Th3 Core

So, 2040 is 21.25 years away, roughly

The report attempts to put a price tag on the effects of climate change. The estimated $54 trillion in damage from 2.7 degrees [F] of warming would grow to $69 trillion if the world continues to warm by 3.6 degrees [F] and beyond, the report found, although it does not specify the length of time represented by those costs.

But while they conclude that it is technically possible to achieve the rapid changes required to avoid 2.7 degrees of warming, they concede that it may be politically unlikely.

The report emphasizes the potential role of a tax on carbon dioxide emissions. “A price on carbon is central to prompt mitigation,” the report concludes. It estimates that to be effective, such a price would have to range from $135 to $5,500 per ton of carbon dioxide pollution in 2030, and from $690 to $27,000 per ton by 2100.

The United States, it said, could lose roughly 1.2 percent of gross domestic product for every 1.8 degrees of warming.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/07/climate/ipcc-climate-report-2040.html

I'm not an economist... so why is a 2.4% drop in GDP (likely considering the likely 3.6F rise because there is no way we're going to stay withing the 1.5C/3.6F limit) a crisis? Is anything short of growth a crisis?

Weird. That doesn't seem catastrophic.

Yeah, I think there's something I'm missing. Everything I've seen is that at 3 degrees C, which is looking likely if we don't pull out all the stops, a large percentage of the arable land in the US becomes non-arable, as in we are unable to irrigate our way out of the problem.

Even if farms only account for 1% of GDP (according to USDA), and only 20% of them become non-viable (optimistic and unlikely unless we really get our sh## together soon), I would think the ripple effects would be huge.

I'm generally an optimist. Except when it comes to climate change.

Me too. I tend to see the up side of most "bad" things, but the climate news is not good

Believe it or not, some fishermen are on forums asking for alternatives to the Patagonia brand of outdoor clothes because Patagonia is suing the Federal government to protect wild lands and rivers from being polluted by industrial mining. They say Patagonia is too "political" for them.

Clickbait alt news sites have politicized climate change and protecting the environment. It's a shame because these issues are literally life and death. And right now we're trending toward apocalyptic level chaos.

We might not be here for that but I'm not holding hope for this generation of politicians to do anything meaningful. The Paris climate change accords were watered down, modest and fell short of what needed to be done and those old farts in our government are saying it went too far?

Unreal.   

Thanks aaron. That makes sense.

Climate change deniers are killing us with their greed.

Climate politics are changing. A recent Monkey Cage article described is as shift from "distributional" to "existential," meaning a shift from who gets what, to who lives and who dies.

So, for example, Exxon just pledged $1,000,000 over two years to campaign for a carbon tax. Other fossil fuel companies are still campaigning to prevent one. I think what's driving it is some oil companies think they are well-placed to be leaders in Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS). Basically, many oil companies are already pumpng C02 into the ground to get at the last drops of oil in some wells.

They are realizing that they could use the same system to pump high concentrations of C02 down there and leave it there, resulting in negative emissions. The tech for massive sequestration is still not there yet, but I can only read the Exxon move in one of two, non-exclusive ways:

 - greenwashing: having seen what happened to big tobacco, and Exxon being known to have been guilty of hiding internal research in the 1970s detailing the threats of climate change, they are worried about eventually being forced to make reparations, so they might as well get going on it and try to head off the worst of the blowback.

 - the belief that they are ahead on CCS tech and stand to be a winner and that they will be one of the "carbon" companies still standing when it's all over.

But in either case, those are both "existential" politics, rather than just "distributional" reasons

We see the deadlock breaking in the Republican party too, with politicians like Carlos Curbello from Florida recognizing that this is an existential issue for Florida and for his career, which drove him to break ranks with his party.

My congressman is a hard-core climate denier and he looks likely to sail to victory in November. Increasingly, though, he's an outlier among Republicans. Lining up against him are not just Curbello and Exxon, but almost 50 sitting Republican representatives on the Climate Solutions Caucus (remember that in early 2016, that number was zero). Republican elder statesmen like James Baker, George Schulz and even Trent Lott (who once got a zero rating from the League of Conservation Voters) have created PACs to campaign for a carbon tax.

I am not expecting the sea change to come in November, but if I look at how much climate politics have changed since 2016, I think it will be a big issue by 2020.

That said, this would have been an easy battle if we had gotten serious in 2000. Now it's going to be close to impossible and requires massive carbon sequestration technology to come online fairly soon.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/10/08/the-climate-is-changing-heres-how-politics-will-also-change/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/exxon-puts-up-1-million-to-campaign-for-a-carbon-tax-1539079200