Another Four Years of Wait-and-See Policies

Joe Romm informs1 that avoiding catastrophic global warming requires stabilizing carbon dioxide concentrations, not emissions.

Addicted


“Wait-and-see policies erroneously presume climate change can be reversed quickly should harm become evident, underestimating substantial delays in the climate’s response to anthropogenic forcing.” John Sterman

We need to cut emissions 50% to 80% below current levels just to stop concentrations from rising. And global temperatures will not be stabilized for decades after concentrations are stabilized. And of course the ice sheets may not stop disintegrating for decades — and if we dawdle too long, centuries — after temperatures stabilize. That is why we must act now if we want to have any reasonable hope of averting catastrophe.

Or, since such change is failing to occur and public complacency reinforces inaction, another way to put it, Joe, is that we basically are farked. The basis for such presumption is that we are doomed because Americans are incapable of forgoing the cheese fries2.

One 2007 M.I.T. study, “Understanding Public Complacency About Climate Change: Adults’ mental models of climate change violate conservation of matter,” concluded “Low public support for mitigation policies may be based more on misconceptions of climate dynamics than high discount rates or uncertainty about the risks of harmful climate change.”

Now Playing: Your Choice


“The problem isn’t that the voters don’t care about global warming. They do. It’s that they don’t care all that much.” — Nordhaus and Shellenberger

Meanwhile, the filthy coal strategy would seem to be buy the 2008 presidential election and influence another four years of delay. The question remains whether the necessary repression of sound policy based upon overwhelming scientific study will continue unabated?

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