Do You Believe in Magic?

Dr. Roger A. Pielke, Jr. has written a good article over at Environment 360 called "The Folly of ‘Magical Solutions’ For Targeting Carbon Emissions".

http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2175

Dr. Pielke discusses the problem of international climate conferences that come up with 'goals' for CO2 emissions reductions without any meaningful plans for meeting them and in some cases, it appears to me, without any meaningful intentions of meeting them. He discusses the abuse Japan got for their more modest emissions reduction goals. When he examines the detailed road map that Japan provided for their goals, it turns out they actually have very aggressive plans for carbon free electricity and hybrid vehicles and energy efficient housing.

When he discusses the underlying problem, it sounds like a common problem on many political issues and not specific to climate issues. There are certain people who have the need to show they "care" about a problem and aren't actually interested in the work involved in fixing the problem. Symbolic actions to show they "care" is what they are interested in and once that emotional need is satisfied they move on to Darfur or the rain forests or DDT or whatever. It's politics reduced to a fashion accessory. Does global warming go with these shoes? Does starvation if Africa match this dress? They live in a consequence free zone, where expensive energy doesn't cause people to starve to death and DDT bans don't cause children to die of malaria. In that world, it doesn't matter that windmills don't cause any coal fired electrical plants to close. We could build them out of cardboard and they would still serve their purpose. Potemkin Enviromentalism rules the roost.

Okay rant off.

Another recent example of what Dr Pielke is talking about is what happened at the G8 summit. they declared that global average temperatures should not exceed 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial levels by 2020 and a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 50 per cent worldwide, and by 80 per cent among industrialized nations, by 2050. They didn't mention how they plan to do that. At least King Canute knew he couldn't actually make the tide go back.

Go read what Dr. Pielke says and also check out his blog.

Links:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/