'The end of the World'. This is not a metaphor. I have just finished reading Mark Lynas Six Degrees (US electronic edition appears only available from Barnes & Noble)
In it he summarizes the global impacts of one to six degrees C of global temperature rise, with six degrees currently being the upper limit projected by 2100 by the IPCC.
With one degree (already achieved) we have already begun to see growing drought in the Southwest, increased extinctions for some species, greater damage from insects and disease in North American forests, and evidence of ocean acidification and large scale movement of marine fish populations.
At three degrees - something quite likely according to IPCC projections, there are vast expansions of deserts at mid-latitudes, widespread contraction of agricultural production, more destructive storms - and the beginning of feedback loops for runaway warming, not to mention many meters of sea level rise, loss of arctic ice cover and mass extinctions.
Follow below the fold to see what this has to do with Romney.
Over three degrees various carbon feedback loops kick in - such as massive release of carbon now sequestered in permafrost and frozen peat bogs in the arctic; or reduction of carbon sequestration through the desertification of the Amazon, and a reduction in marine phytoplankton productivity, and potential release of frozen methane hydrates as oceans warm. Once the feedback loops kick in, the amount of human carbon emissions are massively amplified, and no amount of human actions can reverse the damage. When the last comparable event of this magnitude happened at the end of the Permian 251 million years ago, 95% of existing species were wiped out.
Lynas is not an alarmist. He is a science writer who has compiled a spreadsheet of peer reviewed climate papers and organized them around the impacts predicted at various levels of warming. He quickly comes up with massive disaster scenarios that include collapse of civilizations on a global scale.
Yet he is not a pessimist. Writing in 2007, he estimated that we had w window of ten years to begin actually reducing carbon emissions to avoid warming above 2 -3 degrees - where there is still a chance to mitigate effects to ensure survival as intact cultures and civilizations.
For the past decade, oil and coal money - typified by the Koch Brothers - has created a massive disinformation campaign around the external costs of using coal and oil. Much in the manner of tobacco companies who deliberately decided to string a few more years of profit by fighting the science that demonstrated smoking kills people, the fossil fuel extractors - the oil giants, the miners, the Koch Industries - have made a deliberate investment of hundreds of millions of dollars to buy time to continue to profit from carbon fuels --- even though the costs of this short term profit is likely to be the destruction of our global civilization within a century.
The only way forward I can see is a progressively more steep carbon tax that begins to pay the externalities - ie. the future flooding of New York by rising sea level - that is a direct cost of oil profiteering.
Now to Romney. Currently even the democrats are in the climate denying camp - refusing to act like continued use of fossil fuels is anything but a collective death sentence. Instead the best the democrats can do is to call for non-fossil energy to be at least treated as favorably as coal and oil.
But democratic control of the White House and parts of congress at least gives us a place to fight - to bring forward the idea of a carbon tax or other programs.
If Romney wins - Koch Industries and the US Chamber of Commerce will have bought another four years of inaction and stalemate, while carbon emissions skyrocket.
Lynas said in 2007 that we have a window of about ten years to reverse course. Election of Romney would in essence close that window, pushing us past a political tipping point from which recovery may not be possible.
That's why I felt I could title this diary with the question of whether a Romney win would mean the 'end of the world'. On controlling carbon emissions, I think it would.
I don't want my Grandchildren (currently 5 months and 2 years old) to spend their middle age in constant crisis beset by food shortages, migration, falling apart of government and insurance support - i.e. I dont want them to live a national version of New Orleans after Katrina on steroids. Yet this is the future Romney offers them in service of the short term profits of the extractors.