Cassandras of Climate

By: Paul Krugman
Date: September 28, 2009
Source: The New York Times (www.nytimes.com)

Ednote: No one writes about climate change as well as Paul Krugman or Andrew Revkin, but Paul Krugman is the next authority on the subject. There is no good business case for a compromised environment. There is some big news here. When the US Chamber of Commerce is loosing members like: Apple, Nike, Johnson & Johnson, Duke Energy and many others of similar prestige, it makes for some serious discussion on whether climate change is a hoax. If it is a hoax it has to be a huge conspiracy.

Here are a few examples:

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 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, (it’s Easy being Green- NYT 9/25/2009 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/25/opinion/25krugman.html) 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.

Climate Change Stance Is Costing U.S. Chamber

Members quit over, decry position against legislation addressing it

By: Reuters
Date: September 29, 2009
Source: CNBC (www.cnbc.com)

WASHINGTON - The fight over climate change has spread to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, where prominent members of the American big-business lobby — including Nike, Johnson & Johnson and Exelon — are publicly disputing the group's stance on global warming legislation.

The most recent critic, Exelon Corp, announced Monday it would not renew its membership in the chamber. The decision by the largest nuclear operator in the United States followed moves by California utility PG&E Corp and New Mexico-based PNM Resources Inc in the last week.

Sportswear giant Nike Inc stopped short of leaving but chided the chamber in a statement circulated Sept. 22 that criticized its recent challenge of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's authority to regulate climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions as pollution.

Johnson & Johnson, the world's largest healthcare company by market value, criticized the chamber earlier this year for failing to "reflect the full range of views'' of its members on climate change.

"It's not unusual for us to have some dissension over policy issues,'' the chamber's Eric Wohlschlegel said in a telephone interview. "Our views represent the majority of our membership through our policy committees in a democratic process.''

In a statement Tuesday after Exelon's announced departure, the chamber said it favors "mainstream, common sense views'' on climate change but opposes a carbon-capping bill that the House narrowly passed June 26.

Senate legislation that builds on the House measure is set to be unveiled Wednesday.

Without commenting specifically on individual corporations' criticism of the chamber's climate policy, Wohlschlegel said the business group's membership is growing.

There is also dissent at another group, the National Association of Manufacturers. Duke Energy said in May it would let its membership lapse because of the association's opposition to climate legislation.

Duke Energy said in September it would leave the American Coalition for Clean Coal Energy for essentially the same reason.

Exelon, Duke Energy, PG&E and PNM are all members of the corporate and environmental coalition U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which favors federal law requiring "significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions.''

Nike is a founding member of another environmental business coalition, Business for Innovative Climate and Energy Policy.

The more traditional business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce are out of step with their members, said Tony Kreindler of the Environmental Defense Fund.

"They're lagging behind where their members actually are and I think what we're seeing now is companies that have already made up their minds (on climate change) are losing patience,'' Kreindler said by telephone. "Lots of companies want a bill to get the uncertainty out of the process.''