Graciela Chichilnisky Is an Argentine American mathematical economist and an authority on climate change. She is a professor of economics at Columbia University.
We need to support our future instead of undermining human survival. Let's do it.
We are in the midst of the 6th largest extinction event in the history of the plant and the first caused by human action.
The sun is the source of all energy on planet Earth and we cannot experiment with our only energy source.
The change in economic values created by the new markets for global public goods will reorient our global economy and under the right conditions can usher the satisfaction of basic needs of the present and of the future. This is what is needed right now.
To survive, humans need food, water, and air. Yet biodiversity, the Earth's bodies of water, and the planet's atmosphere are all under threat.
Changing an economic system that is bent on uncontrolled and poorly measured economic growth and depends on fossil energy for its main objectives, is much more difficult than changing how nuclear energy is used for military purposes. Some think it may be impossible.
We have used the majority of our carbon budget and we are already at dangerous levels of CO2 concentrations, about 400 parts per million. The levels were 250 before industrialization. So the problem is what we have done already and, therefore, what must be undone.
While denial leads to certainty, it is only the certainty of death. This is true for individuals and also for civilizations.
We know little of the consequences of the geoengineering process, such as spraying particles into the atmosphere that shade the planet from the sun's rays and could decrease its temperature. But this process is how dinosaurs disappeared from the Earth about 60 million years ago, by particles spewed by a volcano or a giant meteorite impact, and our species could follow suit.
The new markets that arise from ecological constraints will dominate the 21st century economy, and so will markets for knowledge.
We know that the warming rising seas will swallow entire island nations that are about 25 percent of the UN vote and perhaps at the end, even our civilization. This realization is traumatic and the first reaction to trauma is denial. Since there is some remaining scientific uncertainty, a natural response is to deny that change is occurring. This is natural but it is very dangerous.
Climate change is due to the use of energy for industrial growth, which has been and is overwhelmingly based on fossil fuels.
Geoengineering means changing the Earth's fundamental large-scale processes.
The transformation of capitalism is unstoppable because we need limits on resources for humans to survive.
We are still learning how exactly the Earth reacts to increased CO2 and other greenhouse gases. We know it leads to warming seas which are melting the North and the South Poles, rising and starting to swallow entire coastal areas in the US and elsewhere, as the New York Times article documents.
Signs of a poorly understood but treatable house fire requires action, not inaction.
The consensus is that climate change ranks along with nuclear warfare as the top two risks facing human civilization.
CO2 from air can replace petroleum: it can produce plastics and acetate, it can produce carbon fibers that replace metals and clean hydrocarbons, such as synthetic gasoline. We can use CO2 to desalinate water, enhance the production of vegetables and fruit in greenhouses, carbonate our beverages and produce biofertilizers that enhance the productivity of the soil without poisoning it. Carbon negative technology is absolutely needed now.
We have to remove the CO2 that the industrial economy has already emitted, which otherwise will remain in the atmosphere for hundreds of years and alter the Earth's climate irreversibly. It is possible to do this.
The "can do" logic, by its own nature, does not accept limits. And an empire does not have a graceful way to evolve out of this role. History demonstrates this time and again.