environment Politics: capitalism economics
by Warren
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Month 11, Day 29: Vaporware
The Irish Times discusses the unlikeliness of anything happening at Cancun. While the notion of economic and climatic catastrophe as two sides of the same coin is not new (either to me or to this letter-writing project), it’s still very tricky to shoehorn them both in to a single short piece.
It is a measure of humans’ limitations as a species that the terrifying implications of climate change are barely registering on our societal alarm systems. While Frank MacDonald notes that people are preoccupied “more pressing issues” — presumably the unemployment and economic turmoil to be seen everywhere in the world, it is incorrect to assume our planetary economic woes are unrelated to climate problems. The economics of nation-states and global commerce rest on two demonstrably false assumptions: never-ending supplies of cheap energy, and the feasibility and desirability of continuous growth. Even were it actually unlimited, fossil fuel’s hardly cheap once we include ancillary expenses (cleanup, environmental destruction, geopolitical brinkmanship), and an ever-expanding economy is definitionally impossible on a finite planet. The price we can expect to pay for having a civilization built upon illusions will be disastrous economic upheavals in the short run and catastrophic climate change in the long.
Warren Senders
environment: capitalism climate negotiations Climategate idiots IPCC
by Warren
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Month 10, Day 14: Yet Another Installment of “Why Capitalism Sucks.”
The Wall Street Journal never misses an opportunity to mislead.
A fairly even-handed discussion of the most recent round of climate negotiations was derailed by a paragraph of heavy-handed editorializing, including allegations of “flawed science” in the IPCC reports and yet another reference to the so-called “climategate.” Let’s get this straight, starting with the second item: there have thus far been three separate and independent investigations of the leaked emails, and each investigation has completely exonerated the scientists involved. Completely. If the print and broadcast media had any sense of responsibility, this fact would have received as much publicity as the original non-scandal. With regard to the flaws in the IPCC report —in a document thousands of pages long, mistakes are inevitable. If a miscalculation of glacial melt rates invalidates the entire report, then by analogy, an error of fact anywhere in the Wall Street Journal must invalidate everything in that day’s edition, including the stock market reports.
Warren Senders