Search This Blog

Monday, July 23, 2012

Krugman On Climate Change

NYT: Loading the Climate Dice
It’s happening now.

3 comments:

Glynn Kalara said...

Prof. Krugman does an excellent summation of why things are the way they are in this whole mess and why they aren't getting better. It appears that an open declaration of WAR against the "bad" guys in this the Energy sector and their plutocratic and Press shills and cronies has now been declared by Bill McKibben and now Paul Krugman. Blame is being placed as people on the left attempt to wash their own hands of the guilt of destroying society enmass. Personally, I find it scary to see intellectuals of this stature basically starting to say and publish these denials of responsibility. I think it's because it's sadly dawned on them and many others that were all in a pickle were not likely to escape this time around and that maybe this is the indeed in a kind of way the end of time. ( at least for our society and maybe even humanity.)

Jim Sande said...

I know how strongly you are paying attention to global warming and how it is written about in the MSM. I was thinking just yesterday that we are seeing more and more people writing articles, like Krugman's, laying the cards out on the table. Chomsky for example has made global warming a central issue in his regular lectures and articles and this is recent and accelerating - within the last decade. Clearly climate change is the number one issue, it's just too freaking obvious and the implications are difficult to contemplate. We are in denial as a society of course. within society some individuals are wringing their hands and fretting. We keep putting the information out there in our own minor way and hope that somebody gets the word or that somebody let's the significance of the massive carbon emission pollution enter into the conscious mind leading to action on some level. Given what we know in terms of not any kind of lessening of carbon emissions in fact just the opposite - more and more carbon emissions, and given how we are already experiencing significant changes, and given that carbon monoxide exists in the atmosphere for 100 years, we have a few generations of people who will have to come to grips with climate change more drastically or perish. And those generations are going to have a helluva time of it.

Glynn Kalara said...

This is being seen by the right as an idealogical issue precisely because it would require as McKibben and others have pointed out for the Energy sector world-wide to essentially shut down and sequester 80% of it's reserves at this pt. to keep Global temps. from rising higher then 2 Deg. C over the next 38 yrs. This would destroy the value of these companies and as he pts. out most of the value of their stock price is already figured into those reseves as being value. It would also mean a collapse of the World's economic system as the Energy bubble worth by some estimates 25 trillion dollars would burst. Here's the catch, it appears if the math is right we have a devil's choice. Either switch to renewables ASAP and seize all carbon assets from their owners and immediately sequester those reserves for the foresellable future or perish in the massive shit storm the planet will unleash on top of and under us in the very near future. The Chamber of Commerce answer is to drill baby drill, burn baby burn and while doing it to ADAPT! That is a signal that the rich intend to hunker down and when the time comes use all their power to throw the rest of us and our heirs under the wheels of this calamity, while they dig in and go underground or into space or as they say ADAPT. It's a a declaration of WAR on all of us by the 001%. Its' up front and it's aggressive, a big fat FU humanity!