Well, Let's Add This to Our Growing List of Dire Warnings

Another day another warning that humanity is pushing its luck, overstressing this Earth, our one and only biosphere.

For those of you who can't handle stress, don't fret. It'll be down the Memory Hole by the end of the weekend at the outside.  We've already forgotten Tuesday's dire warning from the World Resource Institute about the dire freshwater crisis that has beset a quarter of humanity.  So many crises, so little time, how is a girl supposed to remember them all?

Dirt. Who gives a damn about dirt? Apparently the UN does.  The latest report from its Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, visits a recurring theme - soils degradation.

It's a topic that's been considered in depth before. Agronomists have been howling their warnings for years. We're exhausting our stocks of arable land, the soils we need to grow our food. It finally led the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to issue a report in 2014 warning that we were heading toward a collapse in agricultural production within 60 years. Even the best remaining farmland, the agency claimed, were already somewhat degraded. We even got a map showing the then state of soils degradation. Then - whoosh - straight down the Memory Hole.

That 2014 report was followed up by another in 2018 that seemed to disappear into that hole of oblivion even faster. With it was a report warning that we would need a 50 per cent increase in agricultural production to feed the herd in 2050. Damn, if we were just a tiny fraction as good at responding to these warnings as we are at ignoring them, and we're so very good at ignoring them, we might just have some hope. Yeah but ignoring them until we've completely forgotten about them comes just so naturally to us. It's effortless and demands nothing of us and,  when it comes to change, our favourite flavour is nothing.

Today's report layers man-made climate change atop man-made soils degradation. I suppose you've guessed it's not good news.

The climate crisis is damaging the ability of the land to sustain humanity, with cascading risks becoming increasingly severe as global temperatures rise, according to a landmark UN report compiled by some of the world’s top scientists. 

Global heating is increasing droughts, soil erosion and wildfires while diminishing crop yields in the tropics and thawing permafrost near the poles, says the report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

Further heating will lead to unprecedented climate conditions at lower latitudes, with potential growth in hunger, migration and conflict and increased damage to the great northern forests. 

The report, approved by the world’s governments, makes clear that humanity faces a stark choice between a vicious or virtuous circle. Continued destruction of forests and huge emissions from cattle and other intensive farming practices will intensify the climate crisis, making the impacts on land still worse.

What came through for me in reading those four paragraphs was how bland the message. It's almost as sterile as the soil itself and it's from The Guardian!  I know, ask George. Monbiot calls this report a miserable failure.

The problem is that it concentrates on just one of the two ways of counting the carbon costs of farming. The first way – the IPCC’s approach – could be described as farming’s current account. How much greenhouse gas does driving tractors, spreading fertiliser and raising livestock produce every year? According to the panel’s report, the answer is around 23% of the planet-heating gases we currently produce. But this fails miserably to capture the overall impact of food production.

The second accounting method is more important. This could be described as the capital account: how does farming compare to the natural ecosystems that would otherwise have occupied the land? A paper published in Nature last year, but not mentioned by the IPCC, sought to count this cost. Please read these figures carefully. They could change your life.

The official carbon footprint of people in the UK is 5.4 tonnes of carbon dioxide per person per year. But in addition to this, the Nature paper estimates that the total greenhouse gas cost – in terms of lost opportunities for storing carbon that the land would offer were it not being farmed – of an average northern European diet is 9 tonnes a year. In other words, if we counted the “carbon opportunity costs” of our diet, our total footprint would almost triple, to 14.4 tonnes.

Okay, well, I'm not sure we're ready to give up meat, poultry, even fish for a diet of swill and soya. I could be wrong but I just don't see it. Still, I like Monbiot's closer:

Are we prepared to act on what we know, or will we continue to gorge on the lives of our descendants?

But wait, there's more. We can avert the worst of the worst. All it will take is a little sacrifice.

However, action now to allow soils and forests to regenerate and store carbon, and to cut meat consumption by people and food waste, could play a big role in tackling the climate crisis, the report says.

Such moves would also improve human health, reduce poverty and tackle the huge losses of wildlife across the globe, the IPCC says.
Burning of fossil fuels should end as well to avoid “irreversible loss in land ecosystem services required for food, health and habitable settlements”, the report says. 

“This is a perfect storm,” said Dave Reay, a professor at the University of Edinburgh who was an expert reviewer for the IPCC report. 

“Limited land, an expanding human population, and all wrapped in a suffocating blanket of climate emergency. Earth has never felt smaller, its natural ecosystems never under such direct threat.”

Didn't you just know that our fossil-fuel economy would get in there somehow?  We know we've got to shut it down but even our Eco-warrior prime minister has other plans. He wants to take us in exactly the opposite direction. Burn baby, burn.

Prof Jim Skea, from the IPPC, said the land was already struggling and climate change was adding to its burdens. Almost three-quarters of ice-free land was now directly affected by human activity, the report says. 

Poor land use is also behind almost a quarter of the planet’s greenhouse gas emissions – the destruction of forests, huge cattle herds and overuse of chemical fertilisers being key factors.

Emissions relating to fertilisers have risen ninefold since the early 1960s. Rising temperatures are causing deserts to spread, particularly in Asia and Africa, and the Americas and Mediterranean are at risk, the report says. 

One of the most stark conclusions in the IPCC report is that soil, upon which humanity is entirely dependent, is being lost more than 100 times faster than it is being formed in ploughed areas; and lost 10 to 20 times faster even on fields that are not tilled. 

The report recommends strong action from governments and business, including ending deforestation and enabling new forests to grow, reforming farming subsidies, supporting small farmers and breeding more resilient crops. Many of those solutions, however, would take decades to have an impact, the IPCC says.

Decades. We haven't got decades to turn this around. Not unless we act now to buy more time.  That could begin by at least exploring new economic models to replace our current three-pack-a-day neoliberalism with its impossible growth-centric focus. And shutting down fossil fuels as fast as possible would be a great help. That could begin by putting an abrupt end to high-carbon fossil energy, thermal coal and bitumen.

The key to all of these crises is quite simple. Mankind has to accept the mortal need to live within the sustainable limitations of our very finite planet, Earth. We're way beyond that now and we just want to grow bigger, faster, all the time. If we can't find and adopt ways to again live in harmony with this, our one and only biosphere, it will surely eliminate us. And that is suicide.

Global Warming Has Been Setting a Trap For Us Since the Early 1900s.

New research shows that global warming has been transforming our soil since the early 1900's. The NASA-Columbia University study itself is available here.

Global warming has been fueling droughts since the early 20th Century, when soils started drying out at the same time across parts of North and Central America, Eurasia, Australia and the Mediterranean, new research shows. 

The researchers say the surprising early-century findings provide the clearest signal yet that human-caused greenhouse gas emissions are changing the hydroclimate in ways that can devastate agriculture, health and livelihoods. 

... in the first half of the 20th Century, something different was starting to happen. Soil moisture decreased across all those areas at the same time — a nearly unmistakable sign that it was driven by rising global temperatures, the study's authors said.

The drying went through a hiatus from 1950 to 1975 due to another man-made phenomenon - aerosols. Then we realized we were going to destroy the ozone layer and life on Earth.... oh dear.

But now the drying is back and it's back big time.

Many of the areas expected to dry out as the planet continues to warm are centers of agricultural production, and some could become permanently arid. "The human consequences of this, particularly drying over large parts of North America and Eurasia, will likely be severe," the authors wrote.

But Eastern Canada is going to remain wet, really, really wet, just like it is right now. Just don't tell Kenney or Moe what's coming. Hell, they brought it on themselves.

The study concludes that this signal is “likely to grow stronger in the next several decades,” adding that the “human consequences of this, particularly drying over large parts of North America and Eurasia, are likely to be severe.”

I know, let's tell them it's a plot by Trudeau and those damned Liberals to turn their provinces into a lifeless wasteland.

Guess what we can do to make Alberta's future even more hellish? Keep burning them fossil fuels, that's what. Oh well, those knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathers wouldn't have it any other way.

A "National Emergency" - Who's Kidding Whom?

Change is afoot. The latest report on climate change in Canada is unsettling. It's even ominous.

The only surprising part is that anyone would be surprised by the report or its findings. They closely mirror reports that we've been getting, at least weekly, for the past several years.

The CBC's Neil Macdonald says this time it's for real. This time the Trudeau Liberals will answer the fire hall bell.

To the Trudeau government, this is core-mission stuff. Last week, scientists from the environment department were brought in to the Prime Minister's Office for briefings. The report will be public and online Tuesday, and Justin Trudeau and members of his cabinet will be pushing the issue as something bordering on a national emergency, which is not an unreasonable way to characterize it.

Think of it this way. If your house was on fire and you wanted to save your home would you douse the flames with gasoline? I'll bet that wouldn't be your first choice. You would realize that could only make your problem vastly worse.

Okay, now let's consider climate change as a national emergency and it is. A national emergency is something that you expect the national government to fight with all of its strength and means. Only despite this gestural farce of carbon taxes, our government is actually dousing the flames with gasoline.

That Trans Mountain pipeline? Perfect example. We've been told that Athabasca tar sludge has to be left in the ground. Trudeau has said no, we've got to get it out, fast, as much as possible while we still can.  He even paid Kinder Morgan, the former owner and Enron alumni,  a massive profit to make that happen. He's already sunk 4.5 billion into that pipeline and he's got easily another 7 billion to go.

Does that sound like somebody who's worried about climate change?

He's still paying billions in subsidies to the fossil fuel giants. They admit to a couple of billion per year. The IMF has priced not only direct subsidies but also "in kind" benefits such as minuscule royalties, grants, deferrals and other benefits at a whopping $46 billion.

Does that sound like somebody that sees shutting down the highest-carbon fossil fuel projects as "core mission stuff"?

Cast your mind back to the heady days of early December, 2015, when the Trudeau Liberals had just been installed in office. Justin and his enviro-min, Dame Cathy McKenna, strode onto the floor of the Paris Climate Summit and proclaimed "Canada's back." The dark days of the Harper era when Canada was regularly rebuked as a climate change pariah were over. No, under new Liberal management, Canada was going to put its shoulder into the fight against climate change.

Perhaps Justin and Cathy were too busy fitting their wreaths of laurels to hear the warning from a climate scientist who was also at the Paris summit, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, then head of the prestigious Potsdam climate institute.

As the political types were high-fiving each other with bold promises to hold global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, max, Johnny Schellnhuber said achieving that goal would require nothing less than the "induced implosion" of the fossil fuel industry. Not milquetoast carbon taxes, no, nothing short of petro-states shutting down their fossil fuel producers and hastening the transition to alternative clean energy.

Do you believe that Justin is undergoing some epiphany over the dire threat of climate change? If you do I sure hope you're right and I'm wrong. Even if he had the moral spine (and he doesn't) he lacks the courage to reverse course and steer Canada to another direction.

In Most Countries This Might be Disturbing News. In Canada, Not So Much.

The Trump regime has joined forces with the fossil energy giants in fighting American cities over climate change.

Just before a critical hearing to determine the fate of a pair of climate lawsuits in California, the United States government has weighed in as a heavyweight ally on the side of the fossil fuel companies. 

Lawyers from the Justice Department's Environment and Natural Resources Division filed a friend of the court brief last week in support of five of the world's largest oil and gas companies, which are seeking to have lawsuits by the cities of San Francisco and Oakland dismissed.
U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup is scheduled to hear arguments on Thursday on a motion by the companies to throw out the cases. 

Federal lawyers argue in their brief that if the two lawsuits succeed, it could stymie domestic and international energy production. 

"The United States has strong economic and national security interests in promoting the development of fossil fuels, among other energy resources," according to the 24-page brief filed May 10. 

The brief cites President Trump's March 2017 Presidential Executive Order on Promoting Energy Independence and Economic Growth, suggesting the fight being waged by the two cities against the companies runs counter to the administration's support of unrestricted fossil fuel development.

BFD. The province of British Columbia and its municipalities get the same treatment from Justin Trudeau and premiers like the soon to be former premier of Alberta, Notley. They jump in with the fossil fuelers whenever some objection is raised in British Columbia to their pipelines.

How does what Trump is doing differ significantly from what we're experiencing from the Dauphin and his coterie? They're birds of a very greasy feather.

Toasted, Roasted and Grilled. - Lagarde

IMF chief Christine Legard has added her voice to the call for urgent action on climate change - and growing inequality.

"As I've said before, if we don't do anything about climate change now, in 50 years' time we will be toasted, roasted and grilled."

Both climate change and inequality were "two key issues" that would drive us to either utopia or dystopia, Lagarde stated. "If we don't address those two issues — of climate change and growing inequalities — we will be moving towards a dark 50 years from now," she said.

Legard chose a conference on future investment held in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, to deliver her remarks. She was somewhat countered by Amin Nasser, CEO of Saudi Aramco, who observed, perhaps ironically, that oil isn't going anywhere anytime soon. 

"Alternatives, electric cars and renewables, are definitely gaining market share, making a lot of progress and we are witnessing that," he said. "However, it will be decades before they take a major share of the global energy supply."

Are You Supporting Politics of Nihilism?

2030.  You do realize that's just 15-years away.  Do you realize that 15-years is a heartbeat when it comes to making fundamental change?

So, what's so important about 2030?  Plenty.  By then we'll be experiencing climate change impacts that are disruptive and difficult to bear.  Take your head out of the sand, look around you - all around, and you'll see many of these impacts are already here and they're growing.

We're coping, more or less, at least most of us.  There's a certain leeway, call it resilience.  We've got resilience, so far.  However, as the challenges grow and worsen, our resilience, our ability to absorb them, wanes.

We think those of us in temperate zones can adapt to warming of 2C by 2100. No one is under any illusions we can equally cope with 4C of warming.  2C is a game changer.  4C is game over.

Yet 4C is now a distinct possibility and, if we want to avoid 4C, we have to choose to avoid it.  We have to do the things necessary to achieve that outcome. We have to make the choices and do the necessary things and we have to 'choose and do' within the remarkably limited time still available to us.

Top world experts at Germany's Potsdam Institute use the example of carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) to make their point.  CCS as a viable, mature technology is still about 10-years off.  2025.  But developing CCS is one thing, implementing it is quite another.  To get CCS up and running on any meaningful scale will take another two decades, possibly three.  That would be 2045 to 2055.

The thing about CCS is that it's used as a sop to justify continuing our extraction and consumption of fossil fuels.  It's a "don't worry, be happy" parlour trick.  It's a way to obstruct us from making the choices and doing the necessary things to avoid 4C and it will contribute greatly to our prospects of getting to 4C or worse. Not for nothing have the fossil fuelers seduced us with grand promises of CCS for so many years.

The scientific community has reached a strong consensus view that, if we're to have any reasonable chance of salvaging a 2C world, we have to leave at least 80% of already known fossil fuel reserves in the ground, unburned.  There's a choice.  It's pretty straightforward.

So, how do we restructure our economies and our societies so that we can leave 80% of known fossil fuel reserves untouched, safely in the ground?  What must we do?  How are we going to go about this?  How much time do we have to choose, how much time to plan, how long will it take to implement our choices? Hint:  it's going to take a while.  Hint:  it's not an open-ended option.  Time is not on our side.

As far as Canada's political parties are concerned, none of the leaders vying to run the country wants to make this fundamental, potentially existential choice lest, in making the choice, they risk political consequences.  Look, we've seen it before.  When Dion proposed the Green Shift initiative, the great Layton every bit as freely as Harper, used it as a cudgel to beat Dion senseless.   Layton showed how low the bar of Canadian political leadership has fallen and it's nauseatingly low. Mulcair is even more opportunistic.

I get a lot of this, "we've got to vote (liberal/ndp) because we've got to get rid of Harper."  Really, why?  If all three parties are inherently nihilistic, it's my obligation to reject them all.  No, sorry.  My vote, I get to set the bar and I will not vote for anyone below it - which includes Messrs. Harper, Mulcair and Trudeau.

ISIS?  You have to be kidding.  The assault on Canada is already underway and it has nothing to do with Islam.  If anything it's more affected by Christian fundamentalism and political partisanship.

The bottom line - if your party doesn't openly endorse the need to leave high-carbon fossil fuels, especially coal and bitumen, in the ground, then you're supporting and empowering the politics of nihilism.  There is no fence-sitting on this one.

Is It Time to Nationalize Fossil Fuels?

There are times when governments must intercede to protect their citizens against significant threats and dangers.

Fossil fuels present a significant threat and danger to life of all forms around the world.

We know if we are to have any reasonable prospect of limiting global warming to no more than 2 degrees Celsius, about 80 per cent,  perhaps even more, of known fossil fuel reserves must be left in the ground, untouched.  Forget about what might lie beneath the Arctic seabed or in other unexplored spots.

When known reserves exceed what we may safely burn on a 5:1 ratio, we're staring at a Carbon Bubble of truly giant proportions.  It's a "bubble" because those reserves are carried on fossil fuel company books at a notional market value that is heavily inflated.  The value of a coal seam that cannot be mined is about zero.  The value of a bitumen reserve that cannot be excavated is, likewise, zero.  Yet on stock markets around the world the Big Fossil companies that own these reserves are trading at share prices that bear no resemblance to their true "bubble" value.  There are trillions of dollars of fictitious wealth bouncing around our stock markets that are capable of inflicting massive economic disruption.

The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, knows there's a dangerous Carbon Bubble loose on the markets.  He admits it.  He said it.   And his voice is just one of many sounding the alarum.

Big Fossil, however, will have none of it.  Big Fossil, and the governments that feed off them, are in for the long haul.  They dismiss the entire notion of a Carbon Bubble and assure their shareholders that people will be burning their products forever.  They're backed up by the latest assessment of the International Energy Agency.  The IEA warning is dire.

Curiously, Big Fossil never says that we can plunder their reserves and still live. No, they don't seriously dispute the idea that consuming their wares will pretty much doom most of mankind to extinction.

So, it's sort of like some outfit building a fireworks plant next door and hiring chronic smokers for their workforce.  You got a problem.  An urgent problem.

Now, if you're the government this puts you in a spot.  You have to pick a side. You can either side with Big Fossil and say that those scientists, the lot of them, don't know what they're talking about and it's "Drill Baby, Drill - Burn Baby, Burn" or those scientists do know what they're talking about and we have to intervene to do what no energy company board of directors could consider doing - leaving their reserves in the ground.

There are, I suppose, plenty of ways to skin this cat.  Governments could declare that a carbon bubble genuinely exists.  They could decree that no more than 20 per cent of existing, known reserves can be extracted and consumed.  They could fix a target date for decarbonizing our societies and economies.  They could rescind subsidies to fossil energy producers and, instead, use those billions to accelerate renewable energy development and production.  As a last resort, governments could nationalize Big Fossil and wind it down.

These options all sound radical and they are but only until you remember the alternative - the fireworks factory next door.  In that context they're not nearly as radical as they might have first appeared.

We have to put Big Fossil out of business.  They won't do it themselves, they can't.  The directors and executives of a company are duty bound to maximize shareholder value and return.  They are not permitted to take their foot off the gas and hit the brakes.  That's simply not their job and so we have to do it for them.

Yes, such a move will cause considerable market upheaval but that will be momentary and minuscule in comparison to what will befall civilization if we do not act.

This is a protection issue, the very future of civilization at stake.  That puts it right up there with threats such as total war and nuclear winter only, on this one, we haven't got another half century to work our way through the madness.

Update:

While you're pondering the scary notion of shutting down Big Fossil, consider this.  A new study finds that, in the US, renewable energy is now fully cost competitive with fossil fuels.  Eliminate fossil fuel subsidies and use those billions to stimulate demand for wind and solar and it should be quite feasible to make the transition.

Dear Tony, You Can Kiss Our...

A group of Australians gathered on Bondi Beach to bury their heads in the sand in protest of their prime minister's fossil fuel fetish.

More than 400 protesters stuck their heads in the sand on Australia’s Bondi Beach on Thursday, mocking the government’s reluctance to put climate change on the agenda of a G20 summit this weekend.
Prime minister Tony Abbott’s perceived failure to address climate change is all the more galling in the wake of an agreement between the United States and China on Wednesday to limit their carbon emissions, they said.

“Obama’s on board, Xi Jinping’s on board, everyone’s on board except one man,” activist Pat Norman, 28, bellowed into a megaphone on the Sydney beach.

“Tony Abbott!” the protesters shouted back (presumably before they stuck their heads in the sand).

OPEC Sees a Bright Future Ahead. Unfortunately, It's Not Yours.

As far as the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, is concerned the future looks rosy.  In its latest outlook report, OPEC foresees $177 per barrel oil prices by 2040 and a market that will require an extra 21 million barrels a day over the next 25-years to meet growing demand.

I expect you know what this means.  If they're right, OPEC's future is very bright and yours, well, anything but.  It should, however, be music to the ears of our own Dark Prince, Harper, and his acolytes, Justin the Lesser and Terrible-Tempered Tom.

The findings of the report will come as a blow to climate change campaigners who are warning that unless serious action is taken to reduce green house emissions the world will face a catastrophic global warming shock beyond 2025.

Opec – which currently pumps about a third of the world’s oil – said that after the end of this decade the world will need to find an additional 1m bpd of crude annually through to 2040 when it forecasts that demand will reach 111.1m bpd up from about 90m bpd at current levels.

Although the figure is a slight downward revision from its previous report it highlights the continued dominant role that oil continues to play in the global energy mix despite warnings from the United Nations that urgent action is required to avoid a climate change catastrophe. According to Opec, Asia accounts for 71pc of demand growth in the developing world, with total global energy demand forecast to increase by 60pc through to 2040.

“It is fossil fuels that will continue to play the leading role in satisfying world energy needs in the future,” said Opec secretary general Abdalla Salem el-Badri on the publication of the 367-page report.

This seems to be in keeping with Aussie PM, Tony Abbott's recent pronouncement that "the foundation of the world's energy needs will be coal."

Meanwhile the International Energy Agency, IEA, three years ago gave us this clear warning:

"The world is likely to build so many fossil-fueled power stations, energy guzzling factories and inefficient buildings in the next five years that it will become impossible to hold global warming to safe levels, and the last chance of combating dangerous climate change will be "lost for ever", according to the most thorough analysis yet of world energy infrastructure.

"Anything built from now on that produces carbon will do so for decades, and this 'lock-in' effect will be the single factor most likely to produce irreversible climate change, the world's foremost authority on energy economics has found.  If this is not rapidly changed within the next five years, the results are likely to be disastrous.

"'The door is closing,' Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency, said. 'I am very worried - if we don't change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum [for safety].  The door will be closed forever.'" 

Bear in mind, also, that it was less than a month ago that the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney, proclaimed that we are in a "carbon bubble" in which most fossil fuel reserves should be treated as "stranded assets."  Carney came to this conclusion on accepting that, if we're to avoid catastrophic climate change, 80 per cent of already known fossil fuel reserves would simply have to be left in the ground, unburned.  

What these messages from Tony Abbott, OPEC, and our own Stephen Harper convey is a subtle but very real declaration of war on the planet, on us and on those who will follow us.  They're not going to back off voluntarily, responsibly.
  

 

Clean Is Cheap, Cheaper Than Dirty.

Of all the Big Lies embedded in our collective consciousness by the fossil fuelers and their minions in government is the scary tale that going green, decarbonizing our economies and our societies, would be devastatingly expensive.  They keep drumming into our heads that shifting off fossil fuels would destroy our economies and plunge us into poverty and darkness.

That's bullshit.

A report to be released today contends that going green would essentially cost almost nothing.

A global commission will announce its finding on Tuesday that an ambitious series of measures to limit emissions would cost $4 trillion or so over the next 15 years, an increase of roughly 5 percent over the amount that would likely be spent anyway on new power plants, transit systems and other infrastructure.

When the secondary benefits of greener policies — like lower fuel costs, fewer premature deaths from air pollution and reduced medical bills — are taken into account, the changes might wind up saving money, according to the findings of the group, the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate.

The commission found that some $90 trillion is likely to be spent over the coming 15 years on new infrastructure around the world. The big challenge for governments is to adopt rules and send stronger market signals that redirect much of that investment toward low-emission options, the report found.

“This is a massive amount of investment firepower that could be geared toward building better cities, and better infrastructure for energy and agriculture,” said Jeremy Oppenheim, who led the research for the report.

While the commission found that the requisite steps may make economic sense, that does not mean they will be politically easy, the report says. For instance, the group will recommend that countries eliminate subsidies for fossil fuels, which cost about $600 billion a year but are vigorously defended by vested interests.

This isn't about making our lives better or whether we can maintain maximum affluence and ease.  It's about what sort of life we're going to bequeath to our children and theirs.  There are already a lot of climate change impacts in the pipe that we can't do much about.  That's not to say that we, today and in the coming years, can't make those impacts far worse than they need be.  If we don't have the courage to change our behaviour, the bill for our cowardice will be foisted off on those to come.