Earth Day Optimism

You are invited to two panels today on climate and environmental policy

Me, saving the planet in a very early Earth Day march. Thanks Dad!

Yesterday, I was surprised to see the New York Times publish an essay with the title, Climate Doom Is Out. ‘Apocalyptic Optimism’ Is In. The framing of the article was about political expediency — is optimism a more effective political framing than pessimism when trying to motivate people to do this or that? My answer to that question is the answer will depend if the action is sheltering from a tornado bearing down or changing the global energy system.

What the essay did not address is whether or not there is an empirical and scientific basis for an outlook on the environment that is more hopeful than the steady stream of apocalypse porn typically emphasized. As readers of THB well know, the answer is a resounding “Yes.”

Today — Earth Day — I am participating in two panels at the American Enterprise Institute. You are invited to attend, either in-person or virtually and all you need to do is sign up at the links below.

• 10 AM ET. With Steve Hayward — 30 Years of Environmental Progress: Is It Time at Last to Be Optimistic?

• 6 PM ET. With Ted Nordhaus, Shuting Pomerleau — Is Climate Change to Blame for Natural Disasters? The Science and Politics of Extreme Weather

After, here in the comments, I’ll be happy to answer any questions or point to supporting information.

Environmental optimism is not the same thing as Panglossian ignorance, and often, optimism/pessimism says a lot more about an individual than it does the planet. Even so, there are objective reasons for optimism, for those choosing so.

A few years ago, I imagined how we might be received by the authors of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) decades ago if we got into a time machine and told them about the state of climate science understandings today:

Us: Hello IPCC, we are from the future!

IPCC: You aren’t Terminators are you?

Us: No, but we do come with knowledge from 2024 about which of your 1,311 scenarios are still judged to be plausible in 2024, and which ones can be judged to be implausible representations of the rest of the 21st century.

IPCC: Oh my! That is fantastic news. As you know, the mandate of the IPCC is to use only plausible scenarios, so if we can identify those which are implausible, that would make our work much more relevant to policymakers, which after all is our mission.

Us: Here is what we found: Using our more restrictive criterion, we have identified 71 of your 1,311 scenarios that reman plausible based only on what actually happened 2005 to 2020 and that number is cut in half, to 35, when we also consider the 2020 IEA projections to 2050.

IPCC: Wow. That is a lot of scenarios that hit the cutting room floor.

Us: Right. As we explain, “as the future unfolds, we should fully expect that the subset of available scenarios judged to be plausible shrinks in number over time as reality constrains possibilities as the future becomes the present.”

IPCC: So now I am nervous. In our full set of 1,311 scenarios there are some truly apocalyptic futures. I mean, the scenario that is identified as “business as usual” and is most commonly used in climate research projects that the world will build something like 33,000 new coal power plants by 2100 and global temperatures might increase by 5 degrees Celsius or more. I’d expect that in 2024 that remains our best guess for the future, right?

Us: Actually, no. We have some very good news for you. Very good news.

IPCC: Tell me! We need some good news on climate.

Us: In a nutshell, all of the plausible scenarios remaining from the ones you are working with today envision less than 3 degrees Celsius total warming by 2100. In fact, the median projection is for 2100 warming from the subset of plausible scenarios of 2.2 degrees Celsius, which is within spitting distance of the Paris Agreement goal of holding temperatures to a warming of 2.0 degrees Celsius.

IPCC: What is the Paris Agreement?

Us: Don’t worry, you’ll find out.

IPCC: I find that both incredibly reassuring and incredibly hard to believe. How did our expectations of the future change so fast?

Us: Long story. But in short, the scenarios you have been using include some pretty dubious assumptions about future energy production. And the world over the next decade will actually start moving on decarbonization. Things really do look a lot different in 2024.

IPCC: That is incredibly good news!

Us: Yes indeed, it is. Of course the challenge of deep decarbonization remains as dauting as ever in 2024, but the extreme scenarios that you have been focusing on appear to be off the table. Hey, I need to get back to the future, as I have two panels to participate in at AEI on Earth Day 2024.

IPCC: Wait! You’re at AEI in 2024?

Us: Damn straight. Academia is a mess and I’m thrilled to be at one of the country’s leading think tanks. In the future, subscribe to The Honest Broker on Substack to learn more . . .

IPCC: Substack?!

❤️Click the heart if you think that the Earth is pretty damn cool every day of the year!

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