But new Nobel economists provide ray of hope
By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor
Humanity has only a dozen years to limit catastrophic climate change, according to a new UN report, “Global Warming of 1.5ºC,” issued on Oct. 7. Underscoring the message, three days later, Hurricane Michael made landfall near Mexico Beach, Florida, the third-strongest hurricane ever to hit the U.S. mainland. It left a path of destruction that looked like a miles-wide tornado, leaving 18 dead and more than $8 billion in property damage, plus as many as 17 F-22s damaged or destroyed that were stationed at Tyndall Air Force Base, about 10 percent of the total fleet.
Michael seemingly came out of nowhere. It only became a tropical depression the day the United Nation’s report was released. It gained hurricane status the next day, and was projected to hit Florida as a Category 2 hurricane as people went to bed the day after that. But the next day it struck landfall with Category 4 winds — just two miles per hour shy of Category 5. It was the second Category 4 hurricane of the year, following three Category 5 hurricanes last year.
Both Michael’s suddenness and intensity were symbolic of the larger global threat unveiled in the UN report, which warned that “Limiting global warming to 1.5ºC would require rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society,” according to the press release. “With clear benefits to people and natural ecosystems, limiting global warming to 1.5ºC compared to 2ºC could go hand in hand with ensuring a more sustainable and equitable society.”
“This is the largest clarion bell from the science community and I hope it mobilizes people and dents the mood of complacency,” said Debra Roberts, a co-chair of the working group on impacts. “It’s a line in the sand and what it says to our species is that this is the moment and we must act now.”
“Every extra bit of warming matters, especially since warming of 1.5ºC or higher increases the risk associated with long-lasting or irreversible changes, such as the loss of some ecosystems,” said Hans-Otto Pörtner, the working group’s other co-chair.
The half-degree difference could prevent the complete eradication of coral reefs and ease pressure on the Arctic, which would be free of sea ice in summer once per century with global warming of 1.5°C, compared to at least once per decade with 2°C. It would cut in half the risk of destroying about ecosystems on about 13 percent of the world’s land. The human impacts would be similarly stark. Hundreds of millions fewer people — concentrated in poor countries — would be at risk of climate-related poverty, and 10 million more people would be forced to move due to rising sea levels by 2100—a number that would increase substantially in future centuries. It would also make a substantial difference in the impact of extreme weather events—storms, heatwaves and droughts.
But between the report’s release and Michael’s devastating landfall came a ray of hope. On Oct. 8, the Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to William Nordhaus and Paul Romer, both for work expanding beyond conventional market economics. Nordhaus pioneered the field of environmental economics, and has spent most of four decades pushing governments to address climate change, preferably via a carbon tax.
“The policies are lagging very, very far — miles, miles, miles behind the science and what needs to be done,” he said, after learning he’d won the prize. “It’s hard to be optimistic. And we’re actually going backward in the United States with the disastrous policies of the Trump administration.”
But his co-winner, Paul Romer, whose work focuses on the role of government in fostering growth and innovation, struck a more hopeful chord.
“One problem today is that people think protecting the environment will be so costly and so hard that they want to ignore the problem and pretend it doesn’t exist,” Romer said in a post-announcement press conference. But that doesn’t have to be. “Humans are capable of amazing accomplishments if we set our minds to it,” he said.
“Once we start to try to reduce carbon emissions, we’ll be surprised that it wasn’t as hard as we anticipated,” Romer told the Guardian, a view supported by the recent rapid progress in renewable energy generation.
“The danger with very alarming forecasts,” he warned, “is that it will make people feel apathetic and hopeless.”