Global warming: Are we doomed? A poll.

[The Grand Nudger]

Dial the clock back to the 80's and 90's for the worst part of it all. We were aware of the damage we could do, and we were going to fix it.

Remember the hole in the ozone layer? It's easy to see why, from the point of view of environmentalists and decent people in general..with that as a recent example in history, we could make progress on the next thing. However, private industry interests also had that as a recent example...and they saw it a very different way than john q.

[Ranjr]

Dupont was all about replacing R12.  Cha-ching.

[The Grand Nudger]

Sure were..but that leaves out that their enthusiasm and their methods got them slapped in antitrust objections.

Ultimately, however, we need to start looking at climate action the way that dupont did without all the duponty bullshit. As an opportunity for growth and profit. This time, hopefully, for more than just the lucky few. People without fossil fuel deposits were never going to be the primary beneficiaries of a fossil fuel based economy to begin with.

[Pat Mustard]

Plus commitments will be tightened further as we actually make progress.

You're deluding yourself if the current political class are going to go against their paymasters and push meaningful climate change measures. My prediction is that we'll be even more polluting in 2050 than we are now.

Oh and PS, the last few years have shown us how quickly environmental change can fuck us over. We're in the middle of the environmental changes that will kill us, not looking at the actions that will kick them off twenty years from now.

[The Grand Nudger]

It's truly bipartisan. Joe Manchin (D) Exxon.

He and his fellow pocket legislators will continue to insist that the path to a brighter carbon free future somehow lies in the continued and increased welfare to the industry he represents. I know, I know, the idea is that at some point the consequences of our poor decisions will become so painful and so obvious that it will be impossible to ignore them and that business will by necessity change it's course to accord with the objective reality of profit in changing circumstances. That may have been true once..I don't know when, and we might want it to be true now, but it isn't.

What I do is objectively more profitable than what big ag does, just not to big ag..and they will and have and will always use whatever anticompetitive practices that are either avialable (or that they can create) to stop anyone else from making the money they believe is theirs by something indistinguishable from divine right. You now who the absolute best warriors in the fight against sustainable aquaculture are? Independent live catch boat captains. The great people of fishing states. Sustainable poultry? Purdues debt slave producers. No fan of their own corporate masters by any description..but even less of a fan of someone who hasn;t been saddled the way they have making money doing what they do while they go further and further into the red.

Society fundamentally misunderstands the actual business of the current big dogs..which isn't to produce a product, but to produce resistance at the ground level to the mere possibility of competition. Are we suddenly going to get smart? Are they suddenly going to get stupid? Will we suddenly find ourselves sitting on a warchest to rival theirs...so that even if we did get smart and they did get stupid they couldn't just outspend us in a show of brute force?

No, they've already got too much invested to ever change their course. If they, themselves, could have figured out how to profit from actual climate action..they;d have done so long ago and they would be applying these same anticompetitive practices to protecting that new racket, but they haven't, they can't. They're buggy whip manufacturers who, instead of making upholstery for automobiles, have correctly surmised that their best chance to profit is to make sure everyone is stuck with a horse drawn carriage. To that end, there's no pile of horseshit too high to stand.

That's why I focus on things that work specifically under the assumption that we do worse, not better. It may be the case, for example, that global warming leads to increases for some regions in the field production of grain..but you'd have to be smoking crack to believe that the people destroying the earth right now growing grain won't be the ones to use their endless pile of money to ensure that they're the only ones growing grain then. They'll leave where they are, and leave a husk where they are, and make sure that the people in the new producing regions never see a penny of the benefit that their malfeasance could have otherwise brought them. All the while funding candidates who swear that their exploited labor pool is to blame for the decline of their communities.

Think about this..just in terms of agriculture. Despite having gotten regular infusions of free land by taking it from the owners..by hook or by crook, and despite the availability of a captive labor market in the form of.... first, actual slaves, then indentured servants, and now substandard laborers....and despite all of the advanced knowledge and technical assistance and big giant train tunnel sized gushing subsidies..they haven't managed to either do it better, or even feed everyone. But boy howdy do those prices keep going up. It's more of that. That's the future. That's why we need appropriate technologies. Some measure of their propriety is not just in whether they're good for the environment in abstract terms..but also whether they're good for people, good for competition..and good for those things specifically in light of the reality of the contemporary model and the strong resistance it fields.

[Alan V]

Plus commitments will be tightened further as we actually make progress.

You're deluding yourself if the current political class are going to go against their paymasters and push meaningful climate change measures.  My prediction is that we'll be even more polluting in 2050 than we are now.

Oh and PS, the last few years have shown us how quickly environmental change can fuck us over.  We're in the middle of the environmental changes that will kill us, not looking at the actions that will kick them off twenty years from now.

Extreme weather events will always be surprising, but still don't represent any new normal in themselves.  However, I take your point that damages can come much earlier in the trends.

But I do find too many contributors to this discussion far too cynical.  I don't think you guys are accurate about the politics of climate change or about human nature and how we will respond.

[Angrboda]

I don't think you guys are accurate about the politics of climate change or about human nature and how we will respond.

Past behavior is the best predictor of future behavior.

[The Grand Nudger]

Here's an outlook for your consideration. Tell me if you think it's cynical. There's just one way to get into sustainable ag right now. It's super simple.

Inherited wealth.

Not kidding. That's it, that's all. It's a known known. Dirty little secret of the food journalism industry. plucky entreprenuers try to buck that trend and the national conversation creates a buzz about them..but then they move on to other things and don't follow up. Those guys fail. Overwhelmingly. The ones that succeed...independently wealthy very nearly to a man. The problem isn't so much to find new ways to grow, but to find ways to make money doing things we've known how to do for quite some time. Thousands of years, in many cases. The problem with respect to farms as a business is investment. You can't corner the market on unpatentable systems and methods through lawfare.

Commons production, regenerative ag, closed loops, diversified crop portfolios, site specific consideration, highly specialized labor. These aren't sci fi solutions, but they're the only game in town, in mere reality. Outside of farming by oils numbers, that is.

[Anomalocaris]

IMOH, most important factors in determining whether, overall,  a reasonable amount is done to combat climate change are simply this:

1. How do you distribute the benefit of climate action equitably based on contributions made?

2. How do you assess the contribution in proportion to actual responsibility in terms of GHG already emitted?

If these are not addressed, then climate action will be fractious, much delayed, and much less adequate than could be.

[zebo-the-fat]

It makes so much sense, a conference about climate change has people flying in from all over the world, driving in poluting fleets of cars, have they never heard of Zoom?
(or is it just an excuse for an all expences paid junket?)

and yes, I am a cynical old fart!