Morning Must-Read: Rob Stavins: Climate Realities

Rob Stavins: Climate Realities: “In theory, we can avoid the worst consequences of climate change…

…with an intensive global effort over the next several decades. But given real-world economic and, in particular, political realities, that seems unlikely…. The world is now on track to more than double current greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere by the end of the century. This would push up average global temperatures by three to eight degrees Celsius and could mean the disappearance of glaciers, droughts in the mid-to-low latitudes, decreased crop productivity, increased sea levels and flooding, vanishing islands and coastal wetlands, greater storm frequency and intensity, the risk of species extinction and a significant spread of infectious disease…. Two points are important to understand if we’re going to be serious about attacking this problem. One, it will be costly…. And two, things become more challenging when we move from the economics to the politics…. If the new technologies we hope will be available aren’t, like one that would enable the capture and storage of carbon emissions from power plants, the cost estimates more than double. Then there are the politics, which are driven by two fundamental facts. First, greenhouse gases mix globally…. Second, some of these heat-trapping gases–in particular, carbon dioxide–remain in the atmosphere for centuries…. Reducing greenhouse gas pollution will require the unalloyed cooperation of at least the 15 countries and one region (the European Union) that together account for about 80 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions…. Making matters more difficult, climate change is essentially unobservable by the public. On a daily basis, we observe the weather, not the climate. This makes it less likely that public opinion will force action the way it did 50 years ago when black smoke rose from industrial smokestacks…