The indispensable (to me anyway) “NY Review of Books” has an insightful look at Bill McKibben’s new book, Eaarth. The reviewer is no less a personage than Nicholas Stern. In generally praising “McKibben’s engaging and persuasive book,” Lord Stern gives a particularly succinct summary of the history of the science and present state of the attacks on it characterized by “…a skepticism often fostered by the distorted arguments of some with powerful interests in maintaining ‘business as usual.'”
Stern is an environmental economist with a blue-chip background. He led the UK’s path-breaking in-depth analysis of the potential for widespread economic damage from climate change.
One of Stern’s criticisms of McKibben’s analysis, though, is that it’s too pessimistic. Stern’s message is plain: “We have already embarked on what will be the most dynamic and creative energy and industrial revolution in our economic history: the transition to low-carbon growth. And this growth will be more energy-secure, safer, quieter, cleaner, and more biologically diverse.” (I concur and I’ve said so any number of times including here: The Technology-Driven Economy.)
We are, to be sure, in a dangerous place relative to our climate system and McKibben paints the vividly dark picture that people must recognize for the reality we are facing now. But we can halt and reverse our momentum. “Sound analysis, educated imagination, strong leadership, and a collaborative spirit can radically reduce the immense risks we are facing. And they could chart the way to three or four decades of great innovation and creativity, and lay the foundations for a more sustainable, collaborative, and equitable world.”
The same issue of the “NY Review” has an article by Paul Volcker on the economic crisis. It is powerful, convincing and clear about what has happened and where we need to be to avoid it happening again, certainly on the scale of what we’ve seen. What’s important for us to note here is that Volcker, who has not opined before on the climate crisis, as far as I know, says: “The need to achieve a consensus for effective action against global warming, for energy independence, and for protecting the environment is not going to go away. Are we really prepared to meet those problems, and the related fiscal implications? If not, today’s concerns may soon become tomorrow’s existential crises.” Existential.
One more important voice on the economy is “NY Times” columnist David Leonhardt. His recent magazine piece, Spillonomics: Underestimating Risk, has some critical insight into how we neglect to properly gauge environmental risk. He wraps up with a reference to climate change. “Then, of course, there are the greenhouse gases that oil wells (among other things) send into the atmosphere even when the wells function properly.” The potential consequences are catastrophic, just as with the BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico. We have been unwise in the extreme to not have properly considered the outcome of a spill and we would be more unwise (perhaps the word stupid works here too) to not think about the consequences of unmitigated climate change. (I would add that we are equally unwise to not look carefully enough at what can happen with a nuclear power accident or terrorist act at a plant or using stolen radioactive materials.)
Finally, there’s an important report that is imminent from the International Energy Agency (IEA) on fossil fuel subsidies. The FT reports here “The world economy spends more than $550bn in energy subsidies a year, about 75 per cent more than previously thought, according to the first exhaustive study of the financial assistance devoted to oil, natural gas and coal consumption.” But Fatih Birol, chief economist at the IEA, says if we jettisoned subsidies we would alter the energy equation “quickly and substantially.” Barack Obama has called for a phasing out of these ruinous subsidies. This is “an idea whose time has come.” The FT article concludes “Critics of energy subsidies say they encourage wasteful consumption, reduce global energy security, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with the threat of climate change.”
An earlier estimate of the state of worldwide energy subsidies, noted here by the FT blog EnergySource, looks like this:
Note the absurd disparity, at this late date, in the subsidies for renewables relative to those for fossil fuels. Important voices like Stern and Volcker are telling us to change this equation. Let’s echo their message back to the policymakers. That’s our job.
