We Can Do This
..................."Freak Out", "Panic", "Climate Change will destroy our world"! Headlines like these remind me of a Tin Tin comic book from my childhood (see book cover photo here). A meteor is hurtling towards earth. Doom! But it lands in the Arctic, melting icebergs. European nations mount a joint expedition. There's a struggle with a shadowy group trying to thwart our heroes.
That's right, the most likely path forward in the fight against Climate Change, as with the Tin Tin book, is for the European Union to act, followed by other nations (see my previous post, #160); and, for the focus to be on redirecting military spending to fight climate change.
Here are a few reactions to the IPCC report, each followed by my comments--in dark green; then, making our plan an easier sell:
* New York magazine has a piece by David Wallace-Wells that makes the things-are-even-worse case.
Right, things are devilishly disturbing; and the sooner action is taken, the easier our efforts.
* Vox has a piece by Mary Annaise Heglar that suggests Climate Change isn't so much our fault, as it is the fault of multi-national corporations trying to disrupt our efforts.
Like the dastardly Bohlwinkel Bank that disrupts Tin Tin's comic book expedition, monied interests are behind attempts to prolong our Age of Fossil Fuels, the primary force driving Climate Change. Once our plan is in place, however, we may find that opposition was all about the plan's financing. Taxing or capping carbon has always been hard; and a relatively easy fight for the no-goodnik opposition: who wants to pay taxes, anyway? Our plan, a global military spending cutback is, by way of comparison, relatively painless once a given country sees that its adversaries are on board, too.
* In Pacific Standard, Sophie Yeo addresses whether the IPCC report was a waste of time or a valuable 'heads up'. One source for her piece suggests the resources behind the report would have been better spent determining "...how to reach more realistic goals in light of political realities."
Odd, that sounds like a brainstorming session, which is free and open to the public, and will generate emergent ideas...like this blog post.
* A workhorse of the online environmental movement, David Roberts, dishes the good news at Vox: the technological solutions are almost all in place to make our plan work.
Science and technology! Roberts has identified our most promising innovations over the years. We really can do what needs to be done.
* I've also read comments left by dejected readers to the effect that all effort is hopeless: the gigantic increases in consumption needed by poorer countries to reach rich country status are not only inevitable, but impossible to ignore.
Perhaps there's something to this pessimism. But, installing a renewable energy power plant simply costs money, it doesn't produce carbon. Sure, there's some carbon involved in construction, but not much, relatively speaking. The real problem is: How do we generate all the money to pay for what we want done? And our plan solves that problem.
* And finally, in Vox again, Eliza Barclay and Umair Irfan, with 10 ways to reduce Carbon.
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So, where does that leave us and our plan?
* We can make the 2030 deadline. There may not be many coral reefs left, and hurricanes, wildfires, etc., will likely get more intense, and so on, but once we get to 2030 we can then work to reverse the effects of our fossil fuel fever.
* The technology exists to get us to our goal. Simply put, it's the financing that's lacking. No voter will be eager to agree to a 10% tax. Meaning that taxing our way out of this problem will be a heavy lift, which is usually why anyone who thinks long enough about the path ahead is so glum.
* Financing our plan is maybe half as difficult as a global carbon tax. See below, for how we can reduce the difficulty level even more.
* Um, no; fighting Climate Change does not cost $$, net, it saves $$.
* Somebody will need to get our plan noticed. The piece by Sophie Yeo has several contacts that might be interested. I will send them a link.
And finally, how might we make our plan more likely? A redirection of resources, such as we propose, is bound to meet with resistance: not only from those who'll suffer financially (arms manufacturers, for example), but defense ministers, who'll be pressed to find enough spare change in the seat cushions, so to speak. A 10% cut to military spending is going to be a difficult sell, even for Scandinavian countries, for example, who have few foes to defend against.
Instead of trying for 10%, which is our eventual goal of course, we could start with a mere 1.5% (1.5 being our target, in degrees Centigrade). This might jeopardize our eventual need to redirect 2.5% of global GDP a year, every year, for a decade, but starting at a lower level is much more doable. Then, once a peace dividend emerges (governments find they don't need as many armaments if their neighbors are buying fewer), and nations realize they're participating in a giant disarmament exercise, the momentum to further the process will mean we can end up with a higher level of redirection than 10% in the final years prior to 2030.
Maybe a sequential target like this:
1st year: 1.5%
2nd year: 6%
3rd year, and thereafter: 12%
Which, over a ten-year period totals: 1.5 + 6 + (12 x 8) = 103.5
As opposed to 10 x 10 = 100
Which means we have about two years to work on that 1.5%. Ideally, the E.U. would start the ball rolling with a symbolic redirect in 2019; perhaps 0.35%. Pressure would then be on all countries to commit to our 1.5% goal for 2020.
And, it goes without saying, our heroes--our winners--at least in that first year, would be the EU.
And if the E.U. can't come through? Being a hero could be any country's role, even the U.S. A new U.S. president in 2021 could hold a summit with the Chinese, who spend the 2nd-most on their military. It is hard to imagine how that would fail to bring aboard most other countries as well.
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