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Why the world faces climate chaos
By Martin Wolf

We will watch the rise in greenhouse gases until it is too late to do anything about it

Last week the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was reported to have passed 400 parts per million for the first time in 4.5m years. It is also continuing to rise at a rate of about 2 parts per million every year. On the present course, it could be 800 parts per million by the end of the century. Thus, all the discussions of mitigating the risks of catastrophic climate change have turned out to be empty words.

Collectively, humanity has yawned and decided to let the dangers mount.
...
So why are we behaving like this?

The first and deepest reason is that, as the civilisation of ancient Rome was built on slaves, ours is built on fossil fuels. What happened in the beginning of the 19th century was not an “industrial revolution” but an “energy revolution”.
...
A second reason is opposition to any interventions in the free market. Some of this, no doubt, is driven by narrowly economic interests. But do not underestimate the power of ideas. To admit that a free economy generates a vast global external cost is to admit that the large-scale government regulation so often proposed by hated environmentalists is justified. For many libertarians or classical liberals, the very idea is unsupportable. It is far easier to deny the relevance of the science.
...
A third reason may be the pressure of responding to immediate crises that has consumed almost all the attention of policy makers in the high-income countries since 2007.

A fourth is a touching confidence that, should the worst comes to the worst, human ingenuity will find some clever ways of managing the worst results of climate change.

A fifth is the complexity of reaching effective and enforceable global agreements on the control of emissions among so many countries. Not surprisingly, the actual agreements reached give more an appearance of action than a reality.

A sixth is indifference to the interests of people to be born in a relatively distant future. As the old line goes: “Why should I care about future generations? What have they ever done for me?”
A final (and related) reason is the need to strike a just balance between poor countries and rich ones and between those who emitted most of the greenhouse gases in the past and those who will emit in the future.

The more one thinks about the challenge, the more impossible it is to envisage effective action.
...
A necessary, albeit not sufficient condition, then, is a politically sellable vision of a prosperous low-carbon economy. That is not what people now see. Substantial resources must be invested in the technologies that would credibly deliver such a future.

Yet that is not all. If such an opportunity does appear more credible, institutions must also be developed that can deliver it.

Neither the technological nor the institutional conditions exist at present. In their absence, there is no political will to do anything real about the process driving our experiment with the climate. Yes, there is talk and wringing of hands. But there is, predictably, no effective action. If that is to change, we must start by offering humanity a far better future. Fear of distant horror is not enough.

Why the world faces climate chaos
By Martin Wolf

We will watch the rise in greenhouse gases until it is too late to do anything about it

Last week the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was reported to have passed 400 parts per million for the first time in 4.5m years. It is also continuing to rise at a rate of about 2 parts per million every year. On the present course, it could be 800 parts per million by the end of the century. Thus, all the discussions of mitigating the risks of catastrophic climate change have turned out to be empty words.

Collectively, humanity has yawned and decided to let the dangers mount.
...
So why are we behaving like this?

The first and deepest reason is that, as the civilisation of ancient Rome was built on slaves, ours is built on fossil fuels. What happened in the beginning of the 19th century was not an “industrial revolution” but an “energy revolution”.
...
A second reason is opposition to any interventions in the free market. Some of this, no doubt, is driven by narrowly economic interests. But do not underestimate the power of ideas. To admit that a free economy generates a vast global external cost is to admit that the large-scale government regulation so often proposed by hated environmentalists is justified. For many libertarians or classical liberals, the very idea is unsupportable. It is far easier to deny the relevance of the science.
...
A third reason may be the pressure of responding to immediate crises that has consumed almost all the attention of policy makers in the high-income countries since 2007.

A fourth is a touching confidence that, should the worst comes to the worst, human ingenuity will find some clever ways of managing the worst results of climate change.

A fifth is the complexity of reaching effective and enforceable global agreements on the control of emissions among so many countries. Not surprisingly, the actual agreements reached give more an appearance of action than a reality.

A sixth is indifference to the interests of people to be born in a relatively distant future. As the old line goes: “Why should I care about future generations? What have they ever done for me?”
A final (and related) reason is the need to strike a just balance between poor countries and rich ones and between those who emitted most of the greenhouse gases in the past and those who will emit in the future.

The more one thinks about the challenge, the more impossible it is to envisage effective action.
...
A necessary, albeit not sufficient condition, then, is a politically sellable vision of a prosperous low-carbon economy. That is not what people now see. Substantial resources must be invested in the technologies that would credibly deliver such a future.

Yet that is not all. If such an opportunity does appear more credible, institutions must also be developed that can deliver it.

Neither the technological nor the institutional conditions exist at present. In their absence, there is no political will to do anything real about the process driving our experiment with the climate. Yes, there is talk and wringing of hands. But there is, predictably, no effective action. If that is to change, we must start by offering humanity a far better future. Fear of distant horror is not enough.