Counting On Climate Change Tipping Point to Appear Within 100 Months
by Karin Kloosterman, Jerusalem, Israel on 08. 4.08
While we do our best to avoid fear mongering on TreeHugger, we do believe that climate change is real and that humanity has to step up to the plate to fix it. If we don’t, echo scientists, life on this planet will change as we know it. With the emerging economy of China, the eastern superpower is now producing more greenhouse gases than America.
For every coal plant America shuts down, China opens 20 more. In light of some of our imminent problems, Andrew Simms from the New Economics Foundation wrote an eye-opening opinion piece on the Guardian on the New Green Deal, a UK plan-of-action released last month to counteract climate change.
Simms, the policy director and head of the climate change program at the New Economics Foundation (NEF) –– a “think and do tank” –– says it’s now time to scream “FIRE!” We have 100 months (about 8 years) he warns to make radical changes to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
He proposes a plan for the UK. It will create a sound economic future for the country, set an example for other nations, and could help avert a potentially catastrophic end for humanity. Simms emulates President Franklin Roosevelt, who during the Dust Bowl and depression of the 30s, proposed a New Deal –– a 100 day program to reform America’s economy.
On the website onehundredmonths, conceived by the NEF and others, we can see a second-by-second countdown of one hundred months (8.3 years) until irreversible climate change sets in (their data). According to Simms, “in just 100 months’ time, if we are lucky, and based on a quite conservative estimate, we could reach a tipping point for the beginnings of runaway climate change. That said, among people working on global warming, there are countless models, scenarios, and different iterations of all those models and scenarios.”
Simms rationale for 100 months is summed up in the Guardian story and reported in Carbon Catalog: “But, even just before that point, there is still a one third chance of crossing the line,” he warns. What's his advice?
Ideas for Stalling the Climate Change Tipping Point
- Avoid infrastructure that is fossil-fuel-dependent (such as the construction of new airports, coal-fired power plants) that lock us in patterns of future greenhouse gas emissions, radically reducing our ability to make the short- to medium-term cuts.
- Appeal to governments to stop defecting blame and responsibility: “It is wildly unrealistic to think that individuals alone can effect a comprehensive re-engineering of the [West’s] fossil-fuel-dependent energy, food and transport systems. The government must lead.”
- Governments should launch a Green New Deal, similar to the one launched in the UK last week, taking inspiration from President Roosevelt's famous 100-day program implemented in the face of the dust bowls and depression.
- Rein in reckless financial institutions and use a range of fiscal tools, new measures and reforms to the tax system, such as a windfall tax on oil companies.
- Resources should be invested in a massive environmental transformation program that could insulate the economy from recession, and create countless new jobs.
- Overhaul a nation's building stock, and tackle the city. First up, he says, remove the money of oil companies pouring into cities. Re-list these companys’ resources as "unburnable.”
- Instead of using vast sums of public money to bail out banks (because they are considered "too big to fail"), banks should be reduced in size until they are small enough to fail without hurting anyone.
- With oil prices wobbling around $130, there is a huge amount of unearned profit waiting for a windfall tax (companies made profits when it was $10 a barrel). Money raised would go towards a long-overdue massive decarbonisation of our energy system.
- A rolling program to overhaul heat-leaking buildings and homes will massively cut emissions and tackle fuel poverty.
- Weaning agriculture off fossil-fuel dependency.
- The “one person, one car” on the roads, should be transformed to a variety of clean reliable forms of public transport. This should be visible by the middle of our 100 months.
If Simms is right, his conservative estimate of 100 months may be something we should be thinking about. Else, we might not be prepared for what most of us aren’t counting on –– a widescale change of climate patterns and life as we know it.
More New Green Deals on TreeHugger:
New Deal II: The Next Dam Thing
New Green Deal: 100 Months to Save the Earth From Climate Change
Imagine Another New Deal, Greener Than the First
::Carbon Catalog
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- Ocean's 'Poop Machines' Could Help Fight Climate Change
- Any Nation That Wants to Combat Climate Change Has an Ally in the US: President-Elect Obama
- Tropical Dead Zones Set to Expand by 50 Percent Under Climate Change
- The Art of Activism: Painting The Faces of Social & Climate Change
Much as I agree that we need to get a move on, attempting to have the world changed by a bunch of people who are neither engineers nor economists, and blind to the real issues in both areas, is no solution at all. Ignorance of the dirty detail does not magic it away.
Fer goodness sake, banks are entirely neutral in climate terms for example, unless incentivised one way or another. 'Kill all the banks' will do nothing except freeze the system that builds and ships PV and turbines, runs the transmission lines and grid, etc, etc.
Rgds
Damon
I have to agree with Damon, most financial institutions are neutral about climate change. At the most, it's the ones that offer investments in oil-related areas, that don't give their clients the right information on the impact of their investments that should be regulated.
I'm working in a News Limited newsroom and just read your 100 months countdown out aloud to the back bench. It put a chill in the air. News Limited is going carbon neutral well within that time frame. Keep up the good work Treehuggers.
I agree on the banks thing, it's more of a sustainable culture ideal than anything to do with climate change.
I disagree with the statement that environmentalists aren't engineers or economists. There are a large number of engineers that share environmental concerns and have voiced their opinion thusly, which is where a lot of sustainable culture people and greening businesses get their ideas. Also, I never really took economics to be a profession, considering everyone has to have experience in it in order to run their daily lives. Some are better at it than others and take in larger worldviews. The overarching view is not that difficult to grasp, even for the layman.
In regard to Damon's message, he misses the point. Quite responsibly it's suggested that banks be properly regulated so that the taxpayers are not having to intervene every time an institution goes bankrupt. After the S&L debacle of the late 1980's (remember George Bush's brother Neil and his failed bank that cost us taxpayers a cool $1.77 Billion- no wonder he's kept in seclusion) when the taxpayers were forced to inject more than $100 billion to save the industry one would think the government would have learned a hard lesson. But instead both Clinton and Bush big-time further deregulated the financial industry and now look at the disasterous results. The point is if the regs. were doing their job, than these precious tax resources could be used to transform the economy from fossil fuels to alternative. And yes, Damon, I worked in the financial services industry as a Senior Vice President. It does not take an industry insider, however, to know what does and does not make common sense.
Ill bet anything there wrong and we only have 50 months or less.............
My family has a long tradition of both engineering and environmentalism, and if you read current environmental science research, it's highly quantitative.
I suggest that the some of the modeling behind environmental science today is more rigorous and advanced than most economics, because it has more concrete data to work with, and economists are limited by surveys of subjective aspirations, and the fact that informants lie about money very readily.
Since envirnomental science models a) resources b)resource use patterns and c) circumstantial data (meteorology, population dynamics) I think they probably have far better predictive insight than some suit in a tower.
The point is that a revolution in the way we produce and consume energy CAN happen in time. All that's standing in the way is a lack of political will. It's entirely achievable to phase out fossil-fuels and replace them with aggressive energy efficiency measures and renewable energy.
Greenpeace recently commissioned an energy expert to model a scenario for Australia to shift to renewable energy. Currently 80% of Australia's energy comes from coal, but the modelling showed that coal-fired power could be entirely phased out by 2030. It may take something like a war effort, but we do still have the choice to avoid catasrtophic climate change - if we act immediately.
Check out the report by clicking the link on my name.
Rob, economics does not depend on "surveys of subjective aspirations". It is the study of the allocation of scarce resources. If that does not sound relevant to environmentalism I don't know what does.
This guy makes some good suggestions, and some strange ones. Like "rein in reckless financial institutions" and a windfall profits tax. I hate how people don't seem to realize that "windfall profits" are still profits and taxed the same as regular profits. How much "unearned" income has the government obtained from oil royalties and corporate taxes on record breaking profits? And classifying oil as unburnable? How does this guy intend to pay for all his suggestions without the taxes paid by oil companies? Over the last three years, ExxonMobil has paid on average over $27 Billion in taxes per year. That's a lot of insulation!
Finally, this guy talks a lot about efficiency, but proposes that the government be responsible for all this. What is more inefficient than government? Watch C-Span for an hour and see what the U.S. government accomplishes. He actually says individuals can't do it. Isn't that why we are all here?
Put these billboards up in major city centers, e.g., Times Square. Where everyone can see their time ticking away.
I'll donate if someone puts it together. And I'm sure I'm not alone. Or which company is brave enough to sponsor this?