Tag: climate change

Climate science, Economy, Environmental politics

Economic Models and the Real-World Social Costs of Carbon

Economic theory mandates that it is worth reducing CO2 emissions up to the point where the benefits are equal to the cost. The social cost of carbon is an estimate, in dollars, of the economic damages from emitting one additional ton of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This metric is inextricably tied to the Neoliberal Economics and used by the UN and most governments to … Continue reading Economic Models and the Real-World Social Costs of Carbon

Stephen Mulkey
Adaptation, biosphere carbon management, Climate science, Ecological change, Environmental politics, Sustainability science

Ecology, Loss, and Triage

Rainforest-burning-NASA-2014Amazonia burning. NASA Earth Observatory 2014

“I don’t think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that remains.”

–Anne Frank

On Sunday, 30 April 2017, the New York Times reported that global marine fisheries are being pushed to the brink. This and countless other imminent losses prompt me to once again point out that management of the global biosphere is necessary if we are to have any hope of controlling climate change and feeding ourselves. Human impacts on ecosystems are pushing the living planet into a new regime characterized by disrupted ecological relationships and accelerating extinctions on local, regional, and global scales. Ecological disruption causes ongoing positive feedbacks from widely-distributed natural sources of emissions, thus further disrupting the climate system. Globally, we are approaching a state of unmanageability on many fronts. Continue reading “Ecology, Loss, and Triage”

Stephen Mulkey
Climate science, Ecological change

Sleepwalking toward a new ecology

The pace of ecological change is quickening and I see little sense of urgency to address the negative consequences that are unfolding. The increasing speed of change is a direct consequence of two interacting drivers – resource use and climate change. The long standing processes of human use of natural resources and resulting habitat degradation have increased in scale and impact as our population has continued to explode. Adding to this, as defense analysts have argued, climate change is both a primary driver and amplifier of change. Collectively these factors are driving worldwide ecosystem change at a pace and scale far exceeding any previous period of change in the history of our planet at least since the demise of the dinosaurs. Continue reading “Sleepwalking toward a new ecology”

Stephen Mulkey