Members of the Senate have gone on record on the topic of whether or not climate change is occurring as the result of human activity. As Wired‘s Victoria Tang observed, “United States Senators stood up for what they believed in today – the results aren’t pretty.” What she meant was that of the folks to whom we have entrusted  the leadership of what is arguably the most powerful nation in the world, almost fully half made it clear that, in Tang’s words, they “think climate change is some other species’ problem”:

The Senate, by a 50-49 vote with 60 required, rejected the amendment to a Republican bill approving TransCanada Corp.’s Keystone XL oil pipeline. Republicans control the Senate 54-46.

The amendment, offered by Senator Brian Schatz, a Hawaii Democrat, would have deemed that “climate change is real” and that “human activity significantly contributes” to it.

It’s no big surprise, I’m sure, that Missouri Republican Senator Roy Blunt is on the list of those voting against the amendment that affirmed the overwhelming scientific consensus that climate change is man made. As long as the fossil fuel industry shows him an adequate amount of love, he will always love them right back. Besides, doesn’t he stand up with the GOPers who claim they can’t legitimately have such an opinion because they’re not scientists? And unlike our President who has made it clear that he understands what goes into creating a scientific consensus, he’s part of that group of policy makers who want us to think that their lack of credentials excuses them from listening to any inconvenient scientific facts. As David Shiffman argues in Slate:

When politicians say “I’m not a scientist,” it is an exasperating evasion. It’s a cowardly way to avoid answering basic and important policy questions. This response raises lots of other important questions about their decision-making processes. Do they have opinions on how to best maintain our nation’s highways, bridges, and tunnels-or do they not because they’re not civil engineers? Do they refuse to talk about agriculture policy on the grounds that they’re not farmers? How do they think we should be addressing the threat of ISIS? They wouldn’t know, of course; they’re not military generals.

I’d like to hear Roy Blunt answer those questions.

Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, on the other hand, voted with the “yeas.” She accepts the scientific verdict about anthropogenic climate change although, to judge by her past performance, she also thinks that it’s okay to ignore inconvenient facts. Or maybe, do you think, the fact that she went on the record this week might prompt more responsible action in the future? After all, McCaskill is one of those folks who goes on interminably about the rather iffy threat posed to our children by our federal debt. Maybe she’s finally getting equally worked up over the incontrovertible threat to their future well-being posed by climate change?

This is not to say that there’s not been progress on the topic. The Senators did vote 59-1 to affirm that climate change is not a hoax. We can take comfort from the fact that it’s now so obviously ridiculous to deny the fact of climate change that all but one of the Senate’s highly-motivated Republican fossil fuel champions would have been embarrassed to affirm support that position in a public vote.

ADDENDUM:  Digby explains why the vote to affirm the fact of a changing climate was a total joke. Hint: “The leaders of the free world are cretinous imbeciles.”

*1st sentence edited slightly for clarity.

Previously:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler (r): Sesame Street is too complicated (November 18, 2014)

Uh, there’s a difference between weather and climate. [….]

A lot of people noticed:

Glenn Greenwald ‏@ggreenwald

How does the obvious stupidity of this not embarrass people? RT @RepHartzler Global warming strikes America! Brrrr! 7:48 AM – 18 Nov 2014

And a sample of the comments in reply to Representative Hartzler (r):

Glic ‏@Glic

.@RepHartzler <— Another elected official who doesn’t understand the difference between weather and climate.#science 7:22 AM – 18 Nov 2014

lawhawk ‏@lawhawk

.@RepHartzler .@BuzzFeedAndrew you do realize that global warming is more than the temp in your corner of the US? Global temps keep rising 7:25 AM – 18 Nov 2014

Hesster56 ‏@hesster56

@RepHartzler Your lack of knowledge is an embarrassment in an elected official. 7:27 AM – 18 Nov 2014

Bart ‏@bart_smith

These morons are at it again. – RT @RepHartzler: Global warming strikes America! Brrrr! 7:27 AM – 18 Nov 2014

Somite ‏@toxicpath

.@RepHartzler global warming isn’t real because it is cold where you are right now * sigh * @BuzzFeedAndrew 7:27 AM – 18 Nov 2014

Eve Zhurbinskiy ‏@gillibranded

Funny how I’m in DC too but yet possess the knowledge that it’s cold in late fall RT “@RepHartzler: Global warming strikes America! Brrrr!” 7:27 AM – 18 Nov 2014

Peg ‏@IowaPeg

.@RepHartzler Aww, are you upset that Joni has stolen your crazy-thunder and are trying to one up her on the batshit scale? Keep trying. 7:27 AM – 18 Nov 2014

Weather Moose ‏@WXMoose

@bart_smith @RepHartzler hey how about we stop using short-term, regional synoptic events for arguments for/against climate change 7:28 AM – 18 Nov 2014

Daniel Aubry ‏@Aubs89

@RepHartzler pray for brains dear. 7:29 AM – 18 Nov 2014

Adam Brown ‏@AdamTilted

Let me guess, you’re “not a scientist.” “@RepHartzler: Global warming strikes America! Brrrr!” 7:29 AM – 18 Nov 2014

Adam Weinstein ‏@AdamWeinstein

You wouldn’t know “global” even if it threatened to get gay-married on your lawn RT @RepHartzler: Global warming strikes America! Brrrr! 7:30 AM – 18 Nov 2014

Turkey Slaying Curt ‏@Curt_Ames

@RepHartzler @toxicpath In other news, the American educational system continues to produce vapid, smugly ignorant citizens. 7:39 AM – 18 Nov 2014

Financial Ownalyst ‏@Cyrus_T_Virus

I am horrified by the notion that you make decisions that affect my well-being RT @RepHartzler: Global warming strikes America! Brrrr! 7:40 AM – 18 Nov 2014

Christy Kilgore ‏@ckilgore

@RepHartzler You know science doesn’t work like that, right? 7:41 AM – 18 Nov 2014

michael hoffman ‏@chelicerata

Like people complaining the Sun is gone at night. RT @RepHartzler: Global warming strikes America! Brrrr! 7:41 AM – 18 Nov 2014

And that’s some of the printable responses.

In the Washington Post:

Congresswoman Vicky Hartzler wonders why it’s so cold if global warming exists. Here’s the answer.

By Philip Bump November 18 at 1:42 PM

It is that time of year when the weather gets cold – even unexpectedly cold – and online humorists and armchair scientists rise up as one to ask a question: “What happened to ‘global warming’???” It’s a good gag, see, because it’s cold and global warming implies that it will be warm. If you don’t get it, please e-mail me and I will explain further.

[….]

There are two options for what Hartzler, a Republican who represents Missouri’s 4th District, hopes to accomplish here. The first is that she’s making a joke about a serious environmental issue that has scientists around the world concerned about how mankind will fare under warmer conditions. We assume a member of Congress wouldn’t make such a joke.

[….]

But heat is just one effect, according to the climate report mentioned above.

Direct effects will include increased heat stress, flooding, drought, and late spring freezes. Climate change also alters pests and disease prevalence, competition from non-native or opportunistic native species, ecosystem disturbances, land-use change, landscape fragmentation, atmospheric and watershed pollutants, and economic shocks such as crop failures, reduced yields, or toxic blooms of algae due to extreme weather events.

That’s what the Midwest can expect.

[….]

The people in Missouri’s 4th Congressional District know what they can expect.

Uh, there’s a difference between weather and climate.

You know, the Sesame [Children’s Television] Workshop teaches critical thinking skills:

One of These Things (Is Not Like The Others)

One of these things is not like the others,

One of these things just doesn’t belong,

Can you tell which thing is not like the others

By the time I finish my song?

Today, via Twitter:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler ‏@RepHartzler

Global warming strikes America! Brrrr! 6:44 AM – 18 Nov 2014

A response:

Ed Smith ‏@esmith326

@RepHartzler I am not hungry, therefore, nobody on this planet is hungry. #samelogic… 7:11 AM – 18 Nov 2014

In the news:

Earth has warmest October on record as ocean temperatures top charts

Multiple datasets have confirmed it was the warmest October on record for the globe, keeping the planet on a course towards its toastiest year.

[….]

Last month, NOAA published a chart…indicating the global temperature for the remaining three months of the year need only average among the top 10 warmest for 2014 to be the warmest year on record.  Considering the October results in so far, a record warm year almost seems inevitable unless temperatures radically tank in November and December.

[….]

That’s global temperatures, not just in rural Cass County, Missouri. There is a difference when it comes to assessing the facts and determining policy, don’t you think?

When I last looked, Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill was still very carefully trying to say nothing at all about the EPA’s proposed new emission standards which are designed to reduce carbon emissions in the United States 30% by 2030. Which is actually pretty much in line with her past behavior; McCaskill has long been a disappointment to her constituents when it comes to showing leadership on the issue of climate change. She has been very careful to avoid even the appearance of pulling out the rug from under dirty coal, the producers and consumers of which are a powerful force in Missouri which currently gets 80% of its energy from fossil fuels.

McCaskill’s past arguments for rejecting stronger regulation of carbon emissions from coal-fired energy plants have revolved around: (1) the supposed potential for economic hardship for “Missouri’s families,” and, (2) the assertion that the costs would be born disproportionately by the U.S. She has noted that “it’s not going to do us any good to clean up our act as it relates to the atmosphere. It’s the same atmosphere that China shares and Japan shares and India shares. Some very big industrial countries.”

The first argument, which McCaskill shares with most Republican apologists for fossil fuels, should, by now, occasion the great hilarity that is due arguments that pit relatively minor, short-term concerns against long-term, global survival. After all, while it’s questionable that efforts to reduce carbon emissions will seriously harm those Missouri families she is so fond of citing, doing nothing about climate change is going to really hurt Missourians over the next thirty years, particularly those dependent on agriculture. A recent report stipulates that “higher temperatures will reduce Midwest crop yields by 19 percent by midcentury and by 63 percent by the year 2100.” McCaskill’s position also ignores the hidden costs of fossil fuel dependence, such as the personal and economic aspects of its effect on public health.  

A new report, the 2014 Low Carbon Economy Index (LCEI), demonstrates the emptiness of McCaskill’s international rationale for delaying action on carbon emisions. According to the LCEI:

… . China could be viewed as the poster child for developing countries, with a 2013 national decarbonisation rate of 4%. China improved its energy intensity by 3% in 2013, the third highest amongst the G20, and has a flourishing renewable energy sector 2. China also launched seven regional emissions trading schemes over the last year, although these are unlikely to have a dramatic impact on emissions in the short term. …

And:

While coal use in China rose by 3.7% in 2013, it is at a much slower rate than in previous years. China has made public efforts to curb coal use to manage its air pollution problems, for example a limit on coal use to 65% of its energy mix, and more recently a proposed ban on coal-fired power in Beijing by 2020. …  

China lowered its carbon emissions by 3.5%, a full percentage point more than the US where:

A revival of coal […], driven by a combination of falling coal prices and rising gas prices, has also been a major factor in the low US position in the G20 decarbonisation league table. Coal in the US has regained some market share from natural gas in the generation mix  ince its low in April 2012, causing an increase in emissions, and dispelling the myth that a shale gas revolution will necessarily result in emissions reductions. …

Don’t these numbers make it clear that we can no longer allow our politicans to point to the other guy in order to excuse inaction on carbon emissions? Certainly we should not allow Senator McCaskill to do so when the time comes when she will have to make her position on the new EPA regulations known. While the reduction in carbon emissions that these regulations would achieve is still not enough to stop potentially catastrophic global warming, they would still move us significantly forward in that direction:

If the rule goes forward as it is currently conceived, this proposal, combined with the reductions to date and those that will be driven by prior executive actions addressing the transportation sector, would, in approximate terms, put the US on a path to achieve Obama’s 17% by 2020 pledge. However, putting the proposed rule in context of the global de-carbonization challenge, it will achieve a small portion of the reductions required to stay within 2°C carbon budget. The EPA estimates it will result in reductions from the business as usual case of 545 MM tonnes of CO2 in 2030*. This plan would contribute a cumulative 5.9% reduction in US carbon intensity or an average annual additional intensity reduction of 0.39%

.

Isn’t it time for the US to start to play the leadership role when it comes to climate change that those advocates of “American exceptionalism” expect us to play when the question involves military action? Let’s ask Senator McCaskill why China should have to do all the heavy lifting – particularly since it’s clear that no nation can do it alone. And while we’re at it, let’s ask the Senator why she can’t manage to play more of a leadership role when it comes to helping our state make the transition from dirty energy sources – surely she can manage to stop concentrating on keeping her balance on the center line that runs down that rightward veering highway she’s been traveling in order to help determine the outcome of what will probably be the defining issue of our time.

Update:  Via Washington Monthly’s Ed Kilgore, Paul Krugman writes today on false economic arguments of the fossil fuel advocates:

I’ve just been reading two new reports on the economics of fighting climate change: a big study by a blue-ribbon international group, the New Climate Economy Project, and a working paper from the International Monetary Fund. Both claim that strong measures to limit carbon emissions would have hardly any negative effect on economic growth, and might actually lead to faster growth. This may sound too good to be true, but it isn’t. These are serious, careful analyses.

But you know that such assessments will be met with claims that it’s impossible to break the link between economic growth and ever-rising emissions of greenhouse gases, a position I think of as “climate despair.” The most dangerous proponents of climate despair are on the anti-environmentalist right. But they receive aid and comfort from other groups, including some on the left, who have their own reasons for getting it wrong.

Their own reasons …. hmmm. Locally, could that be Peabody Coal? Along with all the voting Missourians who get all their information from Fox News? How do you balance them beans against climate apocalypse?

I’ve just returned from a lovely and isolated vacation in the Canadian Rockies and, lo and behold, as soon a I got back to Missouri I think that I may have seen one of those proverbial winged piggies flying just over the spot where Hell froze over. What I’m talking about is the response to President Obama’s proposed new carbon emission standards. Of course that flying piggy isn’t from Missouri’s Senate contingent, all of whom seem to be oinking along the same old muddy road.

Start with Republican Senator Roy Blunt who couldn’t wait to go to bat for the energy industry sugar daddies who love him so generously. Blunt  has promised a heroic battle against these standards. He says they will – what else – “kill jobs and raise electric rates.” This, of course, is what Blunt says about anything that emanates from the Democratic administration that saved us from the GOP engendered financial crisis of 2008. The only thing different is that this time he tried to put some numbers to his claims of economic hardship to come, numbers that could be double-checked, and lots of very public merriment – at poor Blunt’s expense – ensued when a journalist at Roll Call did just that. Of course, I noticed some yahoo quoting those same figures in a recent letter the editor published in a little local newspaper so I guess Blunt knows how to please his main audience.

Democratic Senator Claire Mcaskill, on the other hand, is trudging along in her same old rut as well – the one that runs down the middle of any controversial road and avoids veering in any meaningful direction. She’s “withholding judgement while she studies the proposal and gathers public input.” Even before the standards were made public, she’s was a busy little equivocator:

I believe that climate change is real, I believe that it is dangerous, I believe that it is the result of man-made activity, and I trust science.

“I’m not happy about this,” she added, “but Missouri is incredibly coal-dependent for its energy needs. Which means that any aggressive changes in the availability of coal-fired electricity will have a direct impact on whether or not people with fixed incomes and small businesses can afford their energy bills.”

Gee, what does the destruction of the Missouri agricultural ecosystem, not to mention the planet itself, matter if it adds a few dollars to the old utility bill. Since our Missouri politicians are more than willing to subsidize farmers right now, perhaps they could extend some energy subsidies to those who really need them – if I remember correctly, the cap-and-trade bill McCaskill voted against a few years ago proposed to do just that. (McCaskill shares her reluctance to deal with the true costs of coal-generated electricity with Rep. Billy Long (R-7) who also wails about the potential higher utility bills. That alone ought to persuade her to rethink her rhetoric.)

But apart from the question of subsidies, don’t you think that a politician as savvy as McCaskill might figure out that it’s not an all or nothing proposition, that there are ways to mitigate the difficulties inherent in reducing the indirect subsidies that prop up coal use – maybe it’s time for the McCaskills in our Congress, those nefarious Red State Democrats, to take a chance, take a real stand, do the right thing and get real abut renewables instead of hemming, hawing and, in the end, pandering to a destructive status quo. The European Union is now producing so much energy from renewables that it has to figure out how to deal with structural problems caused by oversupply. Why can’t that be Missouri’s problem?

No, the piggy that seems to be sprouting a tiny, feathery winglet or two is Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-7). Usually Vicky is a good little soldier who marches in lock-step with the radical right wing, anti-science base. However, she’s on the record saying that the proposed rules “aren’t as bad as once feared,” and, unlike Senator Blunt’s rhetorical overreach, actually seems to be willing to point out that the rules permit the states some flexibility that can be used to mitigate their impact.

Of course, those may not be incipient wings on that pig, but just lipstick smears. Hartzler did make these statements at a panel discussion dominated by speakers from Missouri’s coal-dependent utilities who tried to sound reasonable and scientifically literate while doing their utmost to keep the renewable energy genie tightly under control lest it upend their their very profitable business models. As research into mechanisms that will store energy generated by renewable sources begins to show serious results, these folks don’t want to be left holding an empty bag. Among them are the same Ameren types who a few years ago proposed a surcharge for consumers who cut their energy use.

But still, it is something when righteous rightwing Vicky Hartzler, of all the politicians in the state, actually acts like she is aware of what the new regulations really propose to do – no matter whose bottom line she wants to protect. And unlike our Democratic Senator McCaskill, who seems to understand the issues even more fully, but who willfully ignores the call to action, Hartzler has struggled to give a coherent response, albeit one that befits an honest conservative. As Paul Krugman observes apropos the Republican reaction to the proposed regulations:

Claims that the effects will be devastating are, however, not just wrong but inconsistent with what conservatives claim to believe. Ask right-wingers how the U.S. economy will cope with limited supplies of raw materials, land, and other resources, and they respond with great optimism: the magic of the marketplace will lead us to solutions. But they abruptly lose their faith in market magic when someone proposes limits on pollution – limits that would largely be imposed in market-friendly ways like cap-and-trade systems. Suddenly, they insist that businesses will be unable to adjust, that there are no alternatives to doing everything energy-related exactly the way we do it now.

So maybe I was right. Maybe I did see a pig lift off, just a little bit. Perhaps Vicky Hartzler is more honest than I had thought. Given the clouds of lies and distortions  consistently rolling in from the rightward direction, that’s at least refreshing.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal, which seems to have morphed into Rubert Murdoch’s effort to recreate Fox News in print, ran what Ed Kilgore calls the “climate-change deniers’ greatest-hits edition”:

In these turgid lines can be found a treasure trove of prevarications. You’ve got your impressive-sounding list of scientists agreeing with the Journal (with no corresponding list of those who disagree; the newsprint or bandwith necessary to publish those would bankrupt even the WSJ). You’ve got your quote marks around the term global warming. You’ve got your allusions to the silly “Climategate” kerfuffle. And you’ve got your unsubstantiated allegations of “persecution” of the brave “heretics” who dare stand with poor, puny Industry against the awesome power of academics.

Well and good. Most of us know where the editorial page at the WSJ is coming from. For those who don’t, who think that this contrived tripe means that scientists are really “uncertain” about human caused climate change, a couple of articles in yesterday’s St. Louis Post-Dispatch suggest that they’ll be in for a rude awakening sometime over the next couple of decades.

The first article in the Post-Dispatch confirms the impression of many of locals that  the St. Louis area really has been getting warmer. The USDA has kicked the region up a notch on its planting zone map. While the article describes this change as positive – gardeners can now overwinter more delicate subtropical plants – it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that there could also be negative implications for traditional crops as well as for crop pests that can thrive when winters are warmer, especially if this is only the beginning of a warming trend.

The second article notes that the on-going drought in the Southwest is one of the reasons for rising beef prices. Many climate scientists believe that such droughts, which have afflicted the area since 2001, will become the norm over time as warming accelerates.

These two casual pieces of reporting should not only concern those lulled into complacency by climate denialism, but those as well who acknowledge that warming is taking place, but think it is too expensive to do what is necessary to mitigate its effects. For instance, on the topic of drought, scientists warn that:

… climate warming will exacerbate water sustainability problems, the Southwest is likely to experience some of the highest economic expenses and environmental losses.

Nor are the risks of drought confined to the Southwest. Many climate-change models predict that as many as 87% of Missouri’s counties “will face higher risks of water shortages by mid-century as the result of climate change.” The new USDA map is one of the first indications that the process of warming is underway.

Senator Claire McCaskill often claims that she opposes meaningful efforts to control carbon emissions because of the it might increase energy costs and stress economically challenged Missouri families. Politicians like Blaine Luetkemeyer work hard to keep farmers worried over probably baseless threats that controlling carbon emissions will increase costs. No Missouri politicians seem to be worried about just how expensive doing nothing could very well be.

Even if dire claims about increased expense that will follow from effort to mitigate carbon emissions aren’t, at the very least, highly exaggerated, they still represent short-term thinking in the face of a long-term march to disaster. I hope that the same Missouri families and farmers remember who misled them when they have to pony up to deal with the far more expensive problems attendant upon escalating climate change.

*Inadvertently omitted text restored to first sentence of last paragraph.  

Ever wonder just why climate change denialism is so prevalent even as hard evidence continues to mount that we are rapidly nearing a point beyond which massively destructive changes may be inevitable? There are, of course, numerous factors behind this situation. As researcher Peter Gleick observed in Forbes, “when scientific findings have big consequences for policy and politics, anti-science ideology and denial flourish.”

Think Progress reports that a new organization, Forecast the Facts, is attempting to insure that TV weather forecasters don’t contribute to this state of affairs. They are worried about the tendency of some forecasters to either ignore climate change or promote denialism in their role as trusted TV weathermen:

It’s a big problem: weather reporters reach millions of people every night, and right now they’re not telling their viewers the full story. We can change that. …

St. Louisians and others in Southeastern Missouri who live in range of KTVI-TV (FOX2) might be interested in the prominent position of that station’s Dave Murray on Forecast the Facts’ list of weather reporters who promote denialism. The report quotes Murray as saying that:

…he prefers to talk about climate change and weather cycles rather than global warming. Murray said, “The climate is always changing and has been since day one” and will continue to do so.

“We have been in a warmer-than-average pattern for the last 10 to 15 years,” said Murray. “That cycle is now just starting to flip to a colder-than-average pattern that will last 15 to 20 years, although there will be some blips in this pattern.”

The St. Louis Business Journal article from which the quote was taken surveyed several Missouri weather forecasters, and while none seemed as overtly denialist as Murray, several noted that they shy away from talking about global warming because it’s “controversial” (Eirch Aldrich, KOMU-TV, Columbia; Lisa Teachman, KMBC-TV, Kansas City; Zach Paul, KRCG-TV, Jefferson City).

It’s heartening to note that other Missouri weather forecasters are less worried about political fallout. Some, while they do not explicitly talk about global warming, do not dispute the concept, but quite legitimately note that they have little time and it is not always possible to relate immediate weather patterns to long-term climate change patterns. Fortunately, there are even some forecasters, like Cindy Prezzler (KSDK, St. Louis) and  Dave Sinder (KY3-TV, Springfield), who consider it appropriate to draw attention to the relationship between weather and climate change.

The divide between Missouri’s TV weather men and women is not unique.  Although the American Meteorological Society has formally come down on the side of the climate scientists, affirming anthropogenic, or man-made, global warming, a recent study finds that only about half of 571 weather forecasters surveyed believed that global warming is real and less than a third believe it is due to human activities.

There are numerous reasons for this divergence; a report on the subject in the New York Times suggested that a major reason might be the difference in the methodology used by meteorologists and that of climate scientists. The tools used to predict a blizzard over the period of a week are quite different than the methodologies used to analyze long term trends and build comprehensive predictive models.

The article also quoted several sources who believe that resentment may play a role. It suggests that TV forecasters – only about half of whom even have a four-year degree in meteorology – may experience “a little bit of elitist-versus-populist tensions” when confronted with dicta laid down by mostly academic climate scientists who operate very differently and who aren’t always respectful of the minutiae of predictive meteorology.  

Whatever the reason, the problem is serious because research also shows that up to 56% of Americans trust TV weather forecasters more than other sources on the subject of global warming. Consequently, it is important to address the problem of meteorologists who persist in misinforming the public while, as Forecast the Facts, notes, “their viewers are facing unprecedented heat waves, droughts, and flooding, which scientists say are fueled by global warming.” If policy shaped by those who are willfully or otherwise ignorant of the facts worries you, visit Forecast the Facts and see what others are doing and what you can do too.        

Crossposted from Antemedius

“Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries. But question it we must.”

“The only thing that has actually remotely slowed down the relentless rise of carbon emissions over the last two to three decades is recession.”

— Tim Jackson

British Economist Tim Jackson studies the links between lifestyle, societal values and the environment to question the primacy of economic growth.

He currently serves as the economics commissioner on the UK government’s Sustainable Development Commission and is director of RESOLVE – a Research group on Lifestyles, Values and Environment. After five years as Senior Researcher at the Stockholm Environment Institute, Jackson became Professor of Sustainable Development at University of Surrey, and was the first person to hold that title at a UK university.

He founded RESOLVE in May 2006 as an inter-disciplinary collaboration across four areas – CES, psychology, sociology and economics – aiming to develop an understanding of the links between lifestyle, societal values and the environment.

In 2009 Jackson published “Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet”, a substantially revised and updated version of Jackson’s controversial study (.PDF, 136 pp.) for the Sustainable Development Commission, an advisory body to the UK Government. The study rapidly became the most downloaded report in the Commission’s nine year history when it was launched in 2009.

Filmed at TEDGlobal 2010, here is Tim Jackson’s economic reality check, a 20 minute talk he gave for the TEDGlobal audience…

I want you to imagine a world, in 2050, of around nine billion people, all aspiring to Western incomes, Western lifestyles. And I want to ask the question — and we’ll give them that two percent hike in income, in salary each years as well, because we believe in growth. And I want to ask the question: how far and how fast would be have to move? How clever would we have to be? How much technology would we need in this world to deliver our carbon targets? And here in my chart. On the left-hand side is where we are now. This is the carbon intensity of economic growth in the economy at the moment. It’s around about 770 grams of carbon. In the world I describe to you, we have to be right over here at the right-hand side at six grams of carbon. It’s a 130-fold improvement, and that is 10 times further and faster than anything we’ve ever achieved in industrial history. Maybe we can do it, maybe it’s possible — who knows? Maybe we can even go further and get an economy that pulls carbon out of the atmosphere, which is what we’re going to need to be doing by the end of the century. But shouldn’t we just check first that the economic system that we have is remotely capable of delivering this kind of improvement?

http://www.antemedius.com/files/flvplayer.swf

full transcript here…  

On May 16, 2009 a collaboration between the British medical journal The Lancet and University College London released the first UCL Lancet Commission report, assessing the impact of global warming on global health, and on populations.

Titled Managing the health effects of climate change (.PDF), the year long study highlights the threat of climate change on patterns of disease, water and food insecurity, human settlements, extreme climatic events, and population migration. The report also highlights the action required by global society to mitigate the health impacts of climate change.

“Climate change,” the report concludes, “is the biggest global health threat of the 21 century.”

The report presents the two distorted maps shown below  – density equalizing cartograms depicting a comparison of undepleted CO2 emissions by country for 1950-2000 versus the regional distribution of four climate sensitive health consequences (malaria, malnutrition, diarrhea, and inland flood-related fatalities).

expand image

The first image shows the world in terms of carbon emissions. America, for instance, is huge. So is China. And Europe. Africa is hardly visible.

The second map shows the world in terms of increased mortality — that is to say, deaths — from climate change. Suddenly, America virtually disappears. So does Europe. Africa, however, is grotesquely distended. South Asia inflates.

In Barack Obama’s commencement address Sunday May 17, 2009 at the University of Notre Dame in South Bend, Indiana, Obama exhorted the graduates to recognize that “that our fates are tied up, as Dr. King said, in a ‘single garment of destiny.'” and “Your generation must decide how to save God’s creation from a changing climate that threatens to destroy it.”

But the peoples of the world are not bound equally.

“Loss of healthy life years as a result of global environmental change (including climate change) is predicted to be 500 times greater in poor African populations than in European populations,” states the UCL Lancet Commission report bluntly.

In other words, for every million deaths related to climate change in Europe – and North America, btw – there will be five hundred million deaths in Africa and other countries.

……….

I have feet. They were free.

And though they sometimes smell, they don’t pollute.

Since the human race doesn’t seem to be able to get it together on using our heads, maybe if we all got together and used our feet more often, we wouldn’t have so many problems to think about?

In the past couple of weeks there has been a spate of newspaper articles reporting that the House passed Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer’s (R-9) budget bill amendement to deny funding to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which he characterizes as “engaged in dubious science.” I admit that I did not do a comprehensive survey, but few of the newspaper articles that I saw bothered to examine Luetkemeyer’s rationale for that belief.

This St. Louis Post-Dispatch article is typical. It summarizes Luetkemeyer’s assertions, briefly quotes another congressman, Rep. Henry Waxman,  who, predictably, criticizes Luetkemeyer, and leaves the issue there.  The reader can be forgiven for thinking that this is just another partisan squabble. Some articles actually get a quote from a scientist who, naturally, finds Luetkemeyer’s actions disturbing. But nobody evaluates the evidence either way.

For example, many of Luetkemeyer’s assertions about the IPCC hinge on his embrace of the “climategate” scam. In the Post-Dispatch article cited above he references the manufactured controversy to justify his claim that the IPCC is “nefarious”:

Scientists manipulated climate data, suppressed legitimate arguments in peer-reviewed journals, and researchers were asked to destroy emails so that a small number of climate alarmists could continue to advance their environmental agenda

Climategate gave rise to no substantive criticism of the IPCC findings  – just efforts to cast aspersions on the group’s impartiality, based on a few casual emails from IPCC participants at the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit (CRU). The Post-Dispatch article said nothing about the fact that half a dozen investigations of the alleged wrongdoing have vindicated the scientists involved. Most recently, the U.S. Commerce Department Inspector General, who initiated an investigation into the Climategate accusations at the behest the the notorious denialist, Senator James Inhoffe (R-OK), concluded that:

In our review of the CRU emails, we did not find any evidence that NOAA inappropriately manipulated data comprising the [Global Historical Climatology Network] dataset or failed to adhere to appropriate peer review procedures.

In his press release on the topic, Luetkemeyer also touts a report in which he says “more than 700 acclaimed international scientists have challenged the claims made by the IPCC.” Several news reports on Luetkemeyer’s legislation also mention his promotion of this report. The Dake Page, a science blog, describes the contents in less enthusiastic terms than Luetkemeyer:

… The report is the list of quotes and abstracts compiled by Marc Morano (a lobbyist funded non-scientist) when he worked for James Inhofe during Inhofe’s previous chairmanship of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee.  While some of the scientists listed are in fact acclaimed, mostly they are in completely separate fields of study and have never done any climate research.  Others are not scientists at all.  And many of the quotes and abstracts have been edited to suggest positions many of the scientists say they do not hold.

It shouldn’t really have been too difficult to come up with this information. Especially since several of the “700 scientists,” such as Steve Rayner from Oxford, have very publicly repudiated the report and asked that their names, included without their permission, be removed.

The fact is that the basis upon which Rep. Luetkemeyer suggests we withhold vital support from the IPCC is easily demonstrated to be false. The real tragedy is that we desperately need the type of unified research effort that only a cooperative body like the IPCC can provide. Yet our press allows misguided and ignorant politicians like Luetkemeyer to besmirch its reputation with impunity.

Given the importance of the issue, would it have been too much to have expected the Post-Dispatch reporter to go just a little deeper? None of the facts above are hard to find or to verify. He wouldn’t have to say that Luetkemeyer is peddling hokum; he should just do a little more fact checking. We rely on newspapers for truth about what our leaders are doing and saying. Reporting what is authoritatively known about important questions – and climate change is indisputably important – does not constitute bias – unless you think that a bias in favor of the truth is wrong.

We hear a lot about what will happen in the future if nothing is done to stop anthropogenic climate change, and we also regularly witness the on-going efforts of the big corporte stakeholders and their tame politicians to pretend that it isn’t so, or, when that line won’t wash, that the “anthropogenic” part can’t be proven. However, deny it until the cows come home, there is no way to avoid the fact that increased CO2 results in warming, and that humans have been pumping historically unprecedented amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. Nor is there any way to avoid the fact that we are experiencing the catastrophic effect of escalating climate and weather changes right now:

* Many citizens of the island nation of Kiribati have relocated to New Zealand because the rising sea level has washed away their villages.

* The President of the Maldives Islands is making desperate plans to forestall the effects of rising water levels, and to relocate thousands of Maldives citizens if his endeavors prove futile – if nothing is done and palliative measures come too late, “we will die” he says.

* Last summer, one of the increasingly more frequent and more violent tropical storms, Cyclone Aila, left the entire island of Gabura off Bangladesh completely submerged, displacing over 20,000 islanders.

These are only a few examples of what has happened last year, is happening this year, and will happen next year – not twenty, thirty, fifty years in the future. If nothing is done the future will be worse, thousands more will be displaced, and all of us will likely live in a world where massive starvation, epidemic disease, and war are commonplace.  

The U.S. will not be exempt – say good-bye to New York City, write off the Eastern third of Maryland.  Don’t believe me?  How about when you hear it from a hard-edged business trying to save its profit margins:

In 2006, Allstate announced it was no longer issuing new homeowners’ policies in states up and down the East Coast. In Maryland, the company shut its doors to new customers across 11 eastern counties, including parts of Anne Arundel and Prince George’s counties. Why? First, the company said, sea levels are definitely rising worldwide based on irrefutable science. Second, Atlantic hurricanes are getting bigger and more intense as the planet warms.

Meanwhile, here in Missouri, too many of our intellectual and political leaders temporize, equivocate, pander and lie, while others seem too stupid to actually understand the urgency of the problem with which we are faced. Consider the following examples:

* University of Missouri President Gary Forsee thinks cap-and-trade legislation isn’t good for the University system’s bottom line – so to hell with the rest of the world!

* Rep. Roy Blunt, taking full advantage of the confusion engendered by climate denial goons in order to help out all the nice folks who keep his campaign kitty overflowing, asserts that “There isn’t any real science to say we are altering the climate path of the earth.”

* Rep. Todd Akin, who assures us that his science advisors have passed high school science, thinks it’s all a big chuckle, and is looking forward to the time when there will surf at the steps of the capitol building.

* Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer has introduced legislation to forbid U.S. funds going to the  United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which represents the thought of the majority of the world’s leading climate scientists, because, he asserts confidently, it “is engaged in dubious science.”

* Sam Graves voted against the House cap-and-trade legislation on the basis of a questionable claim that it would constitute a “national energy tax” that would “devastate rural America.” Wasn’t he aware of measures in the bill that were explicitly designed to mitigate any potential hardships?  Or was it just too inconvenient to explain why he opposed trying to making cap-and-trade work for everyone.

*  According to Rep. Jo Ann Emerson, cap-and-trade is risky because “Now the only experience that we’ve seen on this is what Europe has, and they have a cap and trade program that is not doing well, and so I think it is a stupid idea… .”  Of course, maybe Emerson’s just a bit too quick to put down the European experience; she probably ought to read up on what initial European cap-and-trade efforts have taught us.    

* Senator Kit Bond cites junk reports in his effort to destroy cap-and-trade legislation.

* Claire McCaskill, who claims to share progressive values in her fundraising letters, is insistent that climate legislation demands a “very gradual implementation,” otherwise Missourians might have to pay somewhat more for electricity.

* In Jefferson City, state legislators, whom Senator McCaskill so aptly described as a “vast sea of neanderthals,” have begun rumbling about the evils of cap-and-trade; a  trio of freshmen state representatives, Sue Allen, Cole McNary, and Andrew Koenig, have been working up the rural and tea-party contingent with state-of-the art climate denial propaganda. Probably much worse will be coming down the pike in the months ahead.

While most of the Missouri establishment has joined the chorus of the self-serving and the brain-dead, a few courageous souls deserve our thanks – at least for the time-being.  Ike Skelton, Lacy Clay and Emanuel Cleaver all come to mind.  One wonders, however, as the pressure builds, as the denialist lies proliferate, and the teapartiers rage, how long they will manage to hold out against expediency which seems to trump the ugly reality of global warming.