Cassandras of Climate
By PAUL KRUGMAN
NY Times Op-Ed: September 28, 2009
Every once in a while I feel despair over the fate of the planet. If you've
been following climate science, you know what I mean: the sense that we're
hurtling toward catastrophe but nobody wants to hear about it or do anything
to avert it.
And here's the thing: I'm not engaging in hyperbole. These days, dire
warnings aren't the delusional raving of cranks. They're what come out of
the most widely respected climate models, devised by the leading
researchers. The prognosis for the planet has gotten much, much worse in
just the last few years.
What's driving this new pessimism? Partly it's the fact that some predicted
changes, like a decline in Arctic Sea ice, are happening much faster than
expected. Partly it's growing evidence that feedback loops amplifying the
effects of man-made greenhouse gas emissions are stronger than previously
realized. For example, it has long been understood that global warming will
cause the tundra to thaw, releasing carbon dioxide, which will cause even
more warming, but new research shows far more carbon dioxide locked in the
permafrost than previously thought, which means a much bigger feedback
effect.
The result of all this is that climate scientists have, en masse, become
Cassandras - gifted with the ability to prophesy future disasters, but
cursed with the inability to get anyone to believe them.
And we're not just talking about disasters in the distant future, either.
The really big rise in global temperature probably won't take place until
the second half of this century, but there will be plenty of damage long
before then.
For example, one 2007 paper in the journal Science is titled "Model
Projections of an Imminent Transition to a More Arid Climate in Southwestern
North America" - yes, "imminent" - and reports "a broad consensus among
climate models" that a permanent drought, bringing Dust Bowl-type
conditions, "will become the new climatology of the American Southwest
within a time frame of years to decades."
So if you live in, say, Los Angeles, and liked those pictures of red skies
and choking dust in Sydney, Australia, last week, no need to travel. They'll
be coming your way in the not-too-distant future.
Now, at this point I have to make the obligatory disclaimer that no
individual weather event can be attributed to global warming. The point,
however, is that climate change will make events like that Australian dust
storm much more common.
In a rational world, then, the looming climate disaster would be our
dominant political and policy concern. But it manifestly isn't. Why not?
Part of the answer is that it's hard to keep peoples' attention focused.
Weather fluctuates - New Yorkers may recall the heat wave that pushed the
thermometer above 90 in April - and even at a global level, this is enough
to cause substantial year-to-year wobbles in average temperature. As a
result, any year with record heat is normally followed by a number of cooler
years: According to Britain's Met Office, 1998 was the hottest year so far,
although NASA - which arguably has better data - says it was 2005. And it's
all too easy to reach the false conclusion that the danger is past.
But the larger reason we're ignoring climate change is that Al Gore was
right: This truth is just too inconvenient. Responding to climate change
with the vigor that the threat deserves would not, contrary to legend, be
devastating for the economy as a whole. But it would shuffle the economic
deck, hurting some powerful vested interests even as it created new economic
opportunities. And the industries of the past have armies of lobbyists in
place right now; the industries of the future don't.
Nor is it just a matter of vested interests. It's also a matter of vested
ideas. For three decades the dominant political ideology in America has
extolled private enterprise and denigrated government, but climate change is
a problem that can only be addressed through government action. And rather
than concede the limits of their philosophy, many on the right have chosen
to deny that the problem exists.
So here we are, with the greatest challenge facing mankind on the back
burner, at best, as a policy issue. I'm not, by the way, saying that the
Obama administration was wrong to push health care first. It was necessary
to show voters a tangible achievement before next November. But climate
change legislation had better be next.
And as I pointed out in my last column, we can afford to do this. Even as
climate modelers have been reaching consensus on the view that the threat is
worse than we realized, economic modelers have been reaching consensus on
the view that the costs of emission control are lower than many feared.
So the time for action is now. O.K., strictly speaking it's long past. But
better late than never.
***
From: Dave Zirin
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dave-zirin/obamas-olympic-error_b_302025.html
Obama's Olympic Error UPDATED
By Dave Zirin
Huffington Post: September 28, 2009
President Barack Obama is now en route to Copenhagen in an effort to sell
Chicago as the site of the 2016 Summer Olympics. In the process, he may be
selling Chicago down the river. Obama is joined arm-in-arm with his wife
Michelle on one side and Mayor Richard Daley's Chicago political machine on
the other. Michelle Obama says, "My father was disabled, and I think what
it would have meant for him to see someone in his shoes compete. Kids need
to see that and that needs to be celebrated just as much, if not more." This
seems more like an argument to support the Paralympics (a tremendous event)
but that's beside the point. Michelle Obama should perhaps realize that if
the Olympics had come to Chicago when she was a young girl on Chicago's
working class south side, her home may have been torn down to make way for
an Olympic facility.
No word on how being out of house and home would have helped her disabled
father.
Mayor Daley, rocking a 35 percent approval rating, says that the Games would
be "a huge boost to our economy, raising it to a new level. The Games will
help us recover sooner from the recession that still grips our nation and
enable us to better compete in the global economy."
There is only one problem with this argument: the history of the Olympic
Games almost without exception brands it as a lie. As Sports Illustrated's
Michael Fish - an Olympic supporter - has written, "You stage a two-week
athletic carnival and, if things go well, pray the local municipality isn't
sent into financial ruin."
In fact, the very idea that Chicago could be an appropriate setting for the
Olympics might have been hatched by Jon Stewart for a four-year supply of
comedic fodder. To greater or lesser degrees, the Olympics bring
gentrification, graft and police violence wherever they nest. Even without
the Olympic Games, Chicago has been ground zero in the past decade for the
destruction of public housing, political corruption raised to an art form,
and police violence. Bringing the Olympics to this town would be like
sending a gift basket filled with bottles of Jim Beam to the Betty Ford
Clinic: over-consumption followed by disaster.
It's also difficult for Chicago residents to see how this will help their
pocketbooks, given that Daley pledged to the International Olympic Committee
that any cost overruns would be covered by taxpayers.
This is why a staggering 84 percent of the city opposes bringing the Games
to Chicago if it costs residents a solitary dime. Even if the games were to
go off without a hitch - which would happen only if the setting was lovely
Shangri-La - not even half the residents would support hosting the Games.
The Obamas, former Chicago residents, should be standing with their city.
Instead, we have the sight of Barack, Michelle, and Oprah trying to
outmuscle Pele and Brazil for a place at the Olympic trough. The question is
why. Maybe Obama wants the Olympic fairy dust enjoyed by Ronald Reagan at
the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles or Bill Clinton at the 1996 games in
Atlanta. Or perhaps he is returning favor to the developers and other sundry
connected people in the Windy City who will make out like bandits once the
smoke has cleared. But his intentions are clear: he wants the glitz,
glamour, and prestige of the games and he wants it for the Daley machine.
What the people of Chicago want doesn't seem to compute.
But we shouldn't be surprised at this point that Obama is tin-eared to the
concerns of Chicago residents. As Paul Krugman wrote Sept. 20 on the banker
bonuses, "the administration has suffered more than it seems to realize from
the perception that it's giving taxpayers' hard-earned money away to Wall
Street." Shoveling taxpayers' money into the Olympic maw is no better,
especially in these tough times.
No Games Chicago organizer Alison McKenna said to me, "I oppose the Olympics
coming to Chicago because instead of putting money toward what people really
need, money will be funneled to real estate developers who will be tearing
down Washington Park and other important community resources. I oppose the
Olympics coming to Chicago because the nonprofit child-welfare agency that I
work for had to sustain budget cuts and layoffs, while Chicago has spent
$48.2 million on the 2016 Olympic bid, as of July 2009."
There is an urgency to building resistance to these kinds of priorities.
Right now, the right wing is shamelessly adopting populist rhetoric and the
power of protest to sell an agenda of racism and fear wrapped in taxpayer
protection. The big public voice against Obama's trip to Copenhagen has been
the repellent RNC chief Michael Steele who believes, and this is hilarious,
that "At a time of war and recession" Obama needs to stay home. It shouldn't
be a scoundrel like Steele who represents a party of privatization and
occupation who delivers that message. Now is the time to build a pole of
attraction on the left for people furious at corporate greed amidst a
recession. This needs to happen, and not just for the Windy City. It's about
building a vibrant protest movement that believes in social justice not the
rank divisiveness of the right. Obama likes to say that change comes from
"outside Washington." It's time to take him at his word.
[Dave Zirin is the author of "A People's History of Sports in the United
States" (The New Press) Receive his column every week by emailing
dave@edgeofsports.com. Contact him at edgeofsports@gmail.com .]
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