Fatal calculations: How bad economics encouraged climate inaction

Pandemics and climate disruption are existential risks that require that particular emphasis be placed on the high-impact possibilities, not middle-of-the road outcomes. Released today by Breakthrough, Fatal calculations: How economics has underestimated climate damage and encouraged inaction, shows how economists  have ignored the real risks of climate change.  This is the introduction to the report.

At the heart of global policymaking is a concern that mitigation should not be economically disruptive or curtail future growth in production. Perhaps as a consequence, and in order to mesh with this policy paradigm, the economic methods of analysis applied to climate change have underestimated the risks and provided reasons to delay action.

The evidence is all around us. Listen to most governments and business leaders, and especially those nations with a large carbon footprint, and the climate conversation for decades has been about taking it slowly; of incremental policy change that does not rock the economic boat, cost jobs, disturb growth or disadvantage significant national industries.  With minimal discussion about the jobs and growth that will be destroyed in a hotter world.

Read the story from Climate Code Red by David Spratt and Alia Armistead - “Fatal calculations: How bad economics encouraged climate inaction.” 

Looking to religion rather than science

The thoughts of Phil Torres, writing in “Morality, Foresight, and Human Flourishing: An Introduction to Existential Risks”, need to be thought about by those of us concerned about the impacts of climate change:

“Further complicating the situation, environmental degradation could positively reinforce the eschatological beliefs of religious people around the world. This is because many world religions prophesy natural disasters (as well as wars, disease, famines, and so on) to be harbingers of the apocalypse. Consequently, as the effects of climate change become more pronounced, a sizable portion of the 8 billion religious people projected to exist by 2050 may look to religion, rather than science, to make sense of the global crises around them.214 Indeed, such crises could even increase the number of religious adherents. This has happened many times before: e.g., the third-century Plague of Cyprian may have catalyzed the early rise of Christianity, since members of the young religion chose to “martyr” themselves rather than perish from the disease, making Christianity appear to be worth dying for.