It is easy to imagine that our large, wealthy country, and most other big countries like China and India, will do nothing about climate change, primarily for selfish economic reasons. Denial of climate change is linked to fear of losing economic benefits. Louisiana, my state, is a good example since, poor as we are, our only hope for wealth and employment is oil and gas production increases.
So, where does that lead. Probably to some sort of catastrophe our next couple generations will have to deal with...if they can. But we will die declaring with our last selfish breath, "Ain't no such thing as global warming, kids. Take care, now."
47
@Greig Olivier The difficulty is that PER CAPITA energy use in India is a fraction of that in China and the per capita use in China is a fraction of that in the US.
Does equality mean that India and China have a "right" that their per capita use equals that of the US? Or does it mean that the US should reduce its per capita use to that of India and China? Or do we stop thinking of equality?
14
Nothing can save us. We are held hostage by the greed and insanity of the fossil fuel companies and their lackeys in government. Even President Obama continued to push fracking and surely he knew better. Once the permafrost starts melting at a fast rate and all the methane sequestered there is released there will be cascading climate disaster after climate disaster. We are doomed. Humans are just too stupid and greedy.
34
This article avoids a common mistake. The planet is not what we are “killing.” It is the civilization we have built. Things will get a lot more brutish and nasty for even the elites, and soon.
In time—many tens of thousands, millions of years—habitats and species other than ours will recover.
If we want to stop this madness, even reverse it by getting gigatons of carbon dioxide out of the air, we have to keep putting a human face on this slow disaster.
110
@Peak Oiler However, this article makes another common mistake, in that is fails to deal with zero-sum reactionaries, like Trump, who have no respect for law and who try to hold on to their power at all costs.
These people will always be with us. They are, unfortunately, especially attracted to politics, and to defend their privilege they attack any person or institution that tries to promote the common good.
While things may get very bad indeed for the poor, those with money imagine they can protect their positions. Life, from their point of view, is nasty and brutish because humanity is fundamentally sinful or evil, so they need to be as calculating and ruthless as possible in response.
6
The main obstacle to mitigating climate change is our economic system's need for constant growth, no matter how useless or destructive the product. Grow, grow, grow. Consume, consume, consume. More, more, more. Faster, faster, faster. We are perhaps the only civilization in history willing to abandon the future for immediate gratification of our every whim and desire -- burning through the earth's natural treasures as quickly as we possibly can.
Contrary to Professor Rosenberg's assertion, technology will not save us unless it is built in the service of consuming less of the planet's limited resources. This will mean significant alteration of the prime directive of capitalism -- maximizing profits.
185
@ando arike
Completely disagree. The solution to climate change will come about through our economic system.
Companies that develop solar, wind and nuclear technologies and electric car manufacturers must be given the incentive to scale up their products to a point that they can be sold across the third world for a cost that puts fossil fuels to shame.
Imagine fourth generation, modular nuclear reactors and inexpensive electric vehicles being sold across not only the US and Europe, but Africa, India and Latin America by the 2030s.
In short, global economic growth with disincentives for oil companies and incentives for clean technology companies is the solution to this issue. Economic growth doesn't need to suffer in order for this to happen.
18
@ando arike
Get clear on this: growth is not the problem. Carbon pollution is.
You can grow an economy restoring forests, giving meditation lessons, raising urban greens in closed-circle intensive operations, taking people on walks - use your imagination.
Reducing pollution and the consumption of limited resources are key, and those currently offer limitless opportunities. Condemning growth per se is terribly tunnel-visioned and does little more than stimulate equally tunnel-visioned opposition.
29
@LW
I can't argue with your response, except that you're talking about a different kind of "growth" than GDP growth, which is the only measure our system recognizes or values. How lovely it would be to "grow" doing the things you list! But taking people on walks and restoring forests don't offer the type of "profit" our capitalist system values. Let's be clear that I'm criticizing the drive to increase GDP at all costs, which is what our present system tends toward.
17
Technology is not the bottleneck in successfully mitigating climate change. The target of lowering greenhouse gases to reach an increase of less that 2C (preferably 1.5C) by 2050 is based on existing technologies. Of course, further research and technology advances will presumably achieve the goals at lower cost and even somewhat earlier. The real bottleneck is human inertia and apathy based partly on the perceptions that the climate impact is decades away, that weather is unrelated to global temperature rise or that the science is suspect. Another hindrance, particularly here, is the unwillingness to wean ourselves from fossil fuels, particularly oil and gasoline, as a substantial sector of our consumers adore max-sized light trucks, SUVs, recreational toys, mega mansions, etc., which combined make us by far the largest per-capita energy consumers among the leading economies of the world. And as long as the fossil fuel industry and their politicians encourage this addiction very little progress will be made here. Heck, we don't even want our fuel taxes to go up to pay the upkeep of our road and transportation infrastructure, let alone for the great cost of transitioning into carbon neutral economy. Hopefully the younger generation will see it differently, but by then it may be too late.
24
@Rudy Ludkey;
The hindrance of people not weaning away from fossil fuel is the core problem. People in 3rd world will not wean themselves from wood,coal fuel oil without a viable replacement either. They are adding 5 to 8 lbs of carbon emissions for every pound we in the West eliminate.
This is why we should be heavily funding research for alternative energies suitable for third world countries. This would be a source of major income for the US. Instead, we are leaving the entire field to China. We are "picking winners" with our policies, and the winner is always China.
5
@Lane - in the poorest parts of many nations from Africa through India, about the only fossil fuel the people might use is kerosene.
But there are companies there, already, who are offering very interesting use-to-own mini electric systems. Solar panel or several, battery or more than one, DC appliances, rechargable lights. Training of locals to sell and maintain.
Billing is through electionic banking on the customer's cell phone. Pay for power consumed, build credit to own the system.
These systems are allowing people to do things we take for granted like read at night. Keep stores open after sundown, and have a refrigerator. One of the "public goods" Mr. Rosenberg described is in there, too. Villages getting solar/battery powered street lighting so women don't have to live in fear if they need to go outside in the dark.
So the good thing as the developing world is developing, is that they will NOT reach levels of fossil consumption the US is at, or even the EU.
Like when eastern Europe put in their phone systems after the Soviet Union fell, they skipped the landline phase and went straight to the better technologies.
CO2 will increase before it stabilizes, then begins a millennias-long decline. But per-person, the developing nations will peak at less per capita than us.
4
Alex Rosenberg, you should rethink and rewrite this idea, "If the rest of the world’s major polluters get together to curb emissions, the United States doesn’t have to and will still benefit. On the other hand, if China, the European Union, India, Russia and South Korea do nothing, there’s no point in the United States even trying. It can’t solve the problem alone. It looks as if either way, the United States should do nothing to curb its own emissions."
Regardless of what the rest of the world does, the United States, as the leading CO2 emitter should take the initiative to cut down emissions. To demand poorer countries do the heavy lifting when a significant amount of their people still have 12-18 hour power cuts every day is hypocritical.
21
@Gary Valan The US is the third largest emitter per capita and the second largest by total. It is not the leading one.
1
This article is a bit of a logical and semantic mess that will mostly just confuse people.
First, the climate isn't a "Public Good." It isn't a "good" produced by the market but rather a status quo that is made worse by the production of other economic goods. Second, the "prisoner's dilemma" is a game theory concept that has nothing at all to do with the issue.
What the author is actually talking about is what economists call "externalities."
If CO2 causes a harm to the world climate and that harm isn't paid for by the direct consumer or producers, then the harm caused by the CO2 is called a "negative externality." The cost is "external" to the market price because it is imposed on other people.
For example, when you buy a gallon of gas and burn it, you and the gas station benefit from the transaction. But the whole world suffers some small marginal detriment that you aren't paying for.
Economists therefore always always advocate for "internalizing the externalities." This means: quantify the climate harm caused by burning a gallon of gas and add that same amount to the cost by a surcharge or tax. Then the consumer and producer will be paying the full cost and the amount of gas burned will strike the correct balance between the climate cost and the benefit to the consumer.
Bottom Line: Impose a carbon tax equal to the environmental harm caused by the carbon.
35
"Policy, philosophy and economics" are trumped by physics.
Climate change is a problem of atmospheric physics and you cannot compromise with physics.
The same physics we are messing with makes the surface of Venus hot enough to melt lead and Mars cold enough to freeze out CO2. And those are our sister planets.
What could go wrong?
24
@Erik Frederiksen What could go wrong? You could. Physics is more complicated than you think. Mars and Venus tell us something, but not that much. Both have atmospheres that are 99% CO2. The Earth? Four one-hundreths of one percent. So you have to do the calculation very, very carefully. The IPCC tries, but gets it hopelessly wrong. The majority of the public can't (and now won't) follow the details. They would rather worship at the feet of Greta. It's so much easier.
1
I appreciate an argument that the "public good" is served by addressing issues of global warming. It is hard to argue against a "public good" unless it threatens my "private interest." However, maybe my private interest is fundamentally at odds with what is good for society? Philosophers definitely need to help us break out of our greedy impulses and help us find a way to agree on a good course of action.
But what disappoints me about this essay is that its main point is to assert: "the problem of climate change makes clear that the United States needs to take seriously the search for a technological solution to the challenge it poses," and start implementing geoengineering solutions (which is already being done, secretly, by the way).
I think what the young people who protested recently want is not a technological fix but a whole revamping of how humans use nature. By assuming a technological fix, the author fails to consider the fundamental failure of the human project: a refusal to accept limits on our use of natural resources.
Let's focus on living sustainably, and use technology for that, not forcing the earth to comply with our demands to give up its riches.
28
I have come to the conclusion that no leader political party or government is strong enough to overcome man's basic - perhaps genetically programmed- instincts to procreate, consume, and worry about the present more than the future. These basic facets of human nature are what are driving climate change.
Democracies are particularly incapable of taking action. Do you think any democratic society would elect leaders saying we could not grow forever? That we need to limit population to ZPG? That we should eat less meat or not drive SUV's? That we should not fly across the world on vacations? That we need to sacrifice our lifestyles even one bit?
The only solution 'enlightened' people seem to accept is supporting and hoping that new technology will magically convert us to 'green' and we can live happily ever after.
29
@John Dyer
Wow. You nailed it.
2
@John Dyer
Not magic hard work.
2
@John Dyer
Agreed. No democratic government is every going to propose legislation that will reduce standard of living or quality of life. Although, thinking about it, that's what the democracies did during WWII. But then the threat was obvious and immediate.
2
The USA consume twice the energy per capita as Europe. Twice the carbon foot print. 2 or 3 ties the amount of plastic. and you recycle almost nothing: only 7 % of plastic recycled in the USA . 50 % in Germany recycled.
Americans use and eat in plastic everyday.
Plastic is in the food chain, in ocean, in the blood of our children. But Americans have absolutely no conscience of it. They eat in plastic everyday.
I wrote that the Light posts ,1800 of them, are always on, all day , in Central park. I think it is a serious problem that shows that Americans don't care about consuming energy.
They don't know or don't realize that the energy that they consume in NY is not just the energy produced in NY. It is a quantity of energy that is a universal global resource of the earth. It belongs to everybody, not only to the people of NY.It belongs to the people of India or Portugal.
And I write that Americans don't care
And I get the most abusive reply from a guy who says : "We care! we like it that way. You are trying to impose your dictatorship on us ".
I don't think there is another nation where people are as ignorant as that.
1
You are so wrong.
Scientific discovery is only rarely serendipity. Penicillin was. Einstein's special and general relativity was the product of directed thought. So was Newton's gravitational theory ... and there was no apple.
Kepler's laws were the result of careful observation.
Quantum mechanics was the result of thought applied to experimental results.
Sir: you dont know science or the scientific method.
1
Rosenberg is more interested in theory than facts. One fact that makes it difficult to assemble multinational coalitions to fight climate change is that warming will bring high-latitude regions benefits greater than costs, while tropical regions will have costs greater than benefits:
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature15725
https://www.nature.com/articles/532317a https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14693062.2012.728790
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10640-017-0197-5
Too many people using too many resources to produce too much stuff and as a by-product, produce too much waste including heat.
The primary need is for birth control, or nature will wipe out many of us.
4
You can lead a horse to science, technology, and workable solutions.... but in the end, it's still a horse.
1
The author has simply played with words, that’s all. It’s not the scientists alone, who can get us of out of woods. It’s literally impossible for them to do so without contribution from people individually and politicians concerned collectively.
The author seems to have got confused with the words public good. He says some might benefit more out of public good by providing the example of street lights, then how come a school is not public good ?
What’s public good after all if it’s not self good ? Every individual invariably has to contribute in a small way in our own interest and for our survival. Practically there is no escape whatsoever.
Paris accord is just some sheets of paper and nothing but trash. Unless the countries concerned implement it in the strictest sense, nothing positive will come out of it, forget the earth’s warming reduction by 1.5 degree Centigrade. What if the countries don’t implement the same ? Who’ll these countries be isolated ? How about America then ?
2
Finally, a sane article. Technology got us into this mess and with a concerted effort science and technology can get us out. This is the most promising technology so far: "Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) is a technology that can capture up to 90% of the carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions produced from the use of fossil fuels in electricity generation and industrial processes, preventing the carbon dioxide from entering the atmosphere."
1
If one studies the sustainability reports of companies (e.g., global reporting initiative, carbon disclosure project) and the reported interests of informed asset managers (i.e. institutional investors) in awareness and mitigation of risk then one can see that corporations for the most part get it (e.g., reduced risk, innovation, new revenue streams, reduced costs by implementing programs like eco-design and participating in the circular economy). Corporations are ahead of politicians who do not want to delivery inconvenient messages to their voters.
We all vote with our consumer and investor dollars and well as at the ballot box.
We need a "man on the moon" goal and investment. There is a lot of a lot of money to be made and jobs provided in mitigating and adapting to climate change. It is not going to go to the existing energy companies (e.g., oil and gas).
We hold the key to unlock our chains. The kids of today get it. It is well passed the time that we all act like responsible adults instead of active (or passive) participants in a rerun of the tragedy of the commons.
@Mytake There is a void of education about ecology in the USA . Children and teens are not educated the way kids are educated in Europe. You are 10 or 20 years behind in the USA, as you are about health care or violent crime per capita , or guns.
You consume twice the energy per capita as Europeans and you absolutely have no conscience of it.
twice the carbon foot print . 3 time the plastic use. And you recycle almost nothing. Only 7 % of plastic recycled in the USA . 50 % in Germany. who uses 3 times less.
It is nice to see a PPE philosopher taking the time to articulate that Hobbes is the key ingredient here, not science. Once everyone sees that international anarchy leads to death, a global authority is required. Then, whether the solution is scientific or just stopping burning fossil fuels entirely, the authority can make it happen.
Things will have to get a whole lot worse before that happens, but it will.
"Science Can Get Us Out of This Mess (if We’re Lucky)" is how the Times lists this article on the online front page.
Bad message, especially when I reread the bit that cheerily tosses in solar, wind, nuclear and then geoengineering. Some problems we're facing in our too-slow action are that:
- fossil interests LOVE a message that says let's just let all wait while scientists study some more - fiddling while Rome and elsewhere burn up.
- scientists are out to discover cause and effect, not to engineer mechanisms, and not to apply policy to enable new technologies, and not to be the funders, executives, project managers of the work of implementation.
- saying "gee whiz, maybe they'll find something cheap" indicates the author is unaware or uncaring that geoengineering, which masks the issue, is expected to be cheap. But impacts of something that's powerful, quick-acting, and beyond our skilled comprehension is dangerous, yet will become more tempting. Big risk there...
It took my re-reading this, and remembering this is "The Stone", the philosophy column, to conclude there's a bit too much of Monty Python's philosopher's sketch in this to be taken seriously.
To correct his last sentence: "All we can do is to follow as many paths as possible with existing technologies and practices to reduce energy consumption (especially fossil fuel use) while funding research AND DEVELOPMENT to add to our tools. Add in prayers if you got 'em, too."
2
I dispute the idea that more light is better for everyone. Astronomers are a small group, but can't see the stars in populated areas, which are diminishing. Also, light uses energy, and unless it is renewable it is adding to the problem. Light gives off heat too, even LED's where you might touch the bulb safely, but what about that base that gets hotter than most things. I like the ideas here, but would like to see a deeper look at finding a good that has no downsides. Maybe democracy?
Dear Professor Rosenberg,
Rousseau famously said that civilization is a hopeless race to discover cures for the evils it produces, and I fear that is the sort of problem climate change is, an irreversible degradation of the ecology by the relentless depredations of its most virulently rapacious species.
So, sadly, no, I rather doubt there’s an app for that, sir.
Cordially,
S.A. Traina
2
I have read books aimed at kindergarteners with more complex ideas. This is a bad article, for the remedial NYT readers. I guess colleges need remedial courses for their slower students. I this. picture of a poorly insulated house, an inefficient gas burning car? How many plane trips did professor Rosenburg take this decade? 2.7 % of global emissions, but only 20% of humans have ever flown. Do we not know that consumption is part of the problem? I hope you are not reading this on paper. We have to consume much less, spend less, use less, reuse more, travel not at all, eat local. ll birth control should be local and free across the globe, including the USA. If street lighting were nowhere, wouldn't night time safety be the same- and aren't we at a 50 yr lw for violent crimes anyway? If others aren't doing it, give up.
Its not rocket science , and we should no longer have space travel.
4
In the current environment, scientists are demonized because they develop models that some people don't want to accept. I find it interesting that given the demonization of science, that people still are looking for science and engineering to lift us out of this hole we have found ourselves in. Which is it? Are scientists corrupt idiots, or are scientists the path to a livable future? This is an important question, because attitudes like this strongly influence the funding of science, which has a large role in its vitality. Also, why would any kid aspire to work really hard to get into a field where his best work will be declared corrupt and wrong by an easily manipulated and poorly educated public? It requires a strong commitment to truth, and this still exists in science, despite the work of its detractors.
1
Public goods theory will save the world? That is hard for me to fathom. This sounds like an ivory tower theory floating in the ether. Two metaphors work for me. One is the market. If we tax carbon and other greenhouse gases, and we incentify not only decarbonizing but geoengineering including not only new techniques of carbon sequestration but restoring ecosystems that will build a model to stabilize things. The other concept which is somewhat antithetical is the World War II mobilization that won the war against fascism in four years. That required every ounce of resources physical and mental that the United States and its allies could muster. The Russians for their part moved most of their industry, physically moved it in a matter of months to save it from the Nazis. They then out produced the Nazis and crushed them millions of men and women.
So the forces of market and the forces of the public sector mobilized for a grand objective, both may be necessary over the coming decades to stabilize and restore the earth's climate system. The stakes are very high. We must avoid mass extinction, the death of our oceans and serious harm to human communities around the world. I trust the forces of politics and ideology will push the world community to save itself.
1
You are your own open-mike moment – to wit, in reverse order:
“...The participants have to agree on who’s in the group...
“...That’s one lesson taught by the relatively new discipline of politics, philosophy and economics...PPE has been the name for this subject since it was first introduced at Oxford...Now it’s taught at a hundred or more American universities, combining intellectual resources to come to grips with complex human issues...
Three disciplines so deeply mired in their astrological and alchemistic hand-waving – as the limits of their benefit and the damage they have wrought come into full view...
Their power will continue unabated for a while longer – as did Castro’s in Cuba, and will Maduro’s in Venezuela...
> Economics says how to print and borrow money till others refuse to take it, and keep going
> Politics says how to coerce or deceive others to take your worthless scrip, while claiming to persuade
> Philosophy says how to rationalize – if you didn’t do these things, someone else would
PS
The streetlight analogy is a dim bulb...
Edison lit up the streets of NYC for free, so people could find their way around – and want to pay Edison to use his product for their more personalized use...
Just as Google lit up the highways and byways of the Internet, gratis...
If street-lighting were an equalizing force:
> East Berlin would shine as brightly at night as West, in satellite photos
> Lanning Square would shine at night as brightly as Times Square
4
Green Swans are highly improbable innovations capable of rapid retirement of fossil fuels. See aesopinstitute.org While the science of climate crisis is clear, the science required for faster replacement of fossil fuels is mired in textbook dogma. With millions or billions of human lives at stake, it would be wise for this to change without delay.
One example is water as fuel. Conversion of combustion engines to run on water, fresh or salt, will soon be easy & cheap. H2 Global, a small firm in Florida, has developed technology that makes that possible with very small amounts of energy. A 9 volt battery for example. This is not electrolysis but new science.
Millions of vehicles running on water - taken from the air - can become power plants when parked, opening a path to rapidly retiring coal, natural gas and nuclear plants.
Another example is engines that need no fuel. These challenge the sacrosanct Second Law of Thermodynamics. Presentations to 3 AAAS meetings on that subject met no refutation. A new prototype is ready to be built but needs modest support. These engines are expected to scale and run 24/7/365 to replace intermittent wind & solar systems. Huge variations will later power the largest ships.
Developments like these will enlist public support, as they will save consumers large amounts of money and need no government actions. They can change the world as fast as did hand held devices. And open minds to disruptive, urgently needed, new science.
I don’t know about all the PPE speak expounded in this article, but I grew up in Northern Idaho in the 70s and 80s and the cold, snowy winters of my childhood days are long gone, replaced by mild winters with little to no snow or use for the bobsleds and ice skates that languished in the garage. I imagine everyone my age or older has a similar story and sees the writing on the wall, but many feel overwhelmed and incapacitated by the enormity of it all. So, instead of PPE, describe how eliminating the use of single use plastics can help, or maybe suggest donating to causes like the World Wildlife Federation - I sign every petition that comes my way.
4
The main obstacle to climate change that is nowhere discussed is unrelenting overpopulation. Every single person creates a 'carbon footprint'. We reached 7 Billion of us in 2011. 8.6 billion by 2030. Thats an increase of almost 23 percent in less than 20 years!! 9.8 Billion by 2050. Thats a 40 percent increase in 39 years. There is no conceivable way that with that level of increase in human carbon production the trend can be reversed. Yet the 800 pound guerilla of overpopulation is nowhere discussed essentially making the Paris equation of how to reverse carbon warming useless even if it were judiciously followed, which as we all know, it is not. So yes, support the miracle of science and hope it is better science than whether we should eat red meat or not.
8
@NYer a contrary assessment:
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/8/20/20802413/overpopulation-demographic-transition-population-explained
1
Science in what way? As a calculator ? Certainly not to 'create' a solution.
The biggest gains in the war against climate change come from planting trees ( and stopping deforestation) and stop feeding plant protean into animal protean ...it is a waste of energy and a waste of land and what it creates is 'a lot of waste'.
Plant trees for people, not corn for cows. This will reduce atmospheric CO2 concentrations and produce a healthier environment and population.
2
Has anyone studied the feasibility of replacing the energy from fossil fuels with renewable energy ? Is it possible ? The world currently gets 85% of it's energy from fossil fuels. Can that much energy be derived from solar, wind, hydro, nuclear, etc ? There are one billion vehicles in the world. Can enough electricity be generated to power that many vehicles ? Can airplanes and large container ships run on batteries ? Are there enough natural resources to build the huge number of devices that will be required to harvest renewable energy ? Let's see a detailed calculation.
Our present market economy isn't the solution to the prisoner's dilemma and climate change. It's the cause. Ultimately, it will result in the extinction of our species.
Relying on the incidental by product of activity motivated by the economic self interest of "higher level groups" for the development of common goods that will benefit everyone does not address the problem of environmental degradation and climate change directly. It is not a rational approach to problems of such magnitude. Radical leftist have been warning us of this dead end since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
At this juncture, it remains an impossible dream, but a world of libertarian socialist states committed to the anarchist values of trust, solidarity and mutual aid is the only solution.
I remember years ago as a young man, probably the 1970s, considering that in making wine, the bacteria poison themselves to death through unlimited growth.
5
WeTp is right on point, especially about the problem of corporations being made to give up profits, and, I would add, for them to be made to pay for externalities, like pollution in all its forms, including the release of CO2. The beginning of wisdom is that there is no market-governed solution to the problem. Thus the issue seems to come down to whether there will be sufficient mass mobilization to force the issue. Enlightened capitalist elites are always a minority in their class [see Germany, 1932-3], so to depend upon persuasion is folly -- compulsion is needed.
1
Sorry, first, this is not the prisoner's dilemma.
Second, the "group" description written fits just as well for the Mafia, as the literature points out. So is it a helpful concept?
Third, recasting this in terms of the public good begs the question of how to force private corporate power to give up trillions in profits.
Fourth, there's no true nexus to scientists in this argument.
Finally, even framing the issue as climate change really avoids the problem. We are destroying nature and making conditions difficult for the majority of people. Solving climate change won't necessarily change that.
4
"Educate scientists, support pure research, disseminate it freely and reward it with immortality, not just money."
The Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 pretty much threw that model out the window in the US.
3
Everyone is listening to the wrong Swede. It is not Greta that we should be listening to, but Bjorn (Lomborg).
@SJW51 - thanks for the laugh, I always enjoy a bit of funny on Monday.
For those not familiar with Bjorn's schtick, he pretends to care about climate change, but then pretends to care about other problems more, when it comes to actually doing things about it. Not that he tries to increase spending on any other cause, just tries (and is paid well) to try avoiding us doing anything about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
He's also willing to use invalid parameters to attack effective programs - like Germany's energy transition. He says "it won't reduce temperatures by 2100", not wanting readers to understand that the German program, which has their annual CO2 emissions now below levels in the 1960s, is about preventing additional warming.
That's what we're able to do this century - by our actions we reduce, or increase, the extra heating on top of the already-accumulated impacts from past emissions. The climate system has huge inertia.
His faulty comparison is like saying there's no use trying to stop an aircraft carrier, because it won't stop in 1000 feet. Well, aircraft carriers are stopped successfully - it takes early action towards the goal. Bjorn's paid to try delaying same when it comes to reducing our damage from fossil fuel use.
3
@SJW51
Greta isn’t saying listen to her, she’s saying listen to the scientists.
Something a Bjorn should do. And you as well.
3
If a major factor in causing climate change is over-population, it is self-correcting. Given time, the population will decrease. Given enough time, and no outside influences, population will decrease to zero. Then, perhaps, the earth will cool, CO2 levels will go down and maybe, somewhere deep in the Mariana's Trench, two tiny things will get together and start something new.
Regrettably, I won't be around to witness it. Nor will you.
10
We should all do what we can. Contract with your electric utility for fossil-free power. Drive less. If you must drive, buy a hybrid or an electric. Have no more than two children. Most important of all, vote Democrat.
7
@Richard Schumacher
We should revise our tax structure so that it discourages people from having more than 2 children. To get his vote for Trump’s tax overhaul, Marco Rubio said it would have to raise the amount parents could deduct from their taxes for each of their children. Rubio said he wanted to encourage people, particularly immigrants, to have more children. He was glad his immigrant parents were able to have 4 children and thought we should subsidize others who wanted to do so.
(What many do not understand about the Child Tax Credit is that it does not have to be a “credit” that is deducted from income taxes. As long as a person has paid payroll taxes, it does not matter if he or she owes any income tax to receive the Child Tax Credit. Many immigrants (including illegal immigrants who have paid withholding taxes using an ITIN) who owe no income taxes have been receiving checks from the IRS under the Child Tax Credit. The IRS has been operating as a welfare agency for the working poor.)
Congress should have raised the amount people could deduct from their taxes (or could receive as cash) under the Child Tax Credit for only their first 2 children. We should not be using our tax structure to encourage people to have more than 2 children.
2
@Richard Schumacher,
...and eat less animal products.
1
One thing worth noting is that the benefit as well as cost of the CO2 emissions are not limited to one country. A million tons of CO2 mitigated can be done anywhere where it is easiest and everyone benefits. The second important thing to note is that the climate response is roughly linear to the total amount of CO2 emitted. So, it is not "too late".
It is possible to make it less of a prisoner's dilemma by putting a carbon tax on imports from a non-compliant country.
1
@Mitch Lyle
It depends on what we're "too late" for. It's too late to stop at least several meters of sea level rise for example.
And we still don't fully understand the coming strength of the many amplifying feedbacks we've already initiated.
4
@Erik Frederiksen
Exactly. The 'climate response' will be (already is) becoming increasingly 'nonlinear' and will manifest ever faster, in ever more unpredictable directions as the oceans lose what little capacity they have left to absorb the excess heat in the atmosphere. Then things will really get interesting.
3
@irene Interesting is not exactly the word I would use to describe it.
No amount of well reasoned words will convince the deniers to stop denying. For many of them it is a religion of fairy tales and wishful thinking not unlike their actual religion. Nice try.
6
Free carbon capture -- sucking CO2 out of the atmosphere and burying it -- is now at about $100/ton. If some agency or group of agencies, anywhere in the world, were to invest a trillion $/yr in the technology, in five years we would have sucked 150 billion tons out of the air and would be down to 360 ppm, which Bill McKibben thinks would be a pretty good number. (He named his organization after it.) If we kept on investing at that level for 14 years we would be back to pre-industrial levels. My numbers might be off by a bit but not by much. And of course the cost of the technology would only go down. All we need is the willingness to spend a few bucks.
4
@fhapgood CO2 is harder to suck out of the air as the concentrations go down. The manufacturing ramp-up and cost would alone kill this idea never mind the cost of powering these millions of machines.
Plant trees, they suck up carbon, They also reduce soil erosion and produce oxygen as well as other beneficial crops ...like food for people.
2
@Louis J
The only disadvantage of trees is that they take a lot more area. But if they work as well, great. The overall point is that there are conceptually simple solutions to climate change. This is not a problem that requires everybody to change their lives. A fairly small number of people have to want to fix the problem badly enough. Which they do not seem to want to do right now. Maybe in a few years.
@fhapgood
"Carbon sucking" could catch on as a term for this new technology.
Please stop talking about climate change as if a stoppable immediate threat. The earth since formation had been very warm without ice on each pole majority of the time. Most bio-diverse periods of the earth had been during warmer climates not colder. We are living at the tail end of an ice age which is actually an abnormality in the earth's history. The climate WILL get warmer no matter what human does. We do must step up to protect bio-diversity and the natural world, but we also need to realize our own insignificance. This might sound very cruel, but: please start planning to move out of tornado zones and stop living next to the beach, use as little plastic as possible, consume less meat and plant native plants, and support green legislations! And stop complaining and depressing yourself to death over the word "climate change." It is like worrying and thinking about death every minutes of your living day. Go jogging, eat healthy and love instead!
3
@Lin
We have stopped the next ice age by our CO2 emissions. There probably won't be another for about 50,000 years or more.
The change in temperature is roughly proportional to the aggregate CO2 emissions, so slowing or stopping does make a difference.
2
@Lin - "We are living at the tail end of an ice age which is actually an abnormality in the earth's history. The climate WILL get warmer no matter what human does"
Not true. We're still in an ice age, but we're in an interglacial period when much of the sub-polar ice sheets melted. This interglacial is called the Holocene, and the warmest part of it ended thousands of years ago - you can look up "Holocene climatic optimum".
Temperatures had been trending gradually downwards for thousands of years, until warming began as widespread use of coal, then other fossil fuels, started in the 19th century.
So yes, yes about many of the steps you advise in your comment, but no, no, warming wasn't in the cards for our near future.
We're the cause of it, like we're the ones making the plastics.
And planning to move out of places that will suffer dramatic change? The world can't all move to Russia, Canada and Scandanavia, so better to try to reduce future damage while we also try to figure out how to live with future damage we're causing. Because FEMA's going to be busy throughout the country this century.
1
I have no idea what this essay is trying to say? I personally would welcome a birth control bomb which when dropped prevented babies from being conceived for a 5 year period. (That's a science solution - a bit different from conventional warfare which we seem to have no trouble with -- certainly less destructive than any nuclear device.)
Meantime, people do what they do -- many for gain -- the capitalists and their investors in the pick-pocket economy of Wall Street. Redefine theft!! and stop glorifying it. Most of us in the USA have too much even the poor. We may not have enough of what is truly useable.. but we have...and the rest of the world has our leftovers and everyone's garbage is in the ocean. Will a wide-spread famine occur in 20 years or so? (Climate change ultimately has to do with food chain.) People can more or less adapt to hot weather or extreme cold? Will only the very rich who supposedly can buy everything survive? then who will do the work?
5
@Auntie Mame a "birth control bomb" like what you described isn't enough. For population control to tame climate change alone, we'd need to slaughter a few billion people in the next 20 years. Are you prepared to support that?
Though rising population may have helped to cause this problem, please stop spreading disinformation that birth control can do anything at all to solve it.
You're making this a complicated academic thought piece. Please, simple is better. The planet warms because of accumulating greenhouse gases. If you thought things were hot this year, check it out in five. So, how to cool a planet? Examples of volcanic eruptions cooling the planet are a clue. The idea of comet dust partially blocking the sun is another. We need time to transition to clean fuel globally hence some sun screen may be necessary. Solar panels should still work effectively since the amount of sun screen particles to lower the temperature a couple of degrees will not block the panels from working. And the wind will not stop blowing. And while we transition, we need to find additional ways of taking carbon out of the atmosphere.
We don't have much time left. Everyday we send billions of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The whole planet does this, not just us. 95 degrees in October? Yep, and that will be a cool day.
1
Just listening to Mr. Foer the other day, he thinks, and may be right, that we all may be at fault in precipitating climate changes; he said, 'we are the climate', by consuming too much meat, by driving too many cars and by flying (in airplanes) far too often. If we do our part, perhaps the oil companies may not only listen...but do something.
1
@manfred marcus - for people who own motorized vehicles, buying electric ones will certainly get the attention of the oil companies.
This essay is too theoretical. Climate change is actually somewhat simpler than the author pretends.
The problem is, and has always been, too much population growth. This was pointed out by Thomas Malthus in his 1798 book, "On the Principle of Population," then brought up again by Paul Ehrlich's "Population Bomb," of 1968, and again by the book "Limits to Growth," by Randers et al.
These warnings were ignored by political scientists, philosophers and especially economists. In fact, the reasoning behind population growth requires nothing more than understanding the relentless nature of exponential growth.
World population was less than one billion when Malthus first issued his warning and about 3.7 billion in 1970. It has doubled since then. That makes the problem of controlling global warming twice as hard now as it would have been In 1970.
In spite of development of solar panels and windmills, use of fossil fuels continues to climb every year because of population growth. The population of Africa is projected to double by 2050.
There is NO WAY of controlling global warming without achieving zero population growth. The longer we wait the more serious the die-off our grandchildren will confront.
Because climate change is a message from Planet Earth to us people: We have exceeded the carrying capacity of planet earth.
There is hope, but only if we adopt something like China's one-child policy for the world as a whole.
Otherwise we have an uninhabitable earth.
11
@Jake Wagner - the "population is the only issue" folks leave me confused. Are they serious?
Do they understand the difference between energy and land consumption at a US level vs. same for a subsistence farmer in the Sahel?
Do they understand that reducing fossil fuel use is necessary even if population growth stopped tomorrow?
Or do they just want to avoid taking action on things we can affect, like our own fossil use and massive consumption habits, by deflecting attention to a different issue and proposing completely unworkable things like a global one-child policy? (Lack of a world government, you know? Else they'd mandate greenhouse reductions instead of negotiating agreements)
The actual rate of population growth peaked around 1960. Birthrates are below replacement level in many nations now, and more and more will follow that path as they see more of their children actually survive their first years, and as some basics like cell phones, education and access to birth control also spread. More people in developing nations have phones now than have power to their home.
And many nations, NGOs and the UN do have activities on family planning and birth control, by the way. You could look it up - like here: https://www.unfpa.org/family-planning
6
@Jake Wagner But it's too late to deal with the problem by stopping population growth, because those already alive would live for too long. You'd have to slaughter several billion people within about 20 years.
We've seen that technology can decouple economic growth from fossil fuels and emissions. We have the technology to nearly complete this decoupling, about 80%. And the economics to drive the rest of the way, in the form of a carbon price, has been known for fifty years. In the US, the Clean Air Act of 1990 created a sulfur emissions market whose technology boom drove down the cost of emissions control so fast that polluters ended up donating permits to environmental non-profits, because the tax benefits were worth more than selling them on the market.
Furthermore, the most effective way to limit population growth - without the widespread slaughter described above - is to educate women and girls and promote family planning. But there are at least five other more cost-effective ways to reduce emissions.
https://www.drawdown.org/solutions
So let's pursue these solutions, and quit pretending that population restriction is any kind of panacea.
2
I have seen a number of presentations that identify the most effective path to lower population to be the education of girls and women in the third world. This is something to aspire to .
5
The single most important bit of education needed to address climate change has nothing to do with climate change. The public and politicians need to be rapidly schooled on how technologies are developed, what influences the time it takes to bring them to practical reality, and how we can marshal capitalism to drive solutions.
Semiconductors, computer chips, the internet, GPS and satellites, aerospace, and a vast array of modern technologies all had their origins in research funded by governments. Governments spent tax dollars to develop promising research to practical devices, long before they had any chance of commercial use. Governments were the earliest adopters, for military or other uses. Governments developed the tools and standards that made manufacturing possible. Governments provided patent and trade protections, without which investors would never have put a single dollar into their commercial development. Government policies helped open markets, drive standards, and make investments worthwhile - again, long before the technologies were products, long before they made a dime in profits.
The right wing propaganda machine pretends this never happened, and that doing it again is somehow "marxist". It's a big lie. Capitalism is built on a bedrock of sound government investment.
7
"It’s not rocket science to see how hard it would be for the 200 or so nations of the world to satisfy these conditions. The Paris agreement is a far cry from Ostrom’s recipe. The main obstacle to carrying it out will be the unwillingness to surrender national sovereignty."
I don't see the problem. Did nations give up sovereignty when they signed onto the Geneva Accords?
3
To properly address climate change we would have to change incentives. I would like to believe that scientists could convince deniers of the severity of negative consequences from inaction, but I doubt it. Even if they could, it's not likely that change could work its way up to industry and government in time to be effective. Nature will cause incentives to change on its own, but the average human experience will not notice until it's far to late. I'm afraid that the only way to address climate change is from the top down. Yes, the elites must be in control. Judging from today's leadership, I'm not hopeful.
3
Swell theoretical discussion.
Nothing humans do is sustainable.
There are 7.5 going to 9.5Bn by 2050, that's a new stress, as in unprecedented, on the environment.
Our technology is causing the problem, which is different than prior problems when technology was our savior.
Earth's systems won't stay in the range within which we evolved.
We outweigh all wild prey, unlike any predator, ever.
We're destroying nature's ability to support human life, and, are more likely than not to be extinct by the end of the century.
5
If you live in the third world, climate change may well kill you. If you live in the western world, like the US, climate change may well impoverish you. That is the difference. No one wins.
The irony here is that climate change-deniers are deniers only on the outside; deep down they know its happening but won't admit the science is right. Moreover, while also being science deniers to some degree, deep down they are also depending on a scientific/engineering solution put together by those same intellectual elites they hate) to save us all.
2
The summer heat and the hurricane aren't actually the reasons we should believe climate change is real. There are at least three far more compelling reasons for believing this. First, climate scientists who have devoted their entire life to this matter have told us repeatedly that this is happening. Second, we are releasing tons of carbon that had been trapped underground into the atmosphere as CO2, a well known heat-trapping gas, and we have been doing this for many years. Third, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere has hovered between about 260 and 290 ppm for most of the past 10,000 years, but began to skyrocket upwards around the time of industrialization and has recently passed 400ppm. I could try to argue from all of this that man-made climate change is our greatest existential threat, but I won't because that isn't really true. Our greatest existential threat is the people, who for political and financial gain, pretend this isn't real, or isn't man made. Equally complicit are people who are too ignorant to see the facts for themselves.
10
I knew this would be a bad essay when you asserted that a single hot summer in a single region of a country, and a single hurricane, should convince a person that climate change is real. That's might unscientific of you.
It's not a prisoner's dilemma if a single country does not mitigate climate change, thinking that its single influence is small in the world; it's a free rider problem. (See Garrett Hardin's "The Tragedy of the Commons.")
There's plenty of literature regarding how to mitigate the free rider problem--no Noble prize required.
4
@tanstaafl Spot on - It's incredible how many "scientifically literate" people cite one bad hurricane and hot weather as evidence for climate change. It is the logical equivalent of holding up a snowball in DC and saying climate change is a hoax. There's tons of good evidence pointing to long-term climate change, and we need to be sticking to the facts.
2
The prisoners dilemma is aptly named whereas prisoners have no morals, no empathy. Are we on par with prisoners? In our current dilemma, the U.S. should strive for all nations participating in reducing greenhouse gases - we shouldn't be happy with only them. And we should strive to make the green technology cheaper than carbon sources as all nations will join in once that happens.
Lastly, I'm not sure that the prisoners dilemma is valid here as some reduction is better than none and the more the emissions, the worse off we will be. So we might has well decrease emissions even if we are the only country doing it - which we aren't.
4
It is hard to solve a problem if you can't define it or identify some strategies to solve it. Of course, Prof. Rosenberg's PPE explanation isn't the only way to define the problem of climate change. I agree with many comments that it's a moral problem and a population and a consumption problem. But telling individuals that they need to change doesn't seem likely to accomplish much if they don't expect the same from others. I appreciated Rosenberg's PPE lens because it helped me imagine what conditions could stimulate collective investment in the public good of a less-changed climate.
1
We just had a special election for the NC 3rd Congressional District. The District is gerrymandered around from much of the Crystal Coast area through the swamp lands along the Neuse River. My property along a creek that feeds the Neuse has been reduced from 30 acres to 5 acres by Nicole, Irene, Matthew and again by Florence. The election winner by a landslide is a man who has strongly vocalized his support for Mr. Trump and all of his policies.
Obviously, most of the voters in the 3rd do not care that a large portion of the District will belong to the ocean soon. If a population that threatened by climate change will still strongly support someone who wants to make it worse, then there is no hope for the necessary systemic change.
3
If we don't agree to act hundreds of millions of us will die and billions will be impoverished. At some point those with the means to force compliance with a CO2 reduction scheme will do so. It would be counterproductive to wage a nuclear war for the right to burn fossil fuels.
2
What kind of problem is climate change? Its a modern problem, its a lifestyle problem, its a consumer culture is 75% of our GNP and it must grow forever problem. Its a consumption problem and its a population problem.
9
A declining population could take some pressure off the environment. In the US approximately half of all pregnancies are unplanned. No one should be forced to have children they don't want, especially now when the ecosystem is literally dying.
The most effective means of contraception should be made easily available - without stigma - and at nominal cost. Birth control pills, plan B and Ella should be available without a prescription, and easily accessible (one shouldn't have to ask for them). Could Depo shots be administered at pharmacies, as flu shots are? Contraception research should be supported.
Society should cease the many pressures on young people to tread the well worn and unsustainable track of marriage, children, large suburban home with a lawn, beef with every dinner.
7
@Cal population increases in the US are mostly from immigration. The fertility for both the US and UK is only 1.8 - not even replacement level. It has been that way for a few years now. Do you propose then to restrict immigration?
I could not read anything beyond the opening line: "If the summer heat, followed by Hurricane Dorian, hasn’t convinced you that climate change is real, probably nothing will."
Equating weather with climate is unscientific. Nothing of much intellectual value could follow.
A recent review published by National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that "it is premature to conclude with high confidence that human activity – and particularly greenhouse warming – has already caused a detectable change in Atlantic hurricane activity."
www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/
4
@Joshua: You should read beyond the opening line. Rosenberg goes on to discuss the tragedy of the commons and how we might avoid it in this, the greatest crisis of our time.
It is irrational but many (most?) people do find personal experience to be more compelling than abstract facts and theoretical frameworks. If weather has convinced more people of the reality of the climate crisis then do not despise it. Of course some people's experience with weather has reinforced their belief that anthropological global warming and climate change do not exist; preconceptions and ignorance remain a danger.
2
@Joshua
A pity you skipped the article. It actually contained quite a bit of relatively rarely-discussed synthesis.
Perhaps you would find it easier to accommodate the speculation surrounding climate change mitigation strategy if it were framed in suitably conditional terms?
Like,
PROVIDED THAT anthropogenic climate change does indeed pose a significant danger to human health and safety, what (if anything) can we do about it?
Surely such a minor exercise of the imagination, such a shore-hugging piece of probable-hypothetica, is within the capacity of even the the most intractable skeptic?
As the man said, "Much virtue in 'If.'"
1
@Joshua
If you read the entire report, instead of one cherry-picked sentence, it supports the predictions of more intense rainfall and more energetic storms. That we haven't *yet* met a formal statistical criterion in observations... that would definitively exclude natural variability... does not negate the underlying science.
What scientists say is that Dorian is *representative* of the types of storms whose frequency is projected to increase, relative to the total number of hurricanes. (That total might actually decrease).
So, unless you believe it is all a vast conspiracy/hoax, it would be perfectly reasonable for one's concern to be heightened by seeing how destructive those future storms could be, and to be motivated to act, as the author suggests.
The term "attribution" can be interpreted in different ways, and sometimes the meaning is not communicated clearly even by the scientists who work on it.
2
A lovely bit of philosophizing. Not sure it has much to do with the real world.
First, forget about the lunatic fringe of people who do not believe the Earth is warming, and explain to me why I should believe in **AGW**---Anthropogenic Global Warming---i.e., the man-made stuff? We know the Earth has been warming for at least the last 20,000 years. Though a middle aged man, it has been widely known since I was 10 yrs old that we have been coming out of the last Ice Age for thousands of years, i.e., the Earth started warming long before human beings could have had any impact on the climate. If we aren't making it warmer, we can't make it cooler.
Furthermore, if humans are the reason for this global warming, what was the reason for warming the last five times the Earth came out of an Ice Age? See my problem?
Second, did Prof Rosenberg read the Green New Deal? The GND is not geophysics or any other kind of science, it is plain vanilla, garden-variety Marxism. Pouring a trillion dollars into the GND will do nothing halt global warming, it will just make us poorer. And hotter.
So, thanks but no thanks.
1
@Haim
Unfortunately for you, understanding the claim of the scientific community that global warming is being ACCELERATED by human activity demands educating oneself about how and why they have come to this AGREEMENT. One can't get anywhere just by hearing some claims by one side or the other that pass by one's ear. Ample evidence couched within a scientific analytical framework has been presented. Please read up on that.
6
@Haim A simple experiment easily performed will show that increased carbon dioxide increases retained heat under radiant heat. Here is one example of dozens available on the net.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeYfl45X1wo
Atmospheric CO2 has nearly doubled in the past 100 years.
https://futureoflife.org/2018/02/06/if-atmospheric-co2-doubles-how-hot-will-it-get/?cn-reloaded=1
The conclusion is obvious and no amount of obfuscation will change that.
4
@Haim
No, I don't see your problem. And you wouldn't either, if you had read enough or thought enough or listened enough. The kind of warming that is taking place now is different from what took place in previous epochs. The indications that it is being caused by human activity are overwhelming. The ecological implications are catastrophic. We're not talking about vineyards in Greenland. We're talking about wholesale system collapse.
As for Marxism (if that were indeed a reasonable designation for the GND), I'll take it if it means this planet could still be habitable a century from now. Not that anything is likely to do that, but I'll tell you one thing for sure, capitalism won't.
And, look, not to hurry you or anything, but this is urgent and we need all hands on deck. So the sooner you can whip through the remaining stages till you reach Acceptance, the better off we'll all be.
6
Yes, climate change is real. It's as if the only convincing people need is repeated disasters affecting the United States. Watching a program on TV about climate change and its affects or reading an article like this one only verifies that the weather is crazy these days.
The real issue is convincing us that HUMANS are creating the change in our climate. Therefore, HUMANS can fix this.
2
The problem is two fold. Too many people and an economic system that requires ever more economic growth, people and spending on a finite world. This is all incompatible with long term sustainability or even survival, so we dance around the issues because no one has the guts to propose what needs to be done as it would require turning our political, economic and philosophical underpinnings on their heads. It's why a meaningless, empty suit photo op like the Paris accords gets a bunch of press when everybody who knows the numbers also knows it won't come close to the 2degree rise we have to beat. CO2 is now 415. It just had the biggest jump in years. It's the highest in a million years. It isn't going lower. But let's blame trump and the oil companies. That's always "safe".
4
@Al
It's people like Trump and businesses like oil companies who do not want to turn our underpinnings upside down.
1
@Dan Barker
So we can count on you to: support no tax deductions for more than 2 kids, pay higher taxes for solar and other techno changes and for having more than 2 kids, support lowering the US and world population to sustainable levels, free, effective birth control everywhere, reduction of immigration levels to the west to reduce co2 production, every vehicle gets 50 mpg or is electric (just have to scrap your current one) and on and on? If not, it's just all talk.
2
@Al
Absolutely.
2
The problem is the long term pace of climate change versus the increasingly short term mindedness of the human being. Look no further than metaphorical example of running a securitized corporation (planet) in relation to how many CEOs (world leaders) behave. They pile on the debt, extract $100 million paychecks for themselves, and eventually parachute to retirement while the company files for CH11. With climate change "older" voters/leaders are not feeling their mortality threat through the lens of climate change.
Like the frogs in the warming pot. Most of the "deciders" will die of old age before the water boils the youth.
2
Climate change for so-called deniers isn't a hoax but it's "hoaxy" vis a vis the weight we should be giving it:
1. First, it assumes that mankind has the capability of predicting and holding constant climate changes not attributed to mankind. So, while you can assert that man's activities contribute to climate change, Mother nature is going to do what it wants to do; we are ultimately at its mercy;
2.Controlling all of man's various alleged contributions, i.e., over population, cow flatulence, fossil fuels, etc would take an unprecedented, monumental, unrealistic and economy- wrecking level of cooperation among countries. It would also take government control to a whole new level;
3.It also ignores the fact that some parts of the world will actual benefit from climate change, i.e., natural resource rich inland areas which are currently relatively uninhabitable. Mankind has migrated in response to climate change since the beginning. Meanwhile, rich folks( including climate change proponents such as the Obamas and Kennedys) are still buying expensive waterfront properties; the clean-up of damage to those properties from the next storm will be financed by the rest of us via FEMA.
In sum, our goal should be to keep the current environment clean. Meanwhile, inasmuch fossil fuels are in finite supply, efforts should continue to be made vis a vis renewable energy. At some point, the cost of extracting the former will render the latter affordable and the market will switch over.
2
@pete
Speaking to your 3rd point : 10% of the world's landmass is in the circumpolar subarctic. It may sound heretical, but we are definitely enjoying our longer growing season and milder winters. And our produce is exceptional, due to the combination of long photoperiod (doesn't get dark for almost four months !) and cool soils. Plants set more plant sugars in those conditions. Fairbanks is actually famous for its carrots, which taste amazing. So yes, eventually there will be some benefits for some people. The problems being, sea level rise and crop losses in much of the presently inhabited land masses. It's going to be a turbulent journey which hopefully humanity survives.
1
rosenberg completely misrepresents what "prisoner's dilemma" has to teach us -- the problem he wants to describe is called "cheaters ride."
bungling basic game theory means philosophy is disqualified from further comment and we're only left with politics and economics to find a solution to climate change. oh boy.
what kind of problem is climate change? it's a moral problem, like nazis sending jews to the gas chamber. it's the conscious and willful decision to deprive millions of humans alive today of crops, water, and doom them to a refugee's heat death.
it's also an economic problem like debt, because heat will persist for decades, even centuries after any successful attempt to reduce CO2 emissions. we are incurring a debt that will be incredibly onerous to discharge.
it's not the economic issue of "public good" but "tragedy of the commons." if you don't know what that means -- educate yourself.
it's certainly the biological problem of overpopulation, and the malthusian chide of limited resources to the free market optimism of continual growth and prosperity forever.
"prosperity forever" is in fact a grift, a con, a ponzi scheme born of greed. yet even nobel laureates like krugman hypocritically decline to call it out. why? you have to ask them.
so we're at the historical juncture where grift, greed, hypocrisy, tragedy of the commons, debt and hideous moral crime all converge. compare all that with what rosenberg has to say, and philosophy turns out to be bankrupt.
7
I like the article but the following worries me. "the political scientist Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize that was supposed to go only to economists."
Actually, both Herb Simon was a political scientist and Daniel Kahneman was a psychologist. Simon's Nobel was in 1978, a long time ago.
When you have a pulpit like the New York Times you do need to do your research.
2
This article is unreadable and reeks of ivory tower elitism. If we are to fight climate change, we need to do so by speaking clearly and using plain language.
2
Wow, talk about over thinking something.
2
Oh dear god, if PPE is the answer we're certainly doomed. See https://reaction.life/welcome-britain-worlds-first-bluffocracy/
2
Multiple solutions are available, see Drawdown...Comprehensive Plan...To Reverse Global Warming, edited by Paul Hawken. One, Regenerative Agriculture (google Gabe Brown and David Montgomery), is immediately available and can be scaled up, worldwide to remove possibly 170 gigatons of CO2 equivalents starting in the next planting season. Some of the gobal cooling that occurred in the 15th,16th centuries is linked to reforestation in the Americas resulting from the waves of death decimating indigenous cultures during colonization.
Farmers who employ regenerative practices pull CO2 from the air into their soils and reduce input costs by avoiding plowing and fertilizer use. It's a win for farmers, people and the planet as we must reduce, not just cap, CO2 in our atmosphere.
We must elect leadership that will confront the fossil fuel oligarchy and implement the solutions before us. We must confront and overcome the cultural immorality that allows us to ignore the survival of people, cultures, animals and ecosystems who/which are different. Our lives and those of our children and grandchildren depend on it. If enough of us do all of things we can and require leaders to implement the practices science offers, we may be able to save ourselves and the world. Our situation is beyond dire and we are out of time. If we fail, the human race may be included in the Sixth Great Extinction we're experiencing,
2
The most impressive op-ed I've read in a long time. The problem with climate change is that when the annual costs of droughts, floods, hurricanes, etc. exceed, say, $5 trillion, then the solutions will suddenly appear to be cost effective. But at that point we might not be able to pull out of the climate change death spiral at any cost.
6
It’s not that complicated. All that needs to be done is to invent a form of clean energy that is cheaper than fossil fuels. We’re not there yet.
1
@SJW51
If we're not there yet, it's too late.
1
The impetus to address climate change is laudable.
The blunders in the description of BOTH game theory and philosophy are terrible, and tell you something about the sad situation of academic enterprises today under the fashionable umbrella of "interdisciplinarity".
2
@PGH
Can you please explain why you think this article "blunders" when it comes to "BOTH game theory and philosophy"?
1
@PGH
Can you tell us what those blunders are?
1
A few good points from the author. I would add that the notion of free riding in the context of fighting climate change is behind the times.
A number of corporations and economically forward-thinking governments like Germany and China are focused on mitigation because they know investing in these technologies serves their interests in the short and long term. One thing is certain, those who learn to operate in a sustainable fashion will find their capacity to lead increasing with time.
The question is, can those parties continue to accelerate their efforts and persuade others to follow suite? I believe so if only because their strategic advantage becomes more evident by the day.
For all of this discussion of saving our planet it boils down to one thing. MONEY.......
To pay for something that takes many years to get results that we all benefit from is not apart of the free market that capitalism embraces. As long as big oil holds the $$$ and the administration wants to drown government in the bathtub
then the only people who've got it right are the Kids.
2
The lesson here is that global cooperation is at the heart of the solution--just another reason why Brexit is such a foolish mistake.
3
@EA
It's also another reason why Trump is a foolish mistake, Trump and the GOP, that is. The longer he and the Republicans deny the existence of climate change and the need to mitigate it, the surer our doom. Intelligent countries will become leaders in the mitigations and alternative energy sources we all need. Our country will be left suffering under the onslaught of climate misery, and our economy will be left behind the economies of countries that had the sense to work for the future.
2
My main concern with climate change, nee global warming, is that it seems to be a theory that can't be falsified. Beyond that, I would say this past summer in upstate New York was quite mild, milder than usual I would say. Now, the standard retort would be, "You fool! You're confusing weather with climate!" Okay, fine, but then why doesn't that same retort apply to the first sentence of this essay: "If the summer heat, followed by Hurricane Dorian, hasn’t convinced you that climate change is real, probably nothing will."
2
@J Yes, that same retort (that weather isn't the same thing as climate) does apply to the first sentence of this article. A hot summer and a big hurricane don't prove that the climate is changing, no more than a big snowstorm and a cold-snap prove it isn't.
But a persistent, multi-decade trend of increasing temperatures is VERY STRONG EVIDENCE of anthropogenic warming. Throw in the fact that there is no other remotely plausible explanation (the sun's output isn't increasing), and there can be no reasonable doubt: the climate is warming (rapidly) and we humans are the cause.
Today's climate models are extraordinarily good at predicting and explaining everything we see now: e.g., the fact that the arctic is warming faster than the tropics, that the jet stream is destabilizing, that extreme precipitation events are becoming more frequent, and on and on.
To make a long story short: If you care actually to look at the evidence, you'll see that the evidence for human-caused warming is overwhelming. In 2019, scientists at Lawrence Livermore showed that the evidence for anthropogenic warming passed the "five sigma" level, meaning that there less than one chance in 3.5 million of getting this evidence if the hypothesis were false. That's the "gold standard" in science. Game over.
@J: Well, it’s true that climate change can’t be falsified by uninformed people making irrelevant comments. Unfortunately you draw the wrong conclusion from this fact.
@J
It is falsifiable - by seeing if reducing emissions changes things. If not, then we move on.
The people who need to change their minds about climate change would never read this article, and if they did, they would never understand it.
1
A shallow article that needs to emphasize disciplines of "environmental sciences" and "demography" for formulating climate change mitigation policies instead of praising the superficial "PPE" courses.
Another thoughtful piece on climate change, but not thoughtful enough,. How anyone can write about climate change and not mention automobiles beats me.
1
What summer heat? California has been cool and wet this year, and there have been fewer hurricanes than usual in the Caribbean. Find new lede.
1
Climate change has happened naturally for ages but the rate at which climate change occurs matters for human civilization and perhaps for life on earth generally.
Human civilization today is rapidly accelerating the rate of climate change. The accelerated rate looks like it will overwhelm the capacity of nature and of human civilization to adapt in ways sufficient to avoid much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the near future. So we need to respond accordingly.
Much of what you said seems useful and the sort of analysis that has to happen for human civilization to respond properly and in time.
But when intellectuals who want to affect public policy or culture take a term with an existing meaning like “public good” and try to CHANGE the meaning of the term, bad things usually happen.
At least this changed term is clearly defined, not a snarl word, and not designed for ad hoc explanations.
Still, you can avoid the problems that come with trying to change by fiat the meaning of a term by talking about different subsets to which a term applies. Public roads, schools, and parks are public goods but we compete for their use. Mitigating climate change will be more like ample street lighting - we won’t compete for the benefit. That matters for figuring out how to solve the problem. Now we can move on to other aspects of the problem.
A problem for some, a boon for others. Rising sea levels threaten to flood low-lying islands and nations like Bangladesh, including major cities like Singapore, Miami, Jakarta and New Orleans. Melting permafrost is destroying roads and towns in Alaska, Siberia and the Arctic Circle. Droughts are bankrupting farmers in what used to be lush agricultural zones. Dropping water levels in the Panama Canal threaten to close off that vital waterway to all cargo shipping while melting ice around the North Pole has opened up Arctic shipping lanes that will enrich Russia while putting the Suez Canal out of business.
2
Its very simple: I don;t want philosophers, or any other "self annointed elite" to decide.
Its for the People of our country. And the elite do NOT have exclusive right to suggest which way to vote.
1
@Doug McDonald: And it’s very simple for me: I don’t want “adult” children, with chips on their shoulders about “elites”, to drag the rest us down.
Unfair of me to characterize you that way? Well I don’t see where Mr. Rosenberg is telling anyone how to vote, for example, just because he is advocating for an approach to the problem.
If those with knowledge and expertise can no longer even open their mouths because “regular people” can no longer stand being reminded that expertise exists, then we really are sunk.
11
@Doug McDonald
Neither "the elite" nor the other People of our country have a right to their own facts. Science is a way of trying not to fool yourself, because you are the easiest person to fool. Politics is a way of trying to fool you, and money is a powerful reason for it. Five years ago, the annual profit from the sale of fossil fuels in the US and Canada was $257 billion (priceofoil.org/profits-oil-gas-coal-companies-operating-u-s-canada). Who do you think the elite really are in this country?
2
@Doug McDonald - so you just made your suggestion. We've now heard from the teacher who wrote the article (he's one of the People, you know) and we've heard from you. So his article and your opinion are both here.
First, as Stephen said, Mr. Rosenberg didn't say anything about voting, so where'd you pull that from?
Second - answer the following, please.
Your wife notices a lump. One of the "elite" folks, who went to medical school and all that, recommends surgery, by another one of the elite.
Do you refuse? Do you reject the diagnosis? Do you accept it but decide you could do surgery without all that elitist education?
Follow-up. You decided to be the one to operate on your now-departed spouse, and are up for manslaughter or murder.
Do you want just any of the People, like your dishwasher buddy, who reliably votes the way you do, to represent you in court? Or would you be looking up one of those elite "lawyers"?
Expertise matters. If I had a car, I'd take it to a skilled mechanic and listen to their opinion, even though they have "elite" skills with complex machinery. Plumbing problems? A plumber. Medical problems = doctor.
Get it?
2
What Kind of Problem Is Climate Change?
Depends where you live and how far your time horizon goes
Climate science was founded by Arrhenius in 1896 the hope that man made emissions could extend the growing season of Sweden. He got the numbers correct within a factor 2, and to his disappointment found that the effect was too small to do so.
So it depends where you live. Greenland is turning green - and the natives are happy. Fishing is up , too.
If your time horizon is a 100 years, it is terrifying. If your time horizon is 500 000 years you know that we are currently in an inter-glacial period, with a temperature 9 degree F above the long term average and that in some 10 000 years the ice will begin to return and cover NY City, as it did 10 000 years ago, again with a one mile thick of ice
And stay there for some 100 000 years or so. Over most of the Northern US
That is, unless man made climate change intervenes
https://www.rsc.org/images/Arrhenius1896_tcm18-173546.pdf
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f8/Ice_Age_Temperature.png
@Geologist
Whether "the natives" of Greenland are "happy" or not depends on which Greenlanders you talk to (theguardian.com/world/2019/aug/12/greenland-residents-traumatised-by-climate-emergency), and perhaps on your prejudices about 'natives'.
And my personal time horizon currently extends through my lifetime to that of my toddler great-nephew. The temperature 500,000 years ago is academic to me. The temperatures in 2050 and 2100 are much more important. How about you?
BTW, it would be more accurate to say climate science was founded by Joseph Fourier in 1824, and that Arrhenius was the first to incorporate the science of the ensuing decades in a laboriously hand-calculated model of global warming due to fossil fuel emissions. You may be right about his personal investment in the project, however. Those interested can read the highly-recommended book "The Discovery of Global Warming" by science historian Spencer R. Weart of the American Institute of Physics. It's freely available at history.aip.org/climate.
I would submit that the 'prisoners dilemma' doesn't apply to global warming solutions. Specifically, we are not given a choice by mother nature, but rather we are being told, (through our scientists) that we will become extinct as a species if we try to burn all the fossil fuel left in the ground.
Mother nature left all that Carbon in the ground for a couple of good reasons: that Carbon imprisons human-toxic compounds, and this Carbon keeps our environment livable.
Gretta Thornburg has shown us that it comes down to one really basic principle, ie, that we must change our ways or perish. So, let's skip all the mumbo-jumbo that the rest of us like to hide behind (as in this article) and get to the job at hand.
Many feel we have time, but we don't. No to 2050. No to 2030. Gretta says NOW and our scientists are backing her up. (Models from even five years ago were overly optimistic.)
Politically, radical change doesn't happen linearly, but rather in sudden jumps. I submit we are approaching one of these very very soon.
6
Humanity as a whole may not have a choice, but the point of the prisoner’s dilemma is that humanity does not act as a whole. As individuals, as corporations or as countries each one of us does have a choice whether or not to bear the burden of contributing to the solution or simply sit and wait for the benefit of others’ actions. That is the very serious conundrum we and the planet face.
3
A given scientific discovery may be serendipitous, but it has been shown through many examples that technological progress is not. That is why there is a discipline of technology forecasting. Examples abound. See the energy efficiency of efficiency of artificial lighting. See the horsepower per pound of airplane engines. See the conversion efficiency of photovoltaic panels. These relied not on new sciientific discoveries but on the steady progression of improvements in materials chemistry and metallurgy over decades of work and investment. The discovery of the photoelectric effect for which Einstein was awarded a Nobel Prize was a serendipitous scientific discovery. But the increase in the efficiency of photovoltaic cells over many orders of magnitude, and the reduction in the cost of producing them, have been technical achievements that can be graphed smoothly.
First, lets get something clear, climate change is an existential problem. Even climate change denier are moving to the "Our lives will change but"...argument. But what? Extinction? Humans will end up living on a rather inhospitable planet that will undergone a global ecological makeover. A population reduction is not out of the question. But the typical business response will be, not on my balance sheet, not my problem.
The facts are clear. The environment has steadily eroded over the course of this experiment in anthropocentric control. Many people look at nature through a short-term myopic lens. They see trees, and conclude that it is a forest. Our forests are a pale comparison to what once existed. American Chestnut - gone; American Elm - gone, Easter White Pine - a tiny fraction of its original area left. The list is near endless. Human activity has reduced the diversity and resilience of forests, megafauna and fisheries. No question.
Climate change will be felt by everyone. The argument isn't if there will be change but how much. Cataclysmic change is not out of the question. The problem is political and economic. Physics and Chemistry do not respect borders, politics or economics.
The liberal democracy and market based capitalism project are built on a specific energy infrastructure (ie burning stuff). That project has to be saved but not at any cost.
4
A Manhattan Project to create carbon extraction technology. The threat was too real to ignore in WW2, so in four years we created a weapon that was only theoretical five years earlier. If we recognize the enormity of the threat and the brief time we have to confront it, perhaps we can do miraculous things again.
7
Not to throw cold water on a commendable article, but here goes:
Like too many mainstream climate-crisis articles, the authors and editors of this piece overemphasize the hope (and that's all we can call it at this time) for technological solutions, while under-emphasizing the efficacy of individual and collective change in habits of consumption.
This article seems to imply that if enough people and enough nations can be persuaded to come up with enough money, we can then buy our way out of this mess. Pony up for the technology so that our overconsumption of extravagant luxury may continue unimpeded.
I am reminded of the rhetoric surrounding electric automobiles, where the measure of success is how little modern driving habits and land-use patterns must change to accommodate them. Or consider the articles about alternative energy solutions, where the aim seems to be to provide non-fossil-fuel means whereby we can continue with our rapacious modern consumer lifestyles unimpeded, and enjoy eternal economic growth in the bargain.
I would prefer to read about the upcoming changes in patterns of consumption. PPE studies could help people understand that they can CHOOSE those changes, which is a better outcome than having those changes forced upon us by real conditions.
21
Agree. However, we should also consider have long-term plans to lower HS population. Our journey is an example of a species runaway. That will be a social and economic challenge as well.
3
Yes, scientific discovery is serendipity, but one has to know the problem one is trying to solve or one will miss the serendipitous solution. Everyone is focused on finding solutions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. There should be more focus on trying to convert CO2 in the atmosphere to harmless or beneficial chemicals by biological or chemical means. In addition we should be investigating the possibility of ejecting CO2 into outer space. When Gödel, Einstein's best friend for 30 years, proved that there would always be statements capable of being made in simple arithmetic which were neither provable nor disprovable within the system of arithmetic, he questioned the basic assumption of mathematicians for more than 2,000 years. Mathematicians always assumed all the true theorems of mathematics could be proved eventually. So Gödel solved a problem nobody had even thought about before. Your PPE view of things needs to expand its universe of what is scientifically possible.
1
The way development is being pursued emits greenhouse gasses and clear-cuts forces, both on a huge scale. Developing countries will not sacrifice themselves for the common good.
Second, there are forces deliberately pursuing a policy of warming to open the arctic for navigation, and the lands of Greenland and Antarctica for exploitation.
In neither case are policy makers willing to protect coastlines, island nations, or vulnerable agriculture. For action, I'm afraid we will have to commit to geoengineering and do so unilaterally if anything is to be done. The scale of the effort will be enormous and will require wartime sacrifices.
2
@Bruce Williams
I would be interesting to know what "forces [are] deliberately pursuing a policy of warming..." This sounds down right sinister. Is it true?
Then you observe: "For action, I'm afraid we will have to commit to geoengineering and do so unilaterally if anything is to be done. "
But all you have to do is look up and notice that geoengineering is already occurring "unilaterally" evidenced by streaks of aerial spraying that leaves a thin cloud cover.
Sadly, we don't know the long term consequences of putting unknown substances into the atmosphere. What if the cure is worse than the disease?
Suggesting that Americans get behind the "public good" (even as defined in this article) will inevitably come up the against national character of extreme individualism. Case in point: despite ample evidence that everyone would be better off with single-payer healthcare, Americans have not managed to secure this good for themselves. What is politically possible is severely constrained by the power of global industry which seems willing to risk our very survival in the name of profit. And are we as individuals any better than? Are we willing to make the sacrifices and pay the costs that are surely required?
7
Question: Is survival of the species and the fate of our planet and economic problem or just a 'public good" Seems to me that the problem of climate change goes beyond economics, politics or philosophy which are human functions. We need a larger picture that embraces the whole of space ship earth including all life on it. our mental processes are just too small to encompass the changes going on, but all our actions thus far have been limited in scope and we need the absolute cooperation of the human race if we are confront the threat of climate change.
5
Excellent article. There is a classic solution to the prisoner's dilemma - an outside adjudicator. The article mentions this and notes why it is difficult (nation states don't want to give up power). But perhaps we are in a place technologically and politically where we can think about it.
It is effectively this: as long as you have individual nation states with no overseeing body, you are going to have the 'state of nature' issue where you always have to ask whether other nations will go rogue. An international body that has to power to enforce shared rules removes that threat. The Ostrom recipe's points seem to (on my first read here) require that kind of overseer.
I know the reaction is that this adds another layer of bureaucracy or government and that there are difficulties in putting such a body (one with more teeth and more democratic foundation than the UN) in place. But if the climate emergency becomes truly existential, we could see nations voluntarily opt in as a guarantee that all nations are following the same rule book. (this, by the way, is the Kantian solution)
8
@Carrie
Thanks for suggesting the need for an outside adjudicator to help the self-interested "prisoners" find a way out of their dilemma.
When the ancient Athenians were on the edge of civil war born of extreme class divisions, they enlisted the aid of Solon to write up rules to keep the society from falling apart. Then he self-exiled for 10 years.
As part of dealing with global warming, all nations need to accept the order of an enlightened adjudicator like the Athenians did years ago. We just need to agree on someone really smart and practical.
There are a couple of solutions to this prisoner’s dilemma, both economic. First, fossil fuels companies currently receive generous tax breaks for exploration. Meanwhile, Trump has done away with some of the previous economic incentives that were provided for cleaner energy, such as electric vehicles and solar power. The government should disincentivize oil and gas exploration and shift those economic incentives to the development of cleaner energy. Corporations would respond by shifting their energies toward innovations in clean energy.
Second, the government should shift costs to reflect the economic realities of climate change. Right now, the profits made from fossil fuels are privatized, whereas the costs of climate change are shared publicly. If I’m an oil company, I reap all the rewards, but if a hurricane destroys half of FL, those homeowners and US taxpayers absorb the costs. Similar to a tax on cigarettes to defray the health costs of smoking, we should tax the use of fossil fuels as well as impose minimum taxes on oil companies, while also offering tax breaks for installing solar panels on your home, using public transportation or driving an electric vehicle. Especially wasteful consumption of fossil fuels, like private jets, should have especially high luxury taxes. This is how to shift human behavior.
20
"... relatively new discipline of politics, philosophy and economics (PPE). …"
Science completely trumps PPE.
People need to become science literate. People need to be able to read, understand, and appreciate the extreme seriousness of the IPCC reports. All else is noise as ecosystems are starting to crash everywhere. There exists currently a multitude of variegated looming disasters already on a roll, ramping up over time, and baked for decades to come. In short, we are already too late. This 'sentient' species is already doomed.
As for PPE, I'm always up for a good read, a good debate, etc ...
7
@oldBassGuy Science can identify the problem and propose technological solutions, but science alone cannot compel people to do something about the problem or explain why it is a problem that we should care about. Politics and philosophy need to do that. There is no shortage of legitimate and excellent climate science right now but somehow that seems to be doing very little on its own to getting us on track to doing something.
19
@oldBassGuy
Consider that most people (that is, more than half of those queried in many, many polls) appreciate the seriousness of the climate crisis (many, presumably, without the scientific literacy you claim that people "need"). Still, less than half of THOSE respondents are willing to bear ANY cost for a solution. Science that, if you will.
Neither science nor PPE "trumps" the other. PPE is science.
We have incredible technological capabilities, but the will to enact solutions is lacking. The science of PPE aims to increase the will.
If this species is already doomed, as you seem to believe, does this belief justify inaction? Does it justify continued contribution to the problem? It certainly rationalizes overconsumption and political apathy, a convenience for folks who are attached to their luxury.
I am as cynical as the next guy. I do not allow my cynicism to rationalize inaction. You can also choose this path.
6
@Carrie
"... science alone cannot compel people […] excellent climate science right now but somehow that seems to be doing very little on its own "
Thanks for your comment, but I respectfully disagree for the most part.
The science is in. The scientifically illiterate can not follow it, thus are blind to and can rationalize denial of the science. These people can not be compelled to do anything. And true, nothing is happening. These same people generally think philosophy (or liberal arts generally) is an utterly useless discipline.
Scientifically literate people do not need to be compelled as they are already 'self-compelled' as it were to do the right thing.
4
An unnecessarily lengthy and sophistical rendition of the new climate denialism, which concludes in a familiar way—we can't do anything other than hope we can "innovate" ourselves out of this mess. I expect we will be seeing a lot more of this rhetoric as pressure for a political solution to climate change increases.
10
Actually, in Colorado Springs, street lighting was not considered a public good: residents who complained about their street lights going out had to pay to have the bulbs replaced.
The leading lights of neoliberal economic theory will put a price on anything.
Keep the kids inside.
5
Global warming is a classic lighthouse problem. There are benefits to a whole community from having a lighthouse, but I benefit even if I don't pay. Building the lighthouse requires a central authority that compels everyone to pay. Without that central authority, no lighthouse. There is no global authority, therefore there will be no solution to global warming even if every major country accepts that it is a global crisis. If anyone doubts this, look at how much pollution and illegality one finds in international waters-- the polluters are known and the problem easily solved save that sovereignty and national self- interest prevent action being taken.
7
Begin an article with the equally accurate observation that: "If the cool summer in the upper Midwest and the 40" of snow that recently fell in Montana hasn't convinced you that climate change is a scam..." you would be CORRECTLY slammed as using weather to discuss climate.
But when every hot day or unusual storm is "proof" of global warming, folks soon tune it out and chalk it up to sensationalism.
Global warming is a fact. Stick to the facts when reporting.
Talk about the fact that the "solutions" proposed are insufficient to make much difference. Talk about the fact that food production, so far has increased, not decreased. Talk about the fact that, to date, more people die from cold weather than hot.
We are not all going to die in 12 years.
Ok, what do we need to do to mitigate this very real issue?
25
@Jonny Galt
Thank you.
The lights are on all day in Central Park . I found a NYT article from 2016 about an investigation by a professor of sustainable energy who found out that the same electrical circuit powers the security cameras in the park and the lighting posts . Therefore the 1800 lights in Central Park have to stay on 24h/365 days in order to maintain the security cameras functioning . 3 years later it is still the same .
What a brilliant American engineering idea !
That would never be admissible in Europe. Even less designed like this from the beginning.
In winter most of the buildings are way too hot in the USA. In summer freezing cold stores with AC and doors to the street wide open . All lights on, all day, around houses on the beach in Malibu and Miami in the middle of summer . No problem.
Americans absolutely don't care .
NYT 2016
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/20/nyregion/who-left-the-lights-on-in-central-park-a-quest-for-answers.html
13
"In winter most of the buildings are way too hot in the USA. In summer freezing cold stores with AC and doors to the street wide open . All lights on, all day, around houses on the beach in Malibu and Miami in the middle of summer . No problem.
Americans absolutely don't care ."
Of course we care! We like it that way.
You are trying to be a dictator, and tell us how to live our lives.
The dictatorial Left has use the strategy over and over again in many countries to reduce the standard of living, as defined by ordinary citizens, and typically, as in this case, done so using sophiocticated logic that tries to cover up the dictatorialness .
So the price of eternal liberty is to stop the first steps.
As useful as this triumvirate of politics, philosophy and economics may be, it leaves out the crucial factor - psychology (or to put it less academically, people).
If you waved a magic wand, and every person on the planet was ready - right this minute - to do everything possible to mitigate climate change (become vegan, massively reduce their carbon footprint in every possible way, have no or just one child, etc), this would be infinitely more powerful than any political/economic/philosophic/scientific-technocratic solution.
Of course, we don't have a magic wand.
But I suggest - imagine we do. Now, look at the results of that wave of the wand, and then work your way back, from the impossible, step by step, until you get to the almost impossible but still conceivably possible.
Now that you're clear about that, go back to PPE and start working out the detailed steps to get to the "almost impossible but still conceivably possible."
www.remember-to-breathe.org
5
Yawn. Street lighting makes it so I can't see the stars. Climate change is real. Ask a real scientist or better yet, work the land a little growing some food. The reason we have someone making a philosophical argument for "public good" around doing something about climate change is because so many human beings, too many human beings, are disconnected from Earth. Wake up!
4
The relatively new discipline of politics, philosophy and economics (PPE) can be considered a systematic variant of the existing disciplines of political economy and of philosophy/ethics/religion.
I have pursued the public good of mitigating the looming climate catastrophe by proposing a transformational global governance system based upon a carbon monetary standard of a specific tonnage of CO2e per person and its associated balance of payments system of accounting for financial and climate debts and credits. The commercial, intellectual, ecological and strategic dimensions of this proposed public good are presented in Verhagen 2012"The Tierra Solution: Resolving the Climate Crisis through Monetary Transformation" (www.timun.net).
States an outstanding economics author and climate specialist: “The further into the global warming area we go, the more physics and politics narrows our possible paths of action. Here’s a very cogent and well-argued account of one of the remaining possibilities.” Bill McKibben, May 17, 2011
4
It's nice to hear someone thinking about this and not shouting about it.
3
If my neighbor abuses his family, leaves trash all over the neighborhood, and threatens me, would I hire him to work on my house? Why is China accepted as an equal partner in trade? Why do American corporations flock to China to do the dirty work of making everything as cheap as possible? The WTO and UN should be composed of countries that share certain core beliefs in freedom and justice. Democrats, Republicans and global corporations have sold out the people of the world in return for bigger profits and faster growth. We won't solve problems like climate change until we give bad actors like China a reason to become a nation that supports human rights and fair play. Trump's tariffs may be too little, too late and for all the wrong reasons, but they are 30 years overdue.
4
@Teal
You misunderstand the situation. You are blaming governments when they aren’t the problem. Look in the mirror. You are the problem. I am the problem. The American consumer is the problem. Why do Walmarts proliferate while local stores die? Us. We want cheap products. And, since all too many of us don’t even want to get up to get our goods, we use Amazon, looking for the cheapest price.
Our government is just giving us what we want.
If you want to say that we are short sighted, I’ll agree with you. If you want to stand in front of Walmart with a sign protesting the purchase of cheap foreign goods, let me know where and when and I’ll be there to photograph the event and see if you can make a difference.
Just put the blame where it belongs.
Just a few minutes ago, I watched Tammy Bruce on "Fox and Friends". She came on to discuss climate change. The side of the issue she wanted to discuss was - wait for it - the climate hypocrites! Climate activists who run around the world proclaiming the need for real solutions to global warming but burn fossil fuels in their private jets and limousines. Leo di Caprio, those who attended the recent climate conference, and of course, Al Gore. While Bruce did say, global warming is a problem, it was more like 'now that we got that out of the way, let's slam some liberals!'*
But while we're talking about hypocrites, let's discuss a bi-sexual who joins the Republican party, the anti-gay rights party, and is a fixture on the party's propaganda news outlet.
*(For the record, I agree with what she said about the hypocrisy of the people she mentioned. BUT while they may be hypocrites they are not wrong.)
3
Climate change seems to be a problem of too many people grasping at too few resources, thereby throwing the equilibrium of the planet out of balance. Why won't climate activists admit that limiting population is necessary for preserving the planet and all the species that are being overrun by the success of homo sapiens?
11
Climate change is nothing compared to willful ignorance. We have a President and the entire Republican Party who call it a hoax when it is reality and won’t admit that anything is happening let alone do something about it. If the people in power are willfully blind to reality and common sense we won’t do anything to mitigate the problem, let alone, prepare for the consequences.
2
All of the technology needed to solve the climate problem exists today. We can replace oil with nitrogen based fuels. Electric cars have had sufficient range to meet 90% of our driving needs. Water, wind, solar and nuclear power are more than enough to meet existing and future needs. Using the Allam power cycle emission free natural gas is already being produced in Texas.
What's needed is for philosophy, political science and economics to get out of the way. Stop babbling and get to work.
2
While this article is 100% true, we have been living within its conclusion for some time to little effect.
That is, there are already many, obvious benefits to solar, wind and other renewable power sources. There are already benefits to an improved power distribution grid, and electric vehicles. There are already benefits to "green buildings", greener cities, and the like.
Yet the Trump administration has actively made it harder to pursue such alternatives. There is a vocal crowd that portrays such efforts as wasteful and expensive.
Which leads to the real problem, and the reason that this article is flawed. The problem is not that countries fail to recognize that addressing climate change is a public good. It is not that countries, corporations or individuals are not motivated to find solutions that will provide more benefits (and profits) than they cost.
The problem is that a powerful subset of the world population (again, countries, corporations and individuals) stand to benefit (at least in the short term, from a rather suicidal point of view) by avoiding solutions or even any recognition of the problem. They possess more power and more wealth in a fossil fuel based society. Admitting to the problem and enacting solutions instantly devalues their fossil fuel holdings from many trillions of dollars to close to zero.
That is the problem that must be solved. How does the public good, the true public good, overcome interference and obstruction by a powerful few?
7
What you are pointing out is that although street lighting is a public good in economic terms, it is not a universal good. Thieves and criminals who find darkness helps them in their endeavors may be opposed to ubiquitous street lighting.
When the thieves are in charge of the government, or able to exert sufficient influence on it, as the fossil fuel industries do, they will find ways of promoting the argument that funding street lighting is "a waste of taxpayer money" and be able to delay or forestall it indefinitely. They may join with religious leaders to say that good people should not be going out after dark. That virtuous men will keep their daughters at home. And that if God meant there to be light at all times he would have made Creation differently.
It will take ongoing serious effort to overcome the corruption implied. And the "promotion of virtue" against the corruption of interest is precisely the problem. It is not solveable by individual effort.
2
If for whatever reason human beings are unable to stop the emission of CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere before the baby boom generation (mine) has died off, then all of our offspring (and their offspring and offspring of offspring) will face a series of all-too-imaginable horrors that will result, in the eventual extinction of the human race, possibly by the end of this century, certainly by the end of the next one.
This has been common knowledge among scientists (nearly all), world leaders and the captains of industry since the 1960s. On several occasions we have seemed to be on the verge of an international solution to the problem, but key leaders, including all recent US presidents, have lacked the courage to do the right thing.
Of course this is understandable when all of modern civilization - yes, all of it, everything in our lives that we like - has been founded on the unthinking, reckless and ever-growing burning of fossil carbon fuels.
Never-the-less, it is inexcusable to condemn unborn generations to the suffering and grief they will surely face, and we older folks will be cursed in our graves.
I offer no solution to our dilemma but would like to suggest that our problem is not about costs vs. benefits or us versus them. No, we have a moral problem, and we must deal with it now.
5
The world can come together to do this. But first, there must be a consensus that climate change is real, humans contribute to it, and that steps must be taken to mitigate as much of the damage as possible. (I'm talking to you, and those like you Mr. Trump) Look at the world's success at reversing the ozone hole. Science, industry, business, and governments world wide, with support from the public, cooperated in an effort to reduce chlorofluorocarbons with the implementation of the Montreal Protocol in 1986. By 1999 most CFs were banned and the ozone hole has been pretty steadily shrinking.
3
As a climate skeptic, I can agree with many of Mr. Rosenbergs's arguments. We should continue to invest in R&D on alternatives to fossil fuels. These are relatively modest investments, and they could produce spinoffs in other areas. So far, the results have been disappointing, but we should carry on. However, under no circumstances should we heed the sainted Greta and other alarmists who want to make massive changes in the economies and lifestyles of citizens, based on shaky "science" and wildly exaggerated projections. The author of this article is disingenuous: he pretends to not understand that the battle over climate change has been provoked by extremists who care nothing for R&D, economics or philosophy (or even logic and reason, for that matter).
1
@Stefan Even if you believe the science around climate change is "shaky" there are things that can be done now that will reduce energy use and save money in the long run. Government-owned buildings can be retrofitted with insulation and tighter-fitting doors and windows. Our rail freight infrastructure can be upgraded to allow faster city-to-city service, shifting freight away from less fuel-efficient long-haul trucks. There are many things we can do to reduce energy consumption that don't require extreme sacrifices. Considering the high rates of obesity in this country, many of us would be healthier if our lifestyles involved walking more and driving cars less.
1
Fortunately, the majority of climate change is caused by a small number of very powerful political entities which each face catastrophic harm if warming continues. The USA, China, the European Union, and India (and Brazil, and Indonesia, et cetera) all have great cities at sea level where tens of millions of people live, facing the threat of storms and floods.
America and China alone could greatly reduce climate change by cooperatively agreeing emissions cuts, research subsidies, and geoengineering approaches. Where those two lead, the EU, India, and others would surely follow.
Fortunately, economists and game theorists have pointed out that the "prisoner's dilemma" is more readily solved when the game is repeated, instead of being played just once. When the game is played many times, the benefits of future cooperation can serve as an incentive to motivate cooperation today, making a mutually beneficial outcome sustainable.
With so many sovereign nations in the world, achieving cooperation to prevent climate change might seem impossible. But fortunately, the climate will depend mostly on the repeated interactions of a small number of major players. Under those circumstances, it is possible to attain the sort of cooperation that Elinor Ostrom observed.
Fortunately, there is still hope.
Your philosophy has one flaw, you assume public goods come with no expenses. But even street-lights need someone, who provides the energy. Talk about the guy who is operating the treadmill for the generator.
What i do think is more relevant is the 'social inequity aversion', the aversion of communities to let freeloaders benefit from their own struggle. And we should be honest, to save the climate will not come for free. What i do believe is to look for options, that do benefit just the community, that implements them, and as a side effect, help the climate.
If technology could make renewable resources so efficient, that they would outclass fossil fuels, that probably would work. But just because it presumes, first - everyone is an egoist, which is very likely and second - there is no such thing like a public good with no expenses.
2
In all this fine analysis one strong group seems to have been forgotten; namely those who would continue to profit from the current state, where the desired 'public good' remains absent, whether it be street lighting, regulation of the financial industry, or a renewable energy system without 'fossil fools'.
As it can and will do everything in its power to frustrate and stall ANY progress, perhaps more scientific research needs to go into strategies to break the grip of vested interest on political power in an effective and timely fashion, first and foremost.
2
I really wish that the writer did not explain his thesis by running down public education. In fact, public education, funded by broad based taxes, IS a public good. We all benefit from our fellow citizens being well educated. And we don't impose the cost of public schools only on families with kids. Sending my kid to school doesn't take away education from your kid. Yes, if the area is growing, at some point the taxpayers will have to decide how much they want to spend to hire more teachers and add more classrooms. And taxpayers will have to pay for more street lights in expanding neighborhoods.
In contrast, fighting climate change does not involve providing a taxpayer funder service that anyone can use regardless of how much they contribute in taxes to its funding. It involves two very different kinds of projects:
1. Prohibitory regulation -- legally restricting how much energy people and businesses consume, and how energy producers generate it. There can't be opt-outs (unlike education, where you can choose to send your children to private school).
2. Economic incentives, either penalties or subsidies, to change energy consumption and generation behavior. Unlike taxes that fund schools and street lights, the penalties and/or subsidies will fall directly on those who do or do not change their behavior.
1
There seems to be a unanimity of opinion among the commenters that this is a well-reasoned discourse. The difference of opinion among the commenters seems to be about the population of the United States and how they think about global warming. I want to propose a solution.
We allow the oligarchy to control our press and political process. Obviously, the citizens read what the oligarchy proposes. Since it is in the narrow self-interest of the oligarchy to deny global warming, many of the citizens only see those opinions and agree. What we need is a system where knowledge is spread widely, and oligarchy does not have a monopoly.
To accomplish this, we need to get rid of Citizens United and the corrupting influence of money in our political system. Then we could spread the information about global warming. I am optimistic, I think that once the people have the real facts, they will understand the problem.
Get involved. Join makeitfair.us. Look up the American anticorruption act. Let’s get money out of politics. Then we have a chance to convince our population the global warming is real and that we can really make a difference.
3
I agree. I think we need to put more into researching solutions. Solar and wind power are now much cheaper than ten years ago. This is our hope. Game theory dictates that there will be free riders hoping all the other countries do the heavy lifting. Also, we need to work on reducing the population growth.
1
The main problem is that elites all over the world depend on a carbon economy to keep themselves in power--once this changes, then the log-jam can be resolved. As the writer cogently concludes, the obstacles to leaving behind a carbon economy are technological: we don't at present have an alternative compelling enough to make the dominant political/economic players willing to cooperate. The tragedy for most of humanity is that the technology to significantly mitigate climate change exists already; what we don't have is technology so good that it will sweep away the political problem of entrenched elites.
1
"If the summer heat, followed by Hurricane Dorian, hasn't convinced you that climate change is real, probably nothing will."
That's a truly awful first sentence and one of the reasons that so many people don't believe that "climate change" is a thing. Summers are always hot. And there are hurricanes every year. You have to provide some real statistics, not this incredibly lame observation.
Note: I actually believe in man-made climate change but not on the basis of "gee it was hot this summer and there was a storm."
7
@JerseyGirl An excellent point. This summer was actually not especially warm, compared with recent years. What the alarmists refuse to accept is that almost all of the warming (on a global scale) occurred during 1980-2000, about 0.6C. During the last 20 years, about 0.1C. So we are on a warm plateau, and every year is "one of the hottest on record". Given this "pause", the alarmists have not given up. Now they trot out every extreme weather event, even though the IPCC itself admits that there is no pattern there.
1
@Stefan Try telling your "no pattern" story to the residents of Iceland or Greenland. Try telling it to the Inuit people. Try telling it to the park rangers at Glacier National Park. Good luck with that!
BTW, it is now estimated that between 70 and 90 percent of the increased heat that has been trapped by rising CO2 levels has been absorbed by the oceans. Given the volume of the oceans, and water's ability to absorb heat (many times that of air) this makes perfect sense. A recent IPCC report addresses concerns about our warming oceans, and it's NOT good news.
1
@Hideo Gump It may make "perfect sense" to you, but not to me. The 70 to 90 percent that you cite is purely theoretical. According to alarmist sources, that corresponds to an average temperature (NOT "energy content") rise of 0.12C per decade. I think it's absurd to claim that it is possible to measure the average temperature of the ocean to that precision. Think about it. Think of the vast differences as a function of location, depth, seasons, currents, etc. Do you realize that this is the kind of "science" that is being used to frighten children with? Please understand that "climate science" is unique. No other branch of science works this way or makes these kinds of claims. It's a fiasco.
1
"We need to start with a technical term from economics: “public good.”
One sign of our troubled times is that refer to "public good" as "a technical term form economics."
A second, far more concerning sign is that there appears to be an idea floating around that we truly have any kind of choice in the matter. Because "choice" and "common good" have been boiled down by our climate catastrophe to mean choosing survival on this planet, or choosing human extinction, we really don't have any choice but to act now.
In this article, we've got a handful of rich guys musing at the beneficence of their streetlights while every complex organism on this planet is under existential threat.
Shed a stark light on that.
1
Useful summary of the "rational-choice" perspective on climate change. There are, to use that language, "negative externalities" of using such analysis: it fosters a view of humans as narrowly self-interested. Climate change is, as the philosopher Steven M. Gardiner has pointed out, is a "perfect moral storm": we rich people (globally speaking) are harming poor people; we in the current generation are harming future generations; and cognitively, climate change is very hard for humans to grasp. To write an article about the "philosophy" of climate change and totally neglect ethics is, well, typical of the rational choice perspective. Rat-choice has always had a huge problem with social movements (which always involve an ethical dimension), and people CAN--sometimes--be motivated to do the right thing. After all, abolishing slavery was also a global public good. And it took a social movement, Abolitionism, to provide the impetus to make that happen. This is why individual choices, social movements, action by individual countries matter--not because they will "solve" the problem, but because they foster participation in a cultural shift. It is quite possible, perhaps even probable, that such a shift will fail. It is certain that continued focus on the pursuit of short-term self-interest will doom civilization.
1
Beyond the need to educate [more] scientists, I think we need to do a better job of educating the general public about what scientists already know. I am appalled by the number of people in this country who still believe that "climate change is a hoax." I suspect that many of these people are believers in a 6-day "Creation" that happened in recent times. (The Freedom From Religion Foundation recently stated: "Forty percent of adults in the United States believe in a strictly creationist view of human origins, claiming that God created the world in its present form within roughly the past 10,000 years.")
It's very hard to gain public support for policies based on scientific knowledge when 40% of the voters are told by their churches to deny scientific facts.
1
@Hideo Gump So the solution is to make churchgoers abandon their religion? Or for religious leaders to make radical changes in doctrine? If that's your program - good luck!
@Stefan Obviously we can't "make" churchgoers change their beliefs. But IMHO it is high time that we stop giving religion and religious "leaders" the degree of deference they have so long enjoyed. I also hope we can stop giving tax breaks to churches, as this practice forces taxpayers to subsidize the teaching of nonsense (in many, but not necessarily all churches).
1. If I find your religious beliefs ridiculous, I believe I am free to say so.
2. I don't feel obligated to address any clergy-folk using their honorary titles: No priest is my "father." 2. "Reverend" means somebody who is to be revered. Revered for what? For propagating stories from Bronze Age mythology? No, I don't "revere" anyone who does that.
"If the summer heat, followed by Hurricane Dorian, hasn’t convinced you that climate change is real, probably nothing will."
Statements like this and those that agree with them have convinced me they know nothing about science and never will. The relationship between ocean temperature and hurricanes is a proven fact but would a meteorologist lead with climate change? It's hot outside? What scientist would say that's proof?
A philosopher wrote this piece so let's assume he's out of his field. Why aren't physicist, engineers, meteorologist, specialist in the energy industry, and well, climate scientist ever called to these pages? There might be a "consensus" but, this might surprise you, people in all fields tend to argue a point. Including philosophers. Where's the argument.
You wouldn't ask the actress Suzanne Summers to run the CDC?
3
You also have to STOP subsidizing fossil fuel development by offloading the cost of pollution cleanup to governments and the cost of protecting drilling, pipelines and other infrastructure to the U.S. military with wars that benefit only the fossil fuel companies and their cronies and damage the rest of the planet, not least the soldiers and other personnel involved in protecting these assets. This is probably the hardest nut to crack. There are other hidden subsidies too, such as the one that allows every U.S. business owner to write off the cost of an SUV or pickup truck but not the cost of a fuel-efficient sedan or electric vehicle.
7
@Dave, That will never happen until the military is 100% off fossil fuel.
1
The United States is under a leadership that is taking advice on the matter of climate change from authoritarian think tanks. They conceive of the world situation as being hopeless, and view a technological approach that protects perhaps a million carefully selected people from the ravages of climate change as being the best option. Towards that end, accelerating climate change is viewed as a sensible tactic, that can bring about a "clean shutdown" of a messy world. That's why, for example, the Administration is actually trying to make it illegal for automobile manufacturers to improve rather than lower their pollution standards.
3
Seems like each day Trump and the Republicans take an action which will make our planet less & less inhabitable for our children and grandchildren.
The window of opportunity to effectively mitigate Climate Change is rapidly disappearing.
The remaining 2020 Democratic Candidates will try to cut & paste portions of Governor Jay Inslee’s comprehensive & actionable Climate Change Mitigation Plan.
We must go with the Real Deal.
The winning Democratic Party 2020 Ticket: President Warren (save a green economy) + Vice President Inslee (save the planet)! W+IN 2020!
6
Unfortunately, at this point in the climate change "discussion" we can't have balanced and informed conversations based on real-world issues that address the development of these alternative energy sources at scale. It seems the main actors don't have much in the way of real world experience. Let's present, for our collective review and comparison, fully researched and resourced projects (people, materials & capital) supported by full life-cycle CAPEX and OPEX numbers with the major objective of providing consumers their energy choices in a transparent, non-subsidized market. Then, I am confident we'll start to advance this cause. Until then, we are stuck in the adolescent phase of engagement - binary, disruptive, accusatory and non-productive.
Interesting. That's it.
Even the writer seems to acknowledge that, in the end, we're still left with an "all we can do is...." situation that requires serendipitous technology breakthroughs and exhortation to do the right thing.
Even the writer acknowledges that he hasn't solved anything with his paradigm since the first move problem still pertains.
Even the writer knows that nothing in his paradigm leads to useful action when some/many of the "consumers" don't believe that there's a problem caused by human action that needs to be changed.
I enjoyed reading the piece in the same way that I enjoyed reading Marx--clear and interesting exposition followed by a very inadequate proposition for action.
3
20K years ago, the LGM saw temperature drop -2 degrees C, then -3.5, then -5 before warming set in.
I hope our goal of holding warming to +1.5 degrees C. was set realistically....
I cannot help but wonder if there's any real hope of that, no matter what steps are taken.
Alex in your last paragraph;
"Philosophers have spent a lot of time studying science. They’ve come very firmly to the conclusion that there is no logic of scientific discovery, no recipe for the next breakthrough and so no algorithm for improving our technology."
Isn't there a distinction to be made here between waiting for a brand-new scientific 'discovery', and the engineering/technological progress we need to make the unit cost of wind/solar energy come down by say 20% every time installed capacity doubles?
The former seems to imply governments are powerless to speed up technological progress in renewables. The latter suggests the government could start a "Manhattan project" of renewables if it wanted to speed things up to improve our odds of survival as a civilisation.
5
@Edwin The "Manhattan" solution is often invoked, but it's a poor analogy. Back in the 1940s, there was no scientific doubt whatsoever that there was an enormous amount of useable energy locked up in the nuclei of heavy elements. The issue was: how to release that energy in the form of a massive explosion. Today, we are in a completely different situation. We know of no similar vast source of energy. Sun, wind, hydro, fission: all of these have been exploited for decades, and only incremental changes can be expected. OK, maybe solar could achieve a breakthrough by increasing efficiency above the current modest value. We should invest in that effort, and we do. But throwing huge amounts of money at solar would, at this point, be wasteful.
Given that we've only a decade to enact change, scientific progress is no longer the immediate concern -- working with the technology we have _right now_ should be the concern.
1
Rosenberg's explanation of the meaning of "public good" is useful. His application of the notion to climate change, however, is deeply flawed because he appears to have no sense of the ecosystemic breakdown driving our global existential crisis. We do NOT need technological solutions to the problem, and especially not the chimera of "safe nuclear energy". What we need to do is restore our forests, soils, and oceans but ceasing to pump hydrocarbons and other pollutants in to them. If were to simply to end the atrocity of pumping petroleum-based agricultural chemicals into our soils our lands would return to health and so would our population. Likewise . . . well everything else. I strongly recommend that any and everyone interested in understanding the climate crisis in a fundamental way read Charles Eisenstein's book "Climate--A New Story." Rosenberg needs to go back to the philosophical part of his PPE education and examine origins, nature, and functioning of the profound disjuncture between humankind and the natural world that has led us into this cut-de-sac. He will eventually realize that the root of the global climate crisis is in fact a global spiritual crisis brought on by the hubris of the techno-scientific culture that conceives of itself as the only source and arbiter of truth.
10
@Citizen Bill
I'm not sure we have a "global spiritual crisis" but a crisis of an economic system that accepts no limits, and a leadership that won't stop pushing for more.
But I agree with your post totally, especially that our problem is rooted in "hubris of the techno-scientific culture... that conceives of itself as the...truth."
Tackling climate change?
The future trend for humanity seems to develop technology, to acquire as much and as clean energy as possible, but at the same time to call for a very much changed in behavior and thought humanity, a vastly restrained humanity, so that we have on one hand a vast increase of energy, and clean energy, but on the other hand increased storage capacity of energy and a humanity which is extremely efficient in consumption and expression of energy.
And this appears the complete opposite of the trend of humanity over the centuries. For centuries the human race has strived to increase its energy production, and with mixed results, but to not care about waste and expression of energy. Think about a pack of buffalo hunters able to bring down entire herds of buffalo but wasting all the meat and then spending their free time drinking and carousing. But what we move toward with greater energy understanding is just as controversial, unappealing to many: We acquire the capacity for attaining greater amounts of energy than ever before, and clean energy, and we get better at storing energy, but our capacity to release all this energy, to express ourselves, to spend as we wish?
What does it mean for humanity to have the capacity for energy as never before but to relentlessly hear that we must never waste energy, that we must direct our energy fruitfully, that we must follow intelligent energy expenditure courses and so on? Clean acquirement/expenditure of energy?
1
To address the unfolding climate catastrophe in any way that actually matters we have to separate private money interests from public policy. The economics of endless growth in a finite reality and the prioritizing of profits and hegemony over biological imperatives and the common good of the biosphere are, in essence, the root of the problem.
17
@Al M Calm yourself. The projected increase of carbon emissions has nothing to do with "endless growth". It will occur because poor countries (China, India, Brazil, others) are striving to provide their citizens with the basic prosperity that Americans take for granted. You know: health care, transportation, food, water, things like that. Should they stop? Should they wait until R&D produces some magic alternative to fossil fuels? You tell them that.
@Stefan
Everyone on the planet does not want or need a car per person, a home full of bleeping gadgets and Amazon delivery -- nor do we. It would take another 5 earths for everyone in China to live the way many Americans do. If we are to survive, we need to reign in polluting industries. We need to replace polluting energy sources. We need to apply known agricultural methods that build soil and re-sequester carbon and we need to live more simply. The delusional juggernaut of neo=liberal market theology needs to be replaced with a more realistic way of living within our actual means.
2
I get “ public good” and I understand the rewards of supporting science-what I cannot reconcile is Ostrom’s theory that groups can get together with a set of norms.Many Americans, for instance , could agree on a set of norms but they would have to fight the oil and gas lobby which will never agree to cleaner energy.It would be tough to agree to norms, reward science AND fight wealthy and entrenched interests which would never accept the benefits of science.
1
It is likely to be a magnitude 13 climate event--a ten trillion dollar disaster that makes both Pearl Harbor and 9/11 footnotes.
The biggest hope now is some yet to be discovered way to decarbonize the atmosphere and store the carbon safely. Nature has a good way. Trees. Nature also has ways to control population. Massive die offs. Humanity can do better, but so far I haven't been impressed.
6
@Mike S. - sorry. the "biggest hope" now is that people wake up, realize the gravity of their choices, and make different choices than they do now.
Regardless of whether or not the Paris climate accord is a perfect match with the Ostrom recipe, it would seem that cooperative efforts of participating countries would advance scientific education and research worldwide. If, as the columnist concludes, the only way out of the delimmma is to
"[e]ducate scientists, support pure research, disseminate it freely and reward it with immortality, not just money", then the Paris Accord would be a good start. Withdrawal from that agreement undermines those objectives.
1
I have to dicker with Dr. Rosenberg's take on public education. If your child gets a better education in a public school than mine, we are all still better off than if neither child gets a good education. This was the idea behind public school systems from the start. Thatcher-Reagan has taught us to look out only for our own to such a degree that even highly educated people such as Dr. Rosenberg no longer understand these basics.
Regarding climate change, an inescapable confounder of the problem is the power of that which will actually be harmed significantly by concerted action, arguably the most powerful entity humans have ever concocted -- i.e. the fossil fuel industry. Its ability to obfuscate, to control the media narrative even in the face of overwhelming evidence, to buy any and every politician it needs to, to compromise every American with a 401k, to compromise our military planners, to disseminate undue fear of change far and wide -- all of this and more makes adequate response incredibly challenging. After two centuries of the Fossil Fuel Age, fossil fuels are at the basis of everything we do, so it has us backed into a corner and seems capable of keeping us there indefinitely, even to the point of civilizational suicide.
74
Ramping up investment in research and development is important, but it is only one part of what we have to do to respond to global warming.
To survive, we must shift from a fossil fuel economy to a clean energy economy. This is an enormous policy change and will be hugely disruptive. Major policy changes gain adherents over time but demand a broadly perceived crisis to trigger action. Only very recently have things gotten bad enough--wildfires, floods, hurricanes, heat waves, drought, sea level rise, species decline--to arouse concern in a substantial part of our public. The speed at which this is happening is amazing, and could lead to action that will mitigate the worst consequences of global warming.
Thanks to the fossil fuel industry's disinformation campaign, we're waking up very late in the game. The IPCC has said we have at most 12 years, yet as the clock ticks our political system remains gridlocked, incapable of meaningful action. We've already squandered at least a year, and we are transfixed by the impeachment inquiry, the next presidential campaign, etc.
I often lie awake at night thinking with dread about the future lives of our children and grandchildren. The best way I've found to get past these debilitating thoughts is by being actively involved in fighting against an unjustified fossil fuel project. One small effort, I know, but a good antidote to depression. If you're worried about climate change, pick a fight and get involved in something real.
7
Wouldn't climate catastrophe be more like an unavoidable war? We could choose not to fight it, live comfortably for a while and then be destroyed. Or go to battle immediately, for the "common good"?
5
Leonardo DiCaprio has raised $100 million to combat climate change. Germany has pledged 100 billion Euros. They are trying to pay for lighting for everyone.
But funding a technological fix to a "problem" that is fundamentally overconsumption by an unsustainable population isn't going to work. Embedding PPE in a systems view of changing needs in a changing world is going to be necessary to get traction on what is increasingly a conundrum rather than a problem.
8
But, as the article says about PPE, "the group providing the public good to its members has to be nested in, authorized by higher-level groups."
This means that "embedding PPE in a systems view", however illuminating, only concludes that there is no solution. The 200 nations of the world have no "higher-level group", i.e. adult supervision, and will ultimately continue to only compete and consume.
2
@Dick Yates
I agree that "embedding PPE in a systems view" is for illumination, but it is also for communication. So far, we haven't found a compelling replacement for the linear causal narratives given us by tradition.
And I conceded that the issue is increasingly a conundrum rather than a predicament. So, yes, absent a "higher-level group", we will probably continue to compete and consume.
My lingering hope, however, is that when things are evidently bad enough (how is it that they are not already??), leaders will be forced to act, perhaps by a public that demands action. The youth strikes of last week are an example of what could lead to a social tipping point. Having a subtle and more complete understanding "shovel ready", along with a way to communicate it, is what I am arguing for.
As long as we can pin our hopes on a nonexistent but possible future technology, we have an excuse to defer unpalatable action based on what we know already.
1
@Brian Stewart
I agree on all points except for the lingering hope, and your parenthetical "(how is it that they are not already?)" suggests its tenuousness. Nothing wrong with hope - unless it magnifies inevitable despair. But have you considered the ideas here:
https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/welcome-to-the-planetary-hospice
PPE provides a compelling tool for analyzing the problem of climate change. But it is discouraging that Ostrom's necessary ingredients for a solution for enhancing the public, good as described here, point to the ultimate obstacle:
"...the group providing the public good to its members has to be nested in, authorized by higher-level groups."
The world as a whole has no such higher level group to structure 200 countries' mutually-beneficial participation. International rivalries and competition for resources will inevitably continue.
Where are those spaceships full of all-powerful aliens when we need them?
2
It would be nice if Prof Rosenberg checked his facts. While Dorian was a monster hurricane, we've actually had a mild hurricane season. And summer heat? Well, you might look at the contiguous US and see that June-August were only slightly above avg for max temps since 1895 and much lower than most of the 1930's. If you look at the 1st eight months this year, it was actually below avg temp wise (max temps). So, I don't think that any of us should be grousing about the temps. Although the Times always posts when we have a month with higher temps, like July, but that was global and who knows how accurate that is.
And Dorian? 100 years ago we might not even known that it became a cat 5.
As for your use of the prisoner's dilemma, i think the tragedy of the commons is a better game to use. Further, if you check your numbers, the US and the European Union are doing things to reduce emissions -- US is flat in total emissions since 1990 and the EU is down and both have reduced per capita emissions. Yet annual global emissions have risen 67% 1990-2017, due to the heavily populated emerging economies.
You present the problem as if every nation was equal, but that's not true. We have less than 5% of the world's population, if you combine the US and EU we have just under 1 billion vs over 6 billion (and growing) -- whatever we do to reduce emissions in the US won't have much impact on total emissions, particularly as emerging economies increase their energy demand.
3
@Ralphie
I guess you just don't believe NASA.
https://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
2
The problem of course is the wealthy person isn't going to pay for street lighting for everyone. He or she will choose the minimum amount of lighting required to provide the personal security he or she desires. Perhaps the park by his or her house, not the warehouse district across town. The general population is therefore geographically excluded from the public benefit unless they happen to walk in that specific wealthy person's park at night.
You still haven't overcome the prisoner's dilemma. Perhaps New York will invest heavily in climate protections and food security. However, perhaps Miami can't afford the same security. We've built a better storm system for New York specifically without really solving the problem globally. Climate mitigation without a public good. People are excluded. Not everyone can afford to live in New York.
5
All the science and technology we have may not be enough to stop the changes that are happening. Then what?
I think the time has come for us, as a species, to get together and figure out how we are going to survive this. We are at a point where all other species are dying off. If we don’t think we will be next, we’re kidding ourselves. You need to bring more into this discussion than just politics, science and economics. Look at the biggest picture you can imagine.
3
Thank you Mr. Rosenberg for sharing the research and your thoughts. The dilemma you outline seems a perfect summary of the challenges humanity faces. My hope is that Americans still live in a democracy and that as more and more people understand what is taking place we'll elect leaders who pass effective legislation, such as an escalating carbon fee, that will multiply the financial incentives industry, scientists and innovators have to develop the technologies and techniques we'll need to bring carbon emission to net zero.
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Kevin Drum at Mother Jones has been arguing that we are not ready to make the life style changes and investments needed on a scale that could begin to deal with climate change effectively. He suggests that any plan which does not include a significant amount for R&D will fail - because until we can address climate without sacrifice, we won't do it.
Take the Solutionary Rail proposal as an example of something we could do - but have problems getting past The Way Things Are. SR proposes electrifying our rail corridors, powering trains with power from wind and solar.
Rail service would be upgraded with faster, more frequent trains able to take high value freight away from trucks, and provide faster/more passenger trains as an alternative to driving and flying. It would revitalize rail corridor communities, create jobs.
The rail corridors would also be used for transmission corridors, to connect that clean wind and solar power to the national grid. Getting carbon out of transportation, getting clean power where it's needed would be a win-win. (www.solutionaryrail.org)
The problem is the major rail lines answer to Wall Street - and all Wall Street wants is to extract value from the rail lines without investing anything in them. Short term gains versus the long term is one of the big problems here.
We also have a major political party that denies there is any such thing as a public good, or that government can do anything about it. That's a real challenge as well.
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“…the climate responds to the overall level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, not to a single country’s contribution to it. If one government drastically reduces its own emissions but others do not, the gallant reducer will in general see no reduced harm.”
“If you reduce emissions and no one else does, you face roughly the same climate risk as before. If everyone reduces and you do not, you get almost as much benefit as you would if you had joined in. It is a collective-action problem that only gets worse as mitigation gets more ambitious.”
“…the fact that legislation calls for something does not means it will happen. And even if it did, at a global level it would remain a small contribution.”
“…the belief that this can be accomplished through a massive influx of ‘political will’ severely underestimates the challenge.”
“The national pledges made at the time of the Paris agreement would, if met, see global emissions in 2030 roughly equivalent to today’s.”
The Economist, September 21st - 29th, 2019.
PPE in the uncontrolled hazardous waste site cleanup business stands for personal protection equipment. Think of Love Canal or any of the thousand other Superfund sites in the US. PPE in this case would be stuff like a white tyvek suits, respirator, etc.
Frankly, an earth impaired by excessive spewing of greenhouse gases into the air isn't too much different than land impacted by excessive dumping of only god knows what, i.e a typical superfund site. Regardless of what's being impacted, the remedy's the thing. Or the process of applying a remedy from planning through completion.
Over the past 30 years engineering schools have been pushed to incorporate liberal arts into curriculums. Engineering for the common good as it goes. In future, engineers will have to do all the the useful work. Sorry, that was snark.
What we really need is top tier liberal arts schools that feed the chattering class to incorporate engineering into curriculums. This could simply be teaching our best and brightest of arts and letters the process of taking a big idea into action, with political and technical pitfalls.
Then again, the term "superfund" as jargon for the Comprehensive Environmental Response Compensation and Liability Act (or CERCLA) meant it would become a super fund for lawyers (and others in the chattering class). There's already something like 1,500 climate suits filled. Lawyers will be the big winners as climate changes.
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"Its not rocket science ". So true lets do nothing since we wont be alive to see the results. The visual results of what is happening all over the world don't seem to move the GOP, so why brother. The money people cant be convinced that their is money to be made with climate change solutions so lets do nothing, but insult the children who want a planet to live on.
Interesting article but when you have lost your home to the climate powers its hard to think on such a higher level.
Americans consume twice the energy per capita of Europeans .
They also have double the carbon foot print of Europeans. 3 times more than France .
They use two or three times more plastic than Europeans and recycle very little.
Germany recycles 50 % of its plastic, the USA recycle only 7 % .
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@JPH
...and France produces about 75% of its electricity from nuclear power.
It's a very incongruous message when those that claim climate change is a "crisis" also want to exclude some of the potential solutions (e.g., nuclear, dams, wind turbines that are visible from their homes, etc.).
Either climate change is a crisis and all mitigations are on the table, or it isn't a crisis.
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I enjoyed reading this article and its conclusion. The only practical solution today is nuclear energy. If climate change is the extreme existential threat to civilization (not the human species; some humans will survive in some corner of the world) portrayed by some scientists, we need to move now with what we have now: nuclear energy. But there may be some Hobbesian people in power and those who follow them who are on the way of progress.
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Corporations are constitutionally incapable of entertaining ANY definition of public good - even one that includes their profitability in, say, fifty months...or fifty years.
And with a corporate-media that refuses to acknowledge that corporate-America pretty much owns the political system as well as the media, how can one NOT be pessimistic about the prospects of mitigating major climate chaos?
Fortunately, millennials and pre-millennials are now the grown-ups in the room, leading the way - but they DO need the support of the rest of us.
If you HAVEN'T attended a climate change protest, you are part of the problem.
If you're understanding of events in the US allows you to think that Obama had a good "climate legacy", despite that fact that he presided over - and bragged about - the country's largest expansion of oil and gas extraction, then you are part of the problem.
If you are unfamiliar with the climate proposals of the major Democratic primary hopefuls - and don't have a pretty good idea, based on their legislative history, of how likely they are to follow through with those proposals, then you are part of the problem.
If you're unfamiliar with the candidates and the prospects that they'll go beyond the half-measures of Obama, and if you want to know which candidate WILL challenge corporate rule on climate, ask yourself which candidate has gotten the least coverage from the media, most of it negative?
Here's a hint: Bernie Sanders. The rest are corporate-owned.
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@Ed Watters, Barking up the wrong tree. Recognize the real problem is over-population. Everything else is just a symptom.
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But our politics is driven by a party that is not only suspicious of “the public good,” but that identifies the public good & collective action as the roots of evil. Ideologically, “there is not such thing as society,” as Margaret Thatcher said, and politically, all benefits are as short term as the news cycle. If most of our leaders (or at least the Republican ones) had to choose between surrendering human life to the fate of runaway global warming and putting the long-term public interest over the short-term profits of one single oil industry executive, they will choose the former, as a matter of morality and of political survival. Most of our politicians are not asking themselves how they can combat climate change, but rather how they can keep political unrest over climate change from negatively impacting the profits of the industries on whom they rely for their upcoming campaigns.
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Technology has always saved us. What different? Technology is causing the problem.
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@Frish Agree. It's almost like society, writ large, has to have its "Amish moment".
@Frish
A bad case of philosophizing right here. If too much fossil fuel is being used develope fusion reactors, drive electric vehicles, use less more efficiently. Too many children, develop birth control and a culture where people don't have to have a dozen children to survive. See what I'm getting at?
@JoeG No. Did you know that languages themselves are more optimistic than pessimistic? I know all about demographic transitions, and, if you look at ANY chart, the RATE OF GROWTH is only slowing, it won't stop us from being 9.5Bn in 30 years or less. All those wonders of tech you point out are more evidence we are Ecto-ecological, we live outside of nature, and that can't last.
Good analysis, but overlooking a key problem. While there is an overwhelming understanding that human activity has a material impact on the environment, there still is a great deal of uncertainty concerning exactly the nature, scope and costs of that human activity, as compared to other non-human impacts. Without a more defined assessment of impacts and costs, it is difficult to bring so many diverse stakeholders and jurisdictions together to identify specific, achievable policy prescriptions that are suggested by a scientific cost-benefit analysis. Right now, the range of impacts are from "every human dies in 100 years" to "sea levels are rising so don't rebuild on Bahama shores."
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Climate change is unlike any problem mankind has ever .First, we are not geared cognitively to address problems whose impact does not occur in the immediate or very near term future. Rising sea levels in 2050, gradual desertification of fertile land, acidification of the seas etc. all play out over time horizons which are much longer than those big problems which grab our immediate attention. Next, with rising global economic wealth comes the ability of billions of people to acquire appliances that both deplete resources and add to pollution . How does the first world persuade those in the third world to do without the polluting comforts the first world takes for granted?Third,how can the world restrict poorer sovereign nations from exploiting their resources without offering up some form of material compensation Absent some form of compensation to Brazil and the other countries with rain forests , the rest of the world is asking a small group of countries to bear the cost of clean air for all of the world. Without a recognition of the right to meaningful compensation for these types of sovereign restrictions on a nation’s Right to the exploitation of its resources, we can expect little movement. Unless we can address these fundamental issues it is unlikely that the framework of a long term solution will emerge.
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Climate Change is a Gigantic Problem. There are a lot of Big Environmental Problems on this Planet, as we know - Pollution, Deforestation, Overpopulation, Species Extinction, Plasticized Oceans... Birth control should be easily available, everywhere on this Earth.
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@Tuxedo Cat
Also, the availability of birth contol would meet the criteria of a 'public good,' as defined in the third paragraph.
"To recognize the problems facing any attempt to mitigate climate change, we need to start with a technical term from economics: 'public good.'"
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This is really good
Given the benefits are intergenerational I wonder how to motivate the current generation to sacrifice for the future one
Doesn’t seem like that’s been done before in history
Most things are motivated by survival in the immediate
The Montreal Protocol is a good example of us saving the ozone which is a public good. The cost just wasn’t as high than shifting carbon use entirely as a human species to solve global warming
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Climate change?
I've never read a decent piece on humanity's relationship to energy period, energy extraction from nature (oil, food, etc.), storage of energy, consumption/expression/use of energy and what we can expect in the future. But it appears humanity emphasizes not so much innovation in energy extraction and storage as it tries to control the consumption/expression/use of energy in society, to not waste energy and to see that people are directing their energies in helpful ways to society.
In fact even if we can imagine society innovating to point of having limitless clean energy we can probably still expect society to clamp down on the consumption/expression/use of energy, to increase its observation of what people are thinking and doing, how they are spending their time, energy in society. Humanity has moved to nuclear energy, but we do not allow people to be particularly explosive anymore, not run rampant like buffalo hunters, not assemble conquering armies, not even demonstrate towering genius and make others feel small.
The trend seems to be for humanity to become more efficient at acquiring vast amounts of energy, but to contain people in expression of energy, and we can only wonder what society, social behavior and thought will be as we acquire more energy, waste less, and direct ourselves "more intelligently and for the good of society". But we can clearly see that pursuing an intelligent energy course will result in life unrecognizable to us today.
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Thinking about Climate Change in (loosely defined) terms of Public Good is philosophically murky and trying to enlist the Prisoner's Dilemma as an analogical explanatory tool is off the logical mark. Humanity should, and probably must, ask itself: is fighting Climate Change a Global Task?
In 1989 I defined a task as global when it fulfils four (and a half) necessary conditions:
1. Performing the task is necessary to confront and solve a problem, posing an existential danger, which is recognized as common, and relatively equal, to the majority of the actors in world politics.
2. The task cannot be performed and the problem solved by the actions of some actors against others.
3. The completion of the task will not result in a radically more privileged relative position for some of the global actors.
4. In the context of world order, the danger confronted must be recognized by all the relevant (necessary for the solution) actors as surpassing the Survival Predicament (as defined by the Realist World View).
5. Accommodating but not necessary: the completion of the task necessitates the (relative) participation of all major actors. It cannot be solved by the actions and contribution of few of the actors (“free riders” problem).
There’s nothing confronting humankind more justifiable to be termed as a Global Task than the (practical) abolition of nuclear weapons. Does Climate Change presents the necessary conditions to merits being termed as a Global Task? That is the question.
@Meir Stieglitz Nuclear weapons are to bullets as climate change is to odorless, poison gas?
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@Tim Scott No, you're are committing the "fallacy of aggregation" which, not surprisingly, W. Buckley used in the seventies in order to convince his audience that there are enough bullets (and knives and stones) in the world to kill all people so there nothing "unique" about nuclear weapons.
Science may add the tech solution (to the tech problem it created) but religion supplies the essential motivation, with both offering to "reward it with immortality": see the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the subject of the Universal Destination of Goods, summarized by the early saints with the admonition that if we give some of our goods to the poor we are not making a gift, we are only returning to them the equal portion of creation to which they are entitled.
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If we continue to power street lights with electricity coming from coal and oil they will go dark one day either because there are no more fossil fuels or because the infrastructure maintaining the lights collapsed. So maybe thinking in this metaphor will move enough people and nations to support renewable energy and a zero carbon civilization.
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Alternately, we can just make capitalism work for us, not against us.
This could be achieved by mandating some of the precepts of Green Economics. For instance, prices that reflect true costs - i.e., that incorporate all environmental costs of production and disposal. These now are system externalities.
All true capitalists should be in favor of this - we should pay for what we get, right?
Actually, if it raises the price by two cents...
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@Steve's Weave - Green Classifieds I want to agree, but I don't. Companies don't want to raise their prices to pay for the externalities that are hurtling us toward environmental destruction. They've taught us to want bargains on a massive scale. As good consumers, we've been conditioned to want things cheap, cheap, cheap! The companies that win consumer share are the ones that can deliver and they know this.
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Interesting,but meaningless analysis. A significant portion of the populace, perhaps a majority, fail to accept clear scientific evidence of climate change, at least human influenced climate change. Until the mindless no longer control the government, no real attempts will be made to address the problem.
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@Disillusioned
But his argument, which I find very illuminating (no pun), is that it might be possible for a single technological advance or discovery to benefit one entity, group, country so disproportionately, that it would be worth it for that entity to proceed in a direction that benefits all.
Wishful thinking? Perhaps, but at least a theoretical possibility.
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Technology is most likely to find a path if not constrained by ideology. At this point in available technology and economics significant advancements in modular nuclear power along with reducing solar radiation through placing particles in the upper atmosphere appear necessary. Note to reality — these two paths are presently blocked by green ideology.
Everyone should agree on funding substantial research without ideological preconditions.
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@Techno-economist,
It seems you haven't taken your own advice, as it's apparent that "green ideology" is a strawman for your imaginary 'environmentalist' cultural adversaries. Modular nuclear power solves some problems of older technologies, not all. Nonetheless, many who call themselves environmentalists aren't opposed to cleaner, safer nuclear power. And any proposal to place particles in the upper atmosphere raises the very issues this article discusses. Do you not think they're real?
We might be able to agree on something, if you'll abandon your ideological preconditions.
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@Techno-economist
I don't know much about the particulate issue, but greenies have been slowly, grudgingly, moving toward nuclear power. They understand the benefits--they're not morons.
Senator Ed Markey, Mr. 'Green New Deal' or whatever it is, has been a long-time opponent of nuclear power. His days in the Senate are numbered.
We have a president who has labeled climate change a hoax and politically powerful corporations entrenched in the fossil fuel industry that long ago decided profits mattered more than people.
Make sure you understand which 'ideology' is causing more damage.
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The analogy of the street lights is a good one. The problem is that half of the country doesn't believe it gets dark when the sun goes down.
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@Dr B
... and still the morally superior are in favor of streetlights while the infuriated inferior still don't believe it gets dark when the sun goes down.
Pragmatism. We don't have time to assuage the feelings of half the country while the whole world is about to burn.
Get over it.
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@Katie Ah, but that is the point. If you're in favor of streetlights and need to get 50% of the people to vote to install them, insulting those who don't want the lights is not a political move that will gain their vote. The time old wisdom still holds: if you can't say anything nice about someone, don't say anything. Insulting your fellow citizen is rarely an effective means of getting them to see your point.
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@Dr B
It is not an insult to say that those people are simply wrong. It is a fact. They are wrong; they believe incorrect information; they are not properly evaluating their information sources; they are wrong.
It is not an "equally strong" problem that half the country believes they are morally superior. As one of those people, I don't understand how trying to have a factual understanding of climate change and its impacts = moral superiority.
I understand your point, and I agree that shaming people is not effective, but I am sick of tiptoeing around "the feelings" of people who don't participate in honest debate that rests on a bedrock of factual information. I am sick of the false premise that saying something someone "believes" is incorrect is akin to an insult.
The "equally strong" problem may be a lack of education. It is not those of us who are honestly trying to understand the problem of climate change and what we can do about it.
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Good perspectives here regarding how we must collectively shift our thinking in order to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change. The question- Is humanity up to the challenge? The technology is here, has been for decades. But can we move on a global scale towards a shared definition of public good?
9
It is hyperbole to suggest that abdicating national sovereignty is a necessary ingredient for solving the climate change problem. Nations must (and did in the Paris agreement) agree to limits on emissions, and an enforceable protocol for ensuring compliance with the pledges. Each nation is free to find their pathway to the agreed upon limits. No nation hands over control of their economy or political governance to a higher authority. The rule of law must exist in the adherence to the agreement, but each is free to meet that agreement in ways that work within their systems. Technology will be an important and necessary part of the solution, but to state that it is the only way, effectively giving up on international agreement, is an unacceptable gamble on "serendipity".
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@Greg
But as the article describes Ostrom's analysis: "the group providing the public good to its members has to be nested in, authorized by higher-level groups."
What you write about the Paris agreement is true, but there is no "higher-level group" and the predictable result is that many or most will not reach their self-determined goals, and those goals are far from adequate in the first place.
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@Dick Yates - The higher level group is the international community of nations. When a nation fails to meet its pledged emmission reductions, there must be some form of enforcement. Economic sanctions come to mind. Nations would agree to that in an effective protocol (one can certainly argue the Paris accord does not rise to that level of effectiveness, but we'll get there). That's not abdicating national sovereignty, each nation can still figure out how they meet their pledges and carve their own path. But, they are accountable for what they've promised to do.
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@Greg
Greg makes an extremely important point.
Countries can agree to act in the best interest of all despite the "prisoner's dilemma", a theoretical game in which participants act strictly in their own short-term interest. It is not surprising that this article does not mention the Montreal Protocol, an international treaty that is successfully addressing the depletion of ozone in the atmosphere, for the good of all. The climate problem can be mitigated through cooperation based on enlightened self-interest. Unfortunately, current US policy is based on ignorance and sociopathy and cannot solve the problem.
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The conundrum and way out (in principle) are fairly and usefully outlined here, but a number of major obstacles are unmentioned, most notably:
1. Without America's active and substantive support, any such approach looks not very viable. China is now a bigger emitter of greenhouse gases, but it does not have the wealth, power and global influence of the USA.
2. Political action to enact and enforce substantive tangible policy change is also essential. America's justly valued constitutional framework remains basically intact, but its two-party political system is badly broken and hugely dysfunctional, for numerous reasons, within which the disastrous Trump presidency is more symptom than cause.
5