Comments on: The Great Transformation: Climate change as cultural change

By: Gail

Gail — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 01:43:06 +0000

“even relatively small changes in carbon dioxide and global temperature can have unexpectedly severe consequences for the health of ecosystems”

from this report:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/ releases/ 2009/ 06/ 090618161150.htm

Let us ask ourselves, what is at stake? How does an easily dismissed as relatively benign statement like “severe consequences for the health of ecosystems” translate into our daily lives?

Oops. Could it mean that we won’t have trees? Apples? Nuts? Peaches? Birds?

Could it mean that ecosystems will collapse and add another positive feedback to climate chaos so that average temperatures will escalate to intolerable and weather become violent?

Why do people care more about long hot showers, big cars, traveling to Provence, and eating chilean sea bass than about their children and grandchildren?

It is a mystery to me.

By: Rick Covert

Rick Covert — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 01:17:48 +0000

John Podesta’s opinion piece on Waxman-Markey and the Copenhagen Conference is very inspiring. I have cautious but high expectations. I hope a large part of humanity is up to the challenge.

By: Modesty

Modesty — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:30:31 +0000

Thanks Joe. But that’s the response I meant to anticipate in my final paragraph.

Given what you say, just how bold is the shot? Does the US risk losing credibility by claiming boldness in a particular circumscribed area where little is to be found?

To prevent misunderstanding: I’m NOT making negative claims about the administration on climate policy. I’m taking your assessment as a given and then questioning the accuracy of the claim that the EPA endangerment proposal is a bold shot across the bow that showcases leadership potential on the part of the US.

By: Asteroid Miner

Asteroid Miner — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:19:26 +0000

As you said: “300,000 deaths a year are already attributable to climate change-related weather, food shortages, and disease.”
That number will rise exponentially until the human population = 0.
I agree with What Richard Pauli wrote in his last sentence.

I notice you have banished me, called “awaiting moderation.”

By: David B. Benson

David B. Benson — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 22:48:03 +0000

What Richard Pauli wrote in his last sentence.

By: Richard Pauli

Richard Pauli — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:44:17 +0000

You describe the visible political situation well. Thank you.

We suffer from decades of a denialist mind setting by the carbon fuel industries. With heavy advertising placements, our news media refuses to seriously examine the problem. i.e. Exxon sponsors “Meet the Press”

Carbon must be removed from the atmosphere – not merely emissions reduced. This message is suppressed by carbon fuel industries that are desperate to secure a place in the future…with continued emissions. Their message is “We want to be a part of the solution” often by promoting fantasies of clean coal, clean gas. All very noble, but unrealized.

The move toward adaptation can include continued heavy carbon usage, but the move to mitigation requires radical carbon reduction. Carbon elimination actually. Our actions today will be seen in 50 years. I think you are politically dancing around a scientific issue. Perhaps when things become more dire, then the required political will can come forth.

We all accept that President Obama is making a wonderful start. But he is far too forgiving of the carbon capitalists who have made this mess. Time to nationalize the oil and coal industries and shut them down.

By: Modesty

Modesty — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 15:54:49 +0000

“But the boldest shot across the bow comes from a recent EPA decision to classify carbon dioxide emissions as a threat to public health—the so-called endangerment finding. This ruling has enormous implications, since it makes CO2 emissions eligible to be regulated under the Clean Air Act, as substances like SO2 already are, under a smaller cap and trade program. Although it would be difficult for the EPA to enact a CO2 cap and trade without congressional cooperation, the finding means that legally, the Administration has the authority to regulate carbon emissions under existing law – which is not a message gone unheard by opponents of climate change policy.”

Questions:

If the US is showcasing this bold shot across the bow as a down payment on serious climate policy, what do we say to nations that point out that W-M undoes this bold shot?

Why isn’t it easier to cash in on the leverage of such a bold shot? That is, why isn’t it easier to significantly strengthen a bill that explicitly *relinquishes* this boldness, relinquishes EPA authority to use the CAA to regulate, say, GHGs from coal plants?

If the answer to both these questions is in part that it would indeed be difficult for the EPA to have this bold shot reach its target, how bold is it in the first place, and across what bow?

[JR: Uhh, "it would be difficult for the EPA to enact a CO2 cap and trade without congressional cooperation." What the EPA authority is most easily translated into is regulating emissions from new sources. Obama has already announced the strongest regulations ever for tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions. That leaves new coal, which was already starting to collapse and the renewables and efficiency in the stimulus package plus the new natural gas supplies will get most of the rest of those. So, while useful for taking some limited actions, the CAA is simply is no substitute for GHG legislation.]