Look at that slope - up and to the right!

Look at that slope - up and to the right!

We are winning!

Everyone loves up and to the right!

Oh. Not this one.

In the second diagram - there is an assumption that we establish a world-wide enforcement of zero carbon emissions by about 2040.

(I have been reading the IPCC report that was just published, and have been furiously taking notes, I am not done yet, but the sheer scope of this existential system of challenges is difficult to understate.)

We will also have 2+ billion more people by mid-century.

These people will all want the consumer lifestyle of the western world - and we will definitely want to sell them the goods and services.

We need to grow every economy by 2-4% every year - otherwise investors lose their minds - because we do not know how to have a system that rewards being just stable.

The assumption is that we will in 22 years have a global, enforceable and deep carbon tax. A tax so high on carbon, that you will not want to emit and CO2 from your factory. And even so high that it becomes an attractive business to suck CO2 out of the atmosphere.

That is a huge tax.

At the very lowest end of the carbon tax we would need to charge ~ $4 EXTRA per gallon of gas by 2030 - JUST 12 years from now.

In 12 years we need to get the USA, China, the middle east, all of OPEC, Britain - everyone globally - to agree to a $4 tax on gas. Anyone who cheats this system, means that the others will have to pay even more to make up the difference.

Towards 2050 to reach true net zero emissions, the carbon taxes will need to be ratcheted up another 10x.

Gasoline would have to carry a $20-40 EXTRA per gallon of gas. Gas powered cars become horses. You can drive them at the track, but you gotta buy your carbon.

The number of industries and jobs that will contract from the sunset of simply gasoline is difficult to comprehend. Sure, we all want electric cars. But we have not put the effort into landing this airplane.

And what do we get if we agree to such a tax? We still get 1.5C warming by 2050.

We still get a 70-90% destruction of the world's coral - for example.

In other words, if we work together like humanity has never worked together, and commit to a world-wide government that reaches down into our daily pocketbooks - we still have mega storms, drowned cities, lost farmland, and millions of climate change migrants.

For the last couple of years I feel like the media has been way too polite in talking about climate change.

Climate change - in my view - is the main driving issue for all of humanity. To me every other issue will simply get worse as we continue to not deal with climate change. Wars, hunger, income inequality, gender, race, LGBTQ - everything gets harder when there is less food to eat, less water to drink, and when storms have destroyed the homes.

People that have existential threats daily, will simply not have any more that they can give to any other issue.

Walls cannot stop a billion people on the move.

With 1/6th of the world's CO2 emitted from the USA, the USA is the key to any and all paths.

The USA (and the world) are going to need a radically different form of government. We are going to need a government that is fact and science-based and is simply not democratic or autocratic or any other flavor opinion based decisions.

IF we snapped our fingers, and immediately became a fact and science based government, we have a chance - a 50% chance of keeping the climate change outcomes to simply really bad.

This whole thing where we decide policy based on what we feel is right, or by voting for people who then make their votes based on lobbying, or by what a dictator feels is right, or any other form of policy-by-opinion is going to lead us to the final world war.

Of my facebook friends, can someone point me to what efforts are being made to running our public policies at least as well as a fortune 100 company chases the next few quarters?

Oh sure, let's keep a gerrymandered congress around for naming post offices.

http://report.ipcc.ch/sr15

Originally posted on Facebook on October 08, 2018.