As hurricane Michael bears down on the Florida pan handle as a Cat 4 storm, I wonder how many people who are going to be directly affected by its devastation are thinking about anthropogenic climate change. This week a new report (http://www.ipcc.ch/report/sr15/) from the IPCC finally paints a bleak picture and calls for radical reductions in carbon dioxide emissions in order to avoid a worst-case scenario.
For a number of years now I have been predicting a dooms-day scenario due to the twin impacts of climate change and peak fossil fuels. The former represents significant costs to societies. The latter represents significant decline in generating the income needed to pay the costs. In other words, for example, just when we will need to address things like moving whole cities inland (costs) our ability to generate the needed income will have vanished. No fuel, no work, no product, no income. It's actually pretty simple.
And for years I called out the primary causes of this predicament. First and foremost is the incredible lack of wisdom in human beings' cognition. No forethought. No caution. Just barge ahead with any technology that provides individuals with more convenience. All humans share in this deficit. All humans, given whatever chances they had, have consumed and wasted resources unmindfully. But our so-called leaders are especially to blame for their inability to tell the truth (and in many cases even understand the truth). Even Obama really blew it. He had a bully pulpit even if he didn't have a Congress that would help him out. Now we get Trump who outright denies climate change (calls it a hoax) and is attempting to ease even the weak restrictions Obama put on the fossil fuel industry, which could have the effect of raising the US emissions even more.
So human foolishness and stupidity, which seem to apply to a majority of the population in the US anyway, is at the root of our problem and that isn't going to go away on its own any time soon. The rest of the world seems to have many more people who are more thoughtful about the situation and are able to accept the scientific consensus about climate change (though many of them are not as up to speed on the problems with peak energy). But even so they are still not understanding that the proximal cause of our situation is the whole neoliberal capitalistic socio-economic system with its emphasis on profit maximization and growth. These things, this philosophy and world view, are just plain wrong. Speed, convenience, private wealth, novelty, these are the habits of thought that now infest a world of 7+ billion people. Every country in the world harbors a population of people who see what the developed world's people have and they want it too. So, for example, even though China's leadership position is to fight climate change, it still maintains a desire to grow its economy. These two objectives are diametrically opposed (see Naomi Klein's book: This Changes Everything).
We need to be absolutely clear on one thing regarding what can be done to solve the immediacy of the climate catastrophe (according to the IPCC report) and that is that market-based mechanisms will simply not work to reduce carbon emissions in any meaningful way. Even a very steep tax on carbon, a policy measure rather than a strictly free market approach, probably won't do the job either, especially if the scheme involves rebating the money to the consumers. Any cost of carbon scheme needs to hurt both consumers and producers equally and sufficiently to force them to change their behaviors. Taking money out of my wallet and putting it into my pocket is not going to accomplish anything.
Only one thing will give us a chance to survive - and then only some of us. We have to stop burning fossil fuels period and that is going to make us extremely poor. We have to abandon capitalism, for profit (and especially profit maximization), growth oriented firms and relocalize, i.e. reform local communities able to collectively meet their basic needs. We have to abandon cars and trucks and airplanes and probably even trains.
We probably won't take the initiative and there are no leaders on the world stage that would risk being booted off of that stage by telling people that they will have to give up most of the trappings of civilization. So what is most likely to happen, as I have predicted before, is that we will continue to cling to our old ways until it is obviously too late (which may already be the case) and the loss of fossil fuel energies (they will be too expensive to extract and refine) and the damage to our social fabric done by climate catastrophes force us to do these things.
I've not been blogging much these days. At some point I realized that I was basically preaching to the choir for the most part and getting repetitive. What prompted me to write this was the issuing of the IPCC report and especially Trump's and other Republicans' responses to it. The report suggests that a solution is feasible but also some of the committee members admit that it is highly unlikely that any of its recommendations will be taken up in time precisely because of the postures and attitudes of the far right ideologies. The US's best hope for any kind of change in policies and taking real leadership is to vote the Republicans out of Congress in November. And then follow through in 2020 with a real change in the presidency. Personally I would prefer to see a Social Democrat (maybe not Bernie per se) run. But at least we should try to find someone with those leanings in the Democratic party and I completely support that person being a woman (just not Hillary!) The rumors about Elizabeth Warren are interesting.I honestly do feel that men have made a mess of everything in governance and that it would be really great to give women a shot at doing better. I'm betting they can. And the current climate of the #meToo movement and the energy pumped into the women electorate (and many of us males who sympathize) may just be right to propel a larger proportion of the government to be controlled by women.
To be clear, though, a change in the political landscape of the US is not a solution. At best it can only serve to possibly slow down the acceleration toward destruction. Whether that would be a good thing or not I cannot say. But like clinging to life in a desperate situation gives a chance that a miracle might happen, slowing down the destruction might offer some last minute help.
The IPCC only deals with the global temperature issue; recommending using non-fossil fuel sources is meant as a way to reduce emissions. It does not provide a complete model of the relationship between fossil fuels and climate change with respect to other dynamics vis-a-vis EROI impacts on our ability to mitigate or adapt. It does not factor in the decline in fossil fuels from excessive extraction and the fact that as of this moment it is the consumption of fossil fuels that subsidize the solar and wind industries. We are already getting poorer due to the declining return on energy invested and climate change will make everything more expensive - a positive feedback loop ensues that will shortly blow up the financial system and with it, civilization.
I continue to advise people to consider less what they can do as individuals to combat climate change (but do that also) and begin laying plans for how to survive in a totally chaotic world of 2-3 degrees C and no oil.