environment Politics: denialists economics extreme weather insurance sustainability
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 10, Day 18: No Joke
More on the Munich Re report, this time from USA Today:
5:07PM EST October 10. 2012 – The number of natural disasters per year has been rising dramatically on all continents since 1980, but the trend is steepest for North America where countries have been battered by hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, searing heat and drought, a new report says.
The study being released today by Munich Re, the world’s largest reinsurance firm, sees climate change driving the increase and predicts those influences will continue in years ahead, though a number of experts question that conclusion.
Whatever the causes, the report shows that if you thought the weather has been getting worse, you’re right.
The report finds that weather disasters in North America are among the worst and most volatile in the world: “North America is the continent with the largest increases in disasters,” says Munich Re’s Peter Hoppe.
This letter seemed to fall into two parts. I don’t know if it’s effective, but I write the letters I write, not the letters I wish I’d write. Sent October 11:
The Munich Re report linking climate change with three decades of steadily increasing natural disasters everywhere on Earth provides yet more support for those who maintain that the rapidly metastasizing greenhouse effect is a clear and present danger to our civilization. Despite the absurd mischaracterizations of conservative opinionators, this group (aka the “reality-based community”) isn’t just comprised of liberal environmentalists, climatologists, and hippies, but also includes the American armed forces, the intelligence community, and the insurance industry.
While it’d be nice to discover that the free market system is the most effective way to deal with the consequences of a century of fossil-fuel consumption, the evidence so far suggests otherwise. Today’s loudest advocates of deregulation and laissez-faire economics are also the ones most conspicuously ignoring or denying scientific reality. The accelerating climate crisis demands action on a scale that the private sector cannot possibly encompass — a planetary Manhattan project.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: denialists economics greenhouse effect Renewable Energy
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 10, Day 11: Change Is Gonna Come
The Des Moines Register offers an op-ed titled: “Climate Change Is About Jobs And The Economy.” Indeed:
Climate chaos is not a future threat. It’s real, it’s here today, and it’s causing misery in Iowa. Left unchecked, it will get worse.
Iowa is ground central for climate change. Almost 60 percent of the state is in extreme drought, with 80 percent of its soils moisture deficient. Nearly three quarters of the corn crop is threatened, driving the price from $5.50 a bushel last year to over $8.
If food prices climb as predicted, a family of four will spend $600 more next year to buy food.
Hot enough for you? From rivers of dead fish to dry wells, Iowans are experiencing firsthand why America’s decade of ignoring climate science has been a horrible mistake. Both the International Energy Agency and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warn that unless we implement energy saving practices immediately we will, perhaps as early as 2017, lock in 6 degrees Celsius warming.
The impacts Iowa is experiencing now have come from a 1.5 degree warming. Unless Iowa acts to capture the green economy, it faces a grim prospect, both from the weather and from an economy strangled by its fossil fuel past.
Those old chestnuts are rattling around in my brain these days. Sent October 4:
When it comes to climate change, the old saying is really true: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Once the greenhouse effect has accelerated, we won’t have very many options left — and the choices will range from devastatingly expensive to simply devastating. To be sure, addressing the aftereffects of our past century’s worth of fossil-fuel consumption won’t be cheap — but it’s going to be a heck of a lot cheaper if we start right away. Waiting until climate change intensifies to the point that its effects are inescapable and undeniable is like delaying therapy until the tumor becomes malignant.
Self-styled “skeptics” who deny the work of the international climate science community are doing America, and the world, a grave disservice. On environmental, humanitarian, and economic grounds, a robust and comprehensive strategy for mitigating the effects of global warming is the right thing to do.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: economics GDP island nations
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 10, Day 9: Your Lovin’ Give Me Such A Thrill…
The Regina Leader-Post (Canada) reports on a new study highlighting climate change’s likely effect on GDP:
Climate change and pollution related to carbon-dioxide emissions are reducing the world’s gross domestic product by 1.6 per cent a year, about $1.2 trillion US, according to a report.
If unchecked, rising temperatures may cut global GDP by 3.2 per cent a year by 2030, according to the Climate Vulnerability Monitor, from by the Madrid-based humanitarian group DARA and the Climate Vulnerable Forum. As the economic impact of climate change grows, so will the cost of curbing it, according to leaders of developing nations who spoke at an event in New York last week.
“What is possible with $100 billion today will cost 10 times more in 2030,” Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheik Hasina Wajed said during the panel discussion, part of the Climate Week NYC conference. Her country is part of the Climate Vulnerable Forum, a group of developing nations threatened by climate change.
A warming planet will have a disproportionate effect on developing countries, especially low-income states such as Bangladesh that have high population density and fewer natural resources.
Low-lying coastal regions also face the prospect of being submerged as the oceans rise, she said.
This will affect food production and drive up prices, she said. Climate change may cut GDP in some developing nations by as much as 11 per cent by 2030.
I would rather replace capitalism by incremental stages as we figure out a better way to do things. I hope there will be enough time. Sent October 1:
Conservative thinkers routinely claim that energy and emissions policies which address the threat of global climate change would be too expensive — an argument which makes sense as long as you don’t think too hard or too long about the issue. But if there was ever an issue which demanded long and concentrated thought, it’s the complex set of economic and environmental forces involved in our civilization’s response to the burgeoning greenhouse effect. Those who deny the scientific reality of global warming cannot expect that their cost/benefit analyses should be taken seriously.
Conversely, the nations represented in the Climate Vulnerable Forum are the ones on the front line of devastating ecological transformation. Their report on climate change’s impact on GDP offers a globally relevant version of some old home truths: a stitch in time saves nine; an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
If we wait to respond until Earth’s climate has transformed beyond recognition, it will cost our species far more than self-styled “fiscal conservatives” can imagine.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: Barack Obama Big Coal Big Oil denialists economics Mitt Romney Renewable Energy Republicans
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 9, Day 24: You Never Give Me Your Money…
The Macon, GA, Telegraph runs a story on the role of climate questions on the campaign trail. Several paragraphs are devoted to the cognitive dissonance of Republican environmentalists. Let’s all quiet down and stop giggling.
Romney has said previously that he believes climate change is occurring and that human activity is a contributing factor. During the Republican primary season, though, he said he didn’t believe it was the right course to spend “trillions and trillions” to reduce carbon emissions. More recently, he said in a questionnaire submitted to Science Debate, a non-profit organization focusing on science issues in the presidential campaign, that he believes human activity contributes to global warming and that policymakers should consider the risk of negative consequences.
Frank Maisano, a lobbyist whose firm represents energy interests and who has been involved in climate change discussions for 15 years, cautioned not to read too much into Romney’s dig about the rise of the oceans. It was designed to show Obama is “a little bit out of touch,” he said.
“Right now, you need someone who cares about you rather than these larger, soaring rhetorical issues,” Maisano said.
Jim DiPeso of ConservAmerica had the same reaction.
“(Romney) acknowledged that science has shown there is a human role in global warming,” said DiPeso, who represents a national grassroots organization of conservation-minded Republicans who would like to see a fiscally conservative approach to capping carbon emissions.
DiPeso said he hopes Romney’s acknowledgement will give Republicans lower down on the ticket the freedom to talk about climate change, an issue that once had Republican support. Policymakers may differ on how to address emissions, but carbon dioxide molecules are apolitical, he said.
“Because we’ve gotten to the point where a good Republican can’t acknowledge the real science that backs up climate change without being cast as some sort of infidel, or somebody who’s not a real conservative,” he said.
Poor puppies. Sent September 17:
I wouldn’t read too much into Mitt Romney’s statements about the human causes of climate change; the erstwhile Massachusetts governor is widely known for his ability to take multiple contradictory positions on any issue. And while it’s good to know that there are some conservatives out there who are genuinely concerned about the looming climate crisis, it must be hard for them to reconcile their free-market fetishism with the tough transformations the next century will demand of America’s energy economy.
The grotesquely inflated subsidies and tax breaks for the fossil fuel industry need to end. These taxpayer dollars would be far better spent on preparing American infrastructure for a century of devastating storms and increasingly unpredictable weather, and our national investment in renewable energy needs to increase by many orders of magnitude over the next decade. These requirements won’t be solved with the economic pixie-dust of the “free market,” but through the collective will of hundreds of millions of Americans demanding that their government work once again in their best interests, instead of the corporate welfare recipients in the oil and coal industries.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: agriculture corporate irresponsibility economics public health
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 9, Day 14: When We Talk About Reducing Poverty, This Is NOT What We Had In Mind.
The Chicago Tribune notes a new report from Oxfam. Are you poor? Too bad, loser:
LONDON (Reuters) – Climate change may pose a much more serious threat to the world’s poor than existing research has suggested because of spikes in food prices as extreme weather becomes more common, Oxfam said on Wednesday.
More frequent extreme weather events will create shortages, destabilize markets and precipitate price spikes on top of projected structural price rises of about 100 percent for staples such as maize over the next 20 years, the charity said in a report.
Droughts in the U.S. Midwest and Russia this year have helped to propel prices for maize and soybeans to record highs and United Nations food agencies this week said that world leaders must take swift action to ensure that food-price shocks do not turn into a catastrophe that could hurt tens of millions of people.
This is going to get really really ugly. Sent September 7:
While spiking food prices are going to clobber poor people, climate change’s impact on worldwide agriculture is only just beginning to be felt. When rising sea levels submerge low-lying areas, the farmers who are turned into refugees and forced from their homes will face profound and devastating losses of land, income, heritage and hope. When insect species travel to new areas to keep up with a rapidly transforming climate, they’ll bring new diseases with concomitant public health impacts — and guess who’ll do most of the suffering? It won’t be the “one percent,” that’s for sure.
When infrastructure crumbles under the assault of extreme weather, the very wealthy may find themselves inconvenienced, but it is those without economic power whose lives will be shattered. Affecting food, land, health, and work, climate change will swell the ranks of the world’s powerless in ways that our politicians have completely failed to anticipate.
Warren Senders
environment: economics sustainability
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 9, Day 2: Your Lovin’ Give Me Such A Thrill…
The Eugene, Oregon Register Guard features an article by one Jan Spencer, who seems to get it, whatever “it” is:
An article in the Aug. 6 Register-Guard described a study for Eugene’s Climate and Energy Action Plan. The study focused on climate change, but many of the findings reveal public perceptions about economics and lifestyle that extend far beyond that issue. These findings can be helpful for crafting a community plan to mitigate climate change and many additional social and environmental concerns.
Study findings include:
A solid majority of people in Eugene believe climate change is human-caused and poses a catastrophic risk.
Many consider a healthy environment to be more important than a growing economy.
A majority in Eugene believe typical American lifestyles place far too much emphasis on buying and consuming.
Well said. Sent August 27:
When Jan Spencer notes that a significant number of citizens find “a healthy environment to be more important than a growing economy,” she puts her finger on one of a fundamental truth about humanity’s presence on Earth: we live on a finite planet. We may briefly delude ourselves that infinite economic growth is both possible and desirable, but the inherent unsustainability of a continuously metastasizing economy becomes obvious when we take into account the collateral costs which are usually omitted from the equation. To take the most substantial examples, fossil fuel energy is only cheap because we don’t consider its environmental, public health, and geopolitical costs. Once these become part of the picture, it’s obvious that our current energy economy is self-destructing before our eyes.
Economic sustainability, by definition, builds on a conception of the common good over the long term. If our species is to survive in the post-climate-change Anthropocene Era, we must change our thinking to reflect this. Continuous weight gain is healthy for an infant, but not for an adult; when our economy was in its fledgling stages, all that growth was excellent. Now? Not so much.
The threats posed by climate change and environmental destruction (both epiphenomena of our attempts to maintain a continuously growing economy) tend to confirm Edward Abbey’s prescient comment that “growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes Big Coal Big Oil corporate irresponsibility economics media irresponsibility sustainability
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 8, Day 23: If This Had Been A Real Emergency, You Would Have Received Instructions…
The Sarasota (FL) Herald Tribune assesses the grim situation:
In drought-scorched parts of the country these days, some farmland bears a resemblance to NASA’s photos of Mars’ barren plains.
Here on Earth, crops are suffering. On Friday, the federal Department of Agriculture cut by 17 percent its estimate for the corn crop and said the U.S. soybean crop is expected to drop, too. Soaring prices are forecast.
The drought stems from a number of causes, science suggests. But some of it appears to be consistent with the kind of long-term drying patterns seen in global-warming climate models.
Furthermore, James E. Hansen, a NASA expert in the field, issued a report last week tying man-made climate change to three severe heat outbreaks from 2003 to 2011.
These latest developments won’t resolve long-running arguments over global warming or its causes. But they heighten the sense that precious time to address the problem is evaporating.
There’s no mystery as to what needs to be done: Carbon emissions from burning fossil fuel must be cut.
The fossil-fuel industry is an ichneumon wasp which has laid its eggs inside our civilization. Ick. Sent August 12:
Why is our political system unable to address climate change in anything approaching a responsibly adult manner? The answer rests in the synergy of three separate forces, interacting to produce paralysis: fossil fuel money, politicians’ cupidity, and media irresponsibility.
Taking full advantage of our compromised campaign finance system, the oil and coal industries use their huge financial resources to purchase the loyalty of as many lawmakers as possible. More of that same money funds conservative “think tanks” and “institutes” which generate spurious studies using cherry-picked data and misinterpreted statistics — and also produce telegenic pundits trained to deliver denialist talking points on cue. Hewing to the doctrine that there are two exactly equivalent sides to every story, our print and broadcast media then allow equal time to worried climatologists and petrol-funded shills — reinforcing the notion that “the debate on climate change isn’t settled.” Purchased politicians seize on this false notion as an excuse for continued inaction, which is all Big Oil and Big Coal require.
Repeat and fade.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: economics elections media irresponsibility sustainability
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 8, Day 20: How Do You Know That You Know What You Know When You Don’t Know What You Know At All?
The Winnipeg Star notes that American presidential politics doesn’t seem to care, really:
WASHINGTON — U.S. President Barack Obama promised to tackle climate change when he ran for the White House four years ago, but as he battles for a second term, he says little about the issue, even as the United States suffers through a drought of historic proportions, wild storms, and punishing heat that topples temperature records almost daily.
As late as April, he told Rolling Stone magazine climate change would be a central campaign issue.
“I will be very clear in voicing my belief that we’re going to have to take further steps to deal with climate change in a serious way,” he said.
Instead, Obama is fighting Republican challenger Mitt Romney in a tight race over the struggling American economy and stubbornly high unemployment. Gallup polling repeatedly shows the economy is the chief concern among American voters, at 65 per cent, while environmental and pollution issues were mentioned by less than one per cent of those polled.
Even without a big push on climate change, Obama has the support of environmentalists. Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune said Obama “has done a substantial amount in his three years to fight the climate crisis.” Romney, he said, “is taking his lead from fossil-fuel companies and does not even acknowledge there is a climate problem.”
Romney has been accused of changing positions on the issue to curry favour with the most conservative Republicans, many of whom deny climate change exists.
La la la la la la. Sent August 9:
This year’s extreme weather may have forced climate change into the public eye, but we still hear that concerns about the economy must necessarily supersede environmental worries. This is a profoundly misleading notion.
We have been able to ignore the crisis for so long because we have not yet recognized that the health of the economy and that of the planet are inextricably linked. The ecological “economy” of planet Earth has been functioning well for many orders of magnitude longer than industrialized humanity’s fiscal economy. To elevate the importance of the latter over the former is to make a profound miscalculation with potentially disastrous consequences.
Ultimately, our prosperity depends on a healthy and consistent climate; if you subtract potable water, clean air, regular weather and flourishing biodiversity from the equation, the result is always going to be catastrophe — regardless of how well the GDP is doing that quarter.
Warren Senders
environment Politics: assholes corporate irresponsibility economics sustainability
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 8, Day 18: Expletive Un-Deleted Edition
Fred Krupp, in the Wall Street Journal, says “It’s time for conservatives to compete with liberals to devise the best, most cost-effective climate solutions.” Uh-fucking-huh:
One scorching summer doesn’t confirm that climate change is real any more than a white Christmas proves it’s a hoax. What matters is the trend—a decades-long march toward hotter and wilder weather. But with more than 26,000 heat records broken in the last 12 months and pervasive drought turning nearly half of all U.S. counties into federal disaster areas, many data-driven climate skeptics are reassessing the issue.
Respected Republican leaders like Govs. John Kasich of Ohio and Chris Christie of New Jersey have spoken out about the reality of climate change. Rupert Murdoch’s recent tweet—”Climate change very slow but real. So far all cures worse than disease.”—may reflect an emerging conservative view. Even Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson, during public comments in June, conceded the reality of climate change while offering assurances that “there will be an engineering solution” and “we’ll adapt.”
Even if my outlook differs, these views may turn out to be a welcome turning point. For too long, the U.S. has had two camps talking past each other on this issue. One camp tended to preach and derided questions about climate science as evidence of bad motivation. The other camp claimed that climate science was an academic scam designed to get more funding, and that advocates for action were out to strangle economic growth. Charges of bad faith on both sides—and a heavy dose of partisan politics—saw to it that constructive conversation rarely occurred.
If both sides can now begin to agree on some basic propositions, maybe we can restart the discussion. Here are two:
The first will be uncomfortable for skeptics, but it is unfortunately true: Dramatic alterations to the climate are here and likely to get worse—with profound damage to the economy—unless sustained action is taken. As the Economist recently editorialized about the melting Arctic: “It is a stunning illustration of global warming, the cause of the melt. It also contains grave warnings of its dangers. The world would be mad to ignore them.”
The second proposition will be uncomfortable for supporters of climate action, but it is also true: Some proposed climate solutions, if not well designed or thoughtfully implemented, could damage the economy and stifle short-term growth. As much as environmentalists feel a justifiable urgency to solve this problem, we cannot ignore the economic impact of any proposed action, especially on those at the bottom of the pyramid. For any policy to succeed, it must work with the market, not against it.
If enough members of the two warring climate camps can acknowledge these basic truths, we can get on with the hard work of forging a bipartisan, multi-stakeholder plan of action to safeguard the natural systems on which our economic future depends.
There’s just one fucking problem with this fucking Peter Pan everybody-fucking-clap-louder stuff… Sent August 7:
It’s certainly gratifying to see that some self-described conservatives are finally coming around to accepting the scientific consensus on climate change. And it’s certainly true that those on both sides of the ideological spectrum are going to have to work together to develop solutions and approaches that will protect and nurture the health of the American and planetary economy.
However, it needs to be said: by denying the findings of climate science, by mocking and threatening climatologists, and by stubbornly adhering to a position that is (to put it mildly) catastrophically wrong, conservatives have forfeited their credibility on the issue.
In business terms: a management team that rejects the facts, misunderstands the measurements, and insults everyone else in the organization (and is eventually shown beyond any doubt to have been wrong all along) should not be given an equal voice in determining the company’s future. It’s just plain common sense.
Warren Senders
environment: economics extreme weather infrastructure ozone Storms sustainability
by Warren
leave a comment
Meta
SiteMeter
Brighter Planet
Year 3, Month 8, Day 7: You Don’t Know What You’ve Got Till It’s Gone
Two separate stories in the New York Times make for an exceptionally frightening synergy. Read ’em and weep:
Weather Extremes Leave Parts of U.S. Grid Buckling:
WASHINGTON — From highways in Texas to nuclear power plants in Illinois, the concrete, steel and sophisticated engineering that undergird the nation’s infrastructure are being taxed to worrisome degrees by heat, drought and vicious storms.
On a single day this month here, a US Airways regional jet became stuck in asphalt that had softened in 100-degree temperatures, and a subway train derailed after the heat stretched the track so far that it kinked — inserting a sharp angle into a stretch that was supposed to be straight. In East Texas, heat and drought have had a startling effect on the clay-rich soils under highways, which “just shrink like crazy,” leading to “horrendous cracking,” said Tom Scullion, senior research engineer with the Texas Transportation Institute at Texas A&M University. In Northeastern and Midwestern states, he said, unusually high heat is causing highway sections to expand beyond their design limits, press against each other and “pop up,” creating jarring and even hazardous speed bumps.
Excessive warmth and dryness are threatening other parts of the grid as well. In the Chicago area, a twin-unit nuclear plant had to get special permission to keep operating this month because the pond it uses for cooling water rose to 102 degrees; its license to operate allows it to go only to 100. According to the Midwest Independent System Operator, the grid operator for the region, a different power plant had had to shut because the body of water from which it draws its cooling water had dropped so low that the intake pipe became high and dry; another had to cut back generation because cooling water was too warm.
Strong Storms Threaten Ozone Layer Over U.S.:
Strong summer thunderstorms that pump water high into the upper atmosphere pose a threat to the protective ozone layer over the United States, researchers said on Thursday, drawing one of the first links between climate change and ozone loss over populated areas.
In a study published online by the journal Science, Harvard University scientists reported that some storms send water vapor miles into the stratosphere — which is normally drier than a desert — and showed how such events could rapidly set off ozone-destroying reactions with chemicals that remain in the atmosphere from CFCs, refrigerant gases that are now banned.
The risk of ozone damage, scientists said, could increase if global warming leads to more such storms.
I tried to get some Joni Mitchell quotes into the letter itself, but couldn’t make it work. Sent July 27:
Whether it’s a power blackout, a buckled roadbed, a broken water main or a breached levee, infrastructure’s only noticeable at the failure point. As climate change gets faster and more severe, we’re going to discover just how much we’ve taken for granted over the past hundred years of civilizational growth. If America is to prosper in the centuries to come, we’ll need to retool and rebuild for far more stressful conditions.
But there’s another, grander infrastructure that cannot be addressed with a public works bill. The newly established connection between climate change and ozone loss is vivid evidence that many of the environmental mechanisms which have made our species’ efflorescence possible are endangered by the greenhouse effect and its epiphenomena. Genuine sustainability must recognize that such natural systems — oxygen-producing phytoplankton, the processes of photosynthesis, or upper-atmosphere protection against UV rays — are even more essential than sewers and roadways.
Warren Senders