Dear Colleagues,
Paul Krugman's column in today's edition of the New York Times is
terrible and sobering reading. I urge you to share this with your
friends --
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/29/opinion/29krugman.html
Krugman, a Nobel Laureate in economics, is a consistent and powerful
voice for sustainability as the foundation for long-term prosperity. Of
course, without a livable planet, there will be no one left to prosper
and nowhere left to do it.
What frightens me about this column is that the predictions are changing
even more dramatically than I had realized. Scientists at MIT are now
predicting a rise of as much as 9 degrees by the end of the century. I
was already frightened by reading what will happen with a rise of 6
degrees in Mark Lynas's book, Six Degrees - Our Future on a Hotter
Planet
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Six-Degrees-Future-Hotter-Planet/dp/0007209053/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1246266527&sr=1-1
I'm passing this along, not to criticize one group of political
opportunists , but because Krugman has his fingers on the issue.
Warm wishes,
Ken
Ken Friedman, PhD, DSc (hc), FDRS
Professor
Dean
Swinburne Design
Swinburne University of Technology
Melbourne, Australia
--
Betraying the Planet
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: June 28, 2009
So the House passed the Waxman-Markey climate-change bill. In political
terms, it was a remarkable achievement.
But 212 representatives voted no. A handful of these no votes came from
representatives who considered the bill too weak, but most rejected the
bill because they rejected the whole notion that we have to do something
about greenhouse gases.
And as I watched the deniers make their arguments, I couldn’t help
thinking that I was watching a form of treason — treason against the
planet.
To fully appreciate the irresponsibility and immorality of
climate-change denial, you need to know about the grim turn taken by the
latest climate research.
The fact is that the planet is changing faster than even pessimists
expected: ice caps are shrinking, arid zones spreading, at a terrifying
rate. And according to a number of recent studies, catastrophe — a rise
in temperature so large as to be almost unthinkable — can no longer be
considered a mere possibility. It is, instead, the most likely outcome
if we continue along our present course.
Thus researchers at M.I.T., who were previously predicting a temperature
rise of a little more than 4 degrees by the end of this century, are now
predicting a rise of more than 9 degrees. Why? Global greenhouse gas
emissions are rising faster than expected; some mitigating factors, like
absorption of carbon dioxide by the oceans, are turning out to be weaker
than hoped; and there’s growing evidence that climate change is
self-reinforcing — that, for example, rising temperatures will cause
some arctic tundra to defrost, releasing even more carbon dioxide into
the atmosphere.
Temperature increases on the scale predicted by the M.I.T. researchers
and others would create huge disruptions in our lives and our economy.
As a recent authoritative U.S. government report points out, by the end
of this century New Hampshire may well have the climate of North
Carolina today, Illinois may have the climate of East Texas, and across
the country extreme, deadly heat waves — the kind that traditionally
occur only once in a generation — may become annual or biannual events.
In other words, we’re facing a clear and present danger to our way of
life, perhaps even to civilization itself. How can anyone justify
failing to act?
Well, sometimes even the most authoritative analyses get things wrong.
And if dissenting opinion-makers and politicians based their dissent on
hard work and hard thinking — if they had carefully studied the issue,
consulted with experts and concluded that the overwhelming scientific
consensus was misguided — they could at least claim to be acting
responsibly.
But if you watched the debate on Friday, you didnthought hard about a crucial issue, and are trying to do the right
thing. What you saw, instead, were people who show no sign of being
interested in the truth. They don’t like the political and policy
implications of climate change, so they’ve decided not to believe in it —
and they’ll grab any argument, no matter how disreputable, that feeds
their denial.
Indeed, if there was a defining moment in Friday’s debate, it was the
declaration by Representative Paul Broun of Georgia that climate change
is nothing but a “hoax” that has been “perpetrated out of the scientific
community.” I’d call this a crazy conspiracy theory, but doing so would
actually be unfair to crazy conspiracy theorists. After all, to believe
that global warming is a hoax you have to believe in a vast cabal
consisting of thousands of scientists — a cabal so powerful that it has
managed to create false records on everything from global temperatures
to Arctic sea ice.
Yet Mr. Broun’s declaration was met with applause.
Given this contempt for hard science, I’m almost reluctant to mention
the deniers’ dishonesty on matters economic. But in addition to
rejecting climate science, the opponents of the climate bill made a
point of misrepresenting the results of studies of the bill’s economic
impact, which all suggest that the cost will be relatively low.
Still, is it fair to call climate denial a form of treason? Isn’t it
politics as usual?
Yes, it is — and that’s why it’s unforgivable.
Do you remember the days when Bush administration officials claimed that
terrorism posed an “existential threat” to America, a threat in whose
face normal rules no longer applied? That was hyperbole — but the
existential threat from climate change is all too real.
Yet the deniers are choosing, willfully, to ignore that threat, placing
future generations of Americans in grave danger, simply because it’s in
their political interest to pretend that there’s nothing to worry about.
If that’s not betrayal, I don’t know what is.
--
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