For Whom the Climate Bell Tolls

Sep 7, 2018 J. Bradford DeLong

Those living large in temperate zones across the Global North might like to think that a warming planet is an inconvenient, costly, but ultimately manageable problem that need not affect their current standard of living. Yet, to believe that, one must be prepared to write off the rest of humanity.

BERKELEY – Scarcely had I begun my first lecture of the fall semester here at the University of California, Berkeley, when I realized that I was too hot. I desperately wanted to take off my professorial tweed jacket.

A tweed jacket is a wonderful but peculiar costume. If all you have for raw material is a sheep, it is the closest thing you can get to Gore-Tex. Not only is it perfect for a cloudy, drizzly climate, it is also surprisingly warm – wet or dry – for its weight. In the world before central heating, the wool fabrics now most commonly associated with male formal and semi-formal attire were both effective and comfortable, regardless of whether one lived in Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh, London, Bristol, or Norwich.

But tweed jackets and the like also spread around the globe – a mixed blessing for which one can thank (or blame) the British Empire. For those living closer to the equator and away from the drizzle and fog of the British Isles, such garments have long been anathema. After the advent of central heating, wool attire became less practical even in temperate zones.

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J. Bradford DeLong

Writing for PS since 2002
235 Commentaries

J. Bradford DeLong is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was Deputy Assistant US Treasury Secretary during the Clinton Administration, where he was heavily involved in budget and trade negotiations. His role in designing the bailout of Mexico during the 1994 peso crisis placed him at the forefront of Latin America’s transformation into a region of open economies, and cemented his stature as a leading voice in economic-policy debates.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 19 Comments on this article

Jon Cloke Sep 17, 2018

This is a reasoned approach which nonetheless completely underestimates the size of the problem - once the deep-ocean methane anhydrates begin to melt and the permafrost gets going (which is beginning now) rates of warming are likely to take off as the feed-back loop begun by carbon emissions kicks into higher gear.

Controversially, twice before sustained greenhouse emissions over time have been linked to mass dyings on Earth by some scholars; the suggestion that the Deccan traps emissions may have resulted in the extinction of the dinosaurs, rather than an asteroid, and the Siberian traps emissions may have been implicated in the Great Dying some 250-odd million years ago.

Whether this is true or not humanity has already missed the 2 degrees warming target suggested by the Paris Accords by some distance and we are now in a world of hurt we are ill-placed to comprehend...
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Elizabeth Pula Sep 10, 2018

Another view, that fills in a lot of blanks about recycling. You gotta be recycling something, rather than just playing keep-away. https://www.yanisvaroufakis.eu/2018/09/10/ten-years-after-lehmans-collapse-what-caused-the-crash-of-2008-is-now-shaping-our-post-modern-1930s-der-freitag/
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Elizabeth Pula Sep 10, 2018

“Yet, to believe that, one must be prepared to write off the rest of humanity.”

As an American citizen, living “mean” in a temperate zone in the Global North, I know I have been written off along with a significant group of the rest of humanity. The more immediate costly, but ultimately more manageable problem that need not affect my current standard of living is the “plastic” problem affecting a pretty important ocean somewhere very far from me.

I hope somebody somewhere does something about that problem, so I can still afford to pay for the water that I might be able to buy, if any of the water that I can still buy is still sanitary enough to still drink, especially right now, since I am getting thirsty.

It would be nice if the little fishies and other yucky things that are still living in the ocean aren’t all contaminated by all that microscopic plastic so the food chain especially at that critical point where it can affect me, during my present lifetime, and perhaps any future generation, from my immediate personal genetic gene pool, so I can still eat some real non genetically re-modified substance that may or may not be called food, especially since I haven’t eaten any breakfast either.

I can’t even think about stepping into the lake near where I live in a temperate zone in the Global North, on the North American continent. That fact sure doesn’t give me much hope, in 2018, to spread around to the rest of world anywhere else in any other temperate or non- temperate zone about whether or not what’s gonna happen to the rest of humanity even with short-term thinking full of no consequence for my actions.

I’m sure glad I can’t really write off anybody, cuz I’m just a nobody.

Oh, I just heard a bell, or something somewhere crashing.
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Dave Hancock Sep 10, 2018

Climate stance seems to be based on ideology and dedicated facts. How 'bout H.A.R.P. caused?
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amrish Macedo Sep 9, 2018

Not sure I agree with precise arrival of Monsoon observation. Just some Indian (South Asian) history. Monsoons are not regular. Not today, not 100 years ago. Today famines, do not kill large percentages of the population. In the past they did.
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Emanuel Müller Sep 9, 2018

We might have to switch in the long run to a form of semi-democracy, where voters would be constitutionally limited to vote only laws clearly non-destructive for future generations. For example if i was asked to vote for climate change hampering measures, if it would entail for me to limit my monthly flights in order to not put say Mumbai under water, I would of course vote against that law, as Mumbai are "others", just like future generations are "others", in which case the rules of shear egoism do of course apply.
Another point that seems unclear is how much of global warming effects can be attributed to countries, to countries inhabitants per capita, and to countries material consumption rate. That is to say, if we get stuff produced in China, but the patent are in say, Japan, the release of C02 will be operated in China, but it is actually global warming for hire if the consumption of those products are not operated in China and, furthermore, the consumption derived from the profits made through the patents is not operated in China.
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pkearns Sep 8, 2018

I am impressed. 3 years after transferring to UC Berkeley, an economics professor wearing a tweed jacket on a sunny fall day has determined that Bay Area weather has increased in temperature so much that the climate has become like Los Angeles. Wow. Genius!!

We've been debating climate change with scientific studies and super computer climate models. All we really needed was to import a few economics professors in tweed jackets to the Bay area! If only we knew, we could have saved billions $$ in our "science is settled" debates.
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John Smith Sep 8, 2018

Climate change is a tough, tough issue. Self-righteous articles like this don't help. It's like the old story about belling the cat. All the mice agreed that their lives would be better if they could tie a bell around the cat's neck so they could hear it coming. But how to do that? Ah, there's the rub.
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Joe Frink Sep 8, 2018

It isn't that climate change is new; it necessarily changes. The earth had a warm period about 1,000 years ago, and another one about 1,000 years before that. (pattern, anyone?).

Malthusians are wrong, though. Civilization has tended to advance more during extended warm periods than through extended cool periods. Famines and disease tend to have greater impact during cool periods too. And given the choice of taking off a wool jacket or returning to the era of a mile of ice over Kansas, I think the jacket should go.

The world is not running out of food. We are producing more than ever before, enhanced by more CO2 being available for plant growth. And with the stroke of a pen to stop contaminating gasoline with ethanol, we can feed another half billion people.

The "damage from climate change" isn't from climate change. We see mismanagement by building cities on sinking river deltas, the failure to build dams, the diversion of irrigation water to minnows, building ever more expensive houses in hurricane zones, and forest mismanagement.

A warming world is generally a better world. Stop blaming the weather for government incompetence.
- Frank Bromley Sep 10, 2018
  
  If you read scientific assessments about impacts of climate change they are very matter of fact and carefully qualified. But even so there are inaccuracies in your opinion there. The gist that i got from reading is that the impact of CO2 on agriculture is likely to be differential - some regions will benefit but most wont. However the same carefully qualified statements claim that above 3 degrees Centigrade the impact is mostly negative. That degree of warming is quite possible.
  
  Then there are associated problems like increasing global population levels anticipated to be another 3 billion in the next few decades which mean need for more food production. Meanwhile ocean acidification and overfishing are likely to have impacts on fish stocks and ecologies.
  
  I’m no more an expert than you but my reading suggests to me we are facing a number of potentially highly dangerous possible scenarios which are inter-linked. For example I believe the US military is preparing contingency plans for more conflicts over scarce resources like water supplies.
  
  Also the climate has changed over long terms as you say but the current change is very dramatic, precipitous and rapid - which means many species including humanly significant ones are not able to evolve quickly enough to cope.
  
  So its all introducing a degree of unpredictability and instability whereas to cope with large population increases stability and predictability are needed. For example predictable weather patterns for crops.
  
  You can read the carefully qualified version here. But on my reading I think you are underestimating the seriousness of the problems.
  
  https://climate.nasa.gov/effects/
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Michael Pettengill Sep 8, 2018

Slowing or stopping climate change is the costly paying of workers to work, lleading to the condition Milton Friedman considered abhorent circa 1970, workers with money to buy more and more stuff, which in turns puts more money in the pockets of other workers who spend more. Businesses seeing better paid workers spending more, compete to gain market share, paying even more workers to develop new products, more factories, further increasing costly wage increases that fuel even more consumer spending.

Fighting climate change would reduce income inequality, and improve the quality of life for all people, not just the wealthy.

A horrid outcome because wealth is based on being thousands of times better off than the masses.
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Jerome Barry Sep 8, 2018

U.S. CO2 emissions declined even while GDP grew last year. Complain all you want, but the U.S.'s relatively free people have already turned the corner on CO2.
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gwenzke Sep 8, 2018

Another whine without solution. Since eliminating carbon in the short term is impossible, without causing widespread poverty, how much change can we make, and specifically, how do we go about it? How much will human beings evolve to the warming climate? What about other living things? Somewhere between changing our treatment of the environment, and the evolution of living species, (including plant life), lies the answer. All I read is either destroying economic viability, (the whiners), and ignoring the problem, (the morons). Just once I'd like to read about a viable approach and solution. By the way, tweed is only worn on campuses. No one else wears it!
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Chris Jones Sep 8, 2018

Climate change has a long history of droughts and floods that humans are just beginning to understand as they decipher the natural records in cores, tree rings, and other things. The cyclic nature of climate depends on orbits, gyres, and multi-year oscillations as well. Here and now, one year of unusual weather in our short lives results in a panic while the Earth's climate can, like the cycles of the Sahara, change in longer time frames.
Several Solar sunspot cycle observers believe that evidence of a colder climate cycle will begin to become obvious in the latter half of 2019. No doubt several associated problems will impact the planet and our human habitats if their data is correct.
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Peter Schaeffer Sep 7, 2018

At some (very important) level, the entire global warming debate is an exercise in futility. Developing countries now account for most CO2 emissions (63% as of 2015) and all of the growth. Of course, they are not about to restrict fossil fuel use (at least at this time). In other words, there is nothing the U.S. or Europe can do to control global CO2 output.

A few useful (but generally unknown) statistics. China now produces twice as much CO2 as the U.S. Of course, it is sometimes argued that the U.S. and Europe have been emitting CO2 for a long time and it is (therefore) unfair to focus on developing countries. That’s not an entirely bad argument. However, China has produced more CO2 in the last few decades than Europe has since the start of the Industrial Revolution.

Trump pulled the U.S. out of the Paris Accord. The Paris Accord imposed no substantive controls on developing countries Indeed, it generally ratified existing plans for massive increases in CO2 output from developing countries. Bjørn Lomborg estimated that the Paris Accord would reduce global temperatures by 0.05 C in 2100. An MIT study came up with 0.2 C in 2100. Other studies have claimed higher numbers for the Paris agreement. However, they assume additional post-Paris restrictions on CO2 output.

The bottom line is that DeLong simply isn't addressing the reality at hand. I could point out that the estimated relationship between global warming and hurricanes is relatively weak (https://www.gfdl.noaa.gov/global-warming-and-hurricanes/). However, that is a different story.
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Marc Laventurier Sep 7, 2018

"The international community is in no way prepared for such a scenario."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bLX06yR3wY
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