Over at
Grist, David Roberts
writes of "Markets and climate change: A case of cognitive dissonance":
Earlier this month, Nicholas Stern -- respected U.K. economist and author of the famed Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change -- cast a spotlight on what he calls a "profound contradiction at the heart of climate change policy."
(CSU Fresno Collegian)
On one side, the world's governments have pledged to hold temperature rise to 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F). To have even a 50/50 shot at meeting that target, humanity has a "carbon budget" of about 1,400 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide between now and 2050. The more we exceed that budget, the more the 2 degrees target slips out of reach. Here's the thing, though: The world's proven fossil fuel reserves, if burned, would create about 2.8 trillion tonnes of CO2, double that carbon budget. If countries are serious about 2 degrees, they must be planning to leave a lot of fossil fuels in the ground. Right?
On the other side, however, the world's top fossil fuel companies are valued at some $7.42 trillion (including the top 100 listed coal companies and the top 100 listed oil and gas companies). They are valued at this level because of proven fossil fuel reserves to which they have access. In other words, their valuation carries the implicit assumption that they will burn the fossil fuels available to them.
Markets are assuming that fossil fuel companies will burn the fossil fuels that the world's governments have, at least implicitly, said they cannot burn. That's the "profound contradiction." So what are markets thinking?
Well, either they think a full-fledged carbon capture and sequestration solution is going to spring into being overnight (spoiler: they don't think that) or they just don't think countries are serious about climate change. They think it's going to be business as usual. "If this is the case," says Stern ...
... the resulting rise in atmospheric concentrations could eventually mean, with a substantial probability, global warming of 5 degrees or more, to temperatures not seen on Earth for more than 30m years. That would probably transform where and how people could live and lead to the migration of hundreds of millions, as well as to conflict and severe economic decline. ...
It's not that the U.S. electricity system can't accommodate the level of changes necessary. Amory Lovins' new book Reinventing Fire shows how to transform the U.S. electricity system at a profit. Or check out Michael Moynihan's Electricity 2.0. Plenty of other analysts have charted out a course that U.S. policymakers could chart if they got serious. It's just that mainstream analysts don't expect them to.
And yet we do nothing to prepare for the future that inaction is going to bring us! It's a widespread and increasingly glaring case of cognitive dissonance in the institutions and practices at the center of the modern global economy. One way or the other, it's going to resolve itself, and I fear the results will not be pretty.
Cognitive dissonance, indeed. The idea that at the Durban conference, victory was barely snatched from the jaws of defeat by the final agreement is fantasy. Once again, the can was kicked down the road. These guys who always talk about carbon regulations strangling the economy should be made to write 100 times on the whiteboard in indelible marker: The environment is the economy. The environment is the economy. The environment is the economy.
Roberts has much more to say as well as some charts to illustrate his points at the link.
On this date at Daily Kos in 2002:
Chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix challenges the US and UK to reveal evidence that Iraq has WMD.
"If the UK and the US are convinced and they say they have evidence, well then one would expect that they would be able to tell us where is this stuff," he told BBC radio.
Ain't gonna happen. I don't believe they have any evidence. Otherwise, what better way to rally world support than to prove once and for all to everyone that Iraq was lying? Give the inspectors the name of just ONE facility suspected of having WMD, have the inspectors swoop in, find the evidence, and reveal it to the world. Bush's invasion would get A LOT easier at that point.
But Blix gets nothing, while Bush and Blair rant on about Hussein's lies. This was tiresome from day one, and it hasn't gotten any better since.
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