Much of the concern about climate change is around the idea of “the big impact,” a single, colossal disaster that dramatically impacts everyone on the planet, much like the scenario depicted in the movie The Day After Tomorrow.
Only if we delay taxing net emissions of CO2 and methane for too long. Even then, "we" are probably not "doomed," just poorer and more uncomfortable than we would be if our 2023 selves had created the incentives for making high-yielding investments in reducing the CO2 content of the atmosphere.
Great article, but I think it underplays the scale of impact and the forced adaptions taking place right now. Millions of people are already homeless and rebuilding their lives from climate-driven disasters ... and for the most part, that rebuilding is without support of any kind. Yes, the US has experienced heat and smoke this year, and yes those things are bad, but the media's (and therfore everyone else) failure to acknowledge the sustained and cummulative impact from rolling climate catastrophes around the world is extreme ignorance. Rome is already burning.
Yes indeed. Economists call these thousand cuts "external costs". The IMF says we subsidize the fossil fuel industry $5.9 trillion a year in direct subsidies and external costs (mostly external costs). External costs are a symptom of a market failure - a market that is failing to operate as efficiently as possible to maximize benefits. The most direct, comprehensive, and fair way to address this market failure is Carbon Fee and Dividend. Everyone: please learn about it, join a group that is helping create the political will to enable Congress to do it, and advocate for it among your friends and family. Here's a good place to start: http://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend.
I am reminded of the silly Monty Python skit where the knight confronts the king and is progressively dismembered while staying defiant. “It is but a flesh wound!” he bellows as his dismembered arm lies at his feet. Denial is not bound by sanity.
Change happens using the same path as the grief cycle: denial, bargaining, anger, surrender, and acceptance. Logically we should be feeling the pain of climate change wounds and the financial pinch of accruing costs, but we are looping in a cycle of denial, bargaining, and anger. The question becomes what level of pain will knock us (and the rest of the natural world) to our knees and accept responsibility for our fate?
Looping in the first three stages of change allows us to play the victim and shift the blame to others which is easy and addictive. But, inevitably a reckoning happens where the wound is felt deeply and personally. The pain sears through the fog of illusion bringing us out of the clouds and back into our humanity. I shudder to think what must happen to bring us down to earth but the power of denial is formidable and we now have a lot of distractions from our pain. Monty Python showed us the bounds of our absurdity. We may just exceed them.
The all but inevitable reckoning you eloquently describe will also lead to what I have called “ Carbon recriminations” in my new book A Climate Vocabulary of the Future, as the role of big oil, media magnates, and the Republican Party in preventing necessary action becomes evident to most everyone.
Yes, the adaptations are expensive. In the last 20 years, dozens of my neighbors and coworkers have installed air conditioning, which they admit they previously did not need (I'm still a hold-out.). It's thousands of dollars for an install and an additional $40, $60 or more a month in the summer paying for the electricity. Also it robs you of the pleasant breezes and bird songs when you just have your windows open.
So many salient points here (and resonated extra given that I just opened my last post with thoughts on the Day After Tomorrow as well... definitely in the zeitgeist for way too urgent reasons).
If climate deniers are right and the global community of scientists, as represented by the Royal Society, National Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science ... IPCC is wrong, why don't they present their science in the scientific literature and win Nobel prizes and the everlasting thanks of governments and humanity?
Trying to get us to follow them down rabbit holes is great fun I'm sure, but some of us have grandchildren whom the oil billionaires are willing to see perish before their time is up.
You can argue till the cows come home but the simple fact is more CO2 in the atmosphere causes Earth to retain more energy from the Sun, and more energy in the climate system means worse weather.
I like your list of societies. Because I worked with physicists all of my life in high energy density physics and fusion, let me add the American Physical Society and their statement on climate change, https://www.aps.org/policy/statements/21_4.cfm .
For deniers and contrarians it does not matter, they will look to the outliers, e.g., Dr. Steven Koonin, to confirm their bias. BTW, I have scoured the internet looking for National Academy Science members who are active deniers, contrarians, or skeptics. At last count, there were about 7 out 2512 or 0.28%, including Dr. Koonin.
Yes, APS is on my customary list and I know one of the fools who "persuaded" it to "enlarge" on its original statement that read "the evidence is incontrovertible". Every scientific society and institution on the planet endorses the consensus, ie the IPCC.
Atmospheric physicists like Ray Pierrehumbert, onetime Chicago now Oxford have Koonin sized up. Koonin was associated with big oil - funny that.
"Contrary to how it is typically protrayed by climate dismissives, adaptation is not free."
Is this a deliberate strawman? Who would ever claim that adaptation is free?
I'd claim that adaptation is cheaper than prevention. I'd also claim that we (essentially all people worldwide) have already chosen not to do prevention, so adaptation is forced on us.
I know you've claimed that reports from Berkeley and Princeton show an affordable path to prevention by getting to Net Zero, or at least 90% of the way to Net Zero, at no cost. But neither of these reports actually claim this: the Berkeley report explicitly claims that continued subsidies for renewable energy would be required, and the Princeton report calls for a magic solution: practical large-scale carbon sequestration at no cost.
I guess we need to define terms. When I say "prevention", I mean rapidly getting to zero carbon (and other GHG) emissions, or perhaps Net Zero if there's some way to take carbon out of the atmosphere. I've heard of no way to do this with anything like our current lifestyle.
For one example, electricity from solar and wind is 2-3 times more expensive than electricity from conventional sources, if taken in small doses. As the renewable part of generation gets larger, it becomes much more expensive, for at least two reasons:
1. Because of variability of output (variability sunlight intensity and wind speed), you will sometimes generate more electricity than you need. The extra electricity will be wasted; some portion of the cost of building and operating the facilities will be wasted, and the remaining electricity becomes even more expensive. California is already experiencing this effect: some hours on some days California pays Arizona to use California's excess solar electricity.
2. Because of non-dispatchability of output, you will need to have storage to hold electricity for night or periods of low wind. Cost of this storage is never included in studies like "Levelized Cost of Energy", but will greatly increase the cost of an all-renewable system.
Related to these points, the German consultancy deENet evaluated Germany's experience with wind energy in 2006. Their conclusion was that large amounts of wind generation *capacity* contribute only a small amount of "capacity credit" to the energy system. So, 100,000 MW of wind capacity (50,000 2MW windmills) would contribute only 5,000 MW of reliable capacity. You'd need to have reliable backup (dispatchable generation, or storage) to keep the lights on, unless you're willing to live with periodic power outages.
The two articles you linked suggested that a "carbon tax" might be politically acceptable. Perhaps it would be. But it doesn't create any new technical capabilities. Getting to a zero-carbon energy system would be enormously expensive. Perhaps a rich country like the US can afford it, at enormous cost. For poorer countries, implementing such a system would mean much less energy available, which would mean keeping living standards lower forever.
To get back to my last point, we've collectively decided not to do prevention, so adaptation is being forced on us.
Thanks. I've seen those stats myself. Go back and look at the stats. I'll guarantee you that the solar/wind figures are based on continuing subsidies for solar and wind. Or, give me the link, and I'll trace the sources (if they have any), and find the small print that says so.
I don't think a carbon "tax" will be politically acceptable in the US, at least not one that approaches the minimum level the IPCC says is required as part of a set of policies to hold warming to 1.5˚C. But I do think a carbon fee and dividend is politically viable and once in place it would be durable because most people end up receiving more cash back than they pay in trickle-down higher prices. Canada has proven it is possible - it is being used as the backstop measure that is increasing the floor carbon price of all provinces by $15/tCO2 a year until it hits US$135/tCO2 in 2030. With the EU CBAM kicking in soon, and Canada, the UK, and Japan likely to add a CBAM to their carbon pricing schemes, it seems just a matter of time before the US will be forced to price carbon if we don't do it on its own merits in the next few years.
I think your estimates of energy prices of a clean energy transition are way off. The En-ROADS climate policy simulator shows the total cost of energy going up some for two decades, then dropping down to half of the BAU amount by the end of the century using a sensible 1.5˚C policy scenario. If the carbon fee revenue is rebated to households, families will be more than able to afford the temporary increase in the short-term. The damages avoided from BAU AGW in poor countries this century from such a policy mix will be substantially greater than harms from any delay in deploying energy. See [18:40] at https://youtu.be/X1bTvnLKkCk.
The link you provided wasn't to the En-ROADS simulator, and didn't have a link to it, so I couldn't evaluate it. If you have a link, I'd love to see it.
As I said above (and in other places) every study I've ever seen claiming that renewable energy (or carbon-free energy) is cheaper has assumptions hidden in the small print, to the effect that "these projections assume that current supports for renewable energy are retained or expanded". Because of this, I don't believe any projections that claim lower energy costs from renewables.
If I can get access to the En-ROADS calculator, or more likely the studies behind it, I'm sure I can find that small print. Please, if you have a link, let me have it.
Thanks for the link. This tool is not really intended to show energy cost, so it may be asking too much to expect it to answer questions about the costs of various forms of energy. Poking around in the model, I found the "Marginal Cost of Low-Carbon Electricity Production graph, which shows costs of $.05 per kWh for wind, projected to decrease to $.03 per kWh by about 2060. These figures don't make sense unless they include subsidies or exclude construction costs, or both, and I don't see a reason to assume that cost of renewables will decrease by 50%. But, if you take them as reasonable, then no policy action is required - wind energy is already the most economical choice. As long as you don't consider the impacts of intermittency.
Whatever the structure of taxes, fees, rebates, subsidies, charges, etc - the only way households can afford the transition is if renewables can produce energy for less cost than conventional sources. If there are subsidies, households have to pay them. If there are taxes, households have to pay them. If there are rebates, it may disguise higher charges, but if actual production cost is higher, someone has to pay it.
For now, I'm sticking with my previous statement: Every study I've ever seen shows that renewable energy is more expensive than conventional generation.
At 2:33, the host claims "the model is transparent - all the equations and model assumptions are open source." I'll see if I can find them somewhere.
The claim that getting to NetZero would somehow prevent climate change is scientifically unwarranted.
Sharply elevated temperatures, continuing sea level rise, glacier melts and Ecosystem collapse would proceed for decades, if not centuries, even after NetZero is reached.
There is no solution to the climate crisis without reducing temperatures and there is no way to reduce temperatures without some combination of massive carbon removal, and or sunlight reflection.
People are the single root source of resource imbalance. World population has tripled in my lifetime (80 years). It may halve in the next 80. If that happens without a war it will be amazing. But note, that only where women are repressed do populations grow out of control.
History tells us that civilisations fall apart quickly. We are doing what the Romans did. They worried about the economy and not the fundamentals.
Dr. Dressler, I agree with your "thousand cuts" metaphor. For the immediate future, as you and your readers point out, adaptation will be most available to those who can afford it. I believe we have a moral obligation to give aid to the rest. Given my 80th percentile age, I now acknowledge, is to my advantage. My fear lies with my grandchildren: fortunately they are not typical consumers. A huge global obstacle, in my opinion, is "leadership". Regardless what commitments delegates make at the numerous conferences, putting the policies in place that are required not forthcoming. Why? Politically and economically net-zero is going to be very costly. How can we insure, food, water, shelter and security? That is to be decided, or not: https://lzed.substack.com/p/if-you-eat-youre-involved-in-agriculture
Perhaps politically, but economically net zeroing (and net negative CO2 emissions) will not be very costly. The deadweight loss of a global tax on net CO2 and methane (the adjustments we make in our behaviors) are just not that great.
I am not so confident that the world or history is that ‘fair.’ Big Tobacco paid its fines, dusted itself off, and keeps making money even today. “It was just business…” they will claim.
Storms and 'un-seasonal' cold or warm snaps have got to be affecting food growing. Many staples produced in subtropical and temperate climates are annual crops, grown between spring and fall. How many acres lost to floods, to super-heat? To frost? In the tropics, though there are two rice crops per year, millions more people are dependent on those two crops. Death by a thousand cut indeed.
I think this is a good example of how people really don't take climate change seriously. Instead of paying for a gym membership maybe move out of Texas to say Duluth, MN. By in large people won't do something like this. Very few people are willing to sacrifice to limit climate change. How many liberals that talk about climate change have made any meaningful reduction in CO2 that cost them comforts? Having the money and buying a Tesla doesn't count. Live in a smaller home. Travel less or not at all. Etc. It largely doesn't happen. The poor have few if any options, the rich do and still do nothing. https://briefedbydata.substack.com/
Climate crises, local and global, belong in the Top Stories and daily Front Page of NYT, WP, and WSJ, at minimum.
Climate will be hitting hard and heavy from now on. It’s the denial-ized context driving all the shenanigans in Ukraine, DC, Beijing, Niger, Delhi — you name it. Yet it’s relegated to special-interest sections at best. And left to the “alternative” media to do hard journalism on the global existential threat of our era.
Shame on those top publishers. They will rue the day they sold out to deniers and drivers of Armageddon.
In the short run only the poor are doomed.
In the long run (50 years) we are all doomed.
In the history of man, it has never been an advantage to be over 65, until now.
Only if we delay taxing net emissions of CO2 and methane for too long. Even then, "we" are probably not "doomed," just poorer and more uncomfortable than we would be if our 2023 selves had created the incentives for making high-yielding investments in reducing the CO2 content of the atmosphere.
Carbon Pricing is Inevitable. But When and How We Do It Matters.
https://www.greenenergytimes.org/2022/12/carbon-pricing-is-inevitable/
Great article, but I think it underplays the scale of impact and the forced adaptions taking place right now. Millions of people are already homeless and rebuilding their lives from climate-driven disasters ... and for the most part, that rebuilding is without support of any kind. Yes, the US has experienced heat and smoke this year, and yes those things are bad, but the media's (and therfore everyone else) failure to acknowledge the sustained and cummulative impact from rolling climate catastrophes around the world is extreme ignorance. Rome is already burning.
Maybe the title should read, "death by a thousand cults."
Thanks for the great article!
"climate change is imposing a tax on us."
Yes indeed. Economists call these thousand cuts "external costs". The IMF says we subsidize the fossil fuel industry $5.9 trillion a year in direct subsidies and external costs (mostly external costs). External costs are a symptom of a market failure - a market that is failing to operate as efficiently as possible to maximize benefits. The most direct, comprehensive, and fair way to address this market failure is Carbon Fee and Dividend. Everyone: please learn about it, join a group that is helping create the political will to enable Congress to do it, and advocate for it among your friends and family. Here's a good place to start: http://citizensclimatelobby.org/basics-carbon-fee-dividend.
I am reminded of the silly Monty Python skit where the knight confronts the king and is progressively dismembered while staying defiant. “It is but a flesh wound!” he bellows as his dismembered arm lies at his feet. Denial is not bound by sanity.
Change happens using the same path as the grief cycle: denial, bargaining, anger, surrender, and acceptance. Logically we should be feeling the pain of climate change wounds and the financial pinch of accruing costs, but we are looping in a cycle of denial, bargaining, and anger. The question becomes what level of pain will knock us (and the rest of the natural world) to our knees and accept responsibility for our fate?
Looping in the first three stages of change allows us to play the victim and shift the blame to others which is easy and addictive. But, inevitably a reckoning happens where the wound is felt deeply and personally. The pain sears through the fog of illusion bringing us out of the clouds and back into our humanity. I shudder to think what must happen to bring us down to earth but the power of denial is formidable and we now have a lot of distractions from our pain. Monty Python showed us the bounds of our absurdity. We may just exceed them.
The all but inevitable reckoning you eloquently describe will also lead to what I have called “ Carbon recriminations” in my new book A Climate Vocabulary of the Future, as the role of big oil, media magnates, and the Republican Party in preventing necessary action becomes evident to most everyone.
Very well said and well written.
A key part of the problem emerges from your story. In the short term, capitalism thrives on environmental degradation and disaster.
When the elderly walkers can't enjoy the great outdoors for free any more then the gym owner sells them subscriptions.
It's so sad.
Yes, the adaptations are expensive. In the last 20 years, dozens of my neighbors and coworkers have installed air conditioning, which they admit they previously did not need (I'm still a hold-out.). It's thousands of dollars for an install and an additional $40, $60 or more a month in the summer paying for the electricity. Also it robs you of the pleasant breezes and bird songs when you just have your windows open.
So many salient points here (and resonated extra given that I just opened my last post with thoughts on the Day After Tomorrow as well... definitely in the zeitgeist for way too urgent reasons).
If climate deniers are right and the global community of scientists, as represented by the Royal Society, National Academy of Sciences, American Association for the Advancement of Science ... IPCC is wrong, why don't they present their science in the scientific literature and win Nobel prizes and the everlasting thanks of governments and humanity?
Trying to get us to follow them down rabbit holes is great fun I'm sure, but some of us have grandchildren whom the oil billionaires are willing to see perish before their time is up.
You can argue till the cows come home but the simple fact is more CO2 in the atmosphere causes Earth to retain more energy from the Sun, and more energy in the climate system means worse weather.
What we see happening is what we would expect.
I like your list of societies. Because I worked with physicists all of my life in high energy density physics and fusion, let me add the American Physical Society and their statement on climate change, https://www.aps.org/policy/statements/21_4.cfm .
For deniers and contrarians it does not matter, they will look to the outliers, e.g., Dr. Steven Koonin, to confirm their bias. BTW, I have scoured the internet looking for National Academy Science members who are active deniers, contrarians, or skeptics. At last count, there were about 7 out 2512 or 0.28%, including Dr. Koonin.
Yes, APS is on my customary list and I know one of the fools who "persuaded" it to "enlarge" on its original statement that read "the evidence is incontrovertible". Every scientific society and institution on the planet endorses the consensus, ie the IPCC.
Atmospheric physicists like Ray Pierrehumbert, onetime Chicago now Oxford have Koonin sized up. Koonin was associated with big oil - funny that.
"Contrary to how it is typically protrayed by climate dismissives, adaptation is not free."
Is this a deliberate strawman? Who would ever claim that adaptation is free?
I'd claim that adaptation is cheaper than prevention. I'd also claim that we (essentially all people worldwide) have already chosen not to do prevention, so adaptation is forced on us.
I know you've claimed that reports from Berkeley and Princeton show an affordable path to prevention by getting to Net Zero, or at least 90% of the way to Net Zero, at no cost. But neither of these reports actually claim this: the Berkeley report explicitly claims that continued subsidies for renewable energy would be required, and the Princeton report calls for a magic solution: practical large-scale carbon sequestration at no cost.
Why pose them as alternatives? Prevention reduces the cost of adaptation.
I guess it depends what you mean by "prevention". If you prevent climate change, what would you adapt to?
Living with problems is rarely cheaper than addressing them, and AGW is going to involve an increasing number of damages and losses with no end in sight on our current emissions path. Perhaps you just don't like the solutions you've heard about. Please consider this: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-winning-republican-climate-solution-carbon-pricing/2020/01/16/d6921dc0-387b-11ea-bf30-ad313e4ec754_story.html
You should also run various 1.5˚C policy solution scenarios through En-ROADS. You'll find there are many that greatly improve health, reduce energy costs, and protect coastlines while returning more money to people than they have now: https://www.greenenergytimes.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Your-Favorite-Climate-Solution.pdf.
I guess we need to define terms. When I say "prevention", I mean rapidly getting to zero carbon (and other GHG) emissions, or perhaps Net Zero if there's some way to take carbon out of the atmosphere. I've heard of no way to do this with anything like our current lifestyle.
For one example, electricity from solar and wind is 2-3 times more expensive than electricity from conventional sources, if taken in small doses. As the renewable part of generation gets larger, it becomes much more expensive, for at least two reasons:
1. Because of variability of output (variability sunlight intensity and wind speed), you will sometimes generate more electricity than you need. The extra electricity will be wasted; some portion of the cost of building and operating the facilities will be wasted, and the remaining electricity becomes even more expensive. California is already experiencing this effect: some hours on some days California pays Arizona to use California's excess solar electricity.
2. Because of non-dispatchability of output, you will need to have storage to hold electricity for night or periods of low wind. Cost of this storage is never included in studies like "Levelized Cost of Energy", but will greatly increase the cost of an all-renewable system.
Related to these points, the German consultancy deENet evaluated Germany's experience with wind energy in 2006. Their conclusion was that large amounts of wind generation *capacity* contribute only a small amount of "capacity credit" to the energy system. So, 100,000 MW of wind capacity (50,000 2MW windmills) would contribute only 5,000 MW of reliable capacity. You'd need to have reliable backup (dispatchable generation, or storage) to keep the lights on, unless you're willing to live with periodic power outages.
The two articles you linked suggested that a "carbon tax" might be politically acceptable. Perhaps it would be. But it doesn't create any new technical capabilities. Getting to a zero-carbon energy system would be enormously expensive. Perhaps a rich country like the US can afford it, at enormous cost. For poorer countries, implementing such a system would mean much less energy available, which would mean keeping living standards lower forever.
To get back to my last point, we've collectively decided not to do prevention, so adaptation is being forced on us.
"For one example, electricity from solar and wind is 2-3 times more expensive than electricity from conventional sources,"
Not any more. According to the stats I saw, coal was the most expensive, solar/wind the cheapest.
Thanks. I've seen those stats myself. Go back and look at the stats. I'll guarantee you that the solar/wind figures are based on continuing subsidies for solar and wind. Or, give me the link, and I'll trace the sources (if they have any), and find the small print that says so.
Please. Show me the source you're citing.
I don't think a carbon "tax" will be politically acceptable in the US, at least not one that approaches the minimum level the IPCC says is required as part of a set of policies to hold warming to 1.5˚C. But I do think a carbon fee and dividend is politically viable and once in place it would be durable because most people end up receiving more cash back than they pay in trickle-down higher prices. Canada has proven it is possible - it is being used as the backstop measure that is increasing the floor carbon price of all provinces by $15/tCO2 a year until it hits US$135/tCO2 in 2030. With the EU CBAM kicking in soon, and Canada, the UK, and Japan likely to add a CBAM to their carbon pricing schemes, it seems just a matter of time before the US will be forced to price carbon if we don't do it on its own merits in the next few years.
I think your estimates of energy prices of a clean energy transition are way off. The En-ROADS climate policy simulator shows the total cost of energy going up some for two decades, then dropping down to half of the BAU amount by the end of the century using a sensible 1.5˚C policy scenario. If the carbon fee revenue is rebated to households, families will be more than able to afford the temporary increase in the short-term. The damages avoided from BAU AGW in poor countries this century from such a policy mix will be substantially greater than harms from any delay in deploying energy. See [18:40] at https://youtu.be/X1bTvnLKkCk.
The link you provided wasn't to the En-ROADS simulator, and didn't have a link to it, so I couldn't evaluate it. If you have a link, I'd love to see it.
As I said above (and in other places) every study I've ever seen claiming that renewable energy (or carbon-free energy) is cheaper has assumptions hidden in the small print, to the effect that "these projections assume that current supports for renewable energy are retained or expanded". Because of this, I don't believe any projections that claim lower energy costs from renewables.
If I can get access to the En-ROADS calculator, or more likely the studies behind it, I'm sure I can find that small print. Please, if you have a link, let me have it.
Thanks.
The video above shows the increased cost of energy compared with the money raised from a carbon fee (plus complementary policies). The money raised from the fee can then be rebated back to households so they can afford the transition. Here's an article I wrote about using En-ROADs: https://www.greenenergytimes.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/04/Your-Favorite-Climate-Solution.pdf. You can run it yourself (on a laptop or Chromebook) at https://en-roads.climateinteractive.org/scenario.html?v=22.11.0. The default values used by En-ROADS come from the IPCC, most of those assumptions are configureable in the tool.
Thanks for the link. This tool is not really intended to show energy cost, so it may be asking too much to expect it to answer questions about the costs of various forms of energy. Poking around in the model, I found the "Marginal Cost of Low-Carbon Electricity Production graph, which shows costs of $.05 per kWh for wind, projected to decrease to $.03 per kWh by about 2060. These figures don't make sense unless they include subsidies or exclude construction costs, or both, and I don't see a reason to assume that cost of renewables will decrease by 50%. But, if you take them as reasonable, then no policy action is required - wind energy is already the most economical choice. As long as you don't consider the impacts of intermittency.
Whatever the structure of taxes, fees, rebates, subsidies, charges, etc - the only way households can afford the transition is if renewables can produce energy for less cost than conventional sources. If there are subsidies, households have to pay them. If there are taxes, households have to pay them. If there are rebates, it may disguise higher charges, but if actual production cost is higher, someone has to pay it.
For now, I'm sticking with my previous statement: Every study I've ever seen shows that renewable energy is more expensive than conventional generation.
At 2:33, the host claims "the model is transparent - all the equations and model assumptions are open source." I'll see if I can find them somewhere.
The claim that getting to NetZero would somehow prevent climate change is scientifically unwarranted.
Sharply elevated temperatures, continuing sea level rise, glacier melts and Ecosystem collapse would proceed for decades, if not centuries, even after NetZero is reached.
There is no solution to the climate crisis without reducing temperatures and there is no way to reduce temperatures without some combination of massive carbon removal, and or sunlight reflection.
Putting all that out there without mentioning the urban heat islands affecting all cities is advocacy, not science in any form.
https://texastrees.org/how-the-urban-heat-island-is-impacting-north-texas/
w.
Replacing eco unfriendly vehicles, building wind turbines, changing farming practices, carbon capture.
It means starvation,
People are the single root source of resource imbalance. World population has tripled in my lifetime (80 years). It may halve in the next 80. If that happens without a war it will be amazing. But note, that only where women are repressed do populations grow out of control.
History tells us that civilisations fall apart quickly. We are doing what the Romans did. They worried about the economy and not the fundamentals.
Had they had a more hollistic app
Dr. Dressler, I agree with your "thousand cuts" metaphor. For the immediate future, as you and your readers point out, adaptation will be most available to those who can afford it. I believe we have a moral obligation to give aid to the rest. Given my 80th percentile age, I now acknowledge, is to my advantage. My fear lies with my grandchildren: fortunately they are not typical consumers. A huge global obstacle, in my opinion, is "leadership". Regardless what commitments delegates make at the numerous conferences, putting the policies in place that are required not forthcoming. Why? Politically and economically net-zero is going to be very costly. How can we insure, food, water, shelter and security? That is to be decided, or not: https://lzed.substack.com/p/if-you-eat-youre-involved-in-agriculture
100% agree that adaptation will require a wealth transfer from rich to poor. That's one of the things that will make it so difficult.
Perhaps politically, but economically net zeroing (and net negative CO2 emissions) will not be very costly. The deadweight loss of a global tax on net CO2 and methane (the adjustments we make in our behaviors) are just not that great.
>"economically net zeroing (and net negative CO2 emissions) will not be very costly."
What is the basis for this claim?
If it's true, why hasn't any country committed to doing it? Why has no politician advocated it? Why has no one published a plan to do it?
I am not so confident that the world or history is that ‘fair.’ Big Tobacco paid its fines, dusted itself off, and keeps making money even today. “It was just business…” they will claim.
Storms and 'un-seasonal' cold or warm snaps have got to be affecting food growing. Many staples produced in subtropical and temperate climates are annual crops, grown between spring and fall. How many acres lost to floods, to super-heat? To frost? In the tropics, though there are two rice crops per year, millions more people are dependent on those two crops. Death by a thousand cut indeed.
I think this is a good example of how people really don't take climate change seriously. Instead of paying for a gym membership maybe move out of Texas to say Duluth, MN. By in large people won't do something like this. Very few people are willing to sacrifice to limit climate change. How many liberals that talk about climate change have made any meaningful reduction in CO2 that cost them comforts? Having the money and buying a Tesla doesn't count. Live in a smaller home. Travel less or not at all. Etc. It largely doesn't happen. The poor have few if any options, the rich do and still do nothing. https://briefedbydata.substack.com/
Climate crises, local and global, belong in the Top Stories and daily Front Page of NYT, WP, and WSJ, at minimum.
Climate will be hitting hard and heavy from now on. It’s the denial-ized context driving all the shenanigans in Ukraine, DC, Beijing, Niger, Delhi — you name it. Yet it’s relegated to special-interest sections at best. And left to the “alternative” media to do hard journalism on the global existential threat of our era.
Shame on those top publishers. They will rue the day they sold out to deniers and drivers of Armageddon.