My Green New Deal colleague, Colin Hines, has yet another letter in the Guardian this morning stressing the importance of a Green New Deal and green quantitative easing to fund it:
Your editorial's revelation (6 December) that the 2014-16 carbon reductions were the result of an economic slowdown that helped fuel the rise of populism appears daunting for future climate-change initiatives. However, rising carbon emissions and extreme rightwing electoral advances can be reversed. This will require a massive increase in economic activity arising from environmental policies that are clearly seen to improve prospects for the majority through an emphasis on green jobs in every community.
The obvious starting point is to make every home, commercial and industrial building energy efficient worldwide. In the US this is one of the central demands of the youngest of the new members of Congress, Alexandria Ocasio—Cortez, with her call for a select committee for a green new deal, an initiative supported by Bernie Sanders and other elected progressives. Also key will be the rapid transition to renewables and low-carbon local transport systems.
To reduce political opposition to such a shift will require cash to help communities initially threatened by such measures, from scrappage schemes for polluting cars, subsidies for a rapid growth in electric public and private transport, through to job conversion schemes for Polish coal miners threatened by the latest climate talks.
The massive amount of money required should come from higher but fairer taxes, while hammering tax dodgers, with increased public expenditure and incentives for affluent savers to invest in such schemes. If this proves inadequate then green quantitative easing should also be introduced. The world really has no other choice.
Colin Hines
East Twickenham, Middlesex
I was at a meeting yesterday where I heard a major politician lament the divides in society that have resulted in populism and the lack of ideas to tackle them.
The Green New Deal is that idea.
Green Quantitative Easing is a funding mechanism.
We really have to do it.
Before it is too late, preferably.
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There is a 1 in 20 chance that we are already too late to save humanity from extinction.
Every day that passes increases this risk.
https://rebellion.earth/the-climate-factsheet-for-rebels/
NASA tells us the globe, our one, is cooling, not overheating. Perhaps we should be investing in geothermal energy which we’re likely to actually need according to credible science, and not worry too much about rapidly rising sea levels, the scientific ‘evidence’ for which recently fell completely apart.
Get real Bill
Or don’t bother to comment here
@Lawrie
I’ll give you the benefit of doubt here and I’m going to assume you’ve linked to the wrong article.
The article you have linked to does not say that the earth is cooling. Not being an astro physicist, I’ve only picked up the jist of the paper, but it looks like they’re trying to predict the next grand solar minimum which is some way away from providing evidence that the earth is cooling. I could accept that a grand solar minimum might result in the earth cooling, but that would only be relative to the Earth’s (surface and atmospheric) temperature at the time.
We KNOW that the Earth’s atmosphere is warming. And also that there is consensus across 99% of the scientific community that it is due to human activities releasing green house gasses into the atmosphere.
Global warming is an issue — it is happening. See Mike Parr’s comment for further details
That was my feeling – but I was way out of my comfort zone
Johan G says:
“We KNOW that the Earth’s atmosphere is warming. ….”
And that the upper layers of North Atlantic is warming, and that the Arctic permafrost circle is creeping northwards….and…. and… and… We also know that some of these changes have a great potential to continue increasing exponentially. Release of trapped methane in the Tundra regions for example is a classic positive feedback factor. Smaller polar ice caps reflect less sunlight energy and expose more seawater to warming sunshine. Increased maritime activity in Polar regions produces more soot pollution affecting the reflective index of the polar ice, one of the biggest carbon sinks on Earth is the Great Barrier Reef and increased atmospheric temperatures with consequent increasing acidity is killing it…… and so it goes on.
It’s coming to something when the best hope we have of reversing the trend is to pray for a super-volcano to blot out the sunshine for years and start a new ice age.
And OK the Earth is cooling. So what? We have a molten core with a crust on it. Of course it’s cooling. It’s been cooling for billions of years, but that has bugger-all to do with Current Climate changes and disruption of global weather patterns.
We ought really to be in a state of global panic and what we do is ‘keep calm and carry on’ arguing the toss about the stripes on the deckchair fabric.
Do we believe that we are above nature ? We aren’t. We’re an element of the natural biosphere. We are being very reckless in hastening our demise. In the overall scheme of things humanity will look like a viral infection that led to the sixth mass extinction event. (Assuming there’s any sentient life to notice it.)
Sapiens indeed !! Pah!
“NASA tells us the globe, our one, is cooling” – nope plumb wrong.
“not worry too much about rapidly rising sea levels, the scientific ‘evidence’ for which recently fell completely apart”: nope it did not.
If you wish to inform yourself – rather than make unbsubstantiated assertions – try this link:
http://www.realclimate.org/
One of the chaps that founded Real Climate is:
Gavin A. Schmidt is a climatologist, climate modeler and Director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York, and co-founder of the award-winning climate science blog.
Note that word again – NASA – Schmidt works for NASA – him and his fellow scientists have shown conclusively time after time that climate change is cause by man-made greenhouse gases.
Thanks
I find climate change deniers very hard to deal with
I would suggest just blocking climate change deniers. They are basically the equivalent of flat-earthers, clearly cannot tell fact from fiction, and therefore have nothing to contribute to any meaningful debate.
Perhaps someone can shed light on this then https://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2018/04/24/did_you_know_the_greatest_two-year_global_cooling_event_just_took_place_103243.html To my uneducated eyes it seems to suggest the Earth is cooling and that the evidence comes direct from NASA.
I found this too, on this subject, which appears informed and authoritative and unimpressed with the recent suggestion of imminently rising seas “The 2016 updated NOAA tide gauge record included data for California coastal locations at San Diego, La Jolla, Los Angeles and San Francisco. The measured rates of sea level rise at these locations vary between four inches and nine inches per century. NOAA data provide assessments with a 95% confidence level at all measured locations. In contrast to these steady but modest real-world rising sea level rates, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) claims that sea levels all over the world will almost immediately begin rising far faster than before. Not only do NOAA records contradict such claims for U.S. and selected island coasts; this pattern of steady but modest sea level rise is being observed all across the world, despite rising CO2 and fluctuating average global temperatures….The Ceuta, Spain data show a nearly flat trend. Most notably, the data show no correlation between CO2 concentration and sea-level rise. If the current trend continues for the next century, the sea level in Ceuta will rise only three inches. This is in sharp contrast to the 10-foot global rise in sea levels recently projected by former NASA scientist James Hansen.” https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/06/the-clever-ruse-of-rising-sea-levels/
There’s quite a bit there! I still haven’t found the original articles which alerted me to this though.
So warming will not melt the ice caps?
Pull the other one
It looks to me like you’re giving credence to a theory that says that for the first 99 floors after jumping off a 100 floor building things go pretty well. Indeed, they might even be exhilerating
Ha! I believe this is it https://reason.com/blog/2018/11/14/widely-reported-ocean-warming-study-is-w “British climate researcher and statistician Nicholas Lewis re-crunched the numbers in the study and found that Resplandy and her team had made significant errors in their calculations… Now co-author Scripps Institution of Oceanography climate scientist Ralph Keeling has acknowledged that Lewis is at least partially right and the researchers are preparing a correction to their original article (apparently not yet published).” So we may not be inundated by the rising seas after all.
Human pollution has been substantial enough for the naming of our age as the Anthropocene. Climate models include many sources including non-human systems like the Sun and forms of space-weather. There is no sensible denial argument and is a thriving dialogue on what the main contributing sources are and in what strength. Nasa reported data from the outer atmosphere cooling and Antarctica. This data is not out of line with the main model. Even something as small as a greenhouse does not have the same temperature everywhere in it, let alone a planet. The mechanism of chemical bonds shedding photons in our direction is under a little doubt in terms of percentage and hence warming numbers. The same is true of such as solar minimum and even cosmic rays. Across all the work one can select a few papers in denial. More than 95% support a complex coupled system with positive feedback that would quickly make things much worse. The models contain human and non-human causes. The main point is that our existential condition has been and is precarious. We need to stop our contributions and reverse them and be prepared for natural disasters. Debate around denial of human contribution forms a fatuous periphery. I am a scientist and will show and tell on papers for anyone putting up cash for my time.
If all the people on Earth behaved like the US we’d need 5 earths to support us – about half this across Europe and this means fixations with growth have to go. International green QE could help us develop sensible and enjoyable ways of living, and potentially aspects of control for survival.
Of course there has to be reasonable doubt
That’s a part of forming sound judgement
The consensus may be wrong
Right now it does not feel that way.
That’s the best that can be said
I go a bit further than your reply Richard. There is a core program agreement and only peripheral discussion on what doesn’t fit. Mejar skews the real debate into polarised rot from both ‘sides’ – nether side being climate scientists. I favour consideration of local-global pollution (which subsumes global warming) to protect and improve lives human and other etc. I remember a Harvard Law Review paper against the then legal-commercial paradigm from 1974. Deniers don’t get the full discourse or science at all. Green QE is an obvious way to start and some of us should be writing business plans for projects and social-economic outcomes. The big question in economics would be how people get more satisfying, less precarious lives as we shrink glaring over-consumption of the wrong stuff across competing nations.
@Bill Kruse
“the greatest global two-year cooling event of the last century just occurred?”
“Two year …event…”
You don’t need to read the rest of it.
Stop being a prat, Bill.
Andy
Go easy eh?
There is no need for the term ‘prat’ on a blog of this quality in my view.
We do have to do this Green New Deal, it’s a task which should unify everyone but the most obtuse of industrialists.
Yet I’ve just found out the Tory Government will scrapthe £2,500 subsidy (from January) to individuals who want to swap their diesel car for an electric or hybrid one, I was just looking into it for myself. Progressive is evidently not a Tory word.
We need to get rid of this government urgently, for many reasons, and get a green progressive agenda passed by whoever leads the new gov.
Track more or less any lead Brexiter and you’ll find Climate Change denial as part of their beliefs.
Do any of us really know exactly what is going to happen with regard to the environment?
I always felt that the the idea around an Inconvenient Truth and subsequently in some movies was quite plausible in that as the Noth pole melted, cold water would cool the Gulf Stream and that in itself would actually enable a cooling of the northern hemisphere. A BBC documentary however this week highlighted that the warmer sea temperature at the surface of the sea at the Pole was what seemed to be undermining the ice shelves as deeper artic waters were still extremely cold enough to sustain such shelves.
However we are now confronted with evidence that warm sea marine life seems to be moving North? What is going on?
The weather systems of this beautiful planet of ours (‘ours’?) are extremely complex and chaos theory is perhaps the closest thing we have that can model them.
The most worrying thing for me is that both sides of the global warming debate are searching for definitive answers. How can this be so when we know from the past studies of climate variation that the changes can take place in periods of time that exceed individual life times? The records may not always deliver linear information either depending on when measurement takes place. Nature does not run to any human imposed timetable or expectation or run in straight lines.
What I would like to see is a recognition by all sides that we are always in the midst of learning about human impact on the environment. And this means that we must stop seeing the planet as some sort of sponge that can soak up endless amounts of our waste indefinitely.
We must at least consider the consequences of our being here. We must be able to have the imagination to consider the problems. This where I get really depressed about the climate change deniers.
This also means that those who give us warnings must be careful about how they put them across.
Climate change debate seems too political to me these days. We have had dire warnings issued since I was a boy. We need to re set the issue on a practical course. But key to it is sovereign Governments putting their hands in their pockets and ensuring that the polluted and the polluters are all helped to change. That is where I feel the beginning of the real answers lies somehow.
Using money to solve the problem is exactly what we need.
Otherwise, ultimately I believe that the Earth will go on without us once it has washed and blown us all away.
There are no ‘both sides’.
The worlds leading climate scientists just reported via the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that we have 12 years left to act. That’s it, pure and simple.
Those who believe otherwise are ideologically-driven, pro-collapsist idiots who should be roundly ignored.
Comedian John Oliver takes the absolute Mick out of Fox News-style ‘climate debates’ here… https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=cjuGCJJUGsg
Those same leading scientists are openly admitting they got it wrong : “19 November 2018 Editor’s Note: We would like to alert readers that the authors have informed us of errors in the paper. An implication of the errors is that the uncertainties in ocean heat content are substantially underestimated. We are working with the authors to establish the quantitative impact of the errors on the published results, at which point in time we will provide a further update.” In other words, they dunno what’s what after all. The study and its reporting has no substance. The initial scare story gets huge press coverage, but the awkward little detail that none of it can be substantiated by the data gets next to no coverage at all, if any. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-018-0651-8#change-history
It’s a story among many Bill
Stop being crass
That’s your last comment on this here
I will save you further embarressment
Stephen
You are right. There are actually lots of sides – more than two.
I believe polluters want to do the right thing but market conditions do not enable them to do so. It’s hard to be rational in an irrational world.
I stick to my guns and you can see them elsewhere.
A dialogue with climate deniers is not unlike one with ‘Brexiteers’: no matter how rational, any counter-argument simply reinforces their immutable views. So, when confronted with ‘climate deniers’ (and I know a few!) my argument is this: “OK, so we don’t know for sure. Now, if you’re right and we do nothing then there’s no problem. Business as usual. And if you’re right yet we take the advice of the 99% scientists, some wealthy investors might lose out but there’ll be no terminal damage, while the living environment for a lot of people & animals would probably be improved. However, if I’m right and we do nothing then it’s ‘adieu to life as we know it’. In the face of the unknown, therefore, which do you think is the more sensible strategy?”. I add that, from their perspective, it’s like taking out an accident insurance policy. You know you’re paying for something that’s unlikely to happen but you’re happy to pay the premium … just in case. Another analogy I offer, which I believe originates with Woody Allen but can’t find the original quote, is along the lines of ‘I’m an atheist but, just in case I missed some of the small print, I pray to God!”
🙂
if 97 cancer experts tell you that you have cancer and 3 say you don`t, who do you listen to? The worship of the maverick is a risky business
John D says:
” Another analogy I offer, which I believe originates with Woody Allen…..”
I think Allen was paraphrasing ‘Pascal’s Wager’.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=4v4MXNfLDu-j1fAPkZKX6A0&q=pascal%27s+wager&oq=…Pascal&gs_l=img.1.4.0i30l10.38424.53099..59122…0.0..0.69.133.2……1….1..gws-wiz-img…….0i7i30.BueiMshQ_CA
Thanks Andy 🙂
John D
Who hasn’t had fireside chats with climate change deniers and BREXITers? But that’s not what my point is it?
What drives them? Emotion – we all should know about that now.
Both sets of dysfunction share a common theme: Fear. Fear of the loss of something – their profits, their way of life, reputation, further doing down of what they have etc.
Look at DuPont and its C8 scandal:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0bs68rr/storyville-poisoning-america-the-devil-we-know
DuPont knew that C8 was toxic from internal experiments but kept producing it and went into denial. I watched this on BBC4 and it is shocking.
Again – what sort of market conditions create the likelihood of this sort of cover up behaviour? Change is where principle meets practice.
That is what we need to tackle. Otherwise you can keep making as many comments as you like John D and whilst they are funny, nothing will really change.
And back to fear and its effects on people. Please watch a recent film called ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’. It’s a contemplation about how fear affects people, communities etc., and drives them apart, comes between understanding and empathy and destroys unity and problem solving (working together). It’s pretty amazing but also redemptive and healing. It is a tale of our times. Watch it. It’s remarkable. It had me in hysterics but also close to tears on a number of occasions.
But I still say this – money is what will destroy fear of change as far as dealing with climate change is concerned.
“Money will destroy the fear of change”
Write the book…..
‘Write the book’
But Richard my dear man, you’ve written it already. I know because I have read it!
Oh….OK
There no climate breakdown debate any more than there is a flat earth debate. Climate breakdown is fact.
Nick
You are quite wrong.
People disagree because of what they feel. There is not unanimity. Where there is disagreement there has to/will be debate.
The debate could be settled with money – Green QE and reinvestment in green technology and the creation of a huge market in environmental remediation.
See the world as it is – before you dream about how it should be.
Pilgrim Slight Return says:
“Nick. You are quite wrong.”
A bit harsh, Pilgrim from someone who objects to me chiding another as a prat 🙂
I actually quite like Nick’s point. It isn’t to be taken as a statement of fact, but as an analogy.
“People disagree because of what they feel.” ???? Hmmm…. Yes often they do, there’s no denying that. The power of ‘feelings’ in defending a case make fools of us all from time to time.
At bottom I suspect that where fossil fuel burning is concerned we are in a classic bind of ‘the Tragedy of the Commons’, powered as always by short-term thinking. We burn fossil fuels with no thought for the morrow – because it is currently profitable. There are still vast reserves of fossil fuels, but we do know they are logically finite and that long before we get to actually exhausting all reserves it will become non viable to extract it from difficult locations. Certainly non-viable as fuel.
We know for a fact that we are polluting the Earth’s atmosphere by burning this stuff and that is not clever. Quite how unclever it is, in terms of climate change, is impossible to be precise about on the sort of short time scales we can measure (although there’s a great deal of historical evidence which can be extracted from ice cores – while we still have ice to core-drill !)
The Climate Change ‘debate’ is a rather silly argument about the colour of deckchair fabric on a global Titanic. One way or another this ship is going down unless we use Earth’s natural resources in a way which is sustainable.
We can do that. ‘Gentlemen, we have the technology’. What we don’t have is the political will to control the global economy as an exercise in resource management, because we have an obsessive notion that economics is all about money.
I’m currently reading Norman Dixon “On the Psychology of Military Incompetence’. There are uncomfortable parallels with political incompetence and I’m only fifty pages into it.
Calm it guys……
Well said Nick.As someone once put it:
Sadly some commenters here seem not to realise that the carbon in the atmosphere couldn’t care less what we “feel” nor give two hoots whether there or not there is “unanimity”.
The great David Attenborough, speaking a few days ago on behalf of the people of the world to the latest UN climate change summit in Poland, put it as bluntly as this:
We really have no time to listen to and debate climate deniers any more. The time for action is now.
Stephen
Erm….not quite. Sorry.
What you are saying is that you are going to ignore one of the most powerful and monied lobbyists in this issue? Really? Are you sure? Is that wise?
Yes – us climate change ‘acceptors’ I feel are right. Something is going on and its incredibly crucial that it is sorted. out
But this issue is not about being right. Or who is wrong. It’s about what are we going to do about it. We need to start it at the end and then work out what we can do now. It’s going to require more imagination than bloody carbon trading that is for sure.
“What you are saying is that you are going to ignore one of the most powerful and monied lobbyists in this issue? Really? Are you sure? Is that wise?”
The genius of Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez and her Green New Deal is she is doing exactly that.
Following in the footsteps of Bernie Sanders, Alexandria rejects Clinton / Blair ‘centrism’. But instead, like Bernie, proposes unapologeticically direct progressive policies that aim to save democracy, return power to the people and, just maybe, save humanity.
Their authentic left-wing agenda has resonated deeply with ordinary people in the US. Key to this authenticity – indeed this downright decency – is their avowed rejection of taking money from rich lobbyists.
So “ignore…powerful and monied lobbyists”? You better believe it.
It’s a nice idea
But they don’t go away
Andy
If you can’t tell the difference between calling someone a prat and telling them that they are wrong then ……..well, really? What is there to add?
I haven’t called Nick a name. I’ve taken the issue – not the man. I’ve played the ball and not kicked him in the shins. I can play rough too but I’d rather be Bobby Moore than Norman Hunter. Nick is welcome to debate with me further without I hope me making him appear a fool. I do not wish to make someone who cares enough to be here feel foolish. After all he did not attack me and he is no time waster or troll.
As to rest of your point, I note that you have chosen to rehash the same old same old about climate change and ignore the proposal? Come on Mr Crow!!!!
My point remains this: how do we solve this? It seems to me we do it how Richard has said but also consider its wider implications & perhaps even go further. Polluters and the polluted must both win out of change.
Unfortunately the way the debate/battle is set up is that someone must lose. Now that is crass in my view. It is not very grown up either.
That remains my point. What was yours exactly?
As I said, let’s please do this without too much heat, please
Was that a pun by any chance?
Otherwise noted.
Pilgrim Slight Return says:
“Unfortunately the way the debate/battle is set up is that someone must lose.”
I both agree and disagree with this assertion Pilgrim. I agree it is very much the way the battle lines are drawn but the lines are false.
The whole point of sustainable development, and the point we are failing to get across is that sustainable development is profitable. We do have to perhaps broaden our view of what constitutes ‘profit’. And how the profits are distributed will remain a problem for ‘politics’.
There is no doubt in my mind that the past eight years of ‘Austerity’ could have been avoided by a government (or governments, but I’m thinking particularly of the UK situation) by relatively modest investment in new clean energy generation and (just as importantly) energy storage to smooth the supply.
We know this is ‘affordable’ in monetary terms, because we have an understanding of how money works as illuminated by clever people who worked it out and called it MMT.
Too many of the clever (highly educated) mathematicians and others from variously useful disciplines are making their living playing with money on the ‘markets’. And I was one of them I expect I would too, rather than do climate research and engineering and hard science whilst watching government cut my research funding and facilities because it doesn’t meet short term market-dogma principles.
My point is that Green is win win, but where we are now is zero sum and doomed to lead us into wars and other tribulations (fighting over diminishing real resources) and the only people who are going to be able to stop this are politicians with at least a modicum of vision and a preparedness to apply their intelligence and political skills to something other than monetary profit, be that for a nation or their own personal gain.
I feel we’re not really arguing about content here, but style of discourse.
The GFC in 2008 was a very good crisis entirely wasted. We need not to squander the opportunities of the next one. It could be here sooner than we expect. (Or considerably later, but come it will)
Andy
OK.
There are no false battle lines in the climate change debate. If they are false, why is progress being held up? I think a mistake is to see climate change denial as false when in fact its effects are real. So it is real. And the emotions driving that denial are real too (fear).
Yes – Green can be profitable. No doubt about that. But we are looking at change which means a heck of a lot of business reprocessing for existing production processes which is very expensive. And that is the clue. And it needs to happen very quickly doesn’t it? Look up ‘business reprocessing’. It’s a complicated and expensive business. But essentially that is what we need.
What we need in my view is a Green QE that encompasses changes in existing production as well new production. Re-tooling, finding new resources etc., all costs money.
Or put simply, an Environmental Bail Out as opposed to a bank bail out. As I’ve said elsewhere this morning, we are at a period now where only new money is going to help. The rich aren’t going to give us anymore of their money for now. It is sovereign Governments that have to step up to the plate.
And BTW – such a bail out does not have to occur in the way that it was dealt with in the GFC (a no strings attached deal as that was, with those who caused it). The ‘Environmental Bailout’ would come with plenty of strings attached believe you me. It would be sovereign Governments using their money as leverage (and not the financial kind).
The only other comment I’m going to make is that this blog is meant to be a heterodox place. That includes when talking about emotive issues like climate change and environmental degradation too.
We must I think get the need for revenge or recompense out of the climate issue – at least for now and just concentrate on change. We can always have a truth and reconciliation period another time.
Thanks
I admire the ideas
The passion
And the closing sentiment
Pity we can’t get on detailing local and panet solutions to precarity.
We can archytas.
I have .
So can you.
What are YOUR ideas?
Stephen
The people you mention are admirable in their own right – true.
But please read what I am advocating.
I am advocating Governments spending THEIR money that they ‘print’ (hopefully digitally) to sort out the environment – not the use of campaign contributions that enable influence on policy so in effect there is no policy.
Do we understand each other now?
I get you
See this morning’s post