[b][url=http://www.vox.com/2014/6/5/5779040/7-reasons-America-fail-global-warming]Ezra Klein on why he's a climate change pessimist.[/url][/b] "If you were going to weaponize an issue to take advantage of the weak points in the American political system — to highlight all the blind spots, dysfunctions, and irrationalities — you would create climate change. And then you would stand back and watch the world burn." [quote][b]1) We've waited so long that what America needs to do is really, really hard — and maybe impossible[/b] Either way, we've waited so long to begin cutting emissions that two degrees looks flatly impossible. We're on track for 4°C of warming — which is nearly the temperature difference between the world now and the Ice Age. That's a nightmare for the planet. The World Bank tried to model it and realized that they had no idea what would happen — or whether humans could manage. There's "no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is possible," they concluded.[/quote] [quote][b]2) The people most affected by climate change don't get a vote[/b] As my colleague Matt Yglesias explained, "very few of us are subsistence farmers. Relatively few of us live in river deltas, flood plains, or small islands. We are rich enough to be able to feasibly undertake massive engineering projects to safeguard our at-risk population centers. And the country is sufficiently large and sparsely populated that people can move around in response to climate shocks." [/quote] [quote][b]3) We're bad at sacrificing now to benefit later[/b] The pain of doing something serious about the problem is upfront. But the worst effects of global warming won't be visible, even in America, for a long time to come. The true crisis is abstract while the sacrifice required to prevent it is tangible. The American political system is not good at trading sacrifice now to prevent crises later.[/quote] [quote][b]4) The effects of global warming are not easily reversible [/b] If climate change were an issue like health-care reform or the budget deficit I wouldn't be a pessimist. My skepticism that we will act with sufficient force soon doesn't translate into a belief that the world won't want to act with force later. But climate change has a "game over" quality to it. Once we've filled the atmosphere with 800 or 1,000 parts per millions of carbon dioxide the consequences are out of our control. [/quote] [quote][b]5) The Republican Party has gone off the rails on climate change[/b] But the GOP hasn't simply opposed Obama's bills. They've abandoned their own legislation and even begun questioning the very fact of climate change. "I think it's an inexact science," McCain said in 2010, "and there has been more and more questioning about some of the conclusions that were reached concerning climate change." They've left themselves little room to enact sensible policies when they regain power.[/quote] [quote][b]6) The international cooperation required is unprecedented, and maybe impossible[/b] In 2006, China passed the United States as the world's leading emitter of carbon dioxide. And their emissions aren't projected to peak until 2030. They talk about capping carbon emissions, but as Plumer writes, there's little reason to be optimistic. "So far, when China has had to choose between economic growth and cutting its emissions, it usually chooses growth."[/quote] [quote][b]7) Geoengineering is nuts[/b] Not to be a killjoy, but it's hard to believe that the consequences of the huge, unpredictable changes to the global climate can be safely reversed by further efforts to make huge, unpredictable changes to the climate.[/quote] [b][url=http://www.vox.com/2014/6/6/5786318/it-doesnt-make-sense-to-say-weve-failed-at-global-warming]Another Vox editor has written a rebuttal piece:[/url][/b] "No matter what, the world is expected to face a significant rise in global temperatures over the coming century. That will likely require costly and often painful adjustments around the world — particularly for poor countries that have fewer resources to cope. But the scale and pace of that rise matters a great deal, and humanity still has a lot of influence over that final outcome." [b][url=http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2014/06/06/3445803/7-reasons-climate-change/]And here's "7 Reasons America Should Succeed On Climate Change from ThinkProgress:[/url][/b] "Well, even a “manageable failure” would be far better than rendering large parts of the planet uninhabitable and reducing the carrying capacity to far below 9 billion people, which is where we’re headed. But I think it’s possible and indeed likely that we will quickly and not-so-painfully pull ourselves into an even better outcome. But that better outcome would require the U.S. political establishment, opinion makers, and media to understand as much about climate science as Ezra Klein does — and as much about clean energy and climate economics as the IEA and world governments and top scientists do. Personally, conveying that information to readers strikes me as a better course of action than prejudging the whole matter as hopeless."