. State officials argue that this would unfairly discourage coal-powered electricity sales in favor of renewably powered electricity.

Really, North Dakota. No shit.

Fortunately for their state, North Dakota is also blessed with an abundance of wind resources. The same high voltage lines that carry dirty coal electricity could be used to export wind power instead.

There’s two ways they can play this:

1) Use the tariff as a direct financial incentive to agressively build wind farms and increase local employment

2) Spend millions of tax dollars fighting the tariff in court and continue down the dead-end of coal power plants.

I wonder which path North Dakota will take?

Filed under climate change, economics, energy, environment, politics : Comments (1) : Jan 6th, 2010

Professional Ignorance

The mammogram kerfuffle over recommendations for middle aged women is but the latest data point in a disturbing trend : professional ignorance.

I define the term thusly :

Willful ignorance of subject matter experts and scientific data in favor of emotion-driven populism, especially in the practice of lawmakers and professional policy makers.

While it’s easy to hang the rise of professional ignorance on the Republican party in its current form, this is a cross-party problem that was around long before Palin and Bachman rose to public popularity. To be sure, the issue of mammograms for 40-year olds was “resolved” by a democratic amendment explicitly stating that medical professionals would be ignored when setting health care policy. Splendid!

The goal of health reform is to reduce health care costs. Eliminating medically unnecessary treatments (such as routine mammograms for 40-year old women) is a very obvious way to cut costs. Yet when presented with the opportunity, our brave legislators proudly ignore science and reason in favor of an emotional knee-jerk reaction. Do I smell truthiness?

The quintessential example of professional ignorance comes from our ongoing national debate over energy policy and climate change. It’s perfectly reasonable (expected, really) to have a vibrant debate over a subject to central to our daily lives. But as Alexis de Tocqueville observed,

“When we can’t agree on what the facts mean, what we have is vibrant debate; when we can’t agree on what the facts are, what we have is cognitive anarchy.”

When professionals in all levels of power reject overwhelming scientific evidence to justify their policy positions, we have a problem. We can’t possibly make wise policy decisions if we don’t start from a common view of the facts.

For better or worse, this trend of ignorance will subside. Either by natural forces (i.e. climate change) or by human forces (i.e. the collapse of the dollar) we will be educated and discover our folly. But maybe, just maybe, we can all agree to act like adults for awhile and reject ignorance.

(Fingers crossed.)

Filed under climate change, culture, politics : Comments (0) : Dec 3rd, 2009

Update on Climate Crises

We need to get serious. Consider:

Filed under climate change : Comments (0) : May 23rd, 2009

Earth Overshot Day

Today marks the day in the year when the human race has collectively used one year’s worth of natural resources. To put it another way, we are on a path to use 125% more resources than the earth can generate in 2008.

You don’t need a science degree to understand that this is not sustainable.

I’ve noticed a strange trend in the public dialogue (particularly in the U.S.) about sustainability. Most people take the fact that living sustainably is difficult in our society and use that to discredit the very premise that sustainability is important or a legitimate concern.

In short, we’ve all got our heads in the sand and we’re proud of it!

Take, for example, gasoline prices. Burning gasonline is a highly unsustainable activity. Not only are we running out of oil, but the contribution to CO2 levels in the atmosphere is accelerating global climate change. In other words, we should probably find a way to burn less gas. In spite of this, politicians are scheming for ways to drive down prices and thereby encourage burning more gas. Huh?

It’s never going to be easy to convert our high-energy lifestyle to a low-energy mode. It’s never going to be cheap. But we had better start now while we still have a little bit of capital left to spend! (Oh wait, I think we just lost that this week as well.)