Category: Climate politics

For the benefit of mankind

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Last weekend I drew attention to Monbiot’s musings on financial and ecological crises. This weekend it’s ecological economist Herman Daly explaining in simple terms why economic growth has become uneconomic growth: we’re getting less wealth and more illth (hat tip: Things Break). That leads nicely to New Scientist’s special issue on The Folly of Growth – covered in detail at Things Break (follow the links there), and also under discussion at frogblog. There are limits to growth and we’re hitting them, but we lack the political and economic tools to deal with the problem. In that context, check out the recent PBS documentary Heat: it opens with an Indian scientist opining:

We are standing at the precipice of hell. If everybody else was to live as an American, we’re doomed.

See also: Nick “Report” Stern’s call for green solutions to the financial crisis. He can’t avoid the word growth, but at least he’s proposing less illth.

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Cloud nine (#2)

kanga.jpg Forty leading Australian scientists have issued an urgent call for action on climate change. Drafted by Barrie Pittock and Andrew Glickson, the statement says that there is a “window of opportunity to halt a climate crisis”, if Australia begins:

Urgently cutting carbon emissions.

Seizing the opportunity to fast-track utilisation of established and new clean energy technologies thus creating new business opportunities.

An urgent tree-planting campaign in Australia and its neighbors.

Attempts at CO2 capture through soil-carbon enrichment and preservation.

The statement has a list of nine suggested policies, including committing (and urging others to commit to) a peak greenhouse gas level of 450 ppm CO2e. Barry Brook at Brave New Climate, one of the signatories, suggests we may need to go further:

We need CO2-e to be 300-325 ppm, and >100% emissions reductions (with active geo-bio-sequestration) as soon as possible. Nothing less is going to pull out out of the sticky mire into which we are now rapidly sinking.

It would be useful if our science community could issue an equivalent statement in the run up to the election, to provide voters with guidance on what can and should be done here – and a yardstick against which to measure policy proposals (or the lack of them). Consider it the scientific equivalent of Treasury’s opening of the national books…

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You can’t Hide (your policy from me)

rodenymorph.gifA few months ago, Rodney Hide decided that he and his party had little to lose and votes to gain by declaring themselves to be climate sceptics. I’ve roundly criticised this stance in earlier posts, and this week I’ve been joined by The Listener‘s Ecologic columnist Sarah Barnett, who takes Hide to task here (full text available next week). With the election approaching, it’s time to dig a little deeper into the intellectual foundations of ACT’s climate change policy, such as they are.

The ACT web site now features a policy document [PDF], and a background briefing [PDF] on their policies page. Let’s take a detailed look…

Continue reading “You can’t Hide (your policy from me)”

Exclusive: ACT release election video explaining climate policy


Source [Hat tip: Cindy]

Love Minus Zero/No Limit?

Required reading this weekend: George Monbiot muses on the links between the financial crisis and the ecological crisis he believes we inevitably face.

As we goggle at the fluttering financial figures, a different set of numbers passes us by. On Friday, Pavan Sukhdev, the Deutsche Bank economist leading a European study on ecosystems, reported that we are losing natural capital worth between $2 trillion and $5 trillion every year, as a result of deforestation alone. The losses incurred so far by the financial sector amount to between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion.

As it happens, Sukhdev was interviewd by Kathryn Ryan on RNZ National last week: she kept getting her trillions confused with billions – numbers too big to conjure with (stream, MP3), numbers too frightening to admit easily (Economics of Ecosystems & Biodiversity report here). Monbiot continues:

The two crises have the same cause. In both cases, those who exploit the resource have demanded impossible rates of return and invoked debts that can never be repaid. In both cases we denied the likely consequences. I used to believe that collective denial was peculiar to climate change. Now I know that it’s the first response to every impending dislocation.

From this perspective, climate change is one symptom of a bigger resource and ecosystem crunch. We live in interesting times…

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