
Climate threats now dominate long-term risks, survey of global leaders finds - drocer88
http://news.trust.org/item/20200115150054-km9of/
======
ulrikrasmussen
Why aren't we doing more to address the source of the problem: extraction of
fossil fuels? It seems that every attempt to limit the consumption of fossil
fuels is going to have a limited effect if we don't reduce the supply, since a
reduction in consumption will lead to an oversupply, which will in turn make
burning fossil fuels for other purposes cheaper.

If the leading producers committed to a 10% reduction each year, then we would
have some (big!) problems to solve, but we would at least be making progress.

I know that the economies of the leading producers is deeply tied to the
production of fossil fuels, but at the current rate of global warming, no
investment in fossil fuel production is going to be a viable long-term
strategy anyway: if the sector continues to grow, then your money from the
profits will be worthless for other obvious reasons anyway.

~~~
mortdeus
10 years ago when I still lived in CA (where i grew up), I was the liberal
rebel in my family of CA Republicans, I argued with my grandfather (who was
still alive at the time) about the issue of Global Warming but rather than
trying to take him on head on about the ethical nature of supporting it, I
tried to take the approach of talking about Electric Cars and how Elon Musk
was paving the way towards a future where nobody would need to use fossil
fuels anymore. (this was back when Tesla was still pretty much a pitch)

He asked me how much would a new Tesla cost? I said well right now they are
$120k, but eventually Elon Musk plans to get that price all the way down to
$40k.

My grandfather said, he can go right now and buy a 4 cylinder truck for $2000
dollars that gets 25 miles to the gallon and with gas at $3 a gallon he could
literally get 360,000 miles out of a vehicle, and then guess what buy another
truck for $2000 dollars for the same amount of money it took to buy a 40k
electric car...

His argument was very simple, and having moved to Oklahoma after the economy
crashed in 2007, I understand now more than ever why his conservative pov was
correct.

The reality is that you can't make the world conform to your utopia when it
first conforms to its budget.

You think this issue can be solved with simply a 10% reduction each year, when
you need to realize people don't buy gas because they are going on family
trips all the time they can choose to do the right thing and cut back on.

People are buying gas to go to work and back everyday. Literally the only way
we could cut back on our current fossil fuel usage is if Andrew Yang's worst
nightmare came to fruition and the robots did take all the jobs, that way we
didn't have to commute to work everyday.

~~~
ulrikrasmussen
You need to think about _why_ people need gas to go to work and back every
day. They do this because their work is located far away from their home. And
why is that? Because it was economically viable to set it up like that,
because of the low price of gas.

Increase the price of gas, and you will get an economic recession in the short
term, for sure. But after that, people will adjust, and you will see a
reversal of the current trend of centralizing all jobs in the big cities.
Towns would get more local businesses, people doing business would invest more
in high-quality video conferencing instead of traveling to meetings by plane
all the time, and so on. Some things that are possible today would not be
possible anymore, and we would have to deal with that.

I think it is a fallacy to see the current way society works as a constant.
Everything is holistically connected, and if you change one variable (price of
fossil fuels), then the rest of society will have to shape itself around that.

~~~
mjfl
You would get lynched by taxi drivers within the first month of implementing
such a ridiculous policy.

~~~
ulrikrasmussen
You would get lynched by everybody! But we have to realize that anything we do
to solve climate change is going to make our living conditions worse _here and
now_ , because we have spent the last century making every aspect of society
dependent on fossil fuels.

I think it is also ridiculous to not do something, because we know what the
outcome is going to be, and it is almost certainly going to be more unpleasant
than an economic recession and a bunch of pissed off taxi drivers.

Edit: Also, note that I do not want to increase the price of gas through a
policy affecting only gas for cars, e.g. via taxation. That will never work,
because it is a local policy that will be a short-term loss for the first
country to implement it. I want to limit the extraction of fossil fuels
_globally_ , causing the short-term losses to be distributed to every nation
in the world which depends on fossil fuels. This will, as a consequence, cause
gas prices to increase.

------
kasperni
Here is an outline of the actual report [1] which draws on feedback from
around 800 global experts and decision-makers.

Environmental threats dominate the survey’s 10-year outlook. The top five long
term risks by likelihood and three of the top five spots by impact.

[1] [https://www.oliverwyman.com/our-
expertise/insights/2020/jan/...](https://www.oliverwyman.com/our-
expertise/insights/2020/jan/globalrisks2020.html)

------
roenxi
> He pointed to the rapid disappearance of insect species around the world,
> including those that pollinate 75% of the world's crops, as a result of
> climate change and other pressures.

Hmm. Do those other pressures involve massive use of insecticides? Climate
becoming warmer isn't about to stop insects; little blighters are resilient as
an evolutionary approach. I'm sure wiping out a species is possible but a new
one would pop up in no time to fill the gap if they aren't being actively
exterminated.

Water and food crisises are not new risks. They are inevitable outcomes of
population growth and variance in the supply chain. The evidence is that we
are much better at dealing with such threats now than we were in the past
because we have all this cheap energy we can use to recover.

~~~
throwaway5752
_" Hmm. Do those other pressures involve massive use of insecticides? Climate
becoming warmer isn't about to stop insects; little blighters are resilient as
an evolutionary approach."_

Insects on the whole are resilient. Specific pollinators aren't. Climate
change is causing massive problems for insect life. Neonic pesticides are also
devestating. Both are bad, and are not mutually exclusive. As a matter of
fact, more pesticides are used as climate change stresses crops more and
weakens them.

~~~
aldoushuxley001
Crops are generally loving climate change though, as more food will be
produced than with colder temperatures, so I don't think more pesticides will
be used because of climate-change induced crop stress

~~~
moultano
> _Crops are generally loving climate change though, as more food will be
> produced than with colder temperatures_

This is not true.

"each degree-Celsius increase in global mean temperature would, on average,
reduce global yields of wheat by 6.0%, rice by 3.2%, maize by 7.4%, and
soybean by 3.1%."
[https://www.pnas.org/content/114/35/9326](https://www.pnas.org/content/114/35/9326)

~~~
mikeyouse
Right - It's very rare that the availability of carbon is the limiting
function in plant growth. You can force more greening by providing a higher-
carbon environment but it's almost always other combinations of nutrients,
sunlight, or water that limit plant growth.

------
bilifuduo
If you want to do something about climate change, consider working at a
company fighting some aspect of it, whether it be wind energy, carbon removal,
electric vehicles or something else.

We started Dolphin ([http://withdolphin.com/](http://withdolphin.com/)) to
create an easy way for people to find impactful jobs tackling climate change.
Hope it's helpful to anyone considering a career shift.

~~~
snowwrestler
I don't mind installing an app and I don't really understand why people object
to it. Apps uninstall even easier than they install, at least on an iPhone.

That said...

\- You don't need to know the name of my college to serve me some job
listings.

\- I double majored in STEM and humanities, but your app will only let me
specify one or the other area of concentration.

\- You also don't need to know what year I graduated college. In fact it may
not be legal to ask as it can be used as a proxy for age, which is protected
under equal employment regs.

~~~
tgsovlerkhgsel
\- Apps uninstall harder than closing a web site.

\- Apps have access to way more permissions, abilities and data than web sites
(at least on Android).

\- Apps tend to be pushed by entities that are trying to exploit the two
above-mentioned things for their own benefit and the detriment of the user.

------
arikr
To be clear, this measures the issue global leaders think is biggest, not
necessarily what issue is actually biggest.

This is probably mostly a proxy for "climate threats are the most top of mind
issue for global leaders" due to the recent rise in coverage.

~~~
Daishiman
Sure, but necessarily, any informed person understands that it is by the
largest existential risk of humanity.

~~~
radford-neal
No. Informed people realize that there is no possibility that climate change
will lead to human extinction (except possibly by some indirect means, such as
leading to a war in which bioweapons are used, but then, drastic action to
curtail climate change could also lead to war...).

Saying "existential risk" again and again does not make it true. Hearing it
again and again does not make a rational person believe it.

~~~
imtringued
>No. Informed people realize that there is no possibility that climate change
will lead to human extinction

Avoiding human extinction from climate change is very easy but with this
attitude you're not doing a good job at avoiding that fate. Right now I don't
have much faith that humanity won't try to burn every single last drop of oil
or chunk of coal. Although it should be very difficult to reach insane targets
like 9°C warming it is definitively possible with enough ignorance and
dedication and as humanity has shown we have an unlimited supply of these two
qualities.

~~~
mrep
How would a 9°C warming cause human extinction? There is plenty of currently
cold land that would benefit from warming temperatures for farming and humans
are massively adaptable in that we live in large populations in pretty much
every climate. Even if things continue the way they are, it'll happen over
such a long time that time that the rate of change won't be a real issue
either.

I'm all for zero carbon emissions but the ridiculous "everyone is going to die
due to climate change" is pure FUD.

~~~
Daishiman
A 9 degree difference will wipe out almost all phytoplankton biomass
responsible for generating most of the oxygen in our planet. You will see a
raise in multiple meters of sea level, causing mass migrations involving over
20% of the world population, will make most of the planet uninhabitable, and
will reduce the oxygen levels of the oceans to the point that they will be
mostly anoxic.

That is an extinction level event greater than the Permian mass extinction.

~~~
mrep
So what specifically in your list do you think will cause humans to go
extinct?

~~~
codebje
Phytoplankton are also responsible for 50-80% of atmospheric oxygen, so in the
parent poster's scenario I think the loss of a breathable atmosphere is the
most likely nail in our species' coffin.

Probably won't happen, probably not a great idea to push things to see how far
we can let things go before it's catastrophic, though.

------
danschumann
I have a gripe with long commuters... Or I think they're kinda dumb. I don't
think the government should get involved, but it's not a social taboo to have
a long commute, it's almost celebrated and romanticized. France has shown gas
taxes have bad side effects, but how about just make people feel stupid for
driving too much habitually. I just think they're stupid for spending a higher
percentage of their lives in traffic, which is hellish.

~~~
neixidbeksoxyd
Ah yes, how dare poor people exist. They must clearly be inferior and stupid
for choosing to live somewhere they can afford.

~~~
danschumann
Poor people? I'm poor. But I integrate my life. My work meshes with my home
life. I would move my house or get a new job. Fighting traffic creates rage
and environmental problems. It's stupid.

~~~
senordevnyc
Wow. Do you seriously imagine that people who spend a huge portion of their
life on a miserable commute have never considered the solutions of "move
somewhere closer" or "get a new job closer to home"?

~~~
danschumann
That makes it better? I'm sure Bernie Madoff thought about quitting his
pyramid scheme. Everyone thinks about quitting smoking. It doesn't matter
unless you actually do it. If you just think about it, you still get lung
cancer.

~~~
senordevnyc
Wow, you just keep digging deeper. Let me spell it out for you:

Most people make those choices because they don’t have better ones available.
They would love to live closer to work, but it’s not viable for many reasons.
I’m sure you consider them invalid or of less importance than whatever you
prioritize in your life, but suggesting that the solution to other people’s
problems is just to do something they can’t easily do is quite arrogant and
out of touch.

~~~
danschumann
It's either their destiny in a sadistic universe, or it's their own
unresourcefulness in making bad decisions.

Making bad decisions over and over is a definition of stupidity.

If you continue to ignore obvious operations of the universe, you, yourself
might fall into the stupid category, but at least you can give yourself
prestige, thinking you're fight for someone, when really you are holding them
back, like a consumptive mother, chaining her babies down, lest they fledge.

And your offense seems rooted in my calling out stupidity, as if the word does
not deserve to exist, itself. It does exist, and you can't take away my right
to describe what I see, you nincompoop.

------
blondie9x
Governments of this planet are not moving quickly enough on climate change
with small incremental changes over time. However, people and organizations
who champion these efforts can pressure governments to drive faster change.

Climate Pledge

To protect all of humanity globally now and for the future of our posterity I
am committing to the following.

I pledge to limit eating red meat. I will restrict intake of cows and lambs
etc. If I choose to have children, I will have 2 or less. I will try to use
cycling or mass transit options whenever possible and to participate in
efforts to expand transit. I will restrict flying to only when necessary and
try to limit flying to only when no other choice is available. If I do fly I
will try to offset all emissions. I will try my utmost to conserve energy and
minimize use of heating and cooling appliances. I will try my best to limit
energy use to renewable sources when I have the choice. When I cannot choose I
will fight for the ability to have this choice. I will try to help those close
to me understand these choices and the need for those able, to also join the
pledge. I will only consume what I need. I will not perpetuate extravagance
and will only support companies who champion sustainable efforts. I will do my
best to strive for and support sustainable and minimalist technology. I will
stay involved in the public discourse on environmental issues and stay engaged
on efforts to mitigate climate change.

~~~
pa7ch
I think the idea that red meat will always be far worse for the environment
then other food is a bit of a red herring and conflated with ethics of animal
eating. There are many factors not considered in those statistics such as
nutrient absorption and protein quality.

While it is true that carbon emissions are worse for grain fed animals (most
of the red meat you see) it doesn't have to be this way. "Regenerative
agriculture" claims to you raise carbon neutral (or negative) beef farms by
restoring the native plant life and replenishing the soil. This won't feed the
entire earth, but I try to support grass fed farms and obtain most of my red
meat from them. Chriss Kresser offers some interesting points on this topic.

~~~
hkyeti
Oxford and CSIRO already proved grass fed cattle emit more greenhouse gases
then CAFO grain fed, and that's after taking into account sequestration

~~~
pa7ch
Thanks for this I'm reading about it now.

------
tempsy
How does one prevent themselves from being consumed by existentialist thoughts
caused by climate news?

I really have had a lot of trouble concentrating lately because things just
don’t feel important to me anymore...

~~~
Cougher
Stop paying attention to the hysteria. It's great for views and clicks. It's
terrible for viewers and clickers.

"We have been told that climate change is an ‘existential crisis.’ However,
based upon our current assessment of the science, the climate threat is not an
existential one, even in its most alarming hypothetical incarnations."

[https://judithcurry.com/2019/12/14/the-toxic-rhetoric-of-
cli...](https://judithcurry.com/2019/12/14/the-toxic-rhetoric-of-climate-
change/#more-25488)

~~~
sxcurry
For context: Between 2014 and February 2019, Curry testified before at least
six Republican-led House committees, expressing the idea that the dangers of
global warming are overstated and difficult to predict. These testimonies
include statements criticizing President Obama’s climate plan, the UN climate
action plan, and other policy proposals aimed at reducing carbon dioxide
emissions.

~~~
useragent86
> expressing the idea that the dangers of global warming are overstated and
> difficult to predict

She actually _expressed the idea_ that the effects of global warming are
difficult to predict? What is she, some kind of denier? Why hasn't she been
canceled yet?

------
TomCNZ
Tech skills are high in demand; if the majority of techies only worked for
companies that are actively trying to mitigate their climate impact and help
their employees, customers and suppliers do the same, I believe the impact
could be considerable. If 50 other professions did the same, imagine the
impact.

------
LatteLazy
Climate is a global issue requiring global solutions. So we won't solve it
because we're just not capable of globalism as a species. So all anyone can do
is protect their investments.

~~~
abraae
Unfortunately you may be right. I could forgo flight, eke out a sustainable
but subsistence living and do the right thing for the planet, while others are
flying their asses off and stock piling their treasure.

But then when the shit hits the fan, they will be the ones with the money to
protect their families, not me.

A sad indictment of us as a species.

~~~
tunesmith
Do it anyway.

~~~
bagacrap
\- treasure stockpiling guy

------
jdkee
Avocado politics will become the norm in North America and Europe.

[https://www.berggruen.org/the-worldpost/articles/beware-
the-...](https://www.berggruen.org/the-worldpost/articles/beware-the-rise-of-
far-right-environmentalism/)

~~~
airstrike
Yawn...

I'm frankly tired of the assumption that anything right of Obama is driven by
nefarious motives such as "antagonistic to African development".

~~~
jdkee
I agree. It is similar to the trope that if you want reduced immigration into
a developed country where you live you are inherently racist. It shuts down
productive conversations on said issues.

That said, Nils Gilman raises some substantive issues surrounding possible
future policy discussions.

------
agumonkey
pdf report
[http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_Risk_Report_2020.pdf](http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Global_Risk_Report_2020.pdf)

------
jdpigeon
Does this mean I can leave my day job and start working on carbon capture
technology now?

~~~
comicjk
If you can find someone to pay for you to work on it.

~~~
born_a_skeptic
So, basically just need to find someone with a lot of extra money and convince
them of an impending crisis. Sounds easy.

------
blackflame
So basically they took a poll. People and their polls smh. It may be true or
it may be false, either way it’s an opinion/feeling instead of something
actionable and concrete

------
allovernow
> He pointed to the rapid disappearance of insect species around the world,
> including those that pollinate 75% of the world's crops, as a result of
> climate change and other pressures.

We're barely starting to understand bee colony collapse, and that's probably
one of the more pressing and therefore better explored issues to date. I think
it's a little unscientific to see literally every change in ecological and
weather patterns blamed automatically on climate change. It's really turning
into a social and institutional catch all. Insects in particular - I find it
far easier to believe that the consistent global drop in insect populations
has far more to do with deforestation and chemical disbursement rather than
fractions of degrees of warming that we've seen so far.

Weather patterns are constantly changing even in the absence of climate
forcing. Defaulting to unusual event->climate change is statistically invalid
in the same way as cold snap->no climate change. More evidence that the
academic institution is increasingly broken and driven by dogma.

~~~
watertom
Phytoplankton populations are collapsing due to increased ocean acidity and
warming.

Phytoplankton is the basis for the entire marine food chain.

~~~
vixen99
The ocean is not acid, it's alkaline (about pH 8.1) so you mean lessened
alkalinity. Even seawater near active volcanic CO2 vents in the Mediterranean
where the CO2 is nearly 6,000 ppm is still alkaline. Between 1751 and 1996,
surface ocean pH is estimated to have decreased from approximately 8.25 to
8.14.

~~~
Supermancho
> The ocean is not acid, it's alkaline

> increased ocean acidity

It's generally phrased that a decrease in alkaline is due to acidification (an
increase in acid) and vice versa. The average ph is not specifically relevant.

------
skimming
Surveys are very scientific.

------
yters
Won't we run out of fossil fuels soon, making this a non issue?

