hopeless climate

For all misantrophes out there, here are some reasons to be hopeless about the climate change initiatives. (This is a very belated post sitting in my drafts.)

- It may be too late to take action. Tipping point may be long gone.

- A rescue plan in terms of a drastic shift in global energy policy may be impossible to execute. Monitoring may be hard. Nations may pretend to commit but in reality defect. For economic reasons, developing nations may choose to go through their own industrialisation periods by burning cheap coal. They may justify this behaviour by pointing out that the carbon dioxide built-up is essentially due to developed nations' accumulated past carbon emissions.

- In every drastic change there are winners and losers. Perhaps the climate change will turn Europe into a desert, but middle Asia into a fertile land. This unevenness makes it even harder to cooperate.

- Major policy shifts may entail harsh economic consequences today, and the losses experienced by the current generation may be greater than the discounted value of gains experienced by the future ones.