Morning Must-Read: Ezra Klein: 7 Reasons the World Will Fail on Global Warming
Ezra Klein: 7 reasons America will fail on climate change: “I don’t believe the United States…
…or the world… will do nearly enough, nearly fast enough, to hold the rise in temperatures to safe levels. I think we’re fucked. Or, at the least, I think our grandchildren are fucked…. 1) We’ve waited so long that what America needs to do is really, really hard — and maybe impossible: In the early 1990s, scientists converged on 2°C…. We’ve waited so long to begin cutting emissions that two degrees looks flatly impossible. We’re on track for 4°C of warming…. The question isn’t whether we’ll fail. It’s how badly we’ll fail…. 2) The people most affected by climate change don’t get a vote: This map… the US… is one of the countries least affected by global warming…. Carbon emissions disproportionately benefit the US and disproportionately harm countries that are not the US…. 3) We’re bad at sacrificing now to benefit later…. 4) The effects of global warming are not easily reversible…. 5) The Republican Party has gone off the rails on climate change…. 6) The international cooperation required is unprecedented, and maybe impossible…. 7) Geoengineering is nuts…. Not to be a killjoy, but it’s hard to believe that the consequences of the huge, unpredictable changes to the global climate can be safely reversed by further efforts to make huge, unpredictable changes to the climate. So what now?… I could make up a more optimistic story. I just don’t believe it…. On climate change, the truth has gone from inconvenient to awful. Right now we’re failing our future. And we will be judged harshly for it.