As always, excellent analysis. Just wanted to share that for 14 years, I lived in Not America, where climate science was well... science. And I had nationalized universal health care that I paid for, but could easily afford, regardless of my job.
Like the fake health care debate, my issue is that we are engaging in this fake debate where one side describes what is actually occurring, and the other lies. In America, we have defined this down as public discourse.
At some point, the allegedly centrist corporate media outlets not named Substack need to point the finger at the right-wing media, which is actively misinforming people and creating these fake debates. Fox and its "friends" lie about the rest of the media every day, and we are all paying the price for it. Dollarocracy is literally killing us.
Climate denialism is the pseudo-religious triumph of profit and propaganda over rational planning for the inevitable. Some days I despair of ever having a functional society as long as there is the lure of excessive profit out there.
To me, the denial of climate change has been the ultimate story of greed ruling every choice made in America. Literally nothing else matters if life, living day to day, is unsustainable. We need clean air and water, a reliable and safe food system, reasonable weather for work and movement around the economy, space for communities to live and conduct their daily business. Yet companies, governments, any people and entities with true opportunity and power to address the issue continuously kicked the can down the road. It was too expensive, too much change to ask for, fake, blah blah blah. And individuals matter, too, as people order throw away nonsense from Amazon, carry around their plastic bags and styrofoam drink cups, and drive their oversized gas cars. What is astounding is that so many, most?, of these same companies, our national and many state/local governments, people, continue to shrug or shove it aside even as we now repeatedly experience the effects first hand. They are inescapable. But still the same too costly, too much change to ask or demand, still fake, blah blah blah. America will be a sick, poor backwater with flimsy, dirty, old “technology”. We have our own greed and laziness to blame.
It is the inertia of profits now over safety tomorrow. And Faux Snooze is selling them that Liberals, Progressives, Social Democrats, etc are the very mark of the Devil, while the Evilgelicals are telling them the Rapture is immanent...
In 1923 scientists started to realize that lead in gasoline was harmful to the environment. Oil companies did everything they could to diminish the facts of the effects of lead in gasoline and lied their way to a final end to lead in gasoline in 1996. I believe it was just a few years ago that no leaded gas was being produced in the world. Oil companies and executives have been telling lies about oil not being a source of anthropomorphic climate change. Using "scientists" to make these disclaimers. None of them were real scientists. republicans, who manage to be the most short sighted people on the planet, have bought into their bullshit and have confused climate with weather.
The lies of corporate bullshit just keeps marching on while we all fall in line with the elite to "exclude" themselves in fancy boats and gated communities so they don't have to mingle with us lowly slaves.
Most piston aircraft engines can run on car gasoline, but someone must prove to the FAA that a particular combination of engine and airframe can safely use it. Proof results in the issuance of a Supplementary Type Certificate (STC) to the person or agency that provides the proof. The mogas STC for my Cessna 150 cost me $100 thirty-three years ago. An STC for the Maule that I owned later would've required engine modifications and cost $600 at that time.
So, quite a few aircraft owners went this route and dragged gas cans out to their planes. Then some States (like mine) mandated the use of alcohol in road gasoline. Alcohol does not work well with changes in altitude. It also attracts water. So gasoline bought at a station in New Jersey cannot be used in the aircraft which I owned. Back to 100 octane low-lead.
Even smoking is making a comeback. After all the todo in the seventies and eighties about smoking harming your health, now you see a "Smoke Shop" on every corner. Who was it that said there's a sucker born every minute?
the rich don't care B/C their $$$$ will protect them from the everyday horrors of extreme heat, flooding, and storms. They will assume that their bunkers will protect them and yet those can be sealed externally from their egress.
The rich will be "heavily inconvenienced" by global warming. Snowless sea chalets, loss of private beaches (SLR, storm surge, sargassum), wildfire smoke, high temps on the decks of their yachts, flooded manorial estates and they can forget about enjoying snorkeling around beautiful coral reefs.
They can have their bunkers and come out any time they want to. And they will have to come out eventually; MREs have a shelf life of ten years. Diesel in a drum starts to deteriorate in about two years. Eventually they're eating rotten food in the dark.
I sometimes think we've reached a stage of capitalism that no one has seen before. Predicted probably, but not experienced. And nobody really seems sure what to do with it. (This, to my thought process is well beyond the "gilded age" and hasn't a tulip in sight.) There are plenty of half-measures that can possibly be implemented but they always seem to be easily skirted.
"I sometimes think we've reached a stage of capitalism that no one has seen before. Predicted probably, but not experienced."
Indeed it was predicted - by Adam Smith - which is why he advocated for strong government and high taxation, the polar opposite of Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman, who lowered taxes by such an amount that they created a system of oligarchy where the oligarchs had enough money to buy the Supreme Court (Citizens United) and POTUS.
And here we are with a new form of socialism, which is not socialism for the common man but socialism for the wealthiest. This is because not paying taxes is government welfare, so Bezos, Musk, and their gang of oligarchs are the new Welfare Queens.
And for someone who proclaims to be against government spending, virtually 100% of Musk’s core businesses have heavily benefited from – and in key cases been outright saved by – government support. Meaning taxpayer (our) support.
Over the past two decades, his companies have secured at least $38 billion in publicly-disclosed federal and state contracts, low-interest loans, subsidies, and tax credits. So, where's that wood chipper now?
Meanwhile, I bet those same “right-wing commentators” that Krugman mentioned were probably also in support of Trump paying $2.5 billion of taxpayer money to energy companies in order to cancel their offshore wind projects at the time when we need them most. It’s total insanity.
It's funny that someone who is so contemptuous of government (Musk) is so heavily dependent on it. He used some of this money to buy 4 rockets from the Russians, the first 3 of which blew up. If the 4th had followed suit we would never have heard of this peculiar individual.
No Mr. Hutchinson. it was Marx and Engels who predicted the future capitalism in which we now find ourselves. Adam smith made warnings, yes, but he was a defender of the capitalist system. Obviously, his warnings did not work.
I was just reflecting on this - they have so much wealth, they have worked their tendrils into every aspect of the economy and corrupted all they touch - just like their Orange Ogre.
During the Gilded Age it was important to the wealthy, like Carnagie, to also be respectable in society and gave generously to charities. This new batch of arrogant clowns like Musk or Larry Ellison are an embarrassment and they don't care.
What we have now is a cocktail of Plutocracy, Kakistocracy and Kleptocracy run by The Don who believes climate change is the "biggest hoax in the history of the world."
When you add electricity use in to household and commercial, household and commercial are right up there with transportation as the largest causes of emissions...
-not industry.
I find too many blame industry, although also large emitters and come in 3rd, so they do not have to take personal responsibility.
See EPA pie chart to the right that adds in electricity use to each sector instead of having it separate:
We must take responsibility for ourselves and our personal use and stop being spoiled lazy emitters. We have simply become accustomed to a way of life that is more than excessive in use.
USA also has, by far, the highest per capita emissions, other than a couple of other oil and gas producers, with more than double most other modern nations - meaning there is a lot of room for improvement and less indulgence and waste.
According to MIT, what we put in the air will likely be around for over 100 years, and there is already too much wreaking havoc on our climate, so that means anything more the zero that you emit, is simply more than acceptable, so simply do the very best you can.
Transportation is number 1, so stop going places unnecessarily. One long haul flight emits more than a household in the UK does in a year, and even more than many in less developed nations (who often bear the brunt) emit in an entire lifetime according to BBC News.
I assume that "Electricity End-Use Indirect Emissions" refers to the emissions from electricity production facilities which are powered by coal, gas or other hydrocarbons. Add in agriculture and it accounts for 90% of total emissions.
The transition to electric vehicles is already underway but planes will be a harder challenge. Home energy is increasingly electrical, but will likely take much longer to fully accomplish without substantial government aid.
The key to all of this is ending (or severely limiting) our dependance on fossil fuels. Power generation from solar, wind, wave and thermal sources are within reach, but will require massive capital investment along with political will. We can probably manage the former, but the political will to make the necessary changes has and will continue to be much harder.
My personal fear is that it will require a series of major catastrophes before the political will can be found to make the necessary changes. If we fail, it might take a billion years or so for Mother Nature to clean up the mess and start over.
I spent less than 2000 for backyard solar (in my case, more than half the cost was batteries for storage) like many people in semi-third world and with conserving l'm down to 1.5 kWh a day. So although gov can help and is desperately needed, it is completely within our ability to do a lot of this, as well.
Industry also wastes abt 5 million BPD. I will get you a link. Not sure how you arrived at 90 percent when there is also a separate graph for electricity alone an my link above and one for agriculture. Transportation is over 30 percent.
Capitalism that functions with the short-term profit horizons that ours in the US does is not sustainable and is destructive of democracy. This "run-a-muck" capitalism can be constrained through tax policies and laws/regulations. Until that happens, this kind of capitalism will continue to subvert all attempts to rein it in. Yes, kind of a catch -22 isn't it?
What keeps me a little more optimistic is that, as Paul mention, US is a relatively small part of the world - even though we have been punching above our weight. The rest of the world seems a lot more fact-based and able to control predatory capitalism (that is actually why it has migrated to US).
The cost of wind/solar energy is already higher than the lowest cost hydrocarbon electricity and it will only get lower. Natural gas generation has already reached 85% efficiency and will be stuck at current prices. Solar and wind still has opportunities for improved efficiency and the cost of energy storage is falling like a rock.
If our grid fail to shift, the cost of grid energy will become higher than the cost of cutting the cord and producing your own backyard energy. Furthermore, as our corporations become more extractive, people will no longer be able to afford transport by vehicles that cost more than twice as much per mile in fuel and maintenance. Many may decide to use backyard energy to power their homes and vehicles - and save a lot of money..
Many of those damaging economic policies are really the non-existent types. Coupled with the belief, or useful excuse, that a free market environment will solve all ills.
Unfettered markets operating with no regard for the common good have taken us to many places we should not have gone. Places we only arrived at because it was profitable for someone. Social media and unrestricted gambling are easy to understand poster children for this concept.
Free markets are a wonderful tool when used to achieve policy goals that are based upon reaching a wise common good. It will get us there faster and less expensive but the 'there' has to make sense, has to be reality based.
Yeah, the whole “Reagan trickle-down economics gig”…which never seems to actually trickle down! In fact, you must know as well as I do that the consolidation of wealth (and power) has dramatically and rapidly accelerated over the past 40 years, particularly under the trump administration.
When has the US ever had a free market economy?
Even the founding fathers
“The United States has never had a purely "free market" economy, operating instead as a heavily regulated mixed economy. From its founding, the nation has relied on government intervention, including tariffs, infrastructure subsidies, antitrust laws, and central banking, to shape industrial outcomes and support the private sector.” (And here’s where “endless consumerism” comes in.)
“The U.S. economy is more accurately defined as a mixed economy rather than a pure "free market". It blends capitalist competition with government intervention, meaning that subsidies, bailouts, and industrial policies frequently coexist with—and alter—the underlying forces of supply and demand.” (I remember well the “too big to fail” fiasco under Bush W. No accountability, but bonuses instead.)
And, infact, of 27 publicly identified corporate donors to Donald Trump's White House ballroom project, 19 received government contracts over a recent five-and-a-half-year period, totaling $338 billion. In just the first six months after the East Wing demolition, 14 of these donors secured over $50 billion in new or expanded federal contracts.”
So I dare say we are now experiencing an unregulated oligarchic “crony capitalism” with virtually no oversight or accountability. Then add the blatant and constant market manipulation into the mix, and well…the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
Bezos and others have their $200 - 500 million yachts as well as their compounds in New Zealand to escape us riff-raff when the whole eco-system collapses.
And that is the problem. They have such vast wealth - actual Fafnir's hoardes - that they have no skin in the game. We need to tax them down out of their rarified heights.
The super yachts will sink w all hands in the super typhoons engendered by global warming, since the egos of the billionaires will keep them from heeding warnings about 'mere weather.'
The Bayesian sank in “mere weather” off Sicily in 2024. Seven passengers ended down in Davey Jones Locker. Tragic accident that may keep billionaires looking over their shoulders?
Several of the oligarchs (billionaires) either have built or are building compounds in New Zealand and other remote places. Some already have people living there full time waiting for the apocalypse. So, many of them think they can buy their way out of the consequences of climate change.
Climate change denial is a little bit more than "pseudo religious". A lot of the "simple minds" that deny the phenomenon do so in the belief that "god" would "never let it happen (to them)". Helped along by the various claims of "the imminent return of the messiah" - being Trump.
Religious “thinkers” who believe their “God” would never let such a bad thing happen to them, think that God created “The Devil” and “The Donald” - and the 40-day flood. The “thinkers” need to do better at thinking
A lot of them think that climate change is the way God will bring on the Rapture and end the world. As the song says, "God said a fire, not a flood next time."
I wish we had had a better conversation years ago about Puritanical control of our media and government….anti-sciences have rules too often, we see it again and again.
It would take a constitutional amendment to limit the right of free speech… we will be ready for amendments by 2028, but I think we should use that political capital to rewrite Articles I, II, and III.
Requiring fact-based reporting as a necessary constraint for "News" organizations is on the to-do list when tRump and his crew lose power. Requiring "News" organizations to be run as non-profit organizations might help if they have robust public service requirements in their articles of incorporation.
If you lie to your audience on a daily basis like Fox does. You shouldn't be allowed to call yourself a "news" organization. Label it opinion or commentary. It isn't news. News should be fact based.
But the bigger issue is that so many people tune in and soak up whatever confirms their prejudices. Stupidity among the general population should not be underestimated as a problem of national importance.
If you don't already subscribe to the VOLTS substack, take a look. They have many innovative guests on that talk about every imaginable new technology like plug-in storage for businesses, plug-in solar (400 - 1200 watt systems for your home) as well as many other technologies.
The US electorate has ceded its power to a rightwing confederacy of oligarchs and theocrats funded by a fossil fuel industry (Kochs, et.al.), which lacked the imagination to transition its engineering know-how to renewable forms of energy and continued down a path to obsolescence. Consequently, the US has ceded its power to shape the future to China and Europe.
Even Fox News' stance on global warming is now more qualified the Trump's. Trump's opposition is ideological and absolute, while Fox News' opposition is primarily economic and regulatory, that it's no emergency meriting costly regulatory action.
Politicians get away with lying because people don't want to hear painful truths. Accepting climate science can imply accepting unwelcome policy conclusions: carbon regulation, energy transition, lifestyle changes, international agreements (globalism), criticism of fossil fuels, and government intervention. For those whose worldview emphasizes markets, energy independence, rural livelihoods, distrust of federal agencies, or hostility to “elite” institutions, accepting the science can feel like conceding one's entire political belief system. So the mind rejects the premise to avoid the conclusion.
Atheists can forget about what we may choose to call the forces at work in our societies, ultimately in our minds, that are so successfully playing Jim Jones with us. The outcome - mass suicide - is clear enough.
Corporate media is never going to point out the lies of republicans or right-wing media. If they were going to do it, they would have done it by now. The fact is our corporate media is owned by the same right-wing republicans. The biggest myth that has harmed this country. Is that we had some some of "liberally biased" media. Even democrats bought that lie. Thinking that reporters would fight their battles for them. Because reporters were supposedly liberal. Most aren't. America is awash in right-wing media. If you want liberal media. Your choices are Democracy Now and The Nation magazine. That's about it.
We need to be able to have a safe and secure electrical system and the yet we do not have one…and we do not need data centers, AI nor ‘forever stored’ cat videos at our fingertips. I would trade Wikipedia for Google AI in a nano-second!
People are dying and we don’t really care!
Smoking and climate science have a strange connection…Merchants of Doubt..and ignorance of science and how it works, same with leadership and how it works.
Donny is an Under-Toad of a leader, Joe wasn’t. Notice the difference!
Yes the climate is certainly changing; when has it not done so. We should be planning for a warmer future, but instead we have lighted on net-zero and the demonisation of carbon (carbon dioxide in fact) and are rushing headlong into decarbonising our economies. Net result, economic decline and power problems, because we are fixated on a trace gas which is still only 420 parts per million in the atmosphere. Heck there is more argon than CO2. Decades of climate conferences, IPCC warnings and hand wringing have not even slowed the increase in CO2. China gets a free ride, builds hundreds of coal fired power stations while western nations destroy their coal-fired generators and close their nuclear plants. Meanwhile customers pay more for power and suffer reduced reliability, and rapidly rising power bills. And to top it all off we subsidise and champion a change from ICE vehicles to EVs. Definitely time for an urgent strategic rethink on how to cope with climate change, because what we are doing now is a total failure.
It is wonderful there are articles like this out there.
It is probably a good time to compute a Comparative Cost Analysis for the Human Contribution to Climate Change: achieving Net Zero from 2015 (Paris Agreement) within 10 or 20 years, versus the current path of denial, rising emissions, and a war on renewables.
What we know is that human society contributes to warming through CO2 and other emissions. Period, this is a scientific fact. If there is a natural climate change, we are contributing to it, if there is none, we own all of it. The point is, we have agency, at least in large part.
We can now compute draft estimates for the total money wasted in Tax Cuts, Shares Buy Backs (instead of investments), Wars of choice, and similar items on one side of the ledger; to this ledger we must add estimates of harvest damage, soil degradation, disruptions, wasted energy, loss of output, loss of natural resources, and so on. Just an estimate on the low side, on Perpetuity though. All the emissions we keep on adding are here to stay for millenia. There is no going back for a long time.
Then, on the other ledger, coherent policies driven toward renewables for instance using Federal Procurement, subsidies, developtment of nuclear plants, and various incentives to build up grids (electricity, hydrogen), and probably some level of sensible (no pork) industrial policy.
Version with edits by/with Gemini: Questions for next Podcast: The Wolf-Krugman Exchange
A Comparative Cost Analysis Approach to the Climate Crisis
Dear Drs. Krugman and Wolf,
Given the compounding economic impacts of the climate crisis, the time is right for a comprehensive Comparative Cost Analysis of the global approach to emissions. Specifically, we need to contrast the macroeconomic trajectory of achieving Net Zero within 10 to 20 years of the 2015 Paris Agreement against the actual path taken: a combination of climate denial, rising emissions, and a legislative war on renewables.
Anthropogenic warming via CO2 and greenhouse gases is a settled scientific baseline. If there is an underlying natural climate cycle, our emissions exacerbate it; if there is none, human society owns the entirety of the warming trend. To quantify this, we can structure a macro-ledger comparing two distinct policy regimes:The Status Quo / Inertia Ledger: This accounts for the profound opportunity costs of capital misallocation—specifically trillions spent on fossil fuel subsidies, wars of choice, short-term share buybacks, and unfunded tax cuts—combined with the ballooning direct costs of climate inaction (agricultural degradation, supply chain disruptions, lost productivity, and ecological depletion).The Transition Ledger: This accounts for the coordinated capital deployment required for deep decarbonization, driven by aggressive federal procurement, targeted subsidies, grid modernization (electric and hydrogen), and base-load nuclear infrastructure.Even conservative, low-end estimates of the status quo's waste likely dwarf the upfront capital expenditure of a managed green transition. I would welcome your thoughts on how economists can better frame this stark balance sheet to shift the public and political debate. Sincerely, LRC.
"If there is a natural climate change, we are contributing to it, if there is none, we own all of it."
----
Based on the Milankovitch Cycles describing Earth's movement, we should be moving into a cooling phase (glaciation), but instead we keep warming, which is why climatologists say humans are responsible for "more than 100%" of the warming.
Yes, I agree, however my point was to leave all hypothesis (however scientifically impecable) out and go with the facts we already know. CO2 emissions to the atmosphere trap heat, a fact we experimentally know as well as newton's laws. Thus, we do know what to do but we are doing the opposite.
Also, all the costs of the climate change we are causing, are here for perpetuity. It is about time a serious comparative cost analysis is done showing the perversity of the situation, specially since the revenues and gains of the current energy use are private while the costs are distributed globably, the higher the poorer people are.
Consider the billions of people who believe they can communicate telepathically with an immeasurable being who created the universe (as I once did), and try to come to grips with the reality that facts don't matter in the face of tribal allegiance. (However, having a decades long interest in human cognition and the self delusion of the brain, I still have trouble accepting that.)
Exactly! Lies and fake analyses/news/science have been elevated to equal standing with facts. Incrementally they have been given credibility with a lazy, conspiracy-loving, low information, non-critically thinking public. And the constant onslaught of misinformation, disinformation and lies has the rest of us at times wondering what is real and spending time trying to verify information. My circle of trusted information has shrunk with the collapse of once independent, well-respected news sources. So many people take the easy way out: “they all lie”, “who knows whats true”, which further erodeds our ability to get out of the current mess and undo the damage.
The republican party is an existential threat to our lives with their climate denialism. This is the only planet we have. If the environment goes, we go. However, there are some in the religious community who assert that life on this planet is merely a staging ground for our eventual ascent to heaven, so who cares? Burn, baby, burn; drill, baby, drill!
The Republican Party as it exists today is just a few handfuls of proto-oligarchs and rage-baiters without the 70 million often lower middle class people who vote for them. The question is how to convince those voters.
I think you're mistaken. Those voters are served an illusion that a bit of critical thinking would easily puncture. But as the philosopher Paul Simon wrote, "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."
The Right Wing takeover envisioned by Powell is pretty comprehensive, controlling most of the media and politics, but many of the folks who thought MAGA would rescue them from the $79 trillion 90%=>1% heist are now disillusioned with Trump. (see any recent poll)
If the DNC Dems break with their billionaire donors and adopt 'TAX the RICH!' policies as the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party proposes, they have a future. Otherwise the 2032 presidential election will see MAGA back in the saddle.
Restructuring the tax code is, I think, necessary but insufficient. The Democrats are going to need to paint a vision for the American future that addresses a broad range of American concerns and promises to unite rather than divide. MAGA succeeded as a slogan for the same reason that Yes We Can succeeded, but MAGA only delivered for the top few percent.
The GOP should be charged for crimes against humanity for climate denialism alone. How can you be for the destruction of our species and planet? The same goes for fundamentalists.
Agree that the republicans are an existential threat—they don’t WANT to govern—they don’t have any ideology. Opportunists and thieves! And if this administration doesn’t highlight the corruption to voters then nothing will.
This is a sad truism. The party has morphed into a vehicle of destruction through the influence of those who think they can live forever and profit indefinitely. And the crazies support them. You can’t reason with those who are eager for the next stage and refuse to accept that it’s one planet for all. It’s egotism and selfishness in the extreme and the rest of humanity is burning up along side with them. Huh! I know of another place that offers eternal heat. Wonder if they’re trying to create that here and now?
And there are some in the religious community who are stark, raving mad. Unfortunately we are stuck sharing with them the planet they are so casually trashing because they expect to be transported in the rapture they have concocted in the feverish imagination of their deranged minds.
"we now account for less than 13 percent of global carbon emissions."
While the US population is 4.2-4.4 percent of all the humans on earth. In other words, the US still emits about three times the world average per person.
I've always wondered if that number includes the emissions created in other countries producing goods for consumption in the US. If [made up number] 20% of Chinese emissions come from producing goods sold to Americans does that get counted in China's total or our own?
So many parts of the American right wing and of Trump are ridiculous, damaging, cruel, and abominably ignorant that choosing a worst is actually impossible. But in terms of costs and harms the climate change denial is right up there. In a newspaper comment I once asked why people on the right refuse to accept climate change. One reply was honest in saying it is that they really dislike the people who warn of climate change. Thus, it seems to me the apotheosis of anti-intellectualism--hating anyone with expertise so profoundly that reality is denied and harm is voluntarily sustained. It has become a litmus test for right wingers to deny climate change and all its ramifications. It is aggravating that the worst of the deniers, who are setting our course, will be dead before the worst and irreversible aspects have completely ruined the lives of humans. The deniers are simpy and truly bad people.
We have those few oligarchs who propagandize their base to vote for what they want which is to subvert and corrupt any and all regulation. It has been fanned into an almost religion which has fanned the rise of christian nationalism. The forces of chaos are at the ramparts.
Anti-intellectualism, aggressive ignorance, racism, misogyny, greed, dollar idolatry, and mass hysteria (the god delusion) are as American as apple pie.
And who doesn't like apple pie? Why wait for it in the heaveny cafe when it's right here, right now? Gobble up.
A most conservative view of American life would require everyone to read the US Constitution. The reader would note that the preamble has a clause "promote the general welfare". The current administration is grossly and deplorably derelict in its duty in that regard.
Though liberty is established by law, we must be vigilant, for liberty to enslave us is always present under that very liberty. Our Constitution speaks of the "general welfare of the people." Under that phrase all sorts of excesses can be employed by lusting tyrants to make us bondsmen. Marcus Tullius Cicero
When I was in high school (in the dark ages) I had copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution on imitation parchment. I have no idea how I got them or what became of them.
The heat of repression is also rising, following the embarrassing strategic defeat in Iran. ICE has doubled its daily arrest rate. Protestors at a Texas ICE facility were just sentenced to 30-100 years. The man sentenced to 30 years was convicted for moving left wing literature, cast as disrupting the investigation. End times fascism is turning our planet into even more of a sweltering hellscape.
The Thermostat War is a textbook case of what Campbell and Kay called "solution aversion". That is, people reject climate science because they hate the proposed solutions – THEN they reason backward to the science and land on bullshit. In their 2014 experiments, Republicans' agreement with climate science increased dramatically when the offered solution was free-market-friendly instead of regulatory. So of course a 78-degree thermostat suggestion from a socialist mayor becomes communism, and of course DOE scrubbed its own identical guidance. That said, excellent article by Krugman, as expected!
Trump and Republicans taking active steps to damage America and hurt its citizens? I'm shocked. See? This is my shocked face.
Seriously, though--climate scientists and oceanographers are getting increasingly frantic about the possible collapse of the Gulf Stream due to global warming. If that happens, parts of northern Europe may well become uninhabitable. England and Norway owe much of their current comparatively moderate climate to the heat brought in by the Gulf Stream Turn off the Gulf Stream and London starts seeing snowfalls that could prove crippling, while food production throughout most of Europe takes a big hit.
Looking on the plus side… writing this from a hot home in London… okay, lots of us die, crops fail, entire areas of NW Europe become uninhabitable - but on the plus side, I won’t need to buy air-conditioning. So there’s that, plus I get to live out The Day After Tomorrow in real time, yay…..
Seriously what scares me about all this is that whenever I talk to climate scientists - THEY are absolutely terrified. And if they are - we as societies should be too. And as of yet the US is in the insane grip of a white nationalist death cult.
The Pacific El Nino currents have a big impact on the US: The South West, already running out of water, becomes hotter and dryer, impacting both drinking water and hydro electricity... also forest fires... so literally "burn, baby burn"
I used to think that at some point there would be a climate disaster so bad and obvious that everyone would realize that climate change is real. I no longer believe that. If all the predictions for 2050 and later come true Americans will still deny climate change. Any policy that requires the population to drive smaller cars, use less gasoline, or reduce energy usage in any way will lose at the ballot box.
I disagree only because the electric alternative to those fossil-fueled cars, energy and appliances are so much better! From induction stoves to EVs, you only have to give them a try to realize how superior they are.
Even if they do, we're stuck with Vance, and we'll be stuck with many members of the cabinet for entirely too long (even if Vance wants to change them).
Jared Diamond's Collapse observed that humans were evolved for short-term thinking but were not good at the long-term. That's been certainly proved. In most of history, it was slow and almost imperceptible, but now the decline is precipitous and unavoidable. Can't say we didn't bring it upon ourselves, with our big lives and expectations, and profligate use of finite resources.
"Can't say we didn't bring it upon ourselves, with our big lives and expectations, and profligate use of finite resources."
This is wrong on so many levels.
First, "finite resouces"? It is simply not the case that the planet cannot feed 8 billion humans. The problem is that the planet cannot absorb the waste and exhaust generated by 1.2 billion humans living in industrialized societies. That's what's driving the climate apocalypse, not a scarcity of resources.
Second, there is no "we" here. People like me have no "big lives and expectations," don't have a car, own very little, with most of it older than 20 years. And it certainly cannot refer to the other 6.8 billion humans outside industrialized societies who mostly haven't contributed anything to the impending catastrophe.
"Well, that's a singularly unhelpful, virtue-signalling response to a world in crisis."
I have no idea what you mean with that. Wikipedia[1] knows that "The concept of virtue signalling is most often used by those on the political right to denigrate the behaviour of those on the political left."
Is that where you see yourself, on the political right?
If not, can you explain what the words "virtue signalling" mean, and why it is a bad thing?
Well Terence, if Rainer speaks truth, his or her reality--one shared by many around the world--how is that virtue signalling. The tragedy is we will all be tasked to clean up a mess not of our own making.
That’s one way to look at it. Not very helpful and riddled with wishful thinking. For instance: No, the planet cannot support 8 billion people. Not even close. You have taken the position, iff they’d all just act like you want them to … problem solved. Full disclosure: They. Never. Will. Not. Ever. You’re dealing with humans here. Get it?
Scarcity of resources is real. We cannot simply mine (dig) our way to ‘success’ as we continue to make huge messes from our mining.
One or two examples: Prince William Sound; the Exxon tanker oil spill. And the oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico — which we are still deep in cleanup mode. I got LOTS more.
Why, the planet has 8 billion people *now*. An estimated 8.2% of them suffer from hunger, while 30%-40% of food goes to waste. It seems to me that the conclusion "The planet could feed 8 billion people" is a matter of simple arithmetic.
Besides, you missed the whole point (while I freely admit that this must be entirely my own fault):
IMO scarcity of resources is the smaller of two problems, because the larger and apparently largely unforeseen problem is the tsunami of refuse, garbage, and gas emissions that a large number of fairly rich people generate. Not only Greeenhouse Gases, but microplastics everywhere, forever chemicals, mountains of cheap clothing from the fast fashion industry, etc.pp.
"Get it?"
I find your presumptuous tone entirely inappropriate for a civilized discussion.
Twenty years is a fraction of a second in Climate Change Time. So you don't have a car - do you have electricity, hot running water, trash bins in your kitchen, food in your refrigerator, clothing, heat and/or air conditioning? You obviously have an electronic device that allows you to read and post on the internet. Do you watch TV? How about a dishwasher, washer and dryer? Do you shop for food at a local market and eat at least one decent meal a day? There's more but I've made the point.
If you have only a few of those things, by the world "We" standards, you're living a big life.
"If you have only a few of those things, by the world "We" standards, you're living a big life."
I very much doubt that this is correct, because one can have a few of these things and still reside below the global median of affluence.
Furthermore, this is not the meaning of "big life" that I inferred from Terence's message when he used it.
Do you assume that the "big life" that is *necessarily* implied with any industrialized society must *inevitably* destroy the planet AND it makes absolutely no difference how the members of such societies behave?
I am astonished that you did not mention the impact on agricultural productivity and resulting effects on food security. Millions will die of starvation, starting with the poorest.
Here in the UK we're in the middle of our second heat wave this summer. It's not fun. Without climate change no one could have anticipated that British people would need air conditioning. With it...
It is now costing money comma although our energy prices are starting to come down as more wind and solar comes on line. We're pikers compared to China, but then I don't think China has right wingers: we do, and yes they're idiots about this, just as yours are. Attacking the fairly boring prescription that we should get our energy from a free source - wind, solar, wave - is only controversial to them, and I suspect that's because it effectively proves that they were wrong, wrong, wrong, all along. But then that's what science does. It verifies things to make sure we don't do stupid shit. Unless you really really like doing stupid shit....
I remember back in the 90s British cars didn't even have air conditioning. I remember when my parents friend got it in their new car and it was seen as the height of self indulgent luxury. How things change.
Good point about one group of profit-motivated fact-based tough-minded capitalists (those are all compliments in the right wing world) who most definitely accept the reality of climate change. Along with farmers and mountaineers.
Early climate change warnings came from people who revere Creation and didn’t want humans to be responsible for despoiling it. But selfishness seems to be the thing we need to “sell it” - it’s all about inconvenience to humans.
Exactly. The oceans can capture only so much before turning acidic. Rain forests are being decimated. Regenerative farming is the way forward but there , again, you’ve got to wrestle it away from corporate farming.
As always, excellent analysis. Just wanted to share that for 14 years, I lived in Not America, where climate science was well... science. And I had nationalized universal health care that I paid for, but could easily afford, regardless of my job.
Like the fake health care debate, my issue is that we are engaging in this fake debate where one side describes what is actually occurring, and the other lies. In America, we have defined this down as public discourse.
At some point, the allegedly centrist corporate media outlets not named Substack need to point the finger at the right-wing media, which is actively misinforming people and creating these fake debates. Fox and its "friends" lie about the rest of the media every day, and we are all paying the price for it. Dollarocracy is literally killing us.
Climate denialism is the pseudo-religious triumph of profit and propaganda over rational planning for the inevitable. Some days I despair of ever having a functional society as long as there is the lure of excessive profit out there.
To me, the denial of climate change has been the ultimate story of greed ruling every choice made in America. Literally nothing else matters if life, living day to day, is unsustainable. We need clean air and water, a reliable and safe food system, reasonable weather for work and movement around the economy, space for communities to live and conduct their daily business. Yet companies, governments, any people and entities with true opportunity and power to address the issue continuously kicked the can down the road. It was too expensive, too much change to ask for, fake, blah blah blah. And individuals matter, too, as people order throw away nonsense from Amazon, carry around their plastic bags and styrofoam drink cups, and drive their oversized gas cars. What is astounding is that so many, most?, of these same companies, our national and many state/local governments, people, continue to shrug or shove it aside even as we now repeatedly experience the effects first hand. They are inescapable. But still the same too costly, too much change to ask or demand, still fake, blah blah blah. America will be a sick, poor backwater with flimsy, dirty, old “technology”. We have our own greed and laziness to blame.
It is the inertia of profits now over safety tomorrow. And Faux Snooze is selling them that Liberals, Progressives, Social Democrats, etc are the very mark of the Devil, while the Evilgelicals are telling them the Rapture is immanent...
In 1923 scientists started to realize that lead in gasoline was harmful to the environment. Oil companies did everything they could to diminish the facts of the effects of lead in gasoline and lied their way to a final end to lead in gasoline in 1996. I believe it was just a few years ago that no leaded gas was being produced in the world. Oil companies and executives have been telling lies about oil not being a source of anthropomorphic climate change. Using "scientists" to make these disclaimers. None of them were real scientists. republicans, who manage to be the most short sighted people on the planet, have bought into their bullshit and have confused climate with weather.
The lies of corporate bullshit just keeps marching on while we all fall in line with the elite to "exclude" themselves in fancy boats and gated communities so they don't have to mingle with us lowly slaves.
Crime rate declined with the reduction of blood lead levels
Nope, small piston-engine planes still use leaded gas, and it has the expected harms.
https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/epa-determines-lead-emissions-aircraft-engines-cause-or-contribute-air-pollution
I'm sure tiny hands will work to prevent eliminating it as planned in 2030.
Most piston aircraft engines can run on car gasoline, but someone must prove to the FAA that a particular combination of engine and airframe can safely use it. Proof results in the issuance of a Supplementary Type Certificate (STC) to the person or agency that provides the proof. The mogas STC for my Cessna 150 cost me $100 thirty-three years ago. An STC for the Maule that I owned later would've required engine modifications and cost $600 at that time.
So, quite a few aircraft owners went this route and dragged gas cans out to their planes. Then some States (like mine) mandated the use of alcohol in road gasoline. Alcohol does not work well with changes in altitude. It also attracts water. So gasoline bought at a station in New Jersey cannot be used in the aircraft which I owned. Back to 100 octane low-lead.
It's even worse than that. The oil companies knew less toxic alternatives and how toxic tetraethyl lead was BEFORE they ever added it to gasoline.
Even smoking is making a comeback. After all the todo in the seventies and eighties about smoking harming your health, now you see a "Smoke Shop" on every corner. Who was it that said there's a sucker born every minute?
IMMINENT, Stephen Brady, it's greed-generated suicidal madness that is immanent... (i.e. at home in addled brains).
the rich don't care B/C their $$$$ will protect them from the everyday horrors of extreme heat, flooding, and storms. They will assume that their bunkers will protect them and yet those can be sealed externally from their egress.
And why do they assume their personal armies will be pointing their guns outward?
The rich will be "heavily inconvenienced" by global warming. Snowless sea chalets, loss of private beaches (SLR, storm surge, sargassum), wildfire smoke, high temps on the decks of their yachts, flooded manorial estates and they can forget about enjoying snorkeling around beautiful coral reefs.
They can have their bunkers and come out any time they want to. And they will have to come out eventually; MREs have a shelf life of ten years. Diesel in a drum starts to deteriorate in about two years. Eventually they're eating rotten food in the dark.
Ah, but where will they get the servants, since most of the ultra-rich lack basic life skills (cooking, etc.)
It is important to note that all the cost incurred is in pepetuity.
I sometimes think we've reached a stage of capitalism that no one has seen before. Predicted probably, but not experienced. And nobody really seems sure what to do with it. (This, to my thought process is well beyond the "gilded age" and hasn't a tulip in sight.) There are plenty of half-measures that can possibly be implemented but they always seem to be easily skirted.
"I sometimes think we've reached a stage of capitalism that no one has seen before. Predicted probably, but not experienced."
Indeed it was predicted - by Adam Smith - which is why he advocated for strong government and high taxation, the polar opposite of Ronald Reagan and Milton Friedman, who lowered taxes by such an amount that they created a system of oligarchy where the oligarchs had enough money to buy the Supreme Court (Citizens United) and POTUS.
And here we are with a new form of socialism, which is not socialism for the common man but socialism for the wealthiest. This is because not paying taxes is government welfare, so Bezos, Musk, and their gang of oligarchs are the new Welfare Queens.
And for someone who proclaims to be against government spending, virtually 100% of Musk’s core businesses have heavily benefited from – and in key cases been outright saved by – government support. Meaning taxpayer (our) support.
Over the past two decades, his companies have secured at least $38 billion in publicly-disclosed federal and state contracts, low-interest loans, subsidies, and tax credits. So, where's that wood chipper now?
Meanwhile, I bet those same “right-wing commentators” that Krugman mentioned were probably also in support of Trump paying $2.5 billion of taxpayer money to energy companies in order to cancel their offshore wind projects at the time when we need them most. It’s total insanity.
It's funny that someone who is so contemptuous of government (Musk) is so heavily dependent on it. He used some of this money to buy 4 rockets from the Russians, the first 3 of which blew up. If the 4th had followed suit we would never have heard of this peculiar individual.
Mr. Hutchinson. I had no idea Musk had purchased rockets from the Russians. Could you please tell us more of this story?
Wood-CVhipper and President Wooden-head CHARGE forward to the rear. Edward Mycue, poet, who finds no poetry in backward and down descent
Needs more Alfred Jarry? Well, I think we do have more than enough at the moment.
No Mr. Hutchinson. it was Marx and Engels who predicted the future capitalism in which we now find ourselves. Adam smith made warnings, yes, but he was a defender of the capitalist system. Obviously, his warnings did not work.
I was just reflecting on this - they have so much wealth, they have worked their tendrils into every aspect of the economy and corrupted all they touch - just like their Orange Ogre.
During the Gilded Age it was important to the wealthy, like Carnagie, to also be respectable in society and gave generously to charities. This new batch of arrogant clowns like Musk or Larry Ellison are an embarrassment and they don't care.
What we have now is a cocktail of Plutocracy, Kakistocracy and Kleptocracy run by The Don who believes climate change is the "biggest hoax in the history of the world."
When you add electricity use in to household and commercial, household and commercial are right up there with transportation as the largest causes of emissions...
-not industry.
I find too many blame industry, although also large emitters and come in 3rd, so they do not have to take personal responsibility.
See EPA pie chart to the right that adds in electricity use to each sector instead of having it separate:
https://www.epa.gov/ghgemissions/sources-greenhouse-gas-emissions
We must take responsibility for ourselves and our personal use and stop being spoiled lazy emitters. We have simply become accustomed to a way of life that is more than excessive in use.
USA also has, by far, the highest per capita emissions, other than a couple of other oil and gas producers, with more than double most other modern nations - meaning there is a lot of room for improvement and less indulgence and waste.
According to MIT, what we put in the air will likely be around for over 100 years, and there is already too much wreaking havoc on our climate, so that means anything more the zero that you emit, is simply more than acceptable, so simply do the very best you can.
Transportation is number 1, so stop going places unnecessarily. One long haul flight emits more than a household in the UK does in a year, and even more than many in less developed nations (who often bear the brunt) emit in an entire lifetime according to BBC News.
Surprised that EPA hasn’t killed the page.
I assume that "Electricity End-Use Indirect Emissions" refers to the emissions from electricity production facilities which are powered by coal, gas or other hydrocarbons. Add in agriculture and it accounts for 90% of total emissions.
The transition to electric vehicles is already underway but planes will be a harder challenge. Home energy is increasingly electrical, but will likely take much longer to fully accomplish without substantial government aid.
The key to all of this is ending (or severely limiting) our dependance on fossil fuels. Power generation from solar, wind, wave and thermal sources are within reach, but will require massive capital investment along with political will. We can probably manage the former, but the political will to make the necessary changes has and will continue to be much harder.
My personal fear is that it will require a series of major catastrophes before the political will can be found to make the necessary changes. If we fail, it might take a billion years or so for Mother Nature to clean up the mess and start over.
I spent less than 2000 for backyard solar (in my case, more than half the cost was batteries for storage) like many people in semi-third world and with conserving l'm down to 1.5 kWh a day. So although gov can help and is desperately needed, it is completely within our ability to do a lot of this, as well.
Industry also wastes abt 5 million BPD. I will get you a link. Not sure how you arrived at 90 percent when there is also a separate graph for electricity alone an my link above and one for agriculture. Transportation is over 30 percent.
Matthew Ratteree, Efficiency at Oil Refineries
Jigar Shah and Matthew Jeffrey Ratteree
Jun 04, 2026
Apologies: I should have said: "Take out Agriculture and the remainder accounts for 90% of emissions."
Here is that link to the massive amount of waste in industry. We can go a long way just by having people do things the smart way.
Matthew Ratteree, Efficiency at Oil Refineries
Jigar Shah and Matthew Jeffrey Ratteree
Jun 04, 2026
https://substack.com/home/post/p-200623344
So stop farting PipandJoe. Seriously.
Capitalism that functions with the short-term profit horizons that ours in the US does is not sustainable and is destructive of democracy. This "run-a-muck" capitalism can be constrained through tax policies and laws/regulations. Until that happens, this kind of capitalism will continue to subvert all attempts to rein it in. Yes, kind of a catch -22 isn't it?
What keeps me a little more optimistic is that, as Paul mention, US is a relatively small part of the world - even though we have been punching above our weight. The rest of the world seems a lot more fact-based and able to control predatory capitalism (that is actually why it has migrated to US).
The cost of wind/solar energy is already higher than the lowest cost hydrocarbon electricity and it will only get lower. Natural gas generation has already reached 85% efficiency and will be stuck at current prices. Solar and wind still has opportunities for improved efficiency and the cost of energy storage is falling like a rock.
If our grid fail to shift, the cost of grid energy will become higher than the cost of cutting the cord and producing your own backyard energy. Furthermore, as our corporations become more extractive, people will no longer be able to afford transport by vehicles that cost more than twice as much per mile in fuel and maintenance. Many may decide to use backyard energy to power their homes and vehicles - and save a lot of money..
Yep. Economic policies that are based solely on expanding consumption, hence corporate profits, is simply unsustainable.
And what’s more “conservative” than environmental conservation?
Many of those damaging economic policies are really the non-existent types. Coupled with the belief, or useful excuse, that a free market environment will solve all ills.
Unfettered markets operating with no regard for the common good have taken us to many places we should not have gone. Places we only arrived at because it was profitable for someone. Social media and unrestricted gambling are easy to understand poster children for this concept.
Free markets are a wonderful tool when used to achieve policy goals that are based upon reaching a wise common good. It will get us there faster and less expensive but the 'there' has to make sense, has to be reality based.
Yeah, the whole “Reagan trickle-down economics gig”…which never seems to actually trickle down! In fact, you must know as well as I do that the consolidation of wealth (and power) has dramatically and rapidly accelerated over the past 40 years, particularly under the trump administration.
When has the US ever had a free market economy?
Even the founding fathers
“The United States has never had a purely "free market" economy, operating instead as a heavily regulated mixed economy. From its founding, the nation has relied on government intervention, including tariffs, infrastructure subsidies, antitrust laws, and central banking, to shape industrial outcomes and support the private sector.” (And here’s where “endless consumerism” comes in.)
“The U.S. economy is more accurately defined as a mixed economy rather than a pure "free market". It blends capitalist competition with government intervention, meaning that subsidies, bailouts, and industrial policies frequently coexist with—and alter—the underlying forces of supply and demand.” (I remember well the “too big to fail” fiasco under Bush W. No accountability, but bonuses instead.)
And, infact, of 27 publicly identified corporate donors to Donald Trump's White House ballroom project, 19 received government contracts over a recent five-and-a-half-year period, totaling $338 billion. In just the first six months after the East Wing demolition, 14 of these donors secured over $50 billion in new or expanded federal contracts.”
So I dare say we are now experiencing an unregulated oligarchic “crony capitalism” with virtually no oversight or accountability. Then add the blatant and constant market manipulation into the mix, and well…the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.
https://www.citizen.org/article/ballroom-billions/
I think you mis-spoke. You said "trickle-down." The Reagan plan was more like "tinkle-down."
😂 I stand corrected! (And dribble-down works too!)
The only thing they want to conserve is their wealth and power.
Yep, at the expense of the expendable “peons”.
According to this chart, it certainly looks like we’re rapidly becoming a neo-feudalist society 👇🏼
https://www.linkedin.com/posts/harshadshah1953_structure-of-our-society-historical-feudalism-activity-7272493560304717824-aG2J
Bezos and others have their $200 - 500 million yachts as well as their compounds in New Zealand to escape us riff-raff when the whole eco-system collapses.
And that is the problem. They have such vast wealth - actual Fafnir's hoardes - that they have no skin in the game. We need to tax them down out of their rarified heights.
The super yachts will sink w all hands in the super typhoons engendered by global warming, since the egos of the billionaires will keep them from heeding warnings about 'mere weather.'
The Bayesian sank in “mere weather” off Sicily in 2024. Seven passengers ended down in Davey Jones Locker. Tragic accident that may keep billionaires looking over their shoulders?
Well, if the customer hadn't overruled the designers and insisted on that tall single mast, she wouldn't have gone down.
And yet we all live on the same planet. Even the super wealthy will suffer the consequences.
Several of the oligarchs (billionaires) either have built or are building compounds in New Zealand and other remote places. Some already have people living there full time waiting for the apocalypse. So, many of them think they can buy their way out of the consequences of climate change.
Climate change denial is a little bit more than "pseudo religious". A lot of the "simple minds" that deny the phenomenon do so in the belief that "god" would "never let it happen (to them)". Helped along by the various claims of "the imminent return of the messiah" - being Trump.
Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet. Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich. Napoleon Bonaparte
Religious “thinkers” who believe their “God” would never let such a bad thing happen to them, think that God created “The Devil” and “The Donald” - and the 40-day flood. The “thinkers” need to do better at thinking
"Religious thinkers" need to actually "think". As do Republicans. But the process is just too painful.
Hence the line, "Thinking is harder than believing, which is why there are more believers than thinkers."
A lot of them think that climate change is the way God will bring on the Rapture and end the world. As the song says, "God said a fire, not a flood next time."
I wish we had had a better conversation years ago about Puritanical control of our media and government….anti-sciences have rules too often, we see it again and again.
Treat climate denialism the way Europe treats Holocaust denial.
It would take a constitutional amendment to limit the right of free speech… we will be ready for amendments by 2028, but I think we should use that political capital to rewrite Articles I, II, and III.
Requiring fact-based reporting as a necessary constraint for "News" organizations is on the to-do list when tRump and his crew lose power. Requiring "News" organizations to be run as non-profit organizations might help if they have robust public service requirements in their articles of incorporation.
If you lie to your audience on a daily basis like Fox does. You shouldn't be allowed to call yourself a "news" organization. Label it opinion or commentary. It isn't news. News should be fact based.
Fox registered with the FCC as an entertainment organization, not a news organization. The issue I have is that "News" is in the title.
But the bigger issue is that so many people tune in and soak up whatever confirms their prejudices. Stupidity among the general population should not be underestimated as a problem of national importance.
If you don't already subscribe to the VOLTS substack, take a look. They have many innovative guests on that talk about every imaginable new technology like plug-in storage for businesses, plug-in solar (400 - 1200 watt systems for your home) as well as many other technologies.
The US electorate has ceded its power to a rightwing confederacy of oligarchs and theocrats funded by a fossil fuel industry (Kochs, et.al.), which lacked the imagination to transition its engineering know-how to renewable forms of energy and continued down a path to obsolescence. Consequently, the US has ceded its power to shape the future to China and Europe.
Mostly China. Europe is hurting on the industrial front (and is warming twice as fast as the planet average). They're losing agricultural land, too.
Even Fox News' stance on global warming is now more qualified the Trump's. Trump's opposition is ideological and absolute, while Fox News' opposition is primarily economic and regulatory, that it's no emergency meriting costly regulatory action.
Politicians get away with lying because people don't want to hear painful truths. Accepting climate science can imply accepting unwelcome policy conclusions: carbon regulation, energy transition, lifestyle changes, international agreements (globalism), criticism of fossil fuels, and government intervention. For those whose worldview emphasizes markets, energy independence, rural livelihoods, distrust of federal agencies, or hostility to “elite” institutions, accepting the science can feel like conceding one's entire political belief system. So the mind rejects the premise to avoid the conclusion.
Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.
Atheists can forget about what we may choose to call the forces at work in our societies, ultimately in our minds, that are so successfully playing Jim Jones with us. The outcome - mass suicide - is clear enough.
Corporate media is never going to point out the lies of republicans or right-wing media. If they were going to do it, they would have done it by now. The fact is our corporate media is owned by the same right-wing republicans. The biggest myth that has harmed this country. Is that we had some some of "liberally biased" media. Even democrats bought that lie. Thinking that reporters would fight their battles for them. Because reporters were supposedly liberal. Most aren't. America is awash in right-wing media. If you want liberal media. Your choices are Democracy Now and The Nation magazine. That's about it.
We need to be able to have a safe and secure electrical system and the yet we do not have one…and we do not need data centers, AI nor ‘forever stored’ cat videos at our fingertips. I would trade Wikipedia for Google AI in a nano-second!
People are dying and we don’t really care!
Smoking and climate science have a strange connection…Merchants of Doubt..and ignorance of science and how it works, same with leadership and how it works.
Donny is an Under-Toad of a leader, Joe wasn’t. Notice the difference!
Darkness or light, please choose soon!
Yes the climate is certainly changing; when has it not done so. We should be planning for a warmer future, but instead we have lighted on net-zero and the demonisation of carbon (carbon dioxide in fact) and are rushing headlong into decarbonising our economies. Net result, economic decline and power problems, because we are fixated on a trace gas which is still only 420 parts per million in the atmosphere. Heck there is more argon than CO2. Decades of climate conferences, IPCC warnings and hand wringing have not even slowed the increase in CO2. China gets a free ride, builds hundreds of coal fired power stations while western nations destroy their coal-fired generators and close their nuclear plants. Meanwhile customers pay more for power and suffer reduced reliability, and rapidly rising power bills. And to top it all off we subsidise and champion a change from ICE vehicles to EVs. Definitely time for an urgent strategic rethink on how to cope with climate change, because what we are doing now is a total failure.
It is wonderful there are articles like this out there.
It is probably a good time to compute a Comparative Cost Analysis for the Human Contribution to Climate Change: achieving Net Zero from 2015 (Paris Agreement) within 10 or 20 years, versus the current path of denial, rising emissions, and a war on renewables.
What we know is that human society contributes to warming through CO2 and other emissions. Period, this is a scientific fact. If there is a natural climate change, we are contributing to it, if there is none, we own all of it. The point is, we have agency, at least in large part.
We can now compute draft estimates for the total money wasted in Tax Cuts, Shares Buy Backs (instead of investments), Wars of choice, and similar items on one side of the ledger; to this ledger we must add estimates of harvest damage, soil degradation, disruptions, wasted energy, loss of output, loss of natural resources, and so on. Just an estimate on the low side, on Perpetuity though. All the emissions we keep on adding are here to stay for millenia. There is no going back for a long time.
Then, on the other ledger, coherent policies driven toward renewables for instance using Federal Procurement, subsidies, developtment of nuclear plants, and various incentives to build up grids (electricity, hydrogen), and probably some level of sensible (no pork) industrial policy.
Version with edits by/with Gemini: Questions for next Podcast: The Wolf-Krugman Exchange
A Comparative Cost Analysis Approach to the Climate Crisis
Dear Drs. Krugman and Wolf,
Given the compounding economic impacts of the climate crisis, the time is right for a comprehensive Comparative Cost Analysis of the global approach to emissions. Specifically, we need to contrast the macroeconomic trajectory of achieving Net Zero within 10 to 20 years of the 2015 Paris Agreement against the actual path taken: a combination of climate denial, rising emissions, and a legislative war on renewables.
Anthropogenic warming via CO2 and greenhouse gases is a settled scientific baseline. If there is an underlying natural climate cycle, our emissions exacerbate it; if there is none, human society owns the entirety of the warming trend. To quantify this, we can structure a macro-ledger comparing two distinct policy regimes:The Status Quo / Inertia Ledger: This accounts for the profound opportunity costs of capital misallocation—specifically trillions spent on fossil fuel subsidies, wars of choice, short-term share buybacks, and unfunded tax cuts—combined with the ballooning direct costs of climate inaction (agricultural degradation, supply chain disruptions, lost productivity, and ecological depletion).The Transition Ledger: This accounts for the coordinated capital deployment required for deep decarbonization, driven by aggressive federal procurement, targeted subsidies, grid modernization (electric and hydrogen), and base-load nuclear infrastructure.Even conservative, low-end estimates of the status quo's waste likely dwarf the upfront capital expenditure of a managed green transition. I would welcome your thoughts on how economists can better frame this stark balance sheet to shift the public and political debate. Sincerely, LRC.
"If there is a natural climate change, we are contributing to it, if there is none, we own all of it."
----
Based on the Milankovitch Cycles describing Earth's movement, we should be moving into a cooling phase (glaciation), but instead we keep warming, which is why climatologists say humans are responsible for "more than 100%" of the warming.
Yes, I agree, however my point was to leave all hypothesis (however scientifically impecable) out and go with the facts we already know. CO2 emissions to the atmosphere trap heat, a fact we experimentally know as well as newton's laws. Thus, we do know what to do but we are doing the opposite.
Also, all the costs of the climate change we are causing, are here for perpetuity. It is about time a serious comparative cost analysis is done showing the perversity of the situation, specially since the revenues and gains of the current energy use are private while the costs are distributed globably, the higher the poorer people are.
We're just a bunch of irrational social apes.
Consider the billions of people who believe they can communicate telepathically with an immeasurable being who created the universe (as I once did), and try to come to grips with the reality that facts don't matter in the face of tribal allegiance. (However, having a decades long interest in human cognition and the self delusion of the brain, I still have trouble accepting that.)
Exactly! Lies and fake analyses/news/science have been elevated to equal standing with facts. Incrementally they have been given credibility with a lazy, conspiracy-loving, low information, non-critically thinking public. And the constant onslaught of misinformation, disinformation and lies has the rest of us at times wondering what is real and spending time trying to verify information. My circle of trusted information has shrunk with the collapse of once independent, well-respected news sources. So many people take the easy way out: “they all lie”, “who knows whats true”, which further erodeds our ability to get out of the current mess and undo the damage.
Yep, greed and blind zealotry are sinking the ship.
The republican party is an existential threat to our lives with their climate denialism. This is the only planet we have. If the environment goes, we go. However, there are some in the religious community who assert that life on this planet is merely a staging ground for our eventual ascent to heaven, so who cares? Burn, baby, burn; drill, baby, drill!
The Republican Party as it exists today is just a few handfuls of proto-oligarchs and rage-baiters without the 70 million often lower middle class people who vote for them. The question is how to convince those voters.
But it convincingly appears that those voters are cut from the same cloth..
I think you're mistaken. Those voters are served an illusion that a bit of critical thinking would easily puncture. But as the philosopher Paul Simon wrote, "A man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest."
Or Willie Dixon: "You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink/You can send a kid to college but you can't make 'em think."
From Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" - "You can lead a child to knowledge but you cannot make him think."
Thanks for that. I can't find the song those lyrics come from. Can you point me to it?
I'm pretty sure the song is "Good Advice" but I'm certain it's on his album "Hidden Charms".
The Right Wing takeover envisioned by Powell is pretty comprehensive, controlling most of the media and politics, but many of the folks who thought MAGA would rescue them from the $79 trillion 90%=>1% heist are now disillusioned with Trump. (see any recent poll)
https://www.rand.org/pubs/working_papers/WRA516-2.html
If the DNC Dems break with their billionaire donors and adopt 'TAX the RICH!' policies as the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party proposes, they have a future. Otherwise the 2032 presidential election will see MAGA back in the saddle.
https://www.gelliottmorris.com/p/2026-05-29-dnc-autopsy-few-more-thoughts
Restructuring the tax code is, I think, necessary but insufficient. The Democrats are going to need to paint a vision for the American future that addresses a broad range of American concerns and promises to unite rather than divide. MAGA succeeded as a slogan for the same reason that Yes We Can succeeded, but MAGA only delivered for the top few percent.
And many of the religious people you reference want to hasten that ascent. Poor policy choices help them with that goal.
Ascent by mean of hot air?
Or a Musk space vehicle.
That is why our lives depend on voting them out.
Their children and grandchildren, etc may not be in quite so big a hurry to hasten that “ascent”.
The GOP should be charged for crimes against humanity for climate denialism alone. How can you be for the destruction of our species and planet? The same goes for fundamentalists.
Yes, this is an amazing and frightening phenomenon.
Agree that the republicans are an existential threat—they don’t WANT to govern—they don’t have any ideology. Opportunists and thieves! And if this administration doesn’t highlight the corruption to voters then nothing will.
This is a sad truism. The party has morphed into a vehicle of destruction through the influence of those who think they can live forever and profit indefinitely. And the crazies support them. You can’t reason with those who are eager for the next stage and refuse to accept that it’s one planet for all. It’s egotism and selfishness in the extreme and the rest of humanity is burning up along side with them. Huh! I know of another place that offers eternal heat. Wonder if they’re trying to create that here and now?
And there are some in the religious community who are stark, raving mad. Unfortunately we are stuck sharing with them the planet they are so casually trashing because they expect to be transported in the rapture they have concocted in the feverish imagination of their deranged minds.
And to quote Christopher Hitchens once again, “religion poisons everything.”
"we now account for less than 13 percent of global carbon emissions."
While the US population is 4.2-4.4 percent of all the humans on earth. In other words, the US still emits about three times the world average per person.
I've always wondered if that number includes the emissions created in other countries producing goods for consumption in the US. If [made up number] 20% of Chinese emissions come from producing goods sold to Americans does that get counted in China's total or our own?
People do track embodied emissions. Where it gets added in depends on who is counting what.
https://clcouncil.org/publications/blog/what-industries-import-the-most-emissions-to-the-u-s/
Made in china gets counted by china
Great point!
So many parts of the American right wing and of Trump are ridiculous, damaging, cruel, and abominably ignorant that choosing a worst is actually impossible. But in terms of costs and harms the climate change denial is right up there. In a newspaper comment I once asked why people on the right refuse to accept climate change. One reply was honest in saying it is that they really dislike the people who warn of climate change. Thus, it seems to me the apotheosis of anti-intellectualism--hating anyone with expertise so profoundly that reality is denied and harm is voluntarily sustained. It has become a litmus test for right wingers to deny climate change and all its ramifications. It is aggravating that the worst of the deniers, who are setting our course, will be dead before the worst and irreversible aspects have completely ruined the lives of humans. The deniers are simpy and truly bad people.
We have those few oligarchs who propagandize their base to vote for what they want which is to subvert and corrupt any and all regulation. It has been fanned into an almost religion which has fanned the rise of christian nationalism. The forces of chaos are at the ramparts.
Scott,
Anti-intellectualism, aggressive ignorance, racism, misogyny, greed, dollar idolatry, and mass hysteria (the god delusion) are as American as apple pie.
And who doesn't like apple pie? Why wait for it in the heaveny cafe when it's right here, right now? Gobble up.
A most conservative view of American life would require everyone to read the US Constitution. The reader would note that the preamble has a clause "promote the general welfare". The current administration is grossly and deplorably derelict in its duty in that regard.
Though liberty is established by law, we must be vigilant, for liberty to enslave us is always present under that very liberty. Our Constitution speaks of the "general welfare of the people." Under that phrase all sorts of excesses can be employed by lusting tyrants to make us bondsmen. Marcus Tullius Cicero
America seems to have invented the trick to "employ all sorts of excesses" under that same banner of "liberty".
When I was in high school (in the dark ages) I had copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution on imitation parchment. I have no idea how I got them or what became of them.
The heat of repression is also rising, following the embarrassing strategic defeat in Iran. ICE has doubled its daily arrest rate. Protestors at a Texas ICE facility were just sentenced to 30-100 years. The man sentenced to 30 years was convicted for moving left wing literature, cast as disrupting the investigation. End times fascism is turning our planet into even more of a sweltering hellscape.
It was horrifying to read about those cases.
That is blatant ridiculousness—will be overturned.
Here's hoping..
I read today that an Air Force officer was arrested for calling on Congress to impeach Trump.
The Thermostat War is a textbook case of what Campbell and Kay called "solution aversion". That is, people reject climate science because they hate the proposed solutions – THEN they reason backward to the science and land on bullshit. In their 2014 experiments, Republicans' agreement with climate science increased dramatically when the offered solution was free-market-friendly instead of regulatory. So of course a 78-degree thermostat suggestion from a socialist mayor becomes communism, and of course DOE scrubbed its own identical guidance. That said, excellent article by Krugman, as expected!
Trump and Republicans taking active steps to damage America and hurt its citizens? I'm shocked. See? This is my shocked face.
Seriously, though--climate scientists and oceanographers are getting increasingly frantic about the possible collapse of the Gulf Stream due to global warming. If that happens, parts of northern Europe may well become uninhabitable. England and Norway owe much of their current comparatively moderate climate to the heat brought in by the Gulf Stream Turn off the Gulf Stream and London starts seeing snowfalls that could prove crippling, while food production throughout most of Europe takes a big hit.
Looking on the plus side… writing this from a hot home in London… okay, lots of us die, crops fail, entire areas of NW Europe become uninhabitable - but on the plus side, I won’t need to buy air-conditioning. So there’s that, plus I get to live out The Day After Tomorrow in real time, yay…..
Seriously what scares me about all this is that whenever I talk to climate scientists - THEY are absolutely terrified. And if they are - we as societies should be too. And as of yet the US is in the insane grip of a white nationalist death cult.
On the train to Waterloo yesterday Hampshire resembled southern France, fields burnt golden brown.
The Pacific El Nino currents have a big impact on the US: The South West, already running out of water, becomes hotter and dryer, impacting both drinking water and hydro electricity... also forest fires... so literally "burn, baby burn"
As I've said elsewhere (but not credit to me): eventual climate catastrophy will lead to famine and water resource wars - big wars.
And mass migrations that will make conflicts even worse.
Yup. And I think they know it…
There are low-scale conflicts in the Colorado River basin already. I know of no killings, but there have been plenty of violations of the law.
And that hot water remains in the Gulf of Mexico. I'm not sure anyone really wants to guess what that will do.
I used to think that at some point there would be a climate disaster so bad and obvious that everyone would realize that climate change is real. I no longer believe that. If all the predictions for 2050 and later come true Americans will still deny climate change. Any policy that requires the population to drive smaller cars, use less gasoline, or reduce energy usage in any way will lose at the ballot box.
I disagree only because the electric alternative to those fossil-fueled cars, energy and appliances are so much better! From induction stoves to EVs, you only have to give them a try to realize how superior they are.
We have two converging disasters: Climate Change & the current administration’s incompetence & hatred of renewable energy.
Solving the second will go a long way to solving the first.
Simple.
We’re dealing with stupid people here folks, so it’s gonna take a major effort.
We may need to wait for 2.5-3yrs before we can solve this.
Our brain dead senile President is the problem.
Section IV of the 25th Amendment is the solution .
Resist
Avance la Lucha
His intensionally chosen brain-dead cabinet, confirmed by his brain-dead Senate, will never call for the 25th.
Even if they do, we're stuck with Vance, and we'll be stuck with many members of the cabinet for entirely too long (even if Vance wants to change them).
True. We gotta start somewhere draining the pustule/cyst.
Jared Diamond's Collapse observed that humans were evolved for short-term thinking but were not good at the long-term. That's been certainly proved. In most of history, it was slow and almost imperceptible, but now the decline is precipitous and unavoidable. Can't say we didn't bring it upon ourselves, with our big lives and expectations, and profligate use of finite resources.
"Can't say we didn't bring it upon ourselves, with our big lives and expectations, and profligate use of finite resources."
This is wrong on so many levels.
First, "finite resouces"? It is simply not the case that the planet cannot feed 8 billion humans. The problem is that the planet cannot absorb the waste and exhaust generated by 1.2 billion humans living in industrialized societies. That's what's driving the climate apocalypse, not a scarcity of resources.
Second, there is no "we" here. People like me have no "big lives and expectations," don't have a car, own very little, with most of it older than 20 years. And it certainly cannot refer to the other 6.8 billion humans outside industrialized societies who mostly haven't contributed anything to the impending catastrophe.
Well, that's a singularly unhelpful, virtue-signalling response to a world in crisis.
"Well, that's a singularly unhelpful, virtue-signalling response to a world in crisis."
I have no idea what you mean with that. Wikipedia[1] knows that "The concept of virtue signalling is most often used by those on the political right to denigrate the behaviour of those on the political left."
Is that where you see yourself, on the political right?
If not, can you explain what the words "virtue signalling" mean, and why it is a bad thing?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtue_signalling
Well Terence, if Rainer speaks truth, his or her reality--one shared by many around the world--how is that virtue signalling. The tragedy is we will all be tasked to clean up a mess not of our own making.
That’s one way to look at it. Not very helpful and riddled with wishful thinking. For instance: No, the planet cannot support 8 billion people. Not even close. You have taken the position, iff they’d all just act like you want them to … problem solved. Full disclosure: They. Never. Will. Not. Ever. You’re dealing with humans here. Get it?
Scarcity of resources is real. We cannot simply mine (dig) our way to ‘success’ as we continue to make huge messes from our mining.
One or two examples: Prince William Sound; the Exxon tanker oil spill. And the oil well blowout in the Gulf of Mexico — which we are still deep in cleanup mode. I got LOTS more.
"No, the planet cannot support 8 billion people."
Why, the planet has 8 billion people *now*. An estimated 8.2% of them suffer from hunger, while 30%-40% of food goes to waste. It seems to me that the conclusion "The planet could feed 8 billion people" is a matter of simple arithmetic.
Besides, you missed the whole point (while I freely admit that this must be entirely my own fault):
IMO scarcity of resources is the smaller of two problems, because the larger and apparently largely unforeseen problem is the tsunami of refuse, garbage, and gas emissions that a large number of fairly rich people generate. Not only Greeenhouse Gases, but microplastics everywhere, forever chemicals, mountains of cheap clothing from the fast fashion industry, etc.pp.
"Get it?"
I find your presumptuous tone entirely inappropriate for a civilized discussion.
Twenty years is a fraction of a second in Climate Change Time. So you don't have a car - do you have electricity, hot running water, trash bins in your kitchen, food in your refrigerator, clothing, heat and/or air conditioning? You obviously have an electronic device that allows you to read and post on the internet. Do you watch TV? How about a dishwasher, washer and dryer? Do you shop for food at a local market and eat at least one decent meal a day? There's more but I've made the point.
If you have only a few of those things, by the world "We" standards, you're living a big life.
"If you have only a few of those things, by the world "We" standards, you're living a big life."
I very much doubt that this is correct, because one can have a few of these things and still reside below the global median of affluence.
Furthermore, this is not the meaning of "big life" that I inferred from Terence's message when he used it.
Do you assume that the "big life" that is *necessarily* implied with any industrialized society must *inevitably* destroy the planet AND it makes absolutely no difference how the members of such societies behave?
You should read, at least, the first chapter of Kim Stanley Robinson’s book, The Ministry for the Future, if you think this is all nonsense.
I am astonished that you did not mention the impact on agricultural productivity and resulting effects on food security. Millions will die of starvation, starting with the poorest.
They already are, thanks to the MuskRat and his "wood chipper."
Here in the UK we're in the middle of our second heat wave this summer. It's not fun. Without climate change no one could have anticipated that British people would need air conditioning. With it...
It is now costing money comma although our energy prices are starting to come down as more wind and solar comes on line. We're pikers compared to China, but then I don't think China has right wingers: we do, and yes they're idiots about this, just as yours are. Attacking the fairly boring prescription that we should get our energy from a free source - wind, solar, wave - is only controversial to them, and I suspect that's because it effectively proves that they were wrong, wrong, wrong, all along. But then that's what science does. It verifies things to make sure we don't do stupid shit. Unless you really really like doing stupid shit....
I remember back in the 90s British cars didn't even have air conditioning. I remember when my parents friend got it in their new car and it was seen as the height of self indulgent luxury. How things change.
And the people who did the loudest howling about the 78 degree request weren’t living in New York.
Many readers like me proably felt the heat last week hit with unprecedented impact. Global warming is no longer future tense, but present.
You know who “believes in” climate change science?
INSURANCE COMPANIES
What will YOU DO if they cancel your policy, and there isn’t any other option?
It’s PAST TIME to sue these fossil fuel companies FOR DAMAGES
and the pretrump military and CIA
Good point about one group of profit-motivated fact-based tough-minded capitalists (those are all compliments in the right wing world) who most definitely accept the reality of climate change. Along with farmers and mountaineers.
Early climate change warnings came from people who revere Creation and didn’t want humans to be responsible for despoiling it. But selfishness seems to be the thing we need to “sell it” - it’s all about inconvenience to humans.
The true value of a lump of coal is it is sequestered carbon. The true cost is when the carbon is released back in to the atmosphere.
Exactly. The oceans can capture only so much before turning acidic. Rain forests are being decimated. Regenerative farming is the way forward but there , again, you’ve got to wrestle it away from corporate farming.