Can Capitalism Really Solve The Climate Problem? Perhaps, And Perhaps Space Aliens Will Also Abduct Donnie Dotard

In perhaps one of the brashest claims on record in the media, Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp ('Capitalism Will Solve Climate Problem', WSJ, p. A17,  July 23) writes:

"Though climate change presents American industries a daunting challenge, market - based policies can unleash innovation from investors, inventors and entrepreneurs, who will work to build a more prosperous and safer future. Working with accurate scientific facts and the right incentives, the market will find winning solutions."

But author Naomi Klein, This Changes Everything: Capitalism Vs. Climate Change isn't buying.  Referencing the need for wealthy nations to cut emissions "somewhere in the neighborhood of 8-10 percent per year", to avoid even the minimal projected increase of 2 degrees Celsius by 2100 - she writes (p. 21):

"The free market simply cannot accomplish this task. Indeed, this level of emission reduction has only happened in the context of economic collapse, or deep depression."

Basically, as Klein argues in her book, capitalism is unable to affect or alter  the course of climate change due to its dependence on fossil fuels and need for continuous growth.  Take away the need for growth - or reduce it in major ways - and perhaps market "forces" can make a difference. But not when the growth demanded is on the order of 2-3 % a year. 

For his part, Krupp insists that "public policy that puts a price on carbon emissions would speed the adoption of clean energy by exposing the market to the costs this pollution puts on society."

But that begs the question: What exactly would the market do about it? Given a current 30 gT/year carbon deposition rate - and assuming we don't add to it-   that leaves us roughly  15 years before we end up at the cusp of the runaway greenhouse effect.  I mean we are already seeing monstrous flooding in the east, and we now know this is tied to climate change given the rainfall record (see graphic above) shows  30 percent more rainfall days of 3-inches plus over the last 50 years.  Also, few mainstream media sources are informing citizens of the ongoing global heat wave, e.g

Web results

Reality Check: Mapping the global heatwave - BBC News - BBC.com

No surprise here given the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere reached 410 parts per million in May, the highest the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii had measured since Charles David Keeling started keeping records in 1958.  Do the corporate media not wish to alarm people? Well, maybe it's past time they did. As for Krupp, Naomi Klein points out (p. 208)  that he failed his "come to Jesus" moment after George Bush Sr. became president - and  promised action on acid rain  - a result of excessive  emission of sulfur dioxide - SO2-   in tandem with precipitation over affected regions (i.e. with coal fired utility plants).  Klein notes (ibid.)  "the solution would have been reduction by a fixed amount across the board."  But Krupp and the EDF punted, e.g.

"Instead, the EDF pushed for the first, full -fledged cap and trade system. These rules did not tell polluters they had to cut their sulfur emissions but instead, set a nationwide cap on sulfur dioxide, beneath which big emitters (like coal fired plants) would do as they pleased. - pay other companies to make reductions for them."

In Krupp's WSJ paean to capitalism it appears he has not moved much beyond such pedestrian, useless solutions and the calamity clock is moving.   Klein herself actually sees Krupp more as a fossil fuel accommodationist citing a quote he made in 2009 (cf. p. 191), "Coal is not the enemy, coal emissions are."  She also cites the fact that Krupp's leadership of the EDF has seen its budget expand from $3 m to $120m, much of it from a hedge fund (Tiger Management) which underwrote EDF's work. Her suggestion is that such vast expansion of support is not based simply on saving the planet - or the humans inhabiting it - but has a huge profit angle too.

More treacherous  than SO2 emissions is the  limit for total carbon in the atmosphere. This is now  2, 750 gT, based on research by Bill McKibben at 350.0rg. Once we cross this threshold, we will usher in the maw of the runaway greenhouse and be on our way to converting the Earth to another Venus. The problem? The energy- and fossil fuel companies  that govern most of our economic system don't see it that way.  Carbon gadfly McKibben cites the fact that Exxon's share price, for example, is based on a total carbon deposition of at least 2,800 gT - which also conforms to expectations set by hedge funds, et al including Peabody Global. 

So in the wake of this what can the market do?  If one rules out high emissions taxes about the only market solution left is "cap and trade".  This is the scheme Klein referenced in her criticism of Krupp's response to acid rain and sulfur dioxide.  But most global warming researchers, and honest politicians  have known for at least seven years that cap and trade is a fool's errand. As the MIT Technology Review puts it: "cap-and-trade, by itself, won’t make much of a dent. "
See e.g.

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/414025/the-problem-with-cap-and-trade/

What WOULD make a dent - but which Krupp never mentions in his WSJ piece, is imposing a direct carbon tax on all oil supplies (including gasoline for autos) around the world. But the likelihood of this passing legislatures anytime soon  is about the same as extraterrestrials from a planet in the Tau Ceti system landing and kidnapping Trump before 2020.  So, in the meantime, too many push "cap and trade" when it is only a Potemkin solution.  

Part of the problem in the U.S. (the biggest CO2 emitter) is that too many don't accept the reality of climate change or that it deserves the priority of attention given it by most climate scientists. According to a June 7 WSJ op-ed by Steven Hayward:

"While roughly half of Americans regard climate change as a problem, the issue has never achieved the high salience among the public,  despite the drumbeat of alarm from the climate campaign. Americans consistently ranked climate the 19th or 20th of 20 leading issues."

It is  interesting that while climate change is highly prioritized and seen as scientific fact backed by 90 percent to 100 percent of experts  in many parts of the world -  this doesn't apply in the United States.   Here climate change remains  a fraught political issue that serves as a major wedge for the partisan divide which feels like it could swallow the nation whole.  But this is inevitably the case when divergent mental maps concerning an anomalous phenomenon hold sway, especially one that has been politicized like climate change- global warming.

A lot of this has to do with the climate denialists'  single minded campaign of agnotology - or sowing doubt on the most minor aspects of climate science divergence. This campaign is funded by economic agents, fossil fuel interests and their lobbyists,  who grasp that their model of "extractivism" and profiteering would have to literally be put  on life support to reach any realistic emissions cuts goals. But if they did that, they'd surrender their profits. This they won't do, and capitalist and the pols they have in thrall won't either. As Klein puts it:

"Climate change has never received the crisis treatment from our leaders, despite the fact it carries the risk of destroying lives on a vastly greater scale than collapsed banks or collapsed buildings. The cuts to greenhouse emissions that scientists tell us are necessary in order to greatly reduce the risk of catastrophe are treated as nothing more than gentle suggestions or actions that can be postponed indefinitely."

The climate upheavals we are witnessing now in our world, discloses that this is wishful thinking and we may have already waited too long to act boldly.

See also:

How climate change is supercharging a hot and dangerous summer

Excerpt:

"Gone are the days when scientists drew a bright line dividing weather and climate. Now researchers can examine a weather event and estimate how much climate change had to do with causing or exacerbating it."

And:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/01/as-i-noted-in-earlier-blog-httpbrane.html

And:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2017/01/climate-change-adaptation-will-be.html

Paris Climate Summit Success Hinges On Subduing the 'Old Brain'

"I've come here personally, as the leader of the world's largest economy and the second largest emitter to say that the United States of America not only recognizes our role in creating this problem, we embrace our responsibility to do something about it". - Barack Obama at the Paris Climate Summit yesterday

Obama's words were bold but his other promise that alternative cleaner energy sources for poorer nations  (like India)  can be funded by Republicans (i.e. the WH can get them to), is perhaps wishful thinking. The Repubs are dug in on this issue, and most of them - see previous post - are not even sufficiently scientifically literate to recognize the problem or want to do something about it. Instead - like WSJ's Matt Ridley in a recent piece ('Your Complete Guide to the Climate Debate', Nov. 28-29, p. A11) they continue to confabulate distortions and lies about it. In fact, contrary to Ridley's header (and as a former scientist he ought to be ashamed of himself) there is NO "debate".

In their analysis of the extent of scientific consensus on global warming (Eos Transactions, Vol. 90, No. 3, p. 22) , P. T. Doran and M. Kendall-Zimmerman found that (p. 24)

“the debate on the authenticity of global warming and the role played by human activity is largely non-existent among those who understand the nuances and scientific basis of long-term climate processes.”

In their analytic survey for which 3146 climate and Earth scientists responded, a full 96.2% of specialists concurred temperatures have steadily risen and there is no evidence for cooling. Meanwhile, 97.4% concur there is a definite role of humans in global climate change.

Ridley,  like the more sophisticated 'pukes, also dredges up other shibboleths*  like "global warming has slowed significantly over the past two decades",  a canard that caused the Reepo Presidential candidates to earn failing marks when they regurgitated it. (See previous post). Ridley is also guilty of making statements such as: "Antarctic ice is increasing" - supposedly offering inconsistent evidence for global warming.  But I already showed the errors of this interpretation in a past post:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/09/brainiac-goops-screw-it-up-again-on.html

In their book, New World, New Mind: Changing The Way We Think To Change The Future, authors Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich show why humans don't always recognize approaching threats and often fight making necessary changes - even to ensure survival.  For example, referencing overpopulation (p. 197):

"Overpopulation causes no cracking branches, no thunderclaps, no darkening of the cave door. It leads to small annual changes in columns of numbers, hidden in reports.  The lethal threats of overpopulation are not even signaled by demographic statistics.  Those statistics- birth rates, death rates, growth rates, life expectancies and the like - were all very well known to demographers a generation ago. The numbers were there, but to the old mind they signified little, Sure, the population was growing and fast, but so what?"

When the future finally arrived, the recalcitrant old mind (or old brain, given the process called 'mind' emanates from it) could see how overpopulation contributed to the deterioration of the international economic system, and manifested in multiple way such as increases in the prices of food, less potable water, higher energy costs, higher home costs, etc. But instead of accepting the need for change the old mind often invented new rationalizations and excuses not to alter the status quo, e.g. "population growth is needed for economic growth".

The same, of course, pertains to climate change. This has been seen coming since the 1970s but little has been done, say in terms of expediting the emergence of alternative energy sources, until now we have reached a critical threshold for action. Again, the old brain - like that of Donald Trump - fails to appreciate that, as when he babbled on 'Morning Joe':

"One of the dumbest statements I've ever heard in the history of politics ...was Obama's that our number one problem is global warming"

Embodying all the atavistic aspects of the old brain we recognize.

As the authors note, in respect of the inherent problem (p. 3):

"We don't perceive the world as it is, because our nervous system evolved to select only a small extract of reality and to ignore the rest. we never experience exactly the same situation twice, so it would be uneconomical to take in every occurrence. Instead of conveying everything about the world, our nervous system is 'impressed' only by dramatic changes. This internal spotlight makes us sensitive to the beginnings and endings of almost every event more than the changes, whether gigantic or tiny, in the middle. "

In the same early pages, Ornstein and Ehrlich note how this "old Mind" of a nation or people can be ramped up collectively and reinforced if its leaders also display and act on their own 'old Minds' prejudices, beliefs, etc. This is certainly evident in the statements of the current Republican field and their denial of global warming, or distorting it to portray it as not that big a problem.  Thankfully, not all Americans are "old brain"- compromised, as recent polls show that 64 % acknowledge it is mostly human caused, while 53 % say it is the most important issue, even surpassing the economy.

In terms of the Paris Climate Summit, the choices at this point are few to halt the 3.6 F threshold increase the participants are supposedly committed to halting. The problem is the steps needed now may be all but impossible to implement politically - especially as the GOP's old mind denizens have vowed to fight anything Obama agrees to.

To fix ideas, Bill McKibben's mathematical limits are instructive. We have roughly 550 gigatons (gT)  of carbon remaining that we can deposit into the atmosphere before earthly "Hell"  is unleashed in the form of rising seas, hellish temperatures and super heat waves, prolonged droughts and superstorms.

Give a current 30 gT/year deposition rate - and assuming we don't add to it,  that leaves us roughly  18 years before - give or take a fraction -  we end up in a likely runaway greenhouse world. It's a world you don't want to live in, believe me.  McKibben's  point was that if we are to avoid that crash inflection point everything must be done to limit the current rate of carbon deposition, including pursuing alternative energy options and imposing significant carbon taxes to limit demand.

The problem? The energy- and fossil fuel empires that govern most of our politicos and economic system don't see it that way. McKibben cited the fact that Exxon's share price, for example, is based on a total carbon deposition of at least 2,800 gT - which also conforms to expectations set by hedge funds, et al including Peabody Global. Thus, again, oil economics is poised against the welfare of humanity and the planet.

This isn't just scare mongering. The most recent reports on melting glaciers (Denver Post, Nov. 27, p. 16A),  show that "90 percent of the world's glaciers are retreating and many of the smaller ones - as in Glacier National Park - are disappearing most rapidly". Most significant is the impact beyond the loss of majestic scenery (such as wifey and I beheld on trips to Switzerland in 2014 and to Alaska in 2005).  Specifically, "thawing glaciers account for 20 percent of the sea level rise recorded in the past century in the past century adding to the meltwater coming from the polar ice caps and ice sheets."

 To put it as McKibben might: Do you want to be able to drive anywhere you wish cheaply and easily, or do you want to fry in endless 'summers' that last all year long...or ...with hundreds of F5  tornadoes to deal with -not to mention new diseases like cholera, amoebic dysentery and dengue fever?

The answer of the old brained Republicans is twofold: 1) they plan to vote to repeal power plant emission rules limiting CO2, and 2) they aim to block funneling and money to developing nations as part of the UN 'Green Climate Fund' to fight increasing CO2 levels. (WSJ,  Nov. 28-29, p. A5)  Nice guys! But....saddled with old brains!

Apart from the knuckle-dragging Reepos who we expect to be reactionary, McKibben's question needs to be answered by each of the 147 nations represented at the Paris Climate Summit.  The problem is that answering it correctly will mean subduing their "old brains". Can they do it? Given they haven't up to now, I am not too confident!

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/04/how-global-warming-deniers-get-better.html


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*An old idea, opinion, or saying that is commonly believed and repeated but which has since been shown to be untrue.