"Climate Change: The Costs Of Inaction"
by John Laumer, Philadelphia on 10.14.06
Tufts University-based authors Frank Ackerman and Elizabeth Stanton, pictured above, will have to forgive us for repeating their report title exactly; there just is no better way to express the essence of their newly released study, sponsored by Friends of the Earth (FOE). Coverage of the report can already be found in places like The Guardian where the lead off statements: "Damage forecast to cost 8% of global GDP by 2100" and "UK 'faces droughts and floods costing billions" have already invited reverse spin from the man-made climate change denialists, to the effect 'don't waste millions now for uncertain benefits later.' Maybe to some having a habitable planet for our grandchildren is an "uncertain benefit," but we think that the time has come that simple re-framings will not be able to distract rational minds from the task at hand. A serious public debate has been launched around the economics of climate change mitigation. Now that discussion is underway, global society will be forced to confront what's deep under the grass mat of national politics and trans-national investments. Like the global impact of patent and technology licensing...there are strong parallels here to the long simmering debate over AIDs drug manufacturing in developing nations..., the prospect of debasing of green designs and services by profiteering wannabees, the integration of green lifestyle components into religion and popular culture, the emergence of a new morality of consumerism, and the defining of socially acceptable business models around life cycle constructs. Gonna be ugly at times. But no more important order of business exists.
Here's a quote that will stay with you: "If nothing is done to slow the process of warming, the grandchildren of today's young adults will inherit a world crippled by food and water shortages, extreme and variable weather, extinctions and other ecosystem damages, and a growing danger of an even more severe catastrophe".
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That quote could be a serious understatement. See http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1860560,00.html.
I think this article (or the content of it) may already have been discussed on TH. If not, it should have been!
Well, gee, that certainly is a dire quote. It kind of reminds me of this one:
"This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000."
-- Lowell Ponte "The Cooling", 1976
======= author's response follows ===
Yes it is dire sounding. In the US, circa 1976, seat belts had only just become standard equipment on cars; lead was not banned from transportation fuel, and for the first time, effective pollution controls were being developed and implemented for major municipal and industrial sources. At that time, climate science was in it's infancy - a matter of hypothetical speculation largely. The computers necessary for world-scale modeling did not even exist yet! Nor did the IPCC. Thirty+ years later we are in a position to make projections about the climate future...albeit with low precision...to begun the very discussion you initiate with this comment.