Michael Mann: Climate change is already costing us $1 trillion a year.
Aljazeera asks Professor Mann why there is still confusion among Americans about the perils of climate change, at a time when the scientific consensus is virtually complete.
Some recent links on the impact:
Much of Australia’s farmland could turn to desert or be subject to flooding
Some 20-30% of plant and animal species will disappear if we go on spewing C02 into the atmosphere.
Poorest, tropical fisheries are being hit hardest by climate change
Fish species are threatened, are already changing their habitats, and many could go extinct.
and, America’s first climate change refugees… in Alaska.
This kind of direct action, where activists used a lobster fishing boat to block a coal freighter’s delivery, is likely to accelerate. Stopping climate change will be the Civil Rights movement of the 21st century.
maybe a case can be made that the evacuation of portions of Devil’s Lake, ND, created earlier climate change refugees.
What is so very tragic is we at present have the technology to stop our goose stepping march towards the climate abyss.
It would require of us a “moon shot” effort: The Pentagon, declaring AGW our greatest national security threat, could pivot purchases from fancy jets (to fight terrorists?) to thousands of 2 MW wind turbines and solar farms. This stuff isn’t lost to war, either.
The energy sold at less than parity with coal energy, could be a revenue stream that could lower our taxes or be used for much needed infrastructure and education, for example..
A pollution fee on Carbon also could be collected to lower other taxes and bend the free market towards low carbon energy. Say, $20/ton Carbon, increasing annually.
Such bills are in Congress, but then, sadly, you have the Tea Party and what I call the Southern Revenge. These characters would sacrifice the next 20 generations to “get even” or win an ideological argument.
OR, are we to follow the “bravest” generation that fought WWII, with the “dumbest”?
I would have to say that we have probably become a combination of “the stupidest,and the greediest” generation. I no longer worry that I will die much early, if at all. My concern is , as most who understand, for my children and grandchildren.If Obama doesn’t approve the XL pipeline, he is likely to face impeachment and a finding of guilty of treason. WRONG. But I hope he can be strong, and deny it, having seen the pictures of “KOCH-COKE” byproduct that will overcome many portions of our country. I am a scientist, but there is no need for me to talk about that. It is nearly unanimous as we all know.We just still have too many “bone-head” who insist on spending their $$ to buy huge, revved up pickup trucks, for no use but to show, and that waste so much gasoline, and make our situation so much worse.
On the other hand, in addition to all the people who are invested in just doing more of the same combusto-consumption, there are a lot of people who are seeing great investment opportunities in various aspects of what even they are calling “climate change,” out of one side of their mouths at least.
For those who have that prudent careful wise $5 to invest every week and are young enough to expect decades of compound interest and growth of “capital” to comfort their declining years, here are a few places to start looking for opportunities:
link to bloomberg.com
link to mindfulmoney.co.uk
link to iigcc.org
link to businessweek.com
I guess until the last dehydrated, hyperthermic human drops and dies, it will always be a case that “it is an ill wind indeed that blows no man good…”