This Is Why We Are Doomed
Politics / Climate Change Mar 26, 2014 - 06:39 PM GMTBy: Raul_I_Meijer
If there’s one thing that defines why we, and the world we live in, are doomed, it can be found – once more – in a recent spat of (leaked) reactions to the upcoming new IPCC report. We’ve come a long way since skeptics started budging in the way creationists demand equal time on the new Cosmos series – only more successful – and now we’re way past mere skepticism. Not only has it become totally acceptable to pooh pooh and hush hush climate change, we’ve arrived at the point where we go look for positive angles.
The first step in the new message is that things are not nearly as bad as we were once told, as is so craftfully put in words by the subtle change from ‘mitigation’ to ‘adaptation’. Throwing in the term ‘resilience’ further enforces the positive notion. As the Telegraph puts it:
Climate Change: The Debate Is About To Change Radically
The latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is due out next week. If the leaked draft is reflected in the published report, it will constitute the formal moving on of the debate from the past, futile focus upon “mitigation” to a new debate about resilience and adaptation.
The new report will apparently tell us that the global GDP costs of an expected global average temperature increase of 2.5 degrees Celsius over the 21st century will be between 0.2% and 2%. To place that in context, the well-known Stern Review of 2006 estimated the costs as 5-20% of GDP. Stern estimates the costs of his recommended policies for mitigating climate change at 2% of GDP – and his estimates are widely regarded as relatively optimistic (others estimate mitigation costs as high as 10% of global GDP).
Achieving material mitigation, at a cost of 2% and more of global GDP, would require international co-ordination that we have known since the failure of the Copenhagen conference on climate change simply was not going to happen. Even if it did happen, and were conducted optimally, it would mitigate only a fraction of the total rise, and might create its own risks. And to add to all this, now we are told that the cost might be as low as 0.2% of GDP. At a 2.4% annual GDP growth rate, the global economy increases 0.2% every month.
See? We would be robbing ourselves by paying any further attention to Nicolas Stern, who just 8 years ago exaggerated the economical costs of climate change as much as 1000%. Has Stern now been found out to be a charlatan? Well, that too, and the science has greatly improved, through the addition of think tanks and scientists that know before they start researching that all dire warnings are just bogus anyway.
And no-one can seriously expect us to do anything drastic like shaking up the comfort we live in if the dollar cost is so low in comparison to the inconveniences we would have to suffer, can they?
So the mitigation deal has become this: Accept enormous inconvenience, placing authoritarian control into the hands of global agencies, at huge costs that in some cases exceed 17 times the benefits even on the Government’s own evaluation criteria, with a global cost of 2% of GDP at the low end and the risk that the cost will be vastly greater, and do all of this for an entire century, and then maybe – just maybe – we might save between one and ten months of global GDP growth. Can anyone seriously claim, with a straight face, that that should be regarded as an attractive deal or that the public is suffering from a psychological disorder if it resists mitigation policies?
But don’t let’s stop there; It’s not only that monetary costs are now claimed to be less than thought before, no, climate change should even be seen as offering opportunities:
Global warming poses risks, but also opportunities: IPCC
“Although it focuses on a whole analytical and sometimes depressing view of the challenges we face, it also looks at the opportunities we face,” said Christopher B. Field, the co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. “This can not only help us to deal with climate change but ultimately build a better world.”
This is of course just another way of saying: “how much money can we make from destroying the world we live in?” But that’s undoubtedly not how the IPCCs Mr Field would like you to see it. The IPCC long ago stopped being a serious research organization. Institutes and corporations who felt threatened in their ability to make money and hold on to power have successfully infiltrated it and demanded “equal airtime”.
And that’s a perfect reflection of the societal model we live in. Every single thing in our lives gets reduced to its dollar value. And if it’s too costly, sorry, but we must throw it out. Every plant, every river, every animal, every sunset and every human being only have a value insofar as it can be expressed in dollar terms.
Which is bad news for polar bears and lions and rhinos – and ultimately people, first in Africa, Asia, South America, then at home -, since they have value only as tourist attractions. And isn’t it much more convenient and cost effective to dump a few of each in a zoo somewhere so we can simply drive to go see them, instead of going on safari’s or Arctic cruises?
Nature is useless on its own; it only has a perceived value where we can stick a price tag on it. No matter that nature is where we come from and are an integral part of, and it never came with a bottom line until we invented one. Despite the fact that we have very little idea of how nature actually works. But then, that is the core of our tragedy, isn’t it? We manage to fool ourselves into believing that we are mighty smart. That’s a surefire way to get everything that really counts all wrong.
Our children and children’s children are going to find out that the only thing we really know about complex systems is that we don’t know much of anything about them. And that when risking to disturb them, the precautionary principle should always be the first thing on our minds.
Assigning dollar values to everything we see around us is a convenient simplification of things, and it guarantees that those who already have most dollars stay on top, but there’s nothing smart about it when you look at it in terms of complex systems or the precautionary principle.
But the worst part must be that it doesn’t make anyone any happier, either. And that we’re not capable of understanding that. We don’t know what makes us happy. We need other people to tell us what does. And there’s a lot of other people who see profit opportunities in that.
Anyway, this is why we’re doomed: if we don’t understand the consequences of our actions, then we just ignore them. Thinking that if we don’t understand them, how bad can they be? Since we are very smart, right? Thing is, if we were so smart, why do we feel the need to almost infinitely simplify our view of the planet’s almost infinitely complex system, by attaching price tags to everything? Either from a rational, scientific point of view, or from an emotional point of view, how does that make sense?
This article addresses just one of the many issues discussed in Nicole Foss’ new video presentation, Facing the Future, co-presented with Laurence Boomert and available from the Automatic Earth Store. Get your copy now, be much better prepared for 2014, and support The Automatic Earth in the process!
By Raul Ilargi Meijer
Website: http://theautomaticearth.com (provides unique analysis of economics, finance, politics and social dynamics in the context of Complexity Theory)
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