×
by Tom LaskawyBrad Plumer at TNR makes a good point in response to the staggering news from NOAA that, regardless of how quickly we cut emissions, we'll still experience significant climatic disruption. As he observes:
Sometimes you hear it argued that we should postpone action on greenhouse gases until we have snazzier technologies to help us out. But as we pump carbon into the air, we're "locking in" future impacts on the climate system—effects that later cuts won't be able to reverse.He's referring to what I like to call the "innovation dodge," endorsed by "reasonable" conservatives like Andrew Sullivan, and used as a bludgeon against government regulation. Before this latest news, it surely seemed safe to base your climate strategy on silver bullets. You just figure you can pull all that nasty carbon out of the air once you've invented a magic carbon-eating machine some time in the indefinite future. But now we have evidence that we don't just have to deal with more carbon if we wait, we have to deal with more and larger guaranteed effects on the climate - things like Dust Bowl-size droughts in most of the world's agricultural regions that last longer and even higher sea levels than earlier predicted. Regulation! And innovation! Together into the future. I can already see the posters.Plumer also runs with the "insurance" metaphor that McKinsey invoked in its analysis of climate costs (i.e. that the costs in GDP to address climate change are significantly less than current worldwide spending on insurance) and suggests it as a rallying cry. Uncertainty will always remain in climate models (though climate scientists swear they are better at assessing risks than financial modelers have been) - what we're looking for at the end of the day is a hedge. Hmmm. Let's stick with calling it insurance, shall we?
