We Need a New Culture

Bill McGibben:

Step one involves actually talking about global warming. For years now, the accepted wisdom in the best green circles was: talk about anything else -- energy independence, oil security, beating the Chinese to renewable technology. I was at a session convened by the White House early in the Obama administration where some polling guru solemnly explained that "green jobs" polled better than "cutting carbon."

Step two, we have to ask for what we actually need, not what we calculate we might possibly be able to get. If we're going to slow global warming in the very short time available to us, then we don't actually need an incredibly complicated legislative scheme that gives door prizes to every interested industry and turns the whole operation over to Goldman Sachs to run. We need a stiff price on carbon, set by the scientific understanding that we can't still be burning black rocks a couple of decades hence. That undoubtedly means upending the future business plans of Exxon and BP, Peabody Coal and Duke Energy, not to speak of everyone else who's made a fortune by treating the atmosphere as an open sewer for the byproducts of their main business.

Instead they should pay through the nose for that sewer, and here's the crucial thing: most of the money raised in the process should be returned directly to American pockets. The monthly check sent to Americans would help fortify us against the rise in energy costs, and we'd still be getting the price signal at the pump to stop driving that SUV and start insulating the house. We also need to make real federal investments in energy research and development, to help drive down the price of alternatives -- the Breakthrough Institute points out, quite rightly, that we're crazy to spend more of our tax dollars on research into new drone aircraft and Mars orbiters than we do on photovoltaics.

Tomgram: Bill McKibben, A Wilted Senate on a Heating Planet

There are economic structures around all the things that we want to go away. Cut off the head of the monsters oil and coal and what happens? Lost jobs. Oil and coal jobs, distributions systems jobs, coal fired electric plant jobs, parts manufacture for coal fired electric plant jobs, and on and on and on. We just saw an economic structure collapse in the gulf due to the spill. Small stuff compared to the impact of suddenly making oil and coal noncompetitive via carbon price.

But lets say just for grins than some tax on carbon is imposed. Costs of energy go up, but the revenues from those taxes go back into your pocket, so you pay the higher costs... and it's almost a wash. So we haven't accomplished anything.

No, I think we need a sea change in our culture. Like the change that got nearly everyone off cigarettes. One that would make it taboo to drive a Humvee, eat beef, stuff like that.

We have become profoundly insensitive to what it takes to maintain our standard of living.

I realized recently that in order for us to do what's needed to prevent catastrophic climate change we're going to have to suffer profound changes in our way of life, our ambitions and our expectations. No more American Dream

• No more disposable anything
  
• No more huge homes for a family of 4
  
• No more gas guzzlers
  
• Less meat
  
• More telecommuting
  

Got some to add?

Our habits of consumption have become epic.

Now tell me, dear readers (I've got at least 1), do you believe people will sacrifice everything they've been programmed to want to save the next generation? Hummm?

And think about how much energy is spent moving stuff around! The price of an avocado in NY... most food in NY, would cost so much nobody could afford the ridiculous housing costs.

We have become profoundly insensitive to what it takes to maintain our standard of living.

It begins?

Wildfires Kill 40 Russians; 58 People Drown as Record Heat Wave Continues

Inconvienient side effect

Russia’s worst drought in at least 50 years, which already drove wheat prices to the biggest jump since 1973, will continue in August and threaten more crops and winter-grain sowings, the state Hydrometeorological Center said on its website. Rainfall last month in central Russia and along the Volga River was 10 percent to 30 percent of the long-term average, the center said.

I say Manhatten, they say Apollo

Humanity needs to take 'giant leap'


But what ever they call it, if it happens, it's going to have to be BIG

Of course they plan on taking a decade to get going, by then it could be too late.

And wow... parasitic? or cancerous?

Meanwhile, the financial system has strangled U.S. growth by parasitically growing from 3% of GDP in 1965 to 7.5% of GDP currently. As Jeremy Grantham pointed out in his quarterly letter to investors, financial services were sufficient for the economy when they were 3% of GDP, but that sector grew by strangling GDP growth elsewhere. The nation's GDP growth slowed from 3.5% in 1965 to 2.4% between 1980 and 2007, and the slowdown occurred before our current crisis.

In other words, our bloated financial sector has been sucking the life-blood out of the U.S. economy for years, and recent decisions insure it will continue to feed off taxpayers, while the host economy struggles for life.

Stranguflation: Deflation and Inflation Where it Hurts America Most

It will take centuries

New CO2 model to ensure that Earth doesn't heat up beyond two degrees

The headline is deceptive

Although, based on these calculations, global warming would remain under the two-degree threshold until 2100, further warming may be expected in the long term.

"It will take centuries for the global climate system to stabilise," said Roeckner