Gwynne Dyer: The Third Option

[GliderGuider]

The Third Option

There are, we are told, only two options. Either we stop burning fossil fuels before our carbon dioxide emissions drive the planet’s average temperature up a full 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F), in which case we will push the world into the biggest-ever recession. Or we continue to burn fossil fuels and push the planet into runaway warming, with lethal consequences for a large part of the human race.

Their conclusion (GG: of a report titled “Unburnable Carbon 2013”. The report’s authors, the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics and the Carbon Tracker Initiative) is that if we are to have a 50 percent chance of stopping the warming before +2 degrees, then at least two-thirds of the currently listed fossil fuel reserves will have to stay in the ground permanently. If they cannot be burned, then they have no economic value. Therefore, the market valuation of the fossil fuel companies is three times higher than it should be.

The report assumes that rationality will prevail, and that at some point a limit will be imposed on the burning of fossil fuels. In this new reality, the debt burden of the fossil fuel companies becomes unsustainable and there is a financial meltdown that dwarfs 2008. Global warming is held to +2 degrees, but at the cost of the Mother of All Recessions. It’s a grim choice: either financial meltdown if we act decisively to halt climate change, or physical meltdown if we don’t. But there is, unfortunately, a third alternative. In fact, it’s the likeliest outcome by far.

First we go on growing our emissions at the current rate (3 percent per year) for the next couple of decades, and the fossil fuel industry thrives. Then, when it’s already too late and we have crossed the +2 degree limit, the actual warming (which always lags the growth in emissions by a decade or more) frightens us into taking action at last. So we lurch into a crash programme to cut fossil fuel use – and suddenly the market wakes up to the fact that a lot of those reserves will have to stay in the ground forever. If you liked the sub-prime mortgage fiasco in 2008, you’ll positively love this one.

See? Like your kindergarten teacher tried to tell you, the best response isn't either/or, it's both/and...

[Laelth]

1. The "do nothing now" solution is less-than-satisfactory to me.

What this author suggests, the "wait until there's a major crisis" solution, is even worse. While this author may be prescient, I do not like the idea of waiting on this. At that point, it may be too late to avoid catastrophic ecological damage.

-Laelth

[GliderGuider]

2. He's not suggesting that we wait

He's suggesting that waiting is the most likely outcome due to the opposing forces involved.

By all means work on it now. The future of humanity is "ontically open", which means that anything might (but won't) happen. Unfortunately, we're getting very close to a major bifurcation point, past which existing options are closed off. We have, in some ways, reached it already, for example we no longer have the option of keeping CO2 under 400 ppm. We need to take such things into account when deciding what it is we want to do.

[tinrobot]

3. 4 trillion? Didn't the Iraq war cost a trillion?

FTA : The market valuation of the world’s 200 biggest oil, gas and coal companies is about $4 trillion, a figure based on the assumed value of their confirmed reserves that are still in the ground.

So, the world eats the cost of 4 Iraq wars and we're free of oil? Not a bad alternative. We could weather the loss and simultaneously enact a "war effort" to create an alternative energy supply.

Nice dream, huh?