Opinions of Peter Belmont
Speaking Truth to Power
| Are We Out of Time to Combat Global Warming Climate Change (GWCC) ? |
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by Peter A. Belmont / 2016-10-08
Are We Running Out Of Time ? It is interesting to consider how people perceive the seriousness of global warming / climate change (GWCC). Two questions are clearly about perceptions as well as about facts. Are we running out of time to combat GWCC? Or have we already run out of time? Well, since the problems brought about by GWCC (or the problems to be brought about by GWCC—most of these problems lie in the future after all) are only getting worse, these questions in a way do not make sense. The situation for now-and-future just keeps getting worse and anything we can do today to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) is to the good. This off-topic: GWCC is not the only problem brought on by human misuse of resources. A global, or at least very wide-spread water shortage appears to be advancing rapidly. People who doubt that over-population is a principal cause of GWCC now have other reasons to believe that securing a substantial reduction in human population, perhaps especially in Asia, should have another think. Readers who need a refresher course on GWCC may wish to read this entire essay. Readers who are familiar with GWCC may wish to jump immediately to a (“List of Climate-Related Wakeup Calls” below.) Refresher Course On GWCC Let us recall that GWCC has two elements: its cause and its present and future effects. Cause of GWCC The cause of GWCC is simple. The man-made over-abundance in the atmosphere of so-called greenhouse gases (GHGs) of which the best-known and most harmful are CO(((SB₂SB))) and methane (CH(((SB₄SB)))). GHGs cause the heat brought to earth in sunlight to be retained rather than radiated back into outer space. More GHGs means more retained heat. There was a concentration of GHGs that persisted for millions of years, until the industrial revolution began, about 1800, when mankind began to burn fossil fuels in significant amounts. Then GHG concentrations began to grow. And they are growing at a fantastic rate today. And the earth-air-oceans system is warming at an alarming rate. Present And Future Effects As the earth and air and oceans continue to warm, the climate is changed. We see some effects already. Heated oceans heat the air, too, and heated air carries more moisture than cooler air. Accordingly, rain and snowfall drop more water/snow when and where they occur than formerly. Storms produce more precipitation. Floods result more often from rainfall. All this will increase with time and continuing warming. Heated oceans also transfer more heat energy into storms so that higher winds are experienced. As time goes by and the earth-air-oceans continue to get warmer we may expect ever more windy storms, tornadoes, hurricanes. Warmer air sucks up water from the earth and its rivers and lakes. We are experiencing more and more drought in many places on earth and drought will become more widespread and frequent as time goes by. Drier earth is less satisfactory for agriculture (or any other vegetation) than moister earth, and it is anticipated that drought will expand over the earth, although not everywhere, and agriculture will there be impaired. (And where the earth is drier, it may well happen that river volumes are also reduced, making irrigation less available.) Warmer air melts ice. Glaciers that have existed since the last ice-age are disappearing and will all be gone before long. Arctic and antarctic ice is melting, The Greenland ice-mass is melting. All this melting of land-based ice will raise sea levels, and this is already being experienced, for example in Miami. It is also true that warmer water is bigger (occupies more volume) than cooler water, so that the warming of the earth’s oceans will also tend to raise sea-levels. Warmer air dries the land and a drier climate puts forests at risk. We have already seen forests dying from drought and being burned in forest fires also due to drought. Warmer air and earth change habitats of plants, insects, and animals. As warming continues, animals and insects which have a limited range of acceptable temperatures die out in hotter places and spring up in cooler places. In mountainous regions, animals and plants tent to move higher up the mountains toward cooler climates. Insects which require higher temperatures move farther north (or south) away from regions nearer the equator. That includes mosquitoes which carry various diseases hitherto regarded as tropical diseases farther toward the earth’s poles into what had hitherto been regarded as temperate. Changes in ocean temperatures change the currents in the oceans, and this changes earth climates, because ocean currents carry warm (equatorial) waters north to warm the eastern USA and Europe. If and when these currents slow, these regions may become colder (as Siberia is today). Rising earth temperatures have brought heat waves (as well as forest fires), and we may all anticipate more and more “days above 90o” or “days above 100o” per year as time goes by. Temperatures above 120o have been experienced in India. I cannot write a complete list of climate changes and their effects viewed today or to be anticipated. But I have a “perception” of it: climate change is a severe “rocking of the boat” and mankind is well-advised “not to rock the boat”. We’ve had a good thing going for 1000’s of years. We’d be well advised not to let it get any worse than can be avoided. (And don’t forget what I called the delayed ratchet mechanism of GWCC. We cannot avoid all future warming. We can, however, avoid what we can avoid, and would be well advised to do so. Taking Candy From A Baby To Save Its Teeth There is a sadly all-too-human tendency for people, especially climate-deniers, to regard the drastic steps needed to get to “Zero-Emissions” of GHGs as a “rocking of the boat” more to be avoided than that being produced (and to be produced in the near future) by climate change and its various effects. They want their candy, and care nothing for their teeth! And of course, getting to “Zero-Emissions day” (ZED) will indeed be a very upsetting transformation. But continuing to heat the planet, in my opinion and the opinion of 97% of climate scientists, will be a calamity for many if not most people, plants, and animals on earth. The baby needs its teeth far more, in the long run, than it needs its candy today. Returning to Perceptions At all events, returning to the matter of perceptions of the seriousness—for now and later—of GWCC, what you think probably depends on what you know. Perhaps a list of “Wakeup Calls” would be helpful for people who are unsure whether GWCC is a problem they should encourage their governments and society to be doing something serious about. (See “List of Climate-Related Wakeup Calls” below.) I began to list these wakeup calls on 2/26/2016 and am continuing today, well after Donald (he calls GWCC a “hoax”) Trump’s frightening election, on 11/18/2016. And as we all know by now, President trump has surrounded himself with advisors and cabinet secretaries who are, almost every one of them, a “climate-denier”—a person who declares that GWCC is a “hoax”. Questions Of Perception When one speaks of people’s “perceptions” of the seriousness of GWCC, one should really speak of two perceptions: perceptions by government folks and others charged with protecting society who might be supposed to have a more-or-less accurate view of this problem; and perceptions by ordinary citizens who may well doubt the seriousness of GWCC due in part to the broad societal failure of education on the subject and due in part to the confusion between “bad effects of changing climate today” and “bad effects of changing climate to be expected in 25, 50, or 100 years”. As time goes on there are more and more reasons to think that the perils of GWCC are more severe than earlier believed (say before 2016) even by those charged with knowing a lot about GWCC (scientists broadly and government people). And this means that there are more and more reasons to think that even the rather weak promises of the Paris Agreement would be insufficient—even if kept—to keep the temperature rise down to the targeted (but still dangerous) 1.5°C. It is becoming likely that promised actions will be too little and too late. The Perils Are Greater Than Earlier Thought Why might the perils of GWCC be more serious than earlier believed? [1] Scientific Knowledge Is Still Incomplete One reason the perils of GWCC be more serious than earlier believed is that scientific modeling is necessarily an incomplete “picture” of the climatic world and what is left out could be either reasons to be calmer or reasons to be more frightened. Certainly, to say as the climate-deniers do—that because scientific knowledge is incomplete there is therefore no peril at all—is ridiculous. Physicists knew about gravity long before they knew about quantum dynamics, and their models of how the world works were to that extent incomplete. But for most practical purposes, physics was correct before quantum theory was added. And our understanding of GWCC science is equally correct to the extent it predicts grave perils from excesses of atmospheric GHGs. That much is true. But the incompletenesses of the models may (for all we know today) be serious in that the perils are graver than earlier believed. And what was earlier believed was bad enough! Scientific knowledge has advanced since 1990. Scientific models have been found to be incomplete, to be less alarming than they should have been.[1] [2] Mankind Has Not Slowed Emissions Another reason that the perils of GWCC may be more severe than earlier believed is that mankind (which mostly means industrial mankind) may have emitted so much more GHGs in recent years as to have run “off the predictive charts” of the early modelers. After all, the models gave predictions of perils based on a variety of GHG concentrations, and we may have produced concentrations higher than the modelers anticipated (even in their most pessimistic moments). Far more important, the industrial world has kept on emitting greenhouse gases (GHGs) “as if there were no tomorrow” (as perhaps in a sense there is not). Put another way, if there is a maximum concentration of GHGs in the atmosphere beyond which it would (in one way or another) be catastrophic to mankind for mankind to go, then if mankind has been emitting GHGs far faster than assumed in earlier assessments, then there is clearly even less time to get to “Zero-Emissions” (to avoid exceeding that maximum) and as a result a far more severe and difficult effort needed by world governments, industries, and people. [3] Obscurantism Increases Risks A third reason that perils may be more severe than earlier believed is that human behavior of the anti-scientific or know-nothing variety may be increasing even in the face of the current situation. Mankind may not just be failing to stop bad behavior but, against all good sense, increasing bad behavior. In other words, a man in a car driving toward a brick wall at 100 MPH may not merely fail to put on the brakes but may, to the contrary, say that brick walls are a “hoax” and step on the gas. Comparing Perils Today With Perils Tomorrow Below I list some recently disclosed information. See if it changes your mind. (See list below) To help answer the question “are we out of time?” it is helpful to recall that GWCC acts as a sort of delayed ratchet mechanism. Because GWCC Is A Delayed Mechanism, Perils Later Are Always Worse Than Perils Today GWCC is a “delayed” mechanism in that the worst effects of GWCC are always in the future as the earth and oceans continue to warm (and the oceans to acidify). Indeed, they will continue to do so long after mankind ceases—if, indeed, mankind ever willingly does cease—those emissions of GHGs which it can control. Because GWCC Is A Ratchet Mechanism, Perils Later Are Always Worse Than Perils Today GWCC is a “ratchet” mechanism because the bad effects only get worse; at this writing no mechanism of human intervention is known which can remove GHGs from the atmosphere in significant quantities and thus prevent GWCC from getting worse—much worse. All GHGs in the atmosphere today will remain in the atmosphere for time periods longer than mankind has to combat GWCC. And every day that goes by, even today’s over-concentrations of GHGs—even if not augmented by further GHG emissions—will make the earth-air-oceans system warmer, and that warming will continue to change the climate and the weather systems on earth and to effect the lives of people, animals, and plants everywhere on earth—although in different ways at different places and different times. All this means [1] that it is always better, from the viewpoint of preventing things from being worse than need be, to cease emitting GHGs absolutely as soon as possible. Nothing is gained by waiting to begin doing so and nothing will be gained from doing it slowly. And [2] every effort to cut down on the human emission of GHGs is to the good even if it is too little and too late. To put it another way, it is never too late to make things less terrible than they might otherwise be. This way of thinking would have been expressed a bit differently in 1990, but in 1990 fewer people would even have believed that there was a desperate problem. In 1990, it might have made sense to say: it is never too late to make things “less bad”—rather than “less terrible.” Anyway, here is some evidence to help answer the question, “are we out of time?” I intend to keep adding items to this list as I see them, Google (‘global warming’) turns them up frequently, although not as frequently as it does the always entertaining expressions of the professional (or ideological) or psychologically-injured climate-deniers! Two Other Points First point: If the USA really wanted to fight GWCC, could it afford to? Sure, you bet![2] Second point: Imagine as some people must be hoping that scientists will someday very soon discover a way to remove GHGs from the atmosphere in large enough quantities to turn GWCC around. Such a discovery, such a deus ex machina, could happen any day now—or not happen for years! Keeping such a discovery in mind, why is it nevertheless so important to get to Zero-Emissions ASAP? The reason is what are called positive feedback loops and tipping points. As the temperatures of the earth, air, and oceans continue gradually to rise, this increased warmth heats up huge quantities of methane frozen beneath polar oceans and lakes and in the permafrost of arctic and antarctic lands. Methane (CH(((SB₄SB)))) is a much more potent GHG than CO(((SB₂SB))) and this release, if it were sudden and sufficiently large, could result in a sudden and very large rise in earth-air (and ocean) warming, sufficient to melt all glaciers, Greenland’s ice-sheet, and all the polar ice, resulting in a rise of ocean water by 10s or 100s of feet. And the temperature would not be suitable for human life or agriculture. Avoiding such a feedback loop is well worth doing even if one has hopes for a discovery, a deus ex machina, to take us out of our little problem (the problem of GWCC). List of Climate-Related Wakeup Calls ● On 3/23/2017we read, again, about methane emissions due to feedback from global warming: ”Global warming triggered by the massive release of carbon dioxide may be catastrophic,” reads the study’s abstract. “But the release of methane from hydrate may be apocalyptic.”See discussion of “positive feedback loops” above. ● On 3/10/2017 we read that: This study shows that more heat is likely to have been absorbed by the oceans over the past 50 years than had previously been reported. With upward revisions in our estimates of the climate’s sensitivity to greenhouse gases and the associated resultant sea level rise.Whenever we read that older estimates were wrong by being insufficiently alarming, we must realize that the problems of GWCC are more extreme than scientists have been reporting until now, and always more extreme than politicians (with their lack of desire to discover desperate problems) have imagined. ● On 2/23/2017 we read Global warming is already shrinking the Colorado River, the most important waterway in the American Southwest, and it could reduce the flow by more than a third by the end of the century, two scientists say.This is not necessarily a “surprise”, but it sure is a wakeup call, especially for those mostly Republican climate-deniers who tell us that there is no problem with climate. We should really be asking what planet they live on, you know, “Earth to deniers? earth to deniers? come in please.” ● On 1/5/2017 we read Potential for Collapse of Key Atlantic Current Rises along with the assertion that the climate models have had trouble accommodating the quick melting of the Greenland ice-sheet: The new studies factor in elements that have been missing from previous projections of how likely the collapse of the current is. One study factors in the melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which is adding a pulse of freshwater into the North Atlantic, but is difficult to incorporate into current climate models. The other attempts to correct a bias in climate models that underestimates how unstable the AMOC really is. ● On 12/21/2016 we read that Brazil, after a right-wing coup (not in my opinion likely to be dissimilar in environmental outcomes to the USA’s recent election) is near changing laws to allow much easier deforestation and to make achieving climate goals more difficult: Mauricio Guetta, a lawyer for Socio-Environmental Institute, told The Guardian that the changes are “the most worrying regressions of our recent history,” and would make it near impossible for Brazil to make its climate change target from Paris COP21, which includes ending illegal deforestation by 2030 and significantly cutting greenhouse emissions.Ecuador seems embarked on a similar anti-environmental path, although the analysis does not touch on GWCC as such. On the positive side, lawsuits in the USA seeking stronger action by state and federal governments against GWCC—lawsuits brought by children seeking a safe future—are slowly progressing despite strong opposition by state and federal governments and industry. ● On 12/1/2016 we read that we are ‘beyond point of no return’. The full impact of climate change has been underestimated because scientists haven’t taken into account a major source of carbon in the environment. ● On 10/18/2016 we read that Global warming may destroy $1B system to protect astronauts. Who said there were no current (or near-term) ill-effects of GWCC? The U.S. Air Force is spending nearly $1 billion to build a radar installation that will help keep astronauts and satellites safe by tracking pieces of space junk as small as a baseball. That is, if global warming doesn’t get in the way. ● On 10/14/2016 we read that We ignore the urgency of climate action at our peril Regrettably, action on climate change has been too slow. Though countries have committed in the recently concluded Paris climate agreement to keep warming below a 2°C increase above pre-industrial global average temperatures, and to attempt to stay below 1.5°C of warming, the voluntary actions currently being taken by governments under that agreement put us on track globally for 3 or 3.5°C of warming. According to climate scientist Kevin Anderson of the Tyndall Center for Climate Change Research, that magnitude of temperature rise is “incompatible with an organized global community, is likely to be beyond ‘adaptation’, is devastating to the majority of ecosystems, and has a high probability of not being stable.” For example, climate model predictions with that level of warming indicate long-term droughts and desertification settling in across most of Southern Africa. ● On 10/10/2016 we read that Global warming doubles size of forest fires in US West, study finds This is not good. Apart from the waste and difficulties for people living near the fires, burning trees releases CO(((SB₂SB))) and thus increases GWCC. Burning trees also reduces the amount of CO(((SB₂SB))) which is sucked-up, so to speak, into growing trees. What we have with these fires is a positive-feedback situation. More GWCC means more fires means more GWCC. It is not the only GWCC feedback loop. Read below about melting permafrost. ● On 10/05/2016 we read: Paris agreements insufficient to save humanity Renowned American climatologist James Hansen, the first scientist to draw public attention to the acceleration of global warming in the 1980s, has released a new study stating that the Paris Agreement regarding greenhouse-gas emissions control will unlikely save humanity from the disastrous consequences of the current climate change.(The paper has not yet been peer-reviewed. But it is the conclusion of a very important student of GWCC. ● On 9/28/2016 we read: Point of No Return: Earth Reaches 400ppm Threshold Permanently. September’s carbon dioxide output failed to drop below 400 parts per million (ppm) despite historically being the year’s low point for CO(((SB₂SB))) emissions, which means the Earth has very likely passed that symbolic climate threshold forever.Remember those long-ago days when people were (still) trying to prevent the earth from reaching 350 ppm? GWCC is not just about what happens (cause and effect) when GHGs increase. It is overwhelmingly about what people actually do, that is, do to increase or decrease GHG emissions. And what people are actually doing, as far as I can see, to reduce emissions to zero (to “get to Zero-Emissions-Day” (ZE-Day) so to speak as quickly as possible) is—nothing. Things continue to get worse, The “ppm” score-card continues to rise like basketball scores, as if that were a good thing. Humankind—so it seems to me—is committing suicide and omnicide, something like biocide. And the USA has chosen to be a leader of the parade. Perhaps I’m wrong. But, if today:400, then tomorrow: what? So, getting to ZE-Day will not reduce the level of GHGs in the atmosphere. It will merely stop it from growing. But the already “thick” GHG “blanket” will continue to warm the earth-oceans system for a long time after ZE-Day. There is no advantage to the health of the earth and the oceans (and the people who depend on them) to delaying getting to ZE-Day, but a big price-or-penalty which grows each day, each month, each year that we fail to get to ZE-Day. ● On 9/10/2016 we read that: Soaring Ocean Temperature ‘Greatest Hidden Challenge’ We perhaps haven’t realised the gross effect we are having on the oceans, we don’t appreciate what they do for us. We are locking ourselves into a future where a lot of the poorer people in the world will miss out.” ● On 8/19/2016 we read that: Smallpox could return as Siberia’s melting permafrost exposes ancient graves. No-one thought that the melting of the arctic permafrost could uncover the graves of people who’d died of anthrax and smallpox and thereby release into the world a disease (smallpox) thought to have been eradicated. Spores of potentially fatal anthrax from dead people and reindeer that had been entombed in the permafrost are already thought to have infected 24 patients currently in hospital in Salekhard near Russia’s north coast.This report is confirmed (or supplemented by a 11/5/2016 report on anthrax arising from melted permafrost. ● On 6/2/2016 we read about thawing of permafrost None of the permafrost thawing beneath millions of lakes across the Arctic is accounted for in global predictions about climate change—it’s “a gap in our climate modeling,” says Katey Walter Anthony, a University of Alaska Fairbanks researcher who studies permafrost thaw across Alaska and Siberia. She’s become famous in certain circles for finding methane bubbling up beneath the ice in frozen-over permafrost lakes, cutting a hole ice-fishing style and lighting the highly flammable gas on fire, sending up a column of flames 10 feet high.And methane released from melting permafrost is one of the largest threats of a sudden and enormous “positive feedback” whereby warming causes an event (here melting of permafrost) and that event causes more warming. ● On 5/20/2016, the hottest temperature ever recorded was experienced in India: “temperatures soared to 123.8 degrees Fahrenheit on Thursday”. This appears to have been an exceptional event, not predicted by most climate models. ● On 5/19/2016 it was reported that Abnormal Arctic ice season may signal abrupt climate change. Summary: • A so-called “Blue-Ocean Event” — a period during the melt season with less than 1 million square kilometers (a little over 386,100 square miles) of Arctic sea ice — was not expected to occur until 2070 to 2100 by most science modeling projections of the early 21st Century. • Recent polar ice observations, however, indicate extreme loss of volume. Daily sea ice loss rates since late April 2016 have averaged about 75,000 square kilometers (about 29,000 square miles) per 24 hours, resulting in continuously record low levels. • Many climate scientists now project the first “Blue-Ocean Event” within a decade or less. Some experts speculate it may even occur during the melt season of 2016. This article also links to this video of James Hansen discussing the impact of ice melt. Unhappily, except for announcing frightening news (in plain English), much of this video is (in my opinion) likely to be understandable only to scientists. It’s clearest result is his finding that the models used for many years (and still) are not consistent with the more frightening events being seen in actuality. ● On 5/20/2016, we are advised that Antarctica’s Totten Glacier is ready to melt, flow into the sea, and raise world sea-level by 11 feet. This is reported as previously unexpected, thus not merely the ordinary day-by-day run of bad news of GWCC but a surprise warranting quicker and more urgent response by the world’s governments. The article says the danger will be realized if the temperature warms by more than 2°C but doesn’t make clear if that means average earth surface temperature or the local (Antarctic) temperature. The last time the glacier melted, boosting sea levels tremendously, was during the Pliocene epoch, 3 millions years ago, when temperatures were 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than they are now, and CO(((SB₂SB))) levels in the atmosphere were 400 parts per million (ppm), Siegert noted. ● On 5/3/2016, we saw this headline: “Florida Reefs Are Dissolving Much Sooner Than Expected”, coral reefs dissolving when the ocean water becomes more acidic, as it does when (as after 1800) it absorbs more carbon dioxide from the air. The warning here is that this dissolution is occurring sooner than anticipated. This means that, as in many other cases, the scientific community’s models (anticipations) of changes due to climate change (global warming) were underestimating the speed of changes. ● On 4/15/2016 a world temperature graph was published which showed not only a steep rise in temperatures but showed most recent temperatures above the long-term trend line for occasional high-point “outliers”, suggesting (but not of course “showing”) that the observed temperature rise is on a new and steeper track. Worth keeping an eye on. If this is true, the world is in far worse shape than has long been thought—bad as the situation has been thought! ● On 4/15/2016,we read that the Greenland ice melt is far, far more extreme than climate scientists had dreamed that it would be: Much warmer than normal temperatures for months on end have meant that for much of the frozen north, there essentially wasn’t a winter this year. In late December, parts of the Arctic were briefly warmer than Texas, southern California, and the Sahara. All across the Arctic, temperatures have shattered records and are causing scientists to scratch their heads. ● On 4/9/2016 we read: A severe food and water crisis is fast spreading in Mindanao and the rest of the Philippines in the wake of what scientists say maybe the most severe El Niño episode on record. Global warming and climate change has been generating not only super typhoons but also super-El Niños. The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) issued a warning early last year that there would be 34 provinces affected by El Niño by March 2016 and 68 provinces by April. On 4/7/2016, we learned that scientific “models” of the climate system had erred by assuming that clouds reflected more, even much more, heat back into outer space than they in fact do. This means that the earth will be absorbing more heat, day-by-day, than earlier thought and the much-desired-to-be-avoided 1.5°C is approaching faster than earlier thought. ● On 3/24/2016, we learned that a long-held assumption of climate science—that soil (or “land”), which acts as a net “sink” of CO(((SB₂SB))), overall reduces GHG emissions and thus fights GWCC—is not true today, due to human interventions. It has been found that due to emissions of methane and nitrous oxides from cattle, fertilisers, manure, and agriculture, the terrestrial biosphere is actually accelerating climate change rather than slowing it. ● On 3/23/2016 we heard that the USA is releasing so much methane (CH(((SB₄SB)))) (and very much more than EPA had heretofore admitted) that these leaks wipe out all the progress cutting down CO(((SB₂SB))) that the Obama Administration had made. Some surprise! Another sign that we’d better get very, very busy. ● On 2/26/2016, we read that scientists now estimate that we may safely burn only 1/2 as much fossil fuels as previously thought, greatly shortening the already short time we have left to get to zero-emissions. ● On 2/28/2016, we read that the moving of sea creatures away from the equator as the seas warm up—is happening faster than earlier thought. “For the species that we have really good data on where they’ve lived historically over the past 100 years, we’re seeing about half of those have actually moved where they live, which is an astonishing number given we’ve only had one degree centigrade warming,” she said. The East Australian Current has moved 350 kilometres further south in the past 60 years. If scientists keep finding surprises which imply that global warming is happening faster than (or earlier than) anticipated, then the “deadline” earlier thought to be 2050 may have to be reset to 2030. ----------- [1] 11/16/2016: It would imply that potentially there is a much weaker carbon sink in the Southern Ocean than has been estimated. ----------- [2] Now a new report from the Institute of Policy Studies provides the most accurate calculation of government spending on climate security to date. The picture isn’t pretty. We’re spending 28 times as much on military security than climate security. A public sector investment of $55bn per year is required to meet the challenge, according to the study. With $21bn in the 2017 budget, a shortfall of $34bn is left. That may seem like an insurmountable hill to climb. It’s not! As the IPS report points out, plenty of money lies untouched in the nation’s bloated military budget. The F-35 fighter plane program is a prime candidate for big cuts. It’s the most expensive weapon ever designed, complete with massive cost overruns. The sad cherry on top: the military admits that this plane just doesn’t work. If we turned back now, IPS says we could build enough offshore wind farms to power 320,000 homes for millions of people. |
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