[TheClimate.Vote] November 9, 2019 - Daily Global Warming News Digest

[Richard Pauli]

/November 9, 2019/

[Follow the money]
*A 'green interest rate?' Fed digs into climate change economics*
Thursday, November 07, 2019
By Ann Saphir and Lindsay Dunsmuir
SAN FRANCISCO/NEW YORK (Reuters) - In their deliberations on monetary 
policy, Federal Reserve policymakers need to consider many factors, but 
up to now, climate change has not been one of them.

But as worries about the warming planet increase, the U.S. central bank 
is taking a closer look at the economic impacts of higher temperatures, 
more frequent severe weather, and rising sea levels.

A "green interest rate" is one of the ideas on view Friday as the San 
Francisco Fed convenes the U.S. central bank's first-ever conference on 
climate change and economics. The event is so oversubscribed a webcast 
has been created to meet demand.

While the Fed lags central banking peers such as the Bank of England in 
making climate change an explicit part of its financial stability remit, 
the conference is the latest sign the Fed has started to take the risks 
and costs of global warming seriously.

"It's important for us from a monetary policy perspective to know what 
the potential growth rate of the economy is and if climate events or 
climate risk is going to shave that off, even if it's over the long 
term," San Francisco Fed chief Mary Daly said in New York earlier this week.

Papers to be presented at this week's conference provide that 
perspective in a range of ways. One estimates climate change could 
subtract 7% from real world per capita GDP by 2100; another finds that 
subsidies for green energy like wind and solar are not an effective tool 
against global warming, but carbon taxes, if implemented in many parts 
of the world, would be. Others papers map out how climate change affects 
asset prices and show trade policy subsidizes greenhouse gas emissions.

The U.S. central bank is focusing more intently on global warming, even 
as President Donald Trump's administration denies it exists. Trump, who 
has called climate change a "hoax," on Monday officially notified the 
United Nations that the United States will in 12 months leave the Paris 
Climate Accord, under which 195 nations agreed to reduce greenhouse gas 
emissions in a bid to prevent catastrophic planetary warming.

Scientists are in broad agreement that carbon dioxide from cars, power 
plants and other human sources are behind the climate change that's 
already making powerful hurricanes, severe drought, and other weather 
extremes more frequent.

Already the target of Trump's ire for not lowering interest rates even 
more than he already has, Fed Chair Jerome Powell said recently that 
central banks are working out how directly they should confront climate 
change.

"We are not in a place where I think we would conduct monetary policy in 
order to deal with climate change type issues," Powell said last month 
in Denver, "but there's a lot of forward-thinking analysis going on."

Powell won't be at Friday's conference, but Lael Brainard, one of five 
Fed governors who sets U.S. interest rates along with the Fed's 12 
regional bank presidents, will be.

She is no stranger to the ideas presented at Friday's conference: more 
than a decade ago she helped edit a book about the economic threat of 
climate change. But since her appointment by President Barack Obama in 
2014, she has said little about the issue.

CAN INTEREST RATES BE GREEN?
For some economists, it makes sense for the Fed to consider how climate 
change might affect growth in the same way it would look at other, 
potentially longer-term issues such as demographic trends.

At the conference, Carnegie Mellon University professor Nicholas Muller 
will outline a "green interest rate." Simply put, he suggests 
interest-rate setting should take into account the economic drag that 
greenhouse gas emissions are projected to cause.

"Rates should be lower when pollution damages are rising," Muller said 
in an interview. His paper also shows how judicious use of rate policy 
can skew investment in ways that could aid environmental goals and save 
human lives.

While that idea may be a step too far for the foreseeable future, the 
Fed has in the past year produced an extraordinary amount of research on 
climate change and economics.

The Dallas Fed devoted much of a recent quarterly publication to climate 
change, including an analysis of carbon emissions in the state of Texas.

The Richmond Fed last month addressed the question of central banks and 
climate change in its own quarterly publication. The San Francisco Fed 
two weeks ago published a 168-page report on the impact of severe 
weather on poor communities and floated a range of responses, including 
discouraging banks from lending to rebuild in disaster-hit areas that 
fail to take steps to reduce future risk.

Even so, the Fed is still far behind other major central banks, and some 
of the research to be presented at the upcoming conference suggests why 
that could be problematic.

"While economists are still debating whether global warming affects the 
level or the growth rate of the economy, ignoring these effects could 
potentially lead central banks to misjudge the evolution of the output 
gap and inflationary pressure," Bank of England researcher Sandra Batten 
notes in her presentation.

Nigel Purvis, co-founder of the advocacy group Climate Advisers, who 
worked with Brainard to edit "Climate Change and Global Poverty" and 
won't be at the conference, is more blunt.

"Climate change creates material risks for U.S. financial institutions 
and by extension the entire U.S. economy," Purvis said in an email. 
"Other financial regulators, including the Bank of England, are climate 
proofing their financial sectors by requiring climate disclosures and 
more active management of climate risks. The Fed should do the same."
(Reporting by Ann Saphir and Lindsay Dunsmuir; Additional reporting by 
Jonnelle Marte in New York; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
https://wkzo.com/news/articles/2019/nov/07/a-green-interest-rate-fed-digs-into-climate-change-economics/955256/


[Great progress]
*New Estimates Predict a Lot More Renewable Power Growth in the U.S. 
Very Soon*
By Justin Mikulka - Tuesday, November 5, 2019 - 16:31
After revising its three-year U.S. power forecast, the Federal Energy 
Regulatory Commission (FERC) has predicted major declines for fossil 
fuels and nuclear power alongside strong growth in renewables by 2022, 
according to a review of the data by the SUN DAY Campaign, a 
pro-renewables research and education nonprofit.

"FERC's latest three-year projections continue to underscore the 
dramatic changes taking place in the nation's electrical generating 
mix," noted Ken Bossong, executive director of the SUN DAY Campaign. 
"Renewable energy sources are rapidly displacing uneconomic and 
environmentally dangerous fossil fuels and nuclear power -- even faster 
than FERC had anticipated just a half-year ago."

While the independent federal agency forecasts robust wind and solar 
development, it also predicts a large increase in natural gas capacity, 
which is consistent with the current public emphasis of the newly 
rebranded "natural gas and oil industry." The projected gains in natural 
gas power, however, aren't enough to offset the sizeable drops in coal 
and oil, resulting in an overall decrease in burning fossil fuels for 
power in the U.S.

As we have noted on DeSmog, the oil and gas industry is publicly selling 
natural gas as a cleaner fossil fuel and a climate solution. Renewables 
represent a threat to its growing market share, both economically and 
based on climate concerns.

According to FERC, net new gas-powered generating capacity (which 
accounts for power plants expected to close) is predicted to increase by 
19,757 megawatts (MW) in the next three years. Wind capacity is 
projected to grow by 27,659 MW and utility-scale solar by 17,857 MW...
https://www.desmogblog.com/2019/11/05/iea-ferc-predict-renewables-us-power-generation


[doomerism studies]
*Human extinction would be a uniquely awful tragedy. Why don't we act 
like it?*
How pessimism about the future affects how we think about humanity and 
extinction.
- - -
Here's one of the questions they asked of thousands of people in the US 
and UK:

    Compare three futures for humanity:
    (1) There is no catastrophe.
    (2) There is a catastrophe that immediately kills 80% of the world's
    population
    (3) There is a catastrophe that immediately kills 100% of the
    world's population.
    Rank them from best to worst.

- - -
To many of you, these questions may seem too hopelessly abstract for us 
to learn anything from them.

But there's something important here. The fact is, we give the 
possibility of human extinction very little thought. And when we do, our 
reasoning about it is often superficial, contradictory, and easy to 
influence. "People are going to have a lot of influence over what we're 
going to do" about the threats of human extinction in our near future, 
Schubert told me. "So it's important to find out how people think about 
them."

In many ways, we're shockingly blasé about the end of our world. Despite 
many people rating extinction "somewhat likely" in the next 15 years, 
few people rate the causes of extinction as among their top policy 
priorities for the next president or Congress. People say extinction is 
kinda bad and under some circumstances they even say it's likely, but 
they don't take it that seriously -- and their intuitions about it are 
often inconsistent.

But one particular result that cuts against this finding stands out in 
the paper. When asked to imagine a long, peaceful, good human future, 
most readers suddenly rated extinction as much worse than they 
previously considered it. That suggests that lots of people don't care 
as much as they should about extinction due to a sort of hopelessness -- 
they don't envision anything much better than the present ahead for 
humanity, so they don't care too much about losing it.

The takeaway seems clear: In order to convince people to fight for our 
species, we might first need to convince them that the fight could be 
winnable.
- - -
Finally, to get the overwhelming majority of respondents to agree that 
extinction was uniquely bad, you had to be even more direct and tell 
them to imagine that human civilization will go on to a long, happy, 
prosperous future -- unless a catastrophe wipes us out.

Suddenly, almost everyone agreed that human extinction was uniquely bad.

*The case against pessimism*
There's one interpretation that makes a lot of sense of these varied 
responses: that most people don't expect a good future, and that for 
that reason the future doesn't weigh heavily in their minds as they 
think about human extinction. It's not that survey respondents are 
unreasonably ignoring the possibility of a good long-term future for 
humanity -- they just consider it unlikely, so it's not much of a 
consideration.

Collectively, the results suggest that people care lots more about 
extinction when they concretely envision a good human future.

But how many visions of that does our society lay out? There's not a lot 
of discussion of what a wonderful 2100 looks like. In fact, the many 
threats we face make lots of people unwilling to imagine 2100 at all.

And these results suggest to me that that inability to imagine the 
future might interfere with ensuring that we make it that far.

Climate change activists, in particular, spend a lot of time discussing 
the advantages and disadvantages of negative -- even apocalyptic -- 
rhetoric and the advantages and disadvantages of taking a more 
optimistic tone. Research like this inclines me to believe that the 
optimists have a good point. It's not that we should exaggerate the odds 
of solving our problems or pretend they aren't there. But any discussion 
of our problems needs to be accompanied by a positive vision for what 
the world can look like if we solve them.

If people don't believe there's a meaningful and good future on the 
other side of the challenges ahead of us, then it looks like they have a 
hard time rating our extinction as a uniquely bad thing. And that means 
pessimism can be a self-fulfilling prophecy as we let our fears 
interfere with our motivation to prove them false.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/11/7/20903337/human-extinction-pessimism-hopefulness-future
- - -
[Source]
*The Psychology of Existential Risk: Moral Judgments about Human Extinction*
Stefan Schubert, Lucius Caviola & Nadira S. Faber
Scientific Reports volume 9, Article number: 15100 (2019) Cite this article
Abstract
The 21st century will likely see growing risks of human extinction, but 
currently, relatively small resources are invested in reducing such 
existential risks. Using three samples (UK general public, US general 
public, and UK students; total N = 2,507), we study how laypeople reason 
about human extinction. We find that people think that human extinction 
needs to be prevented. Strikingly, however, they do not think that an 
extinction catastrophe would be uniquely bad relative to near-extinction 
catastrophes, which allow for recovery. More people find extinction 
uniquely bad when (a) asked to consider the extinction of an animal 
species rather than humans, (b) asked to consider a case where human 
extinction is associated with less direct harm, and (c) they are 
explicitly prompted to consider long-term consequences of the 
catastrophes. We conclude that an important reason why people do not 
find extinction uniquely bad is that they focus on the immediate death 
and suffering that the catastrophes cause for fellow humans, rather than 
on the long-term consequences. Finally, we find that (d) laypeople--in 
line with prominent philosophical arguments--think that the quality of 
the future is relevant: they do find extinction uniquely bad when this 
means forgoing a utopian future.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-50145-9



[Brazil]
*The Amazon rainforest is drying out and could be vulnerable to 
cataclysmic wildfires, Nasa reveals*
Jasper Hamill - 6 Nov 2019 1:13 pm

The Amazon rainforest is drying out and it could increase the risk of 
catastrophic wildfires. That's the grim warning from NASA, which has 
been analysing the atmosphere above the Amazon. It found that levels of 
moisture have plunged over the rainforest over the past 20 years and 
blamed the phenomenon on 'human activities'.

'We observed that in the last two decades, there has been a significant 
increase in dryness in the atmosphere as well as in the atmospheric 
demand for water above the rainforest,' said JPL's Armineh 
Barkhordarian, lead author of the study. 'In comparing this trend to 
data from models that estimate climate variability over thousands of 
years, we determined that the change in atmospheric aridity is well 
beyond what would be expected from natural climate variability.' 
Barkhordarian said that 'elevated greenhouse gas levels are responsible 
for approximately half of the increased aridity'.

The rest is 'the result of ongoing human activity, most significantly, 
the burning of forests to clear land for agriculture and grazing'. These 
human activities are causing localised warming of the Amazon's climate 
and make the ecosystem more vulnerable to fires. The during process is 
made worse by blazes, which release aerosol particles into the 
atmosphere. Black carbon, which is more often called soot, has a 
particularly grim effect because it absorbs the sun's heat and causes 
the atmosphere to warm up. The trend is dangerous because the Amazon 
absorbs billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide As the climate of the 
Amazon heats up, plants release more water to cool themselves down, 
potentially causing an even greater drying effect.

'It's a matter of supply and demand,' said JPL's Sassan Saatchi, 
co-author of the study. 'With the increase in temperature and drying of 
the air above the trees, the trees need to transpire to cool themselves 
and to add more water vapor into the atmosphere. But the soil doesn't 
have extra water for the trees to pull in. 'Our study shows that the 
demand is increasing, the supply is decreasing and if this continues, 
the forest may no longer be able to sustain itself.'

It's feared the Amazon may reach the point where it cannot 'function 
properly', meaning it does not absorb enough carbon dioxide to regulate 
the climate. Nasa warned: 'If this trend continues over the long term 
and the rainforest reaches the point where it can no longer function 
properly, many of the trees and the species that live within the 
rainforest ecosystem may not be able to survive.

'As the trees die, particularly the larger and older ones, they release 
CO2 into the atmosphere; and the fewer trees there are, the less CO2 the 
Amazon region would be able to absorb - meaning we'd essentially lose an 
important element of climate regulation.'
Read more: 
https://metro.co.uk/2019/11/06/amazon-rainforest-drying-vulnerable-cataclysmic-wildfires-nasa-reveals-11051252/?ito=cbshare
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MetroUK | Facebook: 
https://www.facebook.com/MetroUK/


[BBC podcast "The Real Story"]
*India's pollution problem*
Released On: 08 Nov 2019
Available for over a year - 53 minutes
At one point this week air pollution in Delhi was so high that monitors 
could not record the toxicity because it was off the scale. Schools were 
closed, vehicles restricted, and people were advised to stay indoors. 
But the situation in Delhi is not the full picture. Fifteen of the 
world's twenty most polluted cities are in India. And air pollution is 
just one of several severe environmental challenges in the country. Fast 
paced industrialisation, poor waste management and badly managed mining 
projects are all contributing to environmental degradation. So why have 
India's pollution problems been so hard to tackle? What are the steps 
authorities should be taking to improve the situation? And can the 
country find a path that will enhance people's lives without damaging 
nature? Join Pascale Harter and a panel of expert guests as they discuss 
India's environmental future.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3csyddt


*This Day in Climate History - November 9, 2011 - from D.R. Tucker*
The Guardian reports:

    "The world is likely to build so many fossil-fuelled 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."

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2011/nov/09/fossil-fuel-infrastructure-climate-change
/-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------/

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