There was always going to have a problem with the IPCC because there are scientists studying the climate, the possible human influences on it and the severity of those influences on the one hand and on the other hand there are scientists who have to study the art of decarbonization (from a technical or social/psychological point of view) on the presumption that there is an (urgent) need to change. The latter group gains relevance from dire predictions about the human influences on climate. It seems to me that it is mostly them who do the communication about climate change, in turn gaining relevance in the media because they are IPCC contributors.
I wouldn’t be surprised however if the misrepresentation you point towards is a good representation of how people in social sciences think in general. The problem could be deeper than just the IPCC.
P.S. There is a certain irony in the IPCC being a stronghold of western males (don’t tell me they are also white and middle aged.) Its strange that not a single journalist from The Guardian has written about this….
I guess Germany is going to be an interesting test case for what degrowth looks like and whether what populations (or at least sections of populations) claim to want is actually what they want. "In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not."
Actually, they where the Simple-Lifers, hungering after a life, which to those who lived it had probably appeared not so Simple, and who had not been, therefore, Simple-Lifers themselves.
In "To the extent that these views of climate researchers show up in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it would come as a surprise if the political agenda reflected in IPCC reports were to be out-of-step with the broader global public.
"Indeed, the IPCC AR6 Working Group 2 (with a large representation of social scientists) endorsed the relevance of degrowth:..."
I think there is a NOT missing. "It would NOT come as a surprise..."
There are plenty of resources. Starvation is common in Africa with all the land, and tons of resources, but we think they should drive a prius and won’t invest in oil and gas. The real racism. And it’s systemic. Leftist must have missed the class on projection.
Congressional Budget Office projections show the federal government’s net interest expenses increasing from 2.5 percent of GDP today to 6.5 percent in 30 years and mandatory entitlement expenditures increasing from 15.1 percent of GDP to 16.9 percent over that same time period. Real GDP growth during that time period is presumed to grow at various rates in the range 1.5 to 1.9 percent.
Having interest and entitlement expenditures grow faster than GDP is not sustainable, and this American example is emblematic of an aging world where the ratio of workers to elderly dependents is decreasing. Since payroll taxes on worker earnings (in terms of Gross National Income) are the basis of transfers to elderly dependents and since GNI equals GDP (with some adjustments), counties around the world are compelled to promote growth to avoid social and economic collapse. Just look at the response to Macron’s almost trivial attempt to raise the retirement age.
But the Europeans are already going down the degrowth path whether knowingly and deliberately or blindly. The following quote is from a July 17, 2023, WSJ article “Europeans Are Becoming Poorer. ‘Yes, We’re All Worse Off.’ "
“The eurozone economy grew about 6% over the past 15 years, measured in dollars, compared with 82% for the U.S., according to International Monetary Fund data. That has left the average EU country poorer per head than every U.S. state except Idaho and Mississippi, according to a report this month by the European Centre for International Political Economy, a Brussels-based independent think tank. If the current trend continues, by 2035 the gap between economic output per capita in the U.S. and EU will be as large as that between Japan and Ecuador today, the report said.”
I disagree with a couple of things. Abundant energy does not necessarily mean abundant water. Solving one does not necessarily mean the other. I've been reading about this for about a decade. The civility aspect is up for debate.
That's up for debate. Particularly the civility part. In Canada you have to pay people to live up north. There are reasons that these regions are not population dense. As my nephew has recently said during a cold snap, you could pay him to work there and they've tried. It's anecdotal but true to my experience. The logistics are not for the faint of heart. I doubt that would be less true for countries at similar latitudes.
Beyond that I have a profound love of my very empty country from a conservationist standpoint. There was something really magical about getting lost in the forest, or driving and not seeing a soul for three hours. Its humbling. That smallness, connectivity. Its a constant reminder of how fragile life can be. People who've never experienced it don't get it.
There is a very different way of looking at all this from the way Roger has. First, one can be skeptical about the need for growth in already rich countries, while accepting need for growth in developing countries- indeed I think that’s what most of the climate researchers would state as their position. So it’s not at all clear that they are out of step with the priorities of the poor majority as Roger implies. Second, the fact that the climate researchers are out of step with public sentiment in rich countries is hardly saying much. Isn’t there a role for intellectual leadership? Hasn’t Roger himself been out of step with public attitudes at times? Growth in rich countries is questionable, especially if you take meeting stated climate targets seriously. The researchers are merely reflecting that.
I guess it’s to much to hope for that we see more scientists from China and India. Although either country seems willing or able to cut emissions. Seems like they would want more participation?
This shows what many guessed. That climate research is filled with biased researchers, many of them no doubt zealots for anti-growth while viewing humans as a an invasive species. It then follows that the research is exaggerated in favor of alarmism over finding rational responses to future climate. It is the same in “trans research,” in which the researchers have a hard bias favoring the ideology.
How many years more of no warming than the 8 we have now, do we have to go before we quit hearing “climate disasters, record temps are increasing rapidly?”
If one’s objective is human flourishing, de-growth is just at odds with that, plain and simple. Machiavelli’s classic 16th century work “The Prince”, talks about how an effective technique for an authoritarian ruler to maintain power is to convince the populace that there is a sever threat from which the ruler will protect them.
The climate catastrophe narrative is looking and smelling a lot like this. Remember, if it looks like a duck and smells like a duck, it’s a duck.
“When you’re green, you grow. When you’re ripe, you rot. Stay green” was a saying that one of my earliest employers after graduating often cited. He was not using green in the environmentalism sense, but drawing an analogy to plant growth. His employees were fully grown adults, so the analogy was not suggesting they grow in the physical sense, but rather in the intellectual and spiritual sense.
I point this out because the term ‘growth’ needs to be examined more carefully. To expand on the analogy, when a baby is born in a hospital it is weighed and measured and will likely continued to be it it’s early years to ensure that it is growing within normal expectations. Any deviations could be a sign of a health problem. But physical growth ceases typically in the early 20s and that person can expect an average life expectancy of around 80 years, and with luck may even 120+. Any physical growth beyond their early 20s in the form of excess weight is not only non useful weight, but can be harmful to the body. Yet that person from 20 onward can grow throughout their life intellectually and spiritually and many do.
No sane person would suggest that a person at 20 or older should engage in ‘degrowth’, unless they seriously overweight. So perhaps at the societal the degrowth should be more narrowly defined as ‘cutting the fat’. The problem is who decides what is the ‘fat’ to be cut out
Currently the consensus of projections for population growth is that we are expected to peak around mid century at around 9 billion and likely have a slight decline after that. So a degrowth is already in the cards
There was always going to have a problem with the IPCC because there are scientists studying the climate, the possible human influences on it and the severity of those influences on the one hand and on the other hand there are scientists who have to study the art of decarbonization (from a technical or social/psychological point of view) on the presumption that there is an (urgent) need to change. The latter group gains relevance from dire predictions about the human influences on climate. It seems to me that it is mostly them who do the communication about climate change, in turn gaining relevance in the media because they are IPCC contributors.
I wouldn’t be surprised however if the misrepresentation you point towards is a good representation of how people in social sciences think in general. The problem could be deeper than just the IPCC.
P.S. There is a certain irony in the IPCC being a stronghold of western males (don’t tell me they are also white and middle aged.) Its strange that not a single journalist from The Guardian has written about this….
I guess Germany is going to be an interesting test case for what degrowth looks like and whether what populations (or at least sections of populations) claim to want is actually what they want. "In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not."
This quote from «I, Robot» seems fitting:
Actually, they where the Simple-Lifers, hungering after a life, which to those who lived it had probably appeared not so Simple, and who had not been, therefore, Simple-Lifers themselves.
In "To the extent that these views of climate researchers show up in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it would come as a surprise if the political agenda reflected in IPCC reports were to be out-of-step with the broader global public.
"Indeed, the IPCC AR6 Working Group 2 (with a large representation of social scientists) endorsed the relevance of degrowth:..."
I think there is a NOT missing. "It would NOT come as a surprise..."
Have I misread?
Well, they are smart. That precludes them from being leftists.
Elon Musk said the thing that keeps him up at night is the coming population collapse.
There are plenty of resources. Starvation is common in Africa with all the land, and tons of resources, but we think they should drive a prius and won’t invest in oil and gas. The real racism. And it’s systemic. Leftist must have missed the class on projection.
Congressional Budget Office projections show the federal government’s net interest expenses increasing from 2.5 percent of GDP today to 6.5 percent in 30 years and mandatory entitlement expenditures increasing from 15.1 percent of GDP to 16.9 percent over that same time period. Real GDP growth during that time period is presumed to grow at various rates in the range 1.5 to 1.9 percent.
Having interest and entitlement expenditures grow faster than GDP is not sustainable, and this American example is emblematic of an aging world where the ratio of workers to elderly dependents is decreasing. Since payroll taxes on worker earnings (in terms of Gross National Income) are the basis of transfers to elderly dependents and since GNI equals GDP (with some adjustments), counties around the world are compelled to promote growth to avoid social and economic collapse. Just look at the response to Macron’s almost trivial attempt to raise the retirement age.
But the Europeans are already going down the degrowth path whether knowingly and deliberately or blindly. The following quote is from a July 17, 2023, WSJ article “Europeans Are Becoming Poorer. ‘Yes, We’re All Worse Off.’ "
“The eurozone economy grew about 6% over the past 15 years, measured in dollars, compared with 82% for the U.S., according to International Monetary Fund data. That has left the average EU country poorer per head than every U.S. state except Idaho and Mississippi, according to a report this month by the European Centre for International Political Economy, a Brussels-based independent think tank. If the current trend continues, by 2035 the gap between economic output per capita in the U.S. and EU will be as large as that between Japan and Ecuador today, the report said.”
I disagree with a couple of things. Abundant energy does not necessarily mean abundant water. Solving one does not necessarily mean the other. I've been reading about this for about a decade. The civility aspect is up for debate.
Yes. All in for nuclear, wave, geothermal, battery storage, Hydrogen, wind solar.
That's up for debate. Particularly the civility part. In Canada you have to pay people to live up north. There are reasons that these regions are not population dense. As my nephew has recently said during a cold snap, you could pay him to work there and they've tried. It's anecdotal but true to my experience. The logistics are not for the faint of heart. I doubt that would be less true for countries at similar latitudes.
Beyond that I have a profound love of my very empty country from a conservationist standpoint. There was something really magical about getting lost in the forest, or driving and not seeing a soul for three hours. Its humbling. That smallness, connectivity. Its a constant reminder of how fragile life can be. People who've never experienced it don't get it.
All in for nuclear, geothermal, wave, solar, battery storage, natural gas, wind. Given geography, resources, efficiency etc...
There is a very different way of looking at all this from the way Roger has. First, one can be skeptical about the need for growth in already rich countries, while accepting need for growth in developing countries- indeed I think that’s what most of the climate researchers would state as their position. So it’s not at all clear that they are out of step with the priorities of the poor majority as Roger implies. Second, the fact that the climate researchers are out of step with public sentiment in rich countries is hardly saying much. Isn’t there a role for intellectual leadership? Hasn’t Roger himself been out of step with public attitudes at times? Growth in rich countries is questionable, especially if you take meeting stated climate targets seriously. The researchers are merely reflecting that.
I guess it’s to much to hope for that we see more scientists from China and India. Although either country seems willing or able to cut emissions. Seems like they would want more participation?
This shows what many guessed. That climate research is filled with biased researchers, many of them no doubt zealots for anti-growth while viewing humans as a an invasive species. It then follows that the research is exaggerated in favor of alarmism over finding rational responses to future climate. It is the same in “trans research,” in which the researchers have a hard bias favoring the ideology.
How many years more of no warming than the 8 we have now, do we have to go before we quit hearing “climate disasters, record temps are increasing rapidly?”
If one’s objective is human flourishing, de-growth is just at odds with that, plain and simple. Machiavelli’s classic 16th century work “The Prince”, talks about how an effective technique for an authoritarian ruler to maintain power is to convince the populace that there is a sever threat from which the ruler will protect them.
The climate catastrophe narrative is looking and smelling a lot like this. Remember, if it looks like a duck and smells like a duck, it’s a duck.
“When you’re green, you grow. When you’re ripe, you rot. Stay green” was a saying that one of my earliest employers after graduating often cited. He was not using green in the environmentalism sense, but drawing an analogy to plant growth. His employees were fully grown adults, so the analogy was not suggesting they grow in the physical sense, but rather in the intellectual and spiritual sense.
I point this out because the term ‘growth’ needs to be examined more carefully. To expand on the analogy, when a baby is born in a hospital it is weighed and measured and will likely continued to be it it’s early years to ensure that it is growing within normal expectations. Any deviations could be a sign of a health problem. But physical growth ceases typically in the early 20s and that person can expect an average life expectancy of around 80 years, and with luck may even 120+. Any physical growth beyond their early 20s in the form of excess weight is not only non useful weight, but can be harmful to the body. Yet that person from 20 onward can grow throughout their life intellectually and spiritually and many do.
No sane person would suggest that a person at 20 or older should engage in ‘degrowth’, unless they seriously overweight. So perhaps at the societal the degrowth should be more narrowly defined as ‘cutting the fat’. The problem is who decides what is the ‘fat’ to be cut out
Currently the consensus of projections for population growth is that we are expected to peak around mid century at around 9 billion and likely have a slight decline after that. So a degrowth is already in the cards