Climate Crisis is Our Third World War -- Requires a Bold Response

The climate crisis is our third world war. It needs a bold response

Joseph Stiglitz | June 4, 2019 | The Guardian

Critics of the Green New Deal ask if we can afford it. 
But we can’t afford not to: our civilization is at stake.


Advocates of the Green New Deal say there is great urgency in dealing with the climate crisis and highlight the scale and scope of what is required to combat it. They are right. They use the term “New Deal” to evoke the massive response by Franklin Delano Roosevelt and the United States government to the Great Depression. An even better analogy would be the country’s mobilization to fight World War II.

Critics ask, “Can we afford it?” and complain that Green New Deal proponents confound the fight to preserve the planet, to which all right-minded individuals should agree, with a more controversial agenda for societal transformation. On both accounts the critics are wrong.

Yes, we can afford it, with the right fiscal policies and collective will. But more importantly, we must afford it. The climate emergency is our third world war. Our lives and civilization as we know it are at stake, just as they were in the second world war.

When the US was attacked during the second world war no one asked, “Can we afford to fight the war?” It was an existential matter. We could not afford not to fight it. The same goes for the climate crisis. Here, we are already experiencing the direct costs of ignoring the issue – in recent years the country has lost almost 2% of GDP in weather-related disasters, which include floods, hurricanes, and forest fires. The cost to our health from climate-related diseases is just being tabulated, but it, too, will run into the tens of billions of dollars – not to mention the as-yet-uncounted number of lives lost. We will pay for climate breakdown one way or another, so it makes sense to spend money now to reduce emissions rather than wait until later to pay a lot more for the consequences – not just from weather but also from rising sea levels. It’s a cliche, but it’s true: an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

The war on the climate emergency, if correctly waged, would actually be good for the economy – just as the second world war set the stage for America’s golden economic era , with the fastest rate of growth in its history amidst shared prosperity. The Green New Deal would stimulate demand, ensuring that all available resources were used; and the transition to the green economy would likely usher in a new boom. Trump’s focus on the industries of the past, like coal, is strangling the much more sensible move to wind and solar power. More jobs by far will be created in renewable energy than will be lost in coal.

Read more at The Guardian

Joseph E Stiglitz is a university professor at Columbia, the 2001 recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics, a former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, a former chief economist of the World Bank and the author, most recently, of People, Power, and Profits: Progressive Capitalism for an Age of Discontent

~    ~    ~

U.S. Fossil Fuel Subsidies Exceed Pentagon Spending, says International Monetary Fund Report

Study: U.S. Fossil Fuel Subsidies Exceed Pentagon Spending

The world would be richer and healthier if the full costs of fossil fuels were paid, according to a new report from the International Monetary Fund

By Tim Dickinson | May 8, 2019

The United States has spent more subsidizing fossil fuels in recent years than it has on defense spending, according to a new report from the International Monetary Fund.

The IMF found that direct and indirect subsidies for coal, oil and gas in the U.S. reached $649 billion in 2015. Pentagon spending that same year was $599 billion.

The study defines “subsidy” very broadly, as many economists do. It accounts for the “differences between actual consumer fuel prices and how much consumers would pay if prices fully reflected supply costs plus the taxes needed to reflect environmental costs” and other damage, including premature deaths from air pollution.

These subsidies are largely invisible to the public, and don’t appear in national budgets. But according the the IMF, the world spent $4.7 trillion — or 6.3 percent of global GDP — in 2015 to subsidize fossil fuel use, a figure it estimated rose to $5.2 trillion in 2017. China, which is heavily reliant on coal and has major air-pollution problems, was the largest subsidizer by far, at $1.4 trillion in 2015. But the U.S. ranked second in the world.

The human, environmental and economic toll of these subsidies is shocking to the conscience. The authors found that if fossil fuels had been fairly priced in 2015, global carbon emissions would have been slashed by 28 percent. Deaths from fossil fuel-linked air pollution would have dropped by nearly half.

Oil, gas and coal companies — and their stooges in public office — have long argued that making consumers pay for the full impacts of fossil fuel use would cripple the economy. The IMF experts call bs on this idea, revealing that the world would, in fact, be more prosperous. Eliminating subsidies for fossil fuels would have created global “net economic welfare gains” in 2015 of “more than $1.3 trillion, or 1.7 percent of global GDP,” the study found. (These net gains are “calculated as the benefits from reduced environmental damage and higher revenue minus the losses from consumers facing higher energy prices.”)

For the United States, the $649 billion in fossil fuel subsidies exceeded even the extravagant amount of money the country spent on defense. To offer a sense of scale, Pentagon spending accounted for 54 percent of the discretionary federal budget in 2015. In comparison to another important, but less well-funded part of the federal budget, fossil fuel subsidies were nearly 10 times what Congress spent on education. Broken down to an individual level, fossil fuel subsidies cost every man, woman and child in the United States $2,028 that year.

At the opening of the IMF’s spring meetings in April, Managing Director Christine Lagarde laid out the benefits she sees in properly pricing fossil fuels. “The numbers are quite staggering” she said, referring to the savings that could be achieved “fiscally, but also in terms of human life, if there had been the right price on carbon emission as of 2015.”

Lagarde continued to rattle off the benefits to humanity of realizing these savings. “There would be more public spending available to build hospitals, to build roads, to build schools and to support education and health for the people,” she said.

For Lagarde and the IMF, the conclusion was obvious: “We believe that removing fossil fuel subsidies is the right way to go.”

Link to the article at Rolling Stone here 

ENERGY: Report finds strong bipartisan support for 100% clean, renewable energy -- Majority see economic benefits

Yale Program on Climate Change Communication

REPORT: Energy in the American Mind -- December 2018

By Anthony Leiserowitz, Edward Maibach, Seth Rosenthal, John Kotcher, Abel Gustafson, Parrish Bergquist, Matthew Ballew and Matthew Goldberg

---

Executive Summary

Drawing on a nationally representative survey (N = 1,114; including 966 registered voters), this report describes Americans’ energy-related beliefs, attitudes, consumer behaviors, and support for different energy policies. Among other important results, we found strong bipartisan support for requiring electric utilities to use 100% clean, renewable energy, that a majority of Americans say transitioning to clean, renewable energy will benefit the economy, and that support for renewable energy research has increased by 30 percentage points among conservative Republicans over the past five years.

Beliefs and Attitudes about Clean, Renewable Energy

• Most Americans consider both “clean energy” and “renewable energy” to be good things. Liberal Democrats were more likely to rate the term “clean energy” (99%) positively than “renewable energy” (83%), while conservative Republicans were more likely to rate the term “renewable energy” (63%) positively than “clean energy” (46%).
• About six in ten Americans consider coal energy (62%) to be “moderately” or more harmful to people’s health. Democrats (76%) are more likely than Republicans (57%) to say that coal is harmful. About half of Americans (53%) say nuclear energy is harmful. In contrast, almost no Americans think solar (5%) or wind energies (5%) are harmful to people’s health.
• A majority of Americans (58%) – including three in four Democrats (75%) – think policies intended to transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy will improve economic growth and create new jobs. Only 18% of Americans – and 7% of Democrats – think such policies will reduce growth and jobs. More Republicans think such a transition will improve economic growth (39%) than reduce it (31%).
• Americans’ most important reasons to support a transition to 100% clean, renewable energy are reducing water pollution (75%), reducing air pollution (74%), and providing a better life for our children and grandchildren (72%).
• About seven in ten Americans (71%; including 87% of Democrats and 51% of Republicans) think clean energy should be a “high” or “very high” priority for the president and Congress. Very few Americans (7%, including 3% of Democrats and 11% of Republicans) think it should be a “low” priority.
• A majority of Americans (61%) – including about eight in ten Democrats (79%) – think that if all nations switch to 100% clean, renewable energy by 2050, it will be “moderately” or “very” effective at limiting global warming.

PUBLIC MEETING: Amherst Waterfront Revitalization Projects

Click images to enlarge

Help Pass Strong Climate Legislation in NYS Now -- Take Action!

We are on the verge of passing the strongest climate legislation in the country, right here in New York!

But Governor Cuomo, who says he supports strong climate legislation, is not standing as the bold leader he’d like us to believe he is and has called proposed legislation “a political placebo.” 

We need to tell him to get his priorities straight and pass a strong Climate and Community Protection Act (CCPA) now.

It's more important than ever to Call Governor Cuomo and Email Your Representatives to tell them it is beyond time to pass a strong CCPA!

It's EASY: simply Click the Link above and select Call or Email. A message is supplied.

Despite Cuomo’s feet dragging, pressure to #PassTheCCPA is at its all time high. Our New York congresspeople endorsed this landmark legislation this week, from Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand to Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Brian Higgins and most other members of the NY congressional delegation (see letter and signatories, below).
 

The time is now. Let’s get this done. Let’s pass the CCPA this legislative session!

~  Environmental Advocates of New York - EANY.org

---

Endorsement of the Climate and Community Protection Act by U.S. Representatives 
(click images to enlarge):

TAKE ACTION: Demand a Vote on the NYS Climate and Community Protection Act

TAKE ACTION: 

Tell our State elected leaders: our Planet, our Health, and our Communities can't wait. 

We need New York State to lead on Climate Justice and pass the Climate and Community Protection Act (CCPA) this session. 

We have a Majority of Sponsors in the Senate and the Assembly. 

We demand a VOTE on the CCPA NOW!

Click Here to Take Action

NY Renews is a coalition of more than 150 grassroots, state, and national organizations. We aim to make New York State the nation’s leader in tackling the climate crisis while protecting workers and lifting up communities.