Hamilton Nolan says: "Eventually, the costs to the nation of subsidizing the ability of people to live in unwise locations will be so enormous that all the rest of the citizens will revolt."
I'd hope so. But no one revolts now at the equivalent subsidies provided to the ruling class, be it in the form of massive subsidies to corporations in various forms, or outright regressive tax laws, or......the list just goes on.
Of all the terrifying information in this extraordinary piece, the most horrifying line is, “The old models no longer suffice.” Because the climate dynamics are changing at speeds we never anticipated, even our once dubious efforts to predict are fatally flawed. The data won’t help us. So the question becomes: what guides us now as we attempt to mitigate, predict and prepare for the changes that we once thought wouldn’t happen in our lifetime. We’re way beyond the “We told you so” stage.
For sure, SOME element of a plan needs to form … The generations that will have to live with it are still to young to make these plans — We OWE it them to do all we can, including to resist such absurdities as we see coming our way … “weather manipulation” indeed … now we have to deal with THAT conspiracy baloney — egad.
Agreed. But it’s hard to plan when the data on which those plans were once based is no longer valid. Part of what Mr. McKibben writes is that we can’t trust the current projections because we blew past them. So, what’s the new data? And sidebar: the climate deniers are not part of the solution, so they don’t deserve a minute of our attention. Our time is too valuable, and there seems to be even less of it than we thought.
We need more than projections about what to expect from the status quo — we need “turn around.” Ah, if any such thing is even any longer possible.
I hear of “drawdown,” and then read of proposals to seed the ocean with crushed limestone or some such — I coud have it wrong. What would be the consequences of THAT?
What plan can we possibly have?
First and foremost — prevent a second Trump administration.
And second, get the Democrats to pledge OFF fossil fuels — How can anyone observe the temperatures in the West and the storms in the East and still not recognize doom as it descends … !
As for climate deniers —- EEEK. They are still with us. They still vote on solutions {or to scrap solutions}. They still function in our world to help or hinder the task of preserving a livable planet. What they deserve, and what WE must do, vis a vis communicating and dealing with them, may not be the same two things. Very few of us can DICTATE the future of the world. If we WANT a dictator to do it, well, maybe we’ll get one who thinks the solution is to let a sh*t ton of us die off, and the ones left over — the rich ones? — will carry on …. {I’m picturing the end of “Don’t Look Up,” when the affluent class got off their escape rocket on a new planet …}.
Mmmm. The timeline for mitigating, not just avoiding, climate change is NOW, if anyone was still wondering, BTW.
Fewer people on the planet. That is the only feasible way to match fast-dwindling natural resources with insatiable human appetites.
There are several ways to reduce human population. Either we choose a humane one, or mother nature will choose an inhumane one for us. Either way it is going to happen.
Further to the instability climate change is bringing to the property insurance industry, I worry about the prospects - indeed the authenticity - of long-term retirement plans and guaranteed annuities? These are long-term investments in an increasingly unstable future. Has anyone done any research in this area?
As someone a few decades away from retirement, I wonder the same. It very much feels like saving for a world and a lifestyle that will likely no longer exist by the time I get there. At the same time, I know I'm very privileged to even have enough to save at all.
I did a double take when I read Josh Marshall's tweet about the "news currently circulating on the right is that Milton and Helene were the result of “weather manipulation” by Democrats designed to…something." Are they that out of touch with reality/susceptible to manipulation by unscrupulous demagogues? Apparently so.
There's an ongoing epistemic breakdown with the internet as a force multiplier. Some of it by kids, some of it by sincere but ignorant individuals and a lot of it by malicious bad actors with political motivations- an age of confusion with everyone and no one experts, with authoritative scientists maligned and their motivations impugned. And oddly, most of this rubbish is being generated by one of our two political factions.
Grr…this pisses me off. They think it’s designed as manipulation to get at the Lithium deposits in the Asheville area, which is what’s used to make electric cars. in my opinion, it just seems like this means that nature gets “othered” which is just wrong.
I am reading "Orwell's Roses" by Rebecca Solnit. The chapter Forcing Lemons is what we are facing in terms of a political hurricane with disastrous consequences. An unpleasant reminder.
To add to our woes, we may soon have to deal with larger, damaging hailstorms. Not a trivial matter. Climatalogical research is showing that thunderstorm intensification is also going on and increased convectivity will lead to the mechanism that generates significantly larger hailstones. Our agriculture will take the brunt of it as well as other surface structures. Aaron Price has written about it recently on his substack.
Last night as 80 km/h winds whipped at our house here on the western coast of Portugal, a friend sent a screenshot of a hurricane that was headed towards Europe and I was like, wait, what?! That's not a normal direction for a hurricane to head! Welp, it *was* a super rare thing, but now thanks to warming ocean temperatures, they do come this way with increasing frequency! That is until the AMOC breaks down and we're plunged into an Ice Age. Not cool!
“The deep fear that wakes me up at night “ is that humanity will cling so tenaciously to the outmoded and incorrect idea that politics, and only politics, can steer humanity through the “transitioning away from fossil fuels in a just, orderly,...equitable [and timely manner]” as COP28 correctly concluded that we must, that we will remain trapped in no action until it is too late.
Transitioning away means transitioning towards. Hospicing energy extraction from hydrocarbons as we redesign and reconstruct a new global energy ecosystem to be purpose-rebuilt for energy sufficiency complete with habitat longevity and social equity on a planetary scale in the 21st Century and beyond.
This is unprecedented. Humanity has never done anything like that before.
It will require investment at unprecedented scale and on unprecedented terms. Debt investment, yes. But critically and catalytically, equity investment.
Banks can be mobilized to provide the debt, but the Capital Markets cannot provide the equity. The Capital Markets are created by design to supply equity for Growth through Creative Destruction.
Transition is not Growth.
Destruction is not orderly. Neither is it equitable. Or just.
Pensions can provide the equity we need on a planetary scale to catalyze banks in adding the debt for “transitioning away from fossil fuels in a just, orderly and equitable manner”.
What deep fear that keeps me up at night is that they won’t. Because we will not ask them to.
You speak of the need for “humanity” to do these things, Tim. I see and hear it … Humanity.
We must find a way for us to recognize that such is who we are — not only nations and tribes at risk, needing to take care of our own. But humanity, on a small planet. We WILL take steps to protect “our own,” of course, breaking our overall humanity into smaller bits. But if we do not ALSO see that other nations and ethnicities have as much “right” to thrive on this planet as any of us do, then fighting each other for ownership of the resources may be the downfall of worldwide “civilization.”
I hate to think the dystopian novelists are prescient, but …. Mad Max World, anyone?
Right now, we have “alliances,” and transnational agreements …. But we are still fragmented, though we do have the merest hint of “worldwide” cooperation in the UN — it’s flawed, for sure, but it suggests we MIGHT learn that we’re all in this together …
That is one of the lessons that has to be taught — WE ARE ALL ON THIS PLANET TOGETHER —
{Does any country entertain the thought that it might be the embodiment of The Emperor Palpatine — Ruler Over All? That ain’t gonna happen. Can’t we all just get along?
Dear Bill, in reference to "the boreal forests of Canada burned last summer, displacing Indigenous people of the north but mostly avoiding cities", I like to inform you that the city of Lytton in the province of BC was burnt to the ground from a forest fire in 2021 and just this past summer almost 1/2 of Jasper in Alberta was destroyed by wild fire also. Urban areas with mostly non-indigenous population in Canada are not spared. Those were not the first, Fort McMurray (Alberta) was burnt down in 2016. Always enjoy and appreciate The Crucial Years. Ted
Fear is useful emotion when the action needed to avoid the feared result is straightforward such as fleeing from the oncoming hurricane.
It is not helpful at all in figuring out the lowest cost policies for mitigating future harms from the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere. Indeed, I fear that "fear" only leads to one of two equally bad options:
a) advocacy of extremely costly (trying to stop specific fossil fuel development projects), even counterproductive policies (ethanol subsidies) or
b) denial that net emissions of CO2 cause harm at all.
It takes cool rationality to figure out how to get the public to accept and then the politicians to enact taxes on net emissions of CO2.
The insights into dysfunctional hazard insurance rate setting were spot on. It appears that especially in Florida rates were not set according to the the degrees of actual risk. Housing and business owners did not have the proper incentives about where to place their assets.
There is no such thing as green/renewable energy. Solar panels and EVs require environmentally unsound mining using slave labor. Wind turbines need to be manufactured, causing more environmental damage. Recycling is a joke and also contributes to the problem. We're not going to win.
Hi Bill, I understand that you called out Jill Stein at a climate conference recently. I am not on social media to speak of so I really don’t know how to amplify this fantastic video on her hypocrisy and narcissism. I wish that as many young people as possible-especially those in the battleground states-could see it.
Hamilton Nolan says: "Eventually, the costs to the nation of subsidizing the ability of people to live in unwise locations will be so enormous that all the rest of the citizens will revolt."
I'd hope so. But no one revolts now at the equivalent subsidies provided to the ruling class, be it in the form of massive subsidies to corporations in various forms, or outright regressive tax laws, or......the list just goes on.
Of all the terrifying information in this extraordinary piece, the most horrifying line is, “The old models no longer suffice.” Because the climate dynamics are changing at speeds we never anticipated, even our once dubious efforts to predict are fatally flawed. The data won’t help us. So the question becomes: what guides us now as we attempt to mitigate, predict and prepare for the changes that we once thought wouldn’t happen in our lifetime. We’re way beyond the “We told you so” stage.
For sure, SOME element of a plan needs to form … The generations that will have to live with it are still to young to make these plans — We OWE it them to do all we can, including to resist such absurdities as we see coming our way … “weather manipulation” indeed … now we have to deal with THAT conspiracy baloney — egad.
Agreed. But it’s hard to plan when the data on which those plans were once based is no longer valid. Part of what Mr. McKibben writes is that we can’t trust the current projections because we blew past them. So, what’s the new data? And sidebar: the climate deniers are not part of the solution, so they don’t deserve a minute of our attention. Our time is too valuable, and there seems to be even less of it than we thought.
We need more than projections about what to expect from the status quo — we need “turn around.” Ah, if any such thing is even any longer possible.
I hear of “drawdown,” and then read of proposals to seed the ocean with crushed limestone or some such — I coud have it wrong. What would be the consequences of THAT?
What plan can we possibly have?
First and foremost — prevent a second Trump administration.
And second, get the Democrats to pledge OFF fossil fuels — How can anyone observe the temperatures in the West and the storms in the East and still not recognize doom as it descends … !
Thirdly? What … ?
I’m at a loss.
As for climate deniers —- EEEK. They are still with us. They still vote on solutions {or to scrap solutions}. They still function in our world to help or hinder the task of preserving a livable planet. What they deserve, and what WE must do, vis a vis communicating and dealing with them, may not be the same two things. Very few of us can DICTATE the future of the world. If we WANT a dictator to do it, well, maybe we’ll get one who thinks the solution is to let a sh*t ton of us die off, and the ones left over — the rich ones? — will carry on …. {I’m picturing the end of “Don’t Look Up,” when the affluent class got off their escape rocket on a new planet …}.
Mmmm. The timeline for mitigating, not just avoiding, climate change is NOW, if anyone was still wondering, BTW.
HOW to do it … well, there’s the rub.
Fewer people on the planet. That is the only feasible way to match fast-dwindling natural resources with insatiable human appetites.
There are several ways to reduce human population. Either we choose a humane one, or mother nature will choose an inhumane one for us. Either way it is going to happen.
The Chiffon margarine people had it right back in 1974, “It’s not nice to fool mother nature.” The payback keeps getting bigger and more deadly.
Further to the instability climate change is bringing to the property insurance industry, I worry about the prospects - indeed the authenticity - of long-term retirement plans and guaranteed annuities? These are long-term investments in an increasingly unstable future. Has anyone done any research in this area?
As someone a few decades away from retirement, I wonder the same. It very much feels like saving for a world and a lifestyle that will likely no longer exist by the time I get there. At the same time, I know I'm very privileged to even have enough to save at all.
Good question
I did a double take when I read Josh Marshall's tweet about the "news currently circulating on the right is that Milton and Helene were the result of “weather manipulation” by Democrats designed to…something." Are they that out of touch with reality/susceptible to manipulation by unscrupulous demagogues? Apparently so.
There's an ongoing epistemic breakdown with the internet as a force multiplier. Some of it by kids, some of it by sincere but ignorant individuals and a lot of it by malicious bad actors with political motivations- an age of confusion with everyone and no one experts, with authoritative scientists maligned and their motivations impugned. And oddly, most of this rubbish is being generated by one of our two political factions.
Grr…this pisses me off. They think it’s designed as manipulation to get at the Lithium deposits in the Asheville area, which is what’s used to make electric cars. in my opinion, it just seems like this means that nature gets “othered” which is just wrong.
I am reading "Orwell's Roses" by Rebecca Solnit. The chapter Forcing Lemons is what we are facing in terms of a political hurricane with disastrous consequences. An unpleasant reminder.
Yes, completely out of touch in so many ways. And committed to the Big Lie, which is a conglomerate of a bunch of Big Lies, related and unrelated.
To add to our woes, we may soon have to deal with larger, damaging hailstorms. Not a trivial matter. Climatalogical research is showing that thunderstorm intensification is also going on and increased convectivity will lead to the mechanism that generates significantly larger hailstones. Our agriculture will take the brunt of it as well as other surface structures. Aaron Price has written about it recently on his substack.
Last night as 80 km/h winds whipped at our house here on the western coast of Portugal, a friend sent a screenshot of a hurricane that was headed towards Europe and I was like, wait, what?! That's not a normal direction for a hurricane to head! Welp, it *was* a super rare thing, but now thanks to warming ocean temperatures, they do come this way with increasing frequency! That is until the AMOC breaks down and we're plunged into an Ice Age. Not cool!
😣
“The deep fear that wakes me up at night “ is that humanity will cling so tenaciously to the outmoded and incorrect idea that politics, and only politics, can steer humanity through the “transitioning away from fossil fuels in a just, orderly,...equitable [and timely manner]” as COP28 correctly concluded that we must, that we will remain trapped in no action until it is too late.
Transitioning away means transitioning towards. Hospicing energy extraction from hydrocarbons as we redesign and reconstruct a new global energy ecosystem to be purpose-rebuilt for energy sufficiency complete with habitat longevity and social equity on a planetary scale in the 21st Century and beyond.
This is unprecedented. Humanity has never done anything like that before.
It will require investment at unprecedented scale and on unprecedented terms. Debt investment, yes. But critically and catalytically, equity investment.
Banks can be mobilized to provide the debt, but the Capital Markets cannot provide the equity. The Capital Markets are created by design to supply equity for Growth through Creative Destruction.
Transition is not Growth.
Destruction is not orderly. Neither is it equitable. Or just.
Pensions can provide the equity we need on a planetary scale to catalyze banks in adding the debt for “transitioning away from fossil fuels in a just, orderly and equitable manner”.
What deep fear that keeps me up at night is that they won’t. Because we will not ask them to.
You speak of the need for “humanity” to do these things, Tim. I see and hear it … Humanity.
We must find a way for us to recognize that such is who we are — not only nations and tribes at risk, needing to take care of our own. But humanity, on a small planet. We WILL take steps to protect “our own,” of course, breaking our overall humanity into smaller bits. But if we do not ALSO see that other nations and ethnicities have as much “right” to thrive on this planet as any of us do, then fighting each other for ownership of the resources may be the downfall of worldwide “civilization.”
I hate to think the dystopian novelists are prescient, but …. Mad Max World, anyone?
Right now, we have “alliances,” and transnational agreements …. But we are still fragmented, though we do have the merest hint of “worldwide” cooperation in the UN — it’s flawed, for sure, but it suggests we MIGHT learn that we’re all in this together …
That is one of the lessons that has to be taught — WE ARE ALL ON THIS PLANET TOGETHER —
{Does any country entertain the thought that it might be the embodiment of The Emperor Palpatine — Ruler Over All? That ain’t gonna happen. Can’t we all just get along?
Gad …}
Dear Bill, in reference to "the boreal forests of Canada burned last summer, displacing Indigenous people of the north but mostly avoiding cities", I like to inform you that the city of Lytton in the province of BC was burnt to the ground from a forest fire in 2021 and just this past summer almost 1/2 of Jasper in Alberta was destroyed by wild fire also. Urban areas with mostly non-indigenous population in Canada are not spared. Those were not the first, Fort McMurray (Alberta) was burnt down in 2016. Always enjoy and appreciate The Crucial Years. Ted
Fear is useful emotion when the action needed to avoid the feared result is straightforward such as fleeing from the oncoming hurricane.
It is not helpful at all in figuring out the lowest cost policies for mitigating future harms from the emission of CO2 into the atmosphere. Indeed, I fear that "fear" only leads to one of two equally bad options:
a) advocacy of extremely costly (trying to stop specific fossil fuel development projects), even counterproductive policies (ethanol subsidies) or
b) denial that net emissions of CO2 cause harm at all.
It takes cool rationality to figure out how to get the public to accept and then the politicians to enact taxes on net emissions of CO2.
The insights into dysfunctional hazard insurance rate setting were spot on. It appears that especially in Florida rates were not set according to the the degrees of actual risk. Housing and business owners did not have the proper incentives about where to place their assets.
https://thomaslhutcheson.substack.com/p/climate-risk-and-insurance
There is no such thing as green/renewable energy. Solar panels and EVs require environmentally unsound mining using slave labor. Wind turbines need to be manufactured, causing more environmental damage. Recycling is a joke and also contributes to the problem. We're not going to win.
Thank you very much for this.
The times...they are a changing.
As is out climate.
As is our intellectual accumane... Back to Neanderthals we a going
We must all vote like our lives depend on it, because they do. November 5!
https://cribb.substack.com/p/the-deafening-silence-in-the-eye
Hi Bill, I understand that you called out Jill Stein at a climate conference recently. I am not on social media to speak of so I really don’t know how to amplify this fantastic video on her hypocrisy and narcissism. I wish that as many young people as possible-especially those in the battleground states-could see it.
https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZP886aVFK/