The obvious questions provoke the obvious answers. From my reading of the literature over the last month, and from everything I have learned at Copenhagen, there can be no doubt that the scientific consensus on climate change is consistent and overwhelming. So it leaves us with a quandary. All of these researchers, across a half dozen academic disciplines, are either right or they are terribly wrong.
In a dramatic break with recent policy, the Environmental Protection Agency has just formally announced plans to regulate climate changing pollution under the Clean Air Act, declaring clear evidence that greenhouse gases "threaten the public health and welfare of the American people." President Obama has pledged to attend the second week of the COP15 climate change talks in Cope
Today on Post Carbon, Juliet Eilperin writes:
Back in the mid-1990s, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change projected this would give the world a decent shot at avoiding dangerous climate impacts.
Tens of thousands of modern-day crusaders, charlatans, Nobel laureates, CEOs, quick-buck artists, earnest politicians, and assorted movie extras of every conceivable socio-political-ethnic-economic background will descend on Copenhagen for the next three weeks to participate in an orgy of carbon-bashing and flag-waving.
Many families who dutifully recycle, take mass transit, and have a house full of compact fluorescent light bulbs, would say they're doing their part to save the earth. However, a new study from the London School of Economics suggests that in developed countries, making the decision to have children dramatically increases your negative impact on the environment.
People sometimes ask me what they will learn by reading Heatstroke. Basically there are two key messages.
One I've already highlighted in past blogs and in a recent op-ed. Simply put, the first message is this: we've got a problem.
What comes to mind when you hear the words "natural resources?" Oil. Water. Nature.
Nature? In fact, yes, nature is one of the big ones. Ecologists and economists have a name for the natural resources that nature provides: "ecosystem services." They've calculated that globally the dollar-value of those services could be $54 trillion annually in 1997 dollars--for comparison the Gross World Product for 2008 was around $62 trillion.
My extended family tells me they're getting a little depressed about hearing all the bad things that might happen from global warming. So I guess it's time to point out that maybe it's not as bleak as it seems. Here's the good news.