Tags
Capitalism, Climate Feedback Loops, Climate Scientists Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Corporate State, David Roberts, Ecological Overshoot, Economic Collapse, Environmental Collapse, Extinction of Man, Free Market Ideologues, Laissez-Faire Capitalism, The Elite 1%
Is it still possible to limit climate change to a 2 degree increase? If we don’t take into account the loss of sulfate parasols as a result of our emissions controls and if we close our eyes to the multiple feedback loops that have already been unleashed and which, in and of themselves, could dwarf anthropogenic emissions, then it might be possible in such a theoretical and hypothetical world.
(click to enlarge)
But a theoretical and hypothetical world and a world of brutal reality are two very different things. Humans must ultimately answer to brutal reality which discards all of the fabricated economic theorems and pie-in-the-sky myths about the techno-supremacy of modern man that we delude ourselves with. So the cold and hard reality is “No, we are well and truly fucked!” Despite decades of warnings by scientists, we have kept on burning fossil fuels and continue to do so as I write this post. As a matter of fact, growth in fossil fuel consumption is baked into our economic system as far into the future as we care to fantasize. We have backed ourselves into a corner where the only salvation left is some sort of globally coordinated Manhattan project of geo-engineering. And how likely is that to occur, let alone succeed? As David Roberts reports in his latest essay ‘Freaked-out climate scientists urge other freaked-out climate scientists to speak up, fight Man‘, our current enslavement to an infinite growth economic paradigm precludes such a possibility:
…Can we make the radical changes necessary to meet that challenge? No, say climate scientists Kevin Anderson and Alice Bows in a recent commentary in Nature Climate Change, not “within orthodox political and economic constraints.”
There is no political or economic constraint more orthodox than the primacy of economic growth. No solution to climate change that threatens economic growth can get any traction at all — even the most “alarmist” climate hawks fear to tread there. Which is too bad, Anderson and Bows say, because “climate change commitments are incompatible with short- to medium-term economic growth (in other words, for 10 to 20 years).” What’s worse, “work on adapting to climate change suggests that economic growth cannot be reconciled with the breadth and rate of impacts as the temperature rises towards 4 °C and beyond.” In other words: We either give up economic growth voluntarily for a little while or suffer a climate that will reverse economic growth long-term…
…Anderson and Bows stress that, “within orthodox political and economic constraints,” hitting such a target is wildly unlikely. Absent some pretty revolutionary political and economic changes, it won’t happen. For obvious reasons, scientists shy away from saying this kind of thing in public. They don’t want to depress people or come off as “political.” However, say Anderson and Bows, “away from the microphone and despite claims of ‘green growth’, few if any scientists working on climate change would disagree with the broad thrust of this candid conclusion.”…
The article goes on to explain how our scientific community is hamstrung and browbeaten into reciting and presenting only evidence without expounding upon and revealing what the consequences of those findings will be for humanity:
…scientists remain reticent, often assuming that “the most effective way of engaging is by presenting evidence, without daring to venture, at least explicitly, broader academic judgment.” This kind of just-the-facts reticence, Anderson and Bows say, is neither warranted nor wise given the urgency of current climate circumstances:
[W]e need to be less afraid of making academic judgments. Not unsubstantiated opinions and prejudice, but applying a mix of academic rigour, courage and humility to bring new and interdisciplinary insights into the emerging era. This would be controversial enough in itself. Various social and professional incentives work against academic researchers speaking out beyond their narrow specialties. And there is an entire cottage industry devoted to scolding climate scientists for going “beyond the science” to political analysis or policy advocacy. These latter sins, they are warned, threaten their status as “trusted brokers.” (Because the trusted-broker thing is working so well so far, climate-wise.)
What else can you do, though, when danger of such unthinkable scope and permanence is looming and humanity’s actions in the coming decade will determine the fate of future generations? I mean, it sounds like a sci-fi movie, but it’s real. What can you do if you’re one of the scientists who understands how dire the situation is? These are not ordinary times.
And in conclusion, the article talks of something I have posted about here – the failure and inability of the free market to solve this civilization-ending problem of climate change:
Anyway, as controversial as it is to ask climate researchers to venture broad social and economic judgments, the specific critique that Anderson and Bows offer is even more likely to make some of their straight-laced colleagues wince. It has to do with the “catastrophic and ongoing failure of market economics and the laissez-faire rhetoric accompanying it.” Specifically, market economists (and the politicians and scientists in thrall to them) suffer the “misguided belief that commitments to avoid warming of 2°C can still be realized with incremental adjustments to economic incentives.” They urge their colleagues:
Leave the market economists to fight among themselves over the right price of carbon — let them relive their groundhog day if they wish. The world is moving on and we need to have the audacity to think differently and conceive of alternative futures.
One of the objectives of this blog was to speak truth to power and reveal where the human race is headed. Now that we know our final outcome, our predicament is analogous to being diagnosed with terminal cancer. You people reading this post are an infinitesimal percentage of the global population who are privileged, or perhaps cursed, to be in possession of such depressing knowledge. Where do we go from here? What do we do? How do we live our lives knowing what we know of the dismal future of the world’s youth? The entire edifice of human civilization will become a worldwide ghost city before this century ends. Perhaps the only thing left to do is live each day as if it were our last because there really is no future without some miraculous, radical, and global social change accompanied by unprecedented global cooperation. Those in charge of such matters have chosen temporary preservation of the current system over the long-term survival of our species. Evil and suicidal or foolish and ill-informed… Which is it that best describes the self-destructive choices that have been made?
A truly frightening time-lapse visualization by the NOAA of the Arctic Ice Melt:
Heh, where, what, how indeed? The analogy to a terminal cancer is quite apt, and the reactions will vary – once people get the diagnosis, that is. So far, most of them have covered their ears and eyes, which is made easier because very few of the doctors (scientists) are being honest about the prognosis. I just sent this message to some friends:
What’s infuriating is that Wadhams is advocating geoengineering which, as we all know, aside from black swans emerging therefrom, won’t do a frigging thing about pollution, or overpopulation, the root causes of climate change.
If scientists are getting so desperate that they are willing to publicly advocate geoengineering, why not go all the way with something that would actually be effective, like demanding the rationing of fuel and a reproduction lottery?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2012/sep/17/arctic-collapse-sea-ice
“In an email to the Guardian he says: “Climate change is no longer something we can aim to do something about in a few decades’ time, and that we must not only urgently reduce CO2 emissions but must urgently examine other ways of slowing global warming, such as the various geoengineering ideas that have been put forward. These include reflecting the sun’s rays back into space, making clouds whiter and seeding the ocean with minerals to absorb more CO2.”
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I’m wondering if a lot of these scientists don’t want to believe their own findings and, therefore, fail to fully communicate the gravity of the situation. They “don’t want to depress people.” Extinction is such a downer.
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Absolutely, some of them are in denial. Lots of them have children and grandchildren. Some believe we’ll be saved by a techno-fix to rising temperatures, and/or we’ll discover some “green” energy breakthrough.
Others know but keep silent because the punishment for speaking out is huge – familial disapproval, professional ostracism, public ridicule.
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Sadly, I think they experience more than that if they do speak out. There are conservative groups/think tanks and corporations that hide behind these orgs that will unleash the legal hounds of hell upon these people. They tie them up in court attempting to discredit them, knowing full well they don’t have the legal funds to fight back. In some cases they destroy their careers.
And these same groups reach hundreds of millions of viewers thru their corporate sponsored media. Just look at how much is ignored or spun into a joke when the subject climate change is even mentioned on any MSM outlet.
And of course the average person’s mindset is ‘we fix everything with technology’. To believe anything else is to acknowledge we A) may have caused this with technology and B) are helpless in the face of our destruction by living this way. Which of course leads to C) Industrial Civilization must end.
I don’t even have to speculate to know that it won’t end voluntarily, which means we won’t power down for a softer, gentler landing.
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I’m afraid you are right.
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Do you subscribe to Climate Code Red? They email excellent summary updates of the latest science. This morning’s message (in part):
How British government’s climate forecasting MET Office gets the Arctic wrong
Introductory note: It is now very likely that the Arctic will be sea-ice-free within a decade, with enormous consequences. Not only has the 2007 record minimum low been smashed, but the new record low 2012 sea-ice extent (3.4 million square kilometres) is less than half the figure three decades ago. And the volume of ice is now down to just one-fifth of the figure three decades ago. In 1979 the summer volume was 16,855 cubic kilometres, on 3 September this year it was just 3,407 cubic kilometres. 80 per cent of the ice has already been lost.
The IPCC 2007 got the Arctic sea-ice wrong in projecting an Arctic still containing summer sea-ice by 2100. Now, Arctic specialists relying on new, regional climate models such as Prof. Peter Wadhams of Cambridge are making the big call of a summer ice-free Arctic as early as 2015. By contrast, those relying for Arctic forecasts on global general circulation models (GCMs) used for the 2007 IPCC report are sticking to a 2030-2040 projection, but lament that “We just don’t know exactly why this (sea-ice loss) is moving so fast”. The predictions of those who rely too much on the GCM models seem strangely removed from the reality on the ground and even a common sense view of the evidence, as this analysis from Arctic News shows. Underestimating the speed and likely future rate of change in the climate system has deadly consequences. – David
http://www.climatecodered.org/2012/09/how-british-governments-climate.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ClimateCodeRed+%28climate+code+red%29
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It is beginning to hit me, after all these years, that responding to global warming in a way that may save human civilization will probably mean the end of our capitalist economic system as we know it.
Morris German writes in his article in Counterpunch this:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/09/20/the-waning-of-the-modern-ages/
I was musing on these issues some time ago when I happened to run across a remarkable essay by Naomi Klein, the author of The Shock Doctrine. It was called “Capitalism vs. the Climate,” and was published last November in The Nation. In what appears to be something of a radical shift for her, she chastises the Left for not understanding what the Right does correctly perceive: that the whole climate change debate is a serious threat to capitalism. The Left, she says, wants to soft-pedal the implications; it wants to say that environmental protection is compatible with economic growth, that it is not a threat to capital or labor. It wants to get everyone to buy a hybrid car, for example (which I have personally compared to diet cheesecake), or use more efficient light bulbs, or recycle, as if these things were adequate to the crisis at hand. But the Right is not fooled: it sees Green as a Trojan horse for Red, the attempt “to abolish capitalism and replace it with some kind of eco-socialism.” It believes—correctly—that the politics of global warming is inevitably an attack on the American Dream, on the whole capitalist structure. Thus Larry Bell, in Climate of Corruption, argues that environmental politics is essentially about “transforming the American way of life in the interests of global wealth distribution”; and British writer James Delinpole notes that “Modern environmentalism successfully advances many of the causes dear to the left: redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, greater government intervention, [and] regulation.”
What Ms. Klein is saying to the Left, in effect, is: Why fight it? These nervous nellies on the Right are—right! Those of us on the Left can’t keep talking about compatibility of limits-to-growth and unrestrained greed, or claiming that climate change is “just one issue on a laundry list of worthy causes vying for progressive attention,” or urging everyone to buy a Prius. Commentators like Thomas Friedman or Al Gore, who “assure us that we can avert catastrophe by buying ‘green’ products and creating clever markets in pollution”—corporate green capitalism, in a word—are simply living in denial. “The real solutions to the climate crisis,” she writes, “are also our best hope of building a much more enlightened economic system—one that closes deep inequalities, strengthens and transforms the public sphere, generates plentiful, dignified work, and radically reins in corporate power.”
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The only problem with this realization of truth is that no one wants to believe there is no option besides it all crashing down, hence denial seems more appropriate. People want to feel good about their choices and choosing not to exist or stop consuming is not an option.
The eco-socialism idea sounds intriguing, but I have not seen a proposal for how it should be organized in a matter besides that it will essentially bring humanity back 2-300 years. Even then we used energy, we burned coal and trees, I cant really imagine a future with 7 billion people suddenly burning trees to keep themselves warm and cook their food. So I guess this eco-socialism also implies a serious downscale of population. I cant see that being a big focus in any governments today (besides China). I imagine this downscaling will happen naturally though…
So why fight it? I don’t know… to prepare more people that as stories of the consequences will unfold… they can finally realize that they were in denial all the time. I guess that’s the psychologists most important part of treating a patient, making them admit their denial, and then change their behavior/thinking.
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In July of 2011, I registered at the Heartland Institute’s Denialpalooza. I was really curious to see what these guys are like. Naomi Klein was there, incognito. I recognized her and was thrilled to meet her. Alas, I was less discrete and dressed up like a cupcake – to demonstrate that climate change is baked in the cake – and so was ejected from the conference for handing out my flyer.
Here’s my blog post with pictures: http://witsendnj.blogspot.com/2011/07/beware-banality-of-evil-heartless-at.html
and the text of the offensive flyer:
WHY ARE CLIMATE SCIENTISTS LESS THAN TRUTHFUL?
If you suspect that climate scientists aren’t being truthful, you would be correct. They are not leveling with us. Are they part of an alarmist conspiracy to embezzle government grants…furthering a plot to regulate, tax and destroy the American way of life?
Not exactly. (For one thing, the amount of money spent on climate research is trivial compared to the profits of the international oil, gas, coal and biofuel industries which are primarily causing climate change – and have oodles left over to fund a well-organized cadre of opposition.)
So, what secrets *are* those pesky climate scientists withholding?
Like doctors reluctant to diagnose a fatal cancer…THEY AREN’T TELLING US HOW BAD THE PROGNOSIS ACTUALLY IS. And why not? They have several inhibitions:
Reason #1. Scientists don’t want to jeopardize their careers by being branded hysterical or unprofessional. Traditional scientific reticence limits predictions researchers can prudently risk when their calculations are subject to complex uncertainties. Because they can’t accurately model the timing of delayed effects from system inertia, or the precise influences from positive amplifying feedbacks, they simply DON’T INCLUDE the most important variables and tipping points in consensus reports – like the albedo effect, and temporary aerosol cooling – even though they know climate change is provoking extremely violent storms, sea level rise, and desertification. And oops…they’ve completely left out of the equation the ramifications of ocean acidification leading to near total extinction of sea life (which produces much of our oxygen!).
Reason #2. Scientists mistrust public reaction. They are fearful that if it were widely recognized how inevitably and rapidly climate destabilization is occurring (and will accelerate exponentially), the majority of people would become resigned, depressed, and lose motivation to do anything about it…or worse – succumb to collective terror and derangement; and
Reason #3. Societal consequences are not in their purview. They know that only an urgent and drastic curtailment of emissions can mitigate the worst effects on society…and that imposing such harsh measures is politically impossible. Following natural laws rather than wishful thinking means that what is required is no less than a revolutionary change in modern lifestyles, including economic systems built on nonsensical faith in unlimited growth and unsustainable resource extraction. Issues such as government energy subsidies, corporate personhood, justice for climate refugees, prevention of famine and wars are foreign to the realm of atmospheric physics, and only the rare scientist has enough courage to venture into policy implications; and
Reason #4. Scientists are human and hope for the survival of their children too. They can’t believe how absurdly awful and inconceivable it is that humans have ignored consistent warnings from decades ago that releasing 90 million tons of greenhouse gases per day means we are knowingly and unnecessarily destroying the habitability of our only home, Earth. Like the most stubborn ideological deniers, many prefer to think the destruction of an environment hospitable to agriculture must be a preposterous nightmare – and that any minute, someone will pinch them and wake them up. They themselves don’t want to admit that
CATACLYSMIC CLIMATE CHANGE IS ALREADY BAKED IN THE CAKE!
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Thanks for the excellent summation Gail.
Year-to-Date temperature evolution is still tracking well out of the historical norm for the month of August:
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