Unfortunately for the planet, the next decade is pretty much going to be the last one to reverse course the “easy” way. By easy, I mean deploying clean energy technology at an aggressive pace with a negligible net economic cost, 0.1 percent of GDP per year or less. It’s a strategy that can be deployed largely by the private sector with the help of well-designed government programs and regulatory reforms.
If conservatives block serious action until the 2020s, then the nation and the world will begin a desperate race to avert catastrophe. By then, the world’s carbon dioxide emissions and concentrations will be so high that the relatively easy market-based technology strategy will not be able to stop us from crossing the point of no return, when major amplifying feedbacks kick in and undermine all efforts to avert catastrophe. The most important feedback is probably the melting of the permafrost and tundra, which could release 1,000 billion tons of carbon — more than the entire atmosphere contains today — much of it in the form of methane, which is 20 times more potent at trapping heat than carbon dioxide.
I call the period from 2025 to 2050 “Planetary Purgatory.” Assuming conservatives block a major reversal in U.S. policies in the next decade, by the 2020s, everyone will know the grim fate that awaits the next 50 generations, including widespread desertification, the loss of the inland glaciers that provide water to a billion people, sea level rise of 80 feet or more at a rate that might hit 6 inches a decade and extinction of most species on land and sea. Maybe then, as the miseries of global warming overtake everyday life, a backlash against conservatives will begin to rise, one that will ultimately relegate that political movement to the dustbin of history.
Climate Security Act | Salon News
