Ian Welsh on Alberta

Alberta’s Alienation From Canada. Ian Welsh. Nov. 5, 2019.

So, for those of you who don’t know, Alberta is sort of Canada’s Texas: it has a lot of oil, and a lot of farms.

Alberta is also the heart of the Conservative Party of Canada. Virtually all of their seats go to the Conservatives every federal election.

Many Albertans feel isolated and disrespected by Ottawa (our capital) and the East. Back in the 70s, Pierre Trudeau (our current Prime Minister’s father) made them sell oil to Canadians for less than market price and even nationalized a little bit of the market.

Since they also have a lot of money, they net give to the other provinces, what are called transfer payments.

They feel like they put in more than they get back.

There’s a lot of truth to this, of course. This isn’t Red State BS in the United States, where they get more from the Feds than they put in and whine about it.

That said, Alberta has been sitting on black gold and fucked it up.

Fucked it up.

They decided that low taxes were more important than investment. They hardly taxed the oil companies pumping the oil, even the foreign ones, even during boom times when there is no question they would pay.

So they didn’t get as much money as they should.

But then they also didn’t spend what money they had smart, on creating a post-oil future economy.

In Canada we have poor provinces. The poorest are the Maritime provinces: the ones up against the Atlantic.

Here’s a funny story: they used to be rich. A long time ago.

See, England needed lots of masts. You need good trees for masts, and the English cut them all down at home and other Europeans had either done the same or wouldn’t chop down enough of them.

Good masts were incredibly valuable. In addition, the Maritimes had the richest fisheries in the world. There are eyewitness accounts from the early days that you could literally dip a bucket into the Ocean and come up with fish.

So the Maritimes were prosperous.

Then the world moved to steam engines.

And then the Maritimes, quite deliberately and before the worst of climate change, fished the Grand Banks cods to collapse.

And now, they are poor as hell, and always getting those transfer payments.

And this is Alberta’s future.

The funny thing is that Alberta is also a big agricultural province, but, of course, since oil makes more money, they’ve gone ahead and polluted like hell, destroying vast swathes of land.

So, to summarize: did not invest enough in industries to take over when oil (a non-renewable resource) became less valuable. Did do what they could to fuck up their sustainable resource industry: farming.

Most of this is not the rest of Canada’s fault. Yeah, they would have had more money if Ottawa had given them a complete free hand, but they had plenty of money and wasted in on low taxes and tax cuts and didn’t bother to be good environmental stewards.

These decisions were made in Alberta, by Albertans, not in Ottawa.

Resource economies are always, at best, cyclical. They are always in danger of being destroyed by substitution (as is happening with hydrocarbons.) A smart jurisdiction uses that wealth to buy a future not reliant on resources.

There are lessons here for a lot of countries and regions. Canada as a whole has fucked up its economic balance over the last 20 years (a different article.) Russia is way too reliant on resources. Various US states are going to take it on the chin when hydrocarbon prices collapse, and they too have been short sighted, greedy and stupid: doing things like polluting their groundwater with fracking.

In the future water is going to be far more valuable than oil. So is good agricultural land.

And these places have gone out of their way to destroy both.

The problem with Ottawa isn’t so much that they interfered in Alberta, but that they interfered in Alberta in the wrong ways.

As for Albertan voters who always vote Conservative: you’re fools. Because they know you will always vote for them, they do nothing for you. When the Conservatives were in power for almost a decade, they sucked up to Ontario and Quebec, because they knew they needed their votes.

You? You got nothing, exactly because they know they don’t need to give you anything.

There are those in the US who might think on this lesson as well.

E-Day

The End of Trudeaumania. Luke Savage, Jacobin. Oct. 21, 2019.

Justin Trudeau may be decisively rejected in today’s Canadian election. The race has been shaken up by a surge in support for Jagmeet Singh and his social-democratic NDP, whose left-wing program is what many Canadians thought they were getting when they voted for Trudeau four years ago.

In 2015, the Liberals gained millions of votes on the basis of Trudeau’s personal popularity and a platform many mistakenly believed was a blueprint for transformative change. Predictably enough, Trudeau soon frustrated these hopes with a run of broken promises and a refusal to implement many parts of the ultimately modest agenda he had once campaigned on.

...

As the Liberals governed from the technocratic center, the Trudeau brand carried on as usual, creating an ever-widening disjuncture between the government’s meticulously crafted political artifice and reality. When it emerged several weeks ago that the same prime minister who had built a cloying international image as the standard-bearer for inclusive liberalism had done blackface more times than he could count, the symbolism could hardly be missed.

... 

In essence, the NDP’s pitch is a more tangible and cogent version of what many voters — particularly the young — mistakenly believed they were going to get with Trudeau in 2015. 

What Canada Can Teach Us About Liberals Everywhere. Luke Savage, Current Affairs. Oct. 16, 2019.

What all this means is that Canadian federal governments have comparatively few obstacles to passing transformative legislation, if indeed it’s their intention. Except in extreme cases, a prime minister with a majority in the House probably won’t face a backbench rebellion and isn’t going to run afoul of big donor money in the event they push legislation private interests dislike. Public opinion, of course, might be an obstacle: Governments aren’t generally prone to pursuing policies that are wildly unpopular. But majority public opinion in Canada appears predisposed to supporting big new social programs and higher taxes on the rich (recent polling, for example, has found that more than two-thirds of Canadians support a wealth tax and a big majority support the creation of a national universal prescription drug program).

For even more evidence of this, we need to look no further than Justin Trudeau’s own campaign messaging in 2015—which gestured, rhetorically at least, towards an activist and equality-minded style of governance. In office, however, Trudeau has largely governed from the neoliberal center: paying lip service to the problems and injustices facing Canadian society while doing little if anything to meaningfully alleviate them and, in some cases, actively moving things in the opposite direction. Unlike its predecessor, his administration has been willing to acknowledge the threat of climate change, but nonetheless remains fiercely committed to the construction of new oil pipelines. For the first time in Canadian history, it has tabled a poverty reduction strategy, a document which in practice amounts to nothing more than a series of new metrics for measuring poverty and includes no resources for actually reducing it. In a cynical sleight of hand, its signature tax hike on the rich was neatly paired with a tax cut for the slightly less rich. Having promised to reform Canada’s archaic electoral system, it reversed course midstream and denounced the very efforts it had sworn to take up as risky and dangerous.

Despite four years of a Liberal government in office preaching the rhetoric of progressive reform, little about Canadian society has fundamentally changed and there’s every reason to believe things will stay that way if the government is re-elected with another majority. And yet, members of the Canadian left can probably expect all the familiar sermons to be repeated when they inevitably protest. Despite the relative lack of obstacles they face compared to America’s Democrats, Canada’s liberals have long been masterfully dextrous when it comes to lecturing progressively-minded voters about the need for “pragmatism” and the necessity of never breaking too much with the status quo, even as they rhetorically acknowledge its injustices.

The Election and the Climate Crisis: A Tyee Reader. The Tyee. Oct. 16, 2019.

Climate Links June 2019

Climate Chaos and Our Own Responsibilities. Arshad Khan, CounterPunch. June 28, 2019.

On the last day of the UN Climate Change (June 17-27, 2019) meeting in Bonn the key IPCC report on 1.5 C was blocked from further discussion by Saudi Arabia and an unlikely set of allies: the US, Iran and Russia. The report, as the saying goes, has been deep-sixed meriting only a five-para watered down waffle at the end of the agreement, so what next?

There is worse for at a 2C rise the cycle becomes self-sustaining, meaning a runaway feedback loop cycle. Clearly the Paris agreement, holding temperature increase to 2C, is no longer viable if we are not to leave behind a raging planet to our children and grandchildren.

... 

In short, to stop hothouse earth, we have to start removing CO2 from the air.

Canada’s Climate Change Election: An Energy Mix Special Report Launches Today. Energy Central. June 16, 2019.

Climate change and the transition off fossil fuels are emerging as top-tier issues in the federal election coming up this fall. And between now and October 21, The Energy Mix has got you covered. 

Today, we’re proud to launch Canada’s Climate Change Election 2019, a special report where we will consolidate the news and opinion that will shape the next four years on the single biggest issue the country faces. 

We’ll keep updating the page right up to Election Day, with breaking news and feature reporting on Canada’s climate action gap, political party campaigns and platforms, public opinion, the continuing contention on carbon pricing, fossil and pipeline politics, climate impacts and adaptation, and the practicalities of the off-carbon transition.

Alberta Taxpayers Will Get Stuck With $400 Billion+ Oil & Gas Cleanup Bill. Steve Hanley, CleanTechnica. June 14, 2019.

Scientists shocked by Arctic permafrost thawing 70 years sooner than predicted. Guardian. June 18, 2019.

Permafrost collapses 70 years early. Robert Hunziker, CounterPunch. June 21, 2019.

These instances of collapsing permafrost are deafening bell-ringers and exactly the type of awful news that presages Runaway Global Warming (RGW). 

In point of fact, Farquharson’s “70-yr too early permafrost collapse” makes the onset of RGW look like a dead-ringer, but when? Still, nobody really knows for sure how horrible it will be for society at large, but it’s 100% guaranteed to upend capitalism’s rampant growth machine. Functioning ecosystems and roughshod capitalism that willy-nilly consumes ecosystems, punctuated by the advent of plutocracy, don’t jive very well. 

Maybe a change is in order. 

There’s no getting around the fact that ecosystems are collapsing. The evidence is too palpable to ignore. It’s serious; it’s deadly, and it could be too late to do much to stop it, other than a last-ditch WWII Marshall Plan Worldwide Consortium dedicated to converting the world to renewable energy, and forcing removal of CO2 from the atmosphere, yet, those solutions take years and years of planning, setup, construction, and billions upon billions of funding. It’s not happening. 

Meanwhile, carbon that has been trapped in and under permafrost over eons readies to escape to turbo-charge an already oversaturated turbo-charged climate. It’s literally happening right now. The waiting room is already full. Farquharson’s study proves it, and Alaska’s permafrost carbon emissions that compete with U.S. commercial CO2 emissions prove it, as sled dogs wade through it. 

It’s postulated that Runaway Global Warming, which could wipe out huge swaths of civilized society, starts in the North, where few people live. Egad! They’re already seeing it.

Extreme Temperatures Are Melting The Arctic. Steve Hanley, CleanTechnica. June 18, 2019.

Any hope that the world can limit global warming to merely disastrous levels is fading rapidly. In fact, it may already be too late for humans to do anything significant about the rotten, stinking mess they have made, which reminds me of this prophetic ditty by Yip Harburg:

God made the world in six days flat.
On the seventh, He said, “I’ll rest.”
So He let the thing into orbit swing,
To give it a dry run test.
A billion years went by,
Then he took a look at the whirling blob.
His spirits fell as he said,
“Oh well. It was only a six day job.”

Climate Links April 2019 (updated)

Canada in a Changing Climate. Environment and Climate Change Canada.

* extra links added April 29th *

Canada says global carbon pollution must be reduced to 'near zero' to limit harsh impacts. Carl Meyer, National Observer. Apr. 1, 2019.

Canada's failure to fight climate change 'disturbing,' environment watchdog says. Mia Rabson, National Observer. Apr. 3, 2019.

'This is a wake-up call:' swift action needed on rising seas, experts say. Michael Tutton, National Observer. Apr. 8, 2019.

Last time CO2 levels were this high, there were trees at the South Pole. Damian Carrington, Guardian. Apr. 3, 2019.

Trees growing near the South Pole, sea levels 20 metres higher than now, and global temperatures 3C-4C warmer. That is the world scientists are uncovering as they look back in time to when the planet last had as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as it does today.

* CO2 Levels are now at a 3 million-year high. Olivia Rosane, EcoWatch. Apr. 5, 2019.

"Our results imply a strong sensitivity of the Earth system to relatively small variations in atmospheric CO2," Willeit said. "As fascinating as this is, it is also worrying."

referencing scientific research article:
* Mid-Pleistocene transition in glacial cycles explained by declining CO2 and regolith removal. Willeit et al. Science Advances. Apr. 3, 2019.


* Researchers Warn Arctic Has Entered 'Unprecedented State' That Threatens Global Climate Stability. EcoWatch. Apr. 8, 2019.

Also last month, as Common Dreams reported, the UN Environment Programme (ENUP) warned in a far-reaching report that winter temperatures in the Arctic are already "locked in" in such a way that significant sea level increases are now inevitable this century. 

Rising temperatures, along with ocean acidification, pollution, and thawing permafrost threaten the Arctic

referencing scientific research article:
* Key Indicators of Arctic climate change: 1971- 2017. Jason Box et al, IOP Science. Apr. 8, 2019.


* Permafrost collapse is accelerating carbon release. Merritt R. Turetsky et al, Nature. Apr. 30, 2019.

The sudden collapse of thawing soils in the Arctic might double the warming from greenhouse gases released from tundra

* The Blue Ocean Event and Collapsing Ecosystems. Robert Hunziker, CounterPunch. Apr. 19, 2019.

Sometime in the near future it is highly probable that the Arctic will no longer have sea ice, meaning zero ice for the first time in eons, aka: the Blue Ocean Event. 

Surely, the world is not prepared for the consequences of such an historic event, which likely turns the world topsy-turvy, negatively impacting agriculture with gonzo weather patterns, thus forcing people to either starve or fight. But, the problem may be even bigger than shortages of food, as shall be discussed....

* The transpolar drift is faltering—sea ice is now melting before it can leave the nursery. Alfred Wegener Institute, Phys.org. Apr. 3, 2019.

According to the researchers, this development not only takes the planet one step closer to an ice-free summer in the Arctic; as the sea ice dwindles, the Arctic Ocean stands to lose an important means of transporting nutrients, algae and sediments.

* Emissions from thawing Arctic permafrost may be 12 times higher than thought, scientists say. Chiara Giordano, Independent. Apr. 17, 2019.

Emissions from thawing Arctic permafrost may be 12 times higher than previously thought, scientists have discovered. 

Permafrost is a mix of soil, rock or sediment that has been frozen for at least two years which is mostly found in the uppermost areas where temperatures are rising more quickly than the rest of the world. 

When it thaws because of global warming, it releases large quantities of carbon dioxide and methane into the atmosphere, causing temperatures to rise and creating a perpetual cycle where more permafrost melts

* Protecting marine life could be key in fighting climate change as sea creatures trap and store carbon in the ocean, researcher says. Heidi Pearson, Daily Mail. Apr. 19, 2019.

• Ocean is Earth’s largest carbon sink and central element of planet’s climate cycle
• Large animals such as whales can store large quantities of carbon for long time
• Others such as otters promote kelp growth, and kelp forests store carbon
• But, expert warns no policy has been created to protect carbon storage in ocean

As the prospect of catastrophic effects from climate change becomes increasingly likely, a search is on for innovative ways to reduce the risks.  

One potentially powerful and low-cost strategy is to recognize and protect natural carbon sinks – places and processes that store carbon, keeping it out of Earth’s atmosphere. Forests and wetlands can capture and store large quantities of carbon. These ecosystems are included in climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies that 28 countries have pledged to adopt to fulfill the Paris Climate Agreement. So far, however, no such policy has been created to protect carbon storage in the ocean, which is Earth’s largest carbon sink and a central element of our planet’s climate cycle.

* ‘Death by a thousand cuts’: vast expanse of rainforest lost in 2018. Damian Carrington, Guardian. Apr. 25, 2019.

Millions of hectares of pristine tropical rainforest were destroyed in 2018, according to satellite analysis, with beef, chocolate and palm oil among the main causes. 

The forests store huge amounts of carbon and are teeming with wildlife, making their protection critical to stopping runaway climate change and halting a sixth mass extinction. But deforestation is still on an upward trend, the researchers said. 

* Climate change being fuelled by soil damage - report. Roger Harrabin, BBC. Apr. 29, 2019.

There's three times more carbon in the soil than in the atmosphere – but that carbon's being released by deforestation and poor farming. 

This is fueling climate change – and compromising our attempts to feed a growing world population, the authors will say. 

Problems include soils being eroded, compacted by machinery, built over, or harmed by over-watering. 

Hurting the soil affects the climate in two ways: it compromises the growth of plants taking in carbon from the atmosphere, and it releases soil carbon previously stored by worms taking leaf matter underground. 

The warning will come from the awkwardly-named IPBES – the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services - a panel studying the benefits of nature to humans.

... 

"The thin layer of soil covering the Earth's surface represents the difference between survival and extinction for most terrestrial life. "Only 3% of the planet's surface is suitable for arable production and 75 billion tonnes of fertile soil is lost to land degradation every year."

* Up to a million species face extinction, many within decades, according to the draft UN report. Marlowe Hood, AFP. Apr. 29, 2019.


* 'Catastrophic' decline threatening the Earth. Stephanie Bedo, NZHerald. Apr. 21, 2019.

A global scientific review of insect decline has warned insects will "go down the path of extinction" in a few decades, with "catastrophic" repercussions for the planet's ecosystems. The biodiversity crisis is said to be even deeper than that of climate change.

* Rapidly declining remarkability of temperature anomalies may obscure public perception of climate change. Frances Moore et al, PNAS. March 12, 2019.

Climate change exposes people to conditions that are historically unusual but that will become increasingly common over time. What kind of weather do people think of as normal or unusual under these changing conditions? We use the volume of social media posts about weather to measure the remarkability of different temperatures and show that remarkability changes rapidly with repeated exposure to unusual temperatures. The reference point for normal conditions appears to be based on weather experienced between 2 and 8 y ago. This rapidly shifting normal baseline means warming noticed by the general public may not be clearly distinguishable from zero over the 21st century, with potential implications for both the acceptance of global warming and public pressure for mitigation policies.

* The Problem With Putting A Price on the End of the World. David Leonhardt, NYT Mag. April 9, 2019.

Economists [think they] have workable policy ideas for addressing climate change. But what if they’re politically impossible?

... 

“We have a climate problem,” Nordhaus said, “because markets fail, and fail badly, in the energy sector.” The only solution, he argued, was for governments to raise the price of emissions.

* The insanity of global trade. Roar. March 30, 2019.


* Global Climate Coalition: Documents Reveal How Secretive Fossil Fuel Lobby Group Manipulated UN Climate Programs. Matt Hope via naked capitalism. Apr. 25, 2019.

A fossil fuel–backed industry group was able to influence the process behind the United Nations climate assessments for decades, using lobbyists and industry-funded scientists to manipulate international negotiations, a cache of recently discovered documents reveals.

* A Future Without Fossil Fuels? Bill McKibben, NYRB. April 4, 2019.

2020 Vision: Why You Should See the Fossil Fuel Peak Coming: a report by Kingsmill Bond (41 pp., September 2018) 

A New World: The Geopolitics of the Energy Transformation: a report by the Global Commission on the Geopolitics of Energy Transformation (88 pp., January 2019)

REVEALED: The five ways the human race could be WIPED OUT because of global warming. Rod Ardehali, Daily Mail. Apr. 10, 2019.

• The deadly possible effects of global warming have been laid bare in a new book that reveals how disease, starvation and rising tides could kill off human beings 
• 'FALTER: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?' lists the lethal, and unexpected, ways that humans could become extinct - within a few generations
• Melting ice caps could bring back disease locked in permafrost - killing swathes 
• Natural disasters could be triggered by collapsing ice caps - with 65ft waves wiping out any coastal life in its path - repeating what happened 8,000 years ago
• Cereal crops - the cornerstone of human sustenance - could dry out because of global warming with plants unable to grow in parched new lands
• Author Bill McKibben's doomsday book asks whether we are already too late 

* Climate research needs to change to help communities plan for the future. Robert Kopp, The Conversation. April 5, 2019.

This reality means society needs to think about climate change in different ways than the past, by focusing on reducing the risk of negative effects. And speaking as a climate scientist, I recognize that climate science research, too, has to change. 

Historically, climate science has been primarily curiosity-driven – scientists seeking fundamental understanding of the way our planet works because of the inherent interest in the problem. 

Now it’s time for the climate science research enterprise to adopt an expanded approach, one that focuses heavily on integrating fundamental science inquiry with risk management.

Looking past the horizon of 2100. Sonja van Jenssen, Nature Climate Change. Apr. 26, 2019.

Long-term climate dynamics and impacts from sea level rise to heat stress make the case for much stronger mitigation efforts today

* 'Flight shame' has Swedes rethinking air travel. Johannes Ledel, Phys.org. Apr. 10, 2019.


This book ranks the top 100 solutions to climate change. The results are surprising. David Roberts, vox. Apr. 22, 2019.

A chat with Paul Hawken about his ambitious effort to “map, measure, and model” global warming solutions.

Condensed Summary of Canada's Changing Climate Report

 Here’s what’s happening .. temperatures are climbing, globally

This chart shows temp relative to the 1961-1990 average

So, as you can see, the period from 1850-1900 was well below 1961-90, while 1990-2018 are well above

On net, we are very much well in excess of pre-industrial temperature norms (which is important because the global goals is to keep the planet from being destabilized by keeping temp increase contained to no more than 2C above pre-industrial, and preferrably 1.5C)

Those temp changes are manifesting themselves in other ways

And these other impacts will themselves in turn have a feedback effect on temperatures, creating a vicious circle

So far, that just covers what has happened so far… here’s what we’re looking at for the future

This shows just two possible scenarios, business as usual, what IPCC calls RCP8.5, and something that many would consider a best case, RCP2.6

Note how on the path we are on, which means continued economic growth, which means more consumption of everything, and more use of energy, which so far is predominantly fossil-fuels, CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere will rise not just linearly but exponentially; on the other hand, in order for us to achieve that best-case 2.6 scenario we just mentioned, you can see that rather than having emissions keep growing, we need to have them quickly plateau and head to zero, and, in fact, below zero (meaning we utilize new technologies to extract more carbon from the atmosphere than we put in)

Some people think, hey, we live in Canada, its cold, no big deal if it gets warmer

Except, for one thing, temperatures are rising further and faster here in Canada than globally, and especially up north in the Arctic

Canada is warming at twice the global rate, and the Arctic at thrice the global rate.. that is hugely destabilizing

So while it might seem okay in southern Ontario, we need to worry about those feedback effects we mentioned earlier… as the Arctic warms, not only are polar bears and other wildlife at risk, but less snow and ice means less albedo effect, and warming tundra means melting permafrost, which releases methane, a very potent GhG into the atmosphere, both from land and from the seabeds, which will cause a huge feedback effect, and greatly accentuate warming, to the extent that it can spiral out of control (Hothouse Earth scenario)

Here’s what climate models, as of the 2013 IPCC report, say will happen to global temperatures as we continue to emit emissions

2 things to note about that:

• these are the projected global avg changes, and, as we just saw, Canada will warm twice as much and the Arctic thrice as much
• global climate change models have improved in the last 6 years, and the latest estimates suggest the climate is even more sensitive than we previously thought, so temperatures will rise even further and faster than is shown here

Note that the majority of climate scientists consider it unlikely that we will fall below the low ranges of the above estimates, but remain concerned that we could exceed the high ranges (which already allow for 25% chance of being exceeded).. but could be worse due to feedback effects, tipping points and irreversibilities in the climate system

If we see these types of temperature changes in the 8.5 scenario, imagine the impacts related to:

·         hot and cold extremes

o    i.e. greater weather variability than we’ve experienced this year

·         extreme weather events,

o    causing flooding on the one hand, and

o    droughts on the other

·         and related knock-on effects on

o    groundwater and freshwater availability

o    our agricultural sector, our growing season, etc.

·         wildfires

·         ocean temperature and ocean acidification

o    and impacts on fisheries

·         sea level rise

o    storm surges for our coastal infrastructure / cities

Uncertainties prevail! Keep in mind that most estimates we see from models are based on chances / estimates

There are still significant risks of things being worse than we currently judge (and over the last 30 years, that has typically been the case, that outcomes have been generally worse than earlier anticipated)

Which raises the question of whether we want to accept a 50% or 25% or even 10% chance of temperatures getting even higher

Canada EVs

Canada iZEV Electric Car Incentive Program Begins May 1. Steve Hanley, Clean Technica. Apr. 22, 2019.

from the comments:

• Canada's EV and transportation emissions strategy in general is one of the most pathetic in the world. It seems like we are actively trying to do everything wrong. The tax credit is small and applies to very few of the EVs on the market. There's little in the way of strategy to expand charge stations into more remote highways. The end of Greyhound means Canada has no national bus service. We have only one national train service and it's quality and reach is comparable to or worse than third world countries and only one province has any regional train service and that province has cut train services. And Canadians are switching from Sedans to the most gas guzzling vehicles on the planet and we're flying and driving everywhere. But we have a Carbon tax, well maybe not for long.
• Generally pathetic...but 62% of Canadian Electricity is Hydro. And this EV incentive at $5000 Federal and in B.C. $5000 provincial means we will buy a Kia Niro Ev for $10,000 less. Should be next month if they are available. So some things are good... and then there are the oil sands
• Being a Canadian, I have to say, Sorry this government sucks so bad and they dropped the ball after all their "Big Talk" (aka Bafflegab & doublespeak). Sadly the next one might be even worse, a "Conservative One". They are all pushing for more pipelines and more Tar Sands emissions and lip serving everything else.  This 5K with limits really is not going to help much as our dollar hurts us. Maybe some provinces will kick in Above & Beyond but forget the "Blue Ones", they won't. Even the new Premiere of Ontario Ol' Fordo kyboshed the BYD Factory being built... Not unlike the USA, We NEED a New Political Party with no deadheads & swamp creatures who will look to the future for all of us but alas it will never happen, just the same ol retreads who insist on painting pigs Black & White and calling them cattle.

List of eligible vehicles under the iZEV Program. Govt of Canada.


related, of note:

Electric vehicles emit more CO2 than diesel ones, German study shows. The Brussels Times. Apr. 17, 2019.

Mining and processing the lithium, cobalt and manganese used for batteries consume a great deal of energy. A Tesla Model 3 battery, for example, represents between 11 and 15 tonnes of CO2

EV Makers Face One Major Problem. Irina Slav, OilPrice.com. Sep 02, 2019.

If one listens to statements from carmakers with ambitious EV plans, one’s left with the impression that the world is in for a true automotive revolution and that those of us in their middle age right now will actually live to see a world with an almost entirely electric fleet. Alas, carmakers with ambitious EV plans have a vested interest in making such statements. Reality, as usual, tends to be different, and now these ambitious plans are facing a challenge: battery recycling costs.

Today's Electric Car Batteries Will Be Tomorrow's E-Waste Crisis, Scientists Warn. Maddie Stone, Motherboard. Nov. 6, 2019.

Climate Links March 2019 #1

Climate Change Is Here—and It Looks Like Starvation. Ben Ehrenreich, The Nation. Mar. 1, 2019.

But don’t expect to hear about it on the nightly news.

Our planet just set a scary new carbon dioxide record. Eric Holthaus, grist. Mar 6, 2019.

This year’s carbon dioxide level is expected to peak around 415 parts per million in May. 

There hasn’t been this much carbon dioxide in our planet’s atmosphere since before cars started clogging the roads a century ago, before agriculture was developed 10,000 years ago, and before modern humans evolved more than a million years ago. We have reached not only a new phase of civilizational history, but a new phase of our species’ history. 

In recent years, the rise in the planet’s carbon dioxide levels has picked up speed. That’s in line with scientists’ predictions of a planet creeping toward [past?] dangerous and irreversible tipping points, and highlights the dangers of collective foot-dragging on shifting to a carbon-free economy.

Heatwaves sweeping oceans ‘like wildfires’, scientists reveal. Damian Carrington, Guardian. Mar. 4, 2019.

Extreme temperatures destroy kelp, seagrass and corals – with alarming impacts for humanity

Marine heatwaves threaten global biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services. Dan Smale et al, Nature Climate Change. March 4, 2019.

Abstract
The global ocean has warmed substantially over the past century, with far-reaching implications for marine ecosystems1. Concurrent with long-term persistent warming, discrete periods of extreme regional ocean warming (marine heatwaves, MHWs) have increased in frequency2. Here we quantify trends and attributes of MHWs across all ocean basins and examine their biological impacts from species to ecosystems. Multiple regions in the Pacific, Atlantic and Indian Oceans are particularly vulnerable to MHW intensification, due to the co-existence of high levels of biodiversity, a prevalence of species found at their warm range edges or concurrent non-climatic human impacts. The physical attributes of prominent MHWs varied considerably, but all had deleterious impacts across a range of biological processes and taxa, including critical foundation species (corals, seagrasses and kelps). MHWs, which will probably intensify with anthropogenic climate change3, are rapidly emerging as forceful agents of disturbance with the capacity to restructure entire ecosystems and disrupt the provision of ecological goods and services in coming decades.

Resource extraction responsible for half world’s carbon emissions. Jonathan Watts, Guardian. Mar. 12, 2019.

Extraction also causes 80% of biodiversity loss, according to comprehensive UN study

Wallace Smith Broecker, the 'grandfather' of climate science, leaves a final warning for Earth. James Rainey, NBC. Mar. 3, 2019.

Days before his death, Wallace Broecker urged scientists to consider deploying a last-ditch solar shield to stop global warming.

To fear or not to fear? Grist. Mar. 2, 2019.

David Wallace-Wells and Eric Holthaus discuss telling stories about the end of the world, facing climate fears, and finding hope in the face of doomsday studies.

Canada just joined IRENA - and here is why it matters. Jonny Tiernan, CleanTechnica. March 4, 2019.

In January of 2019, Canada officially joined the International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA), becoming the 160th member of the global intergovernmental organization.

Climate Links: December 2018

You Are Stealing Our Future: Greta Thunberg, 15, Condemns the World’s Inaction on Climate Change. Democracy Now!
Dec. 13. 2018.

My name is Greta Thunberg. I am 15 years old, and I’m from Sweden. I speak on behalf of Climate Justice Now! 

Many people say that Sweden is just a small country, and it doesn’t matter what we do. But I’ve learned that you are never too small to make a difference. And if a few children can get headlines all over the world just by not going to school, then imagine what we could all do together if we really wanted to. 

But to do that, we have to speak clearly, no matter how uncomfortable that may be. You only speak of green eternal economic growth because you are too scared of being unpopular. You only talk about moving forward with the same bad ideas that got us into this mess, even when the only sensible thing to do is pull the emergency brake. You are not mature enough to tell it like it is. Even that burden you leave to us children. 

But I don’t care about being popular. I care about climate justice and the living planet. 

Our civilization is being sacrificed for the opportunity of a very small number of people to continue making enormous amounts of money. Our biosphere is being sacrificed so that rich people in countries like mine can live in luxury. It is the sufferings of the many which pay for the luxuries of the few. 

The year 2078, I will celebrate my 75th birthday. If I have children, maybe they will spend that day with me. Maybe they will ask me about you. Maybe they will ask why you didn’t do anything while there still was time to act. You say you love your children above all else, and yet you are stealing their future in front of their very eyes. 

Until you start focusing on what needs to be done, rather than what is politically possible, there is no hope. We cannot solve a crisis without treating it as a crisis. We need to keep the fossil fuels in the ground, and we need to focus on equity. And if solutions within the system are so impossible to find, then maybe we should change the system itself. 

We have not come here to beg world leaders to care. You have ignored us in the past, and you will ignore us again. We have run out of excuses, and we are running out of time. We have come here to let you know that change is coming, whether you like it or not. The real power belongs to the people. Thank you.

“Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago” says Greta Thunberg at UN conference. Anne-Sophie Garrigou, The Beam. Dec. 4, 2018.

Some people say that I should be in school instead. Some people say that I should study to become a climate scientist so that I can ”solve the climate crisis”. But the climate crisis has already been solved. We already have all the facts and solutions. 

And why should I be studying for a future that soon may be no more, when no one is doing anything to save that future? And what is the point of learning facts when the most important facts clearly mean nothing to our society? 

Today we use 100 million barrels of oil every single day. There are no politics to change that. There are no rules to keep that oil in the ground.

So we can’t save the world by playing by the rules. Because the rules have to be changed. 

So we have not come here to beg the world leaders to care for our future. They have ignored us in the past and they will ignore us again. 

We have come here to let them know that change is coming whether they like it or not. 

The people will rise to the challenge. And since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago.

Our house is on fire, and many Albertans want more lighters. CALGARY HERALD. Dec. 29, 2018

'Brutal news': global carbon emissions jump to all-time high in 2018. Damian Carrington, Guardian. Dec. 5, 2018.

Rapid cuts needed to protect billions of people from rising emissions due to increase in use of cars and coal 

Global carbon emissions will jump to a record high in 2018, according to a report, dashing hopes a plateau of recent years would be maintained. It means emissions are heading in the opposite direction to the deep cuts urgently needed, say scientists, to fight climate change.

Global Carbon Budget. Dec. 5, 2018.

Global CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and industry have increased every decade from an average of 3.1±0.2 GtC yr-1 (11.4 GtCO2) in the 1960s to an average of 9.4±0.5 yr-1 during 2008-2017 (34.4 GtCO2). Emissions in 2017 were 9.9±0.5 (36.2 GtCO2) with a share of coal (40%), oil (35%), gas (20%), cement (4%), and flaring (1%). Global emissions in 2018 are projected to increase by more than 2% (+1.8% to +3.7%) after three years of almost no growth, reaching 10.1±0.5 GtC (37.1 GtCO2), a new record high.

Global warming will happen faster than we think. Yangyang Xu, Veerabhadran Ramanathan and David G. Victor, Nature. Dec. 5, 2018.

But the latest IPCC special report underplays another alarming fact: global warming is accelerating. Three trends — rising emissions, declining air pollution and natural climate cycles — will combine over the next 20 years to make climate change faster and more furious than anticipated. In our view, there’s a good chance that we could breach the 1.5 °C level by 2030, not by 2040 as projected in the special report.

The climate-modelling community has not grappled enough with the rapid changes that policymakers care most about, preferring to focus on longer-term trends and equilibria.

... 

Three lines of evidence suggest that global warming will be faster than projected in the recent IPCC special report.

First, greenhouse-gas emissions are still rising. In 2017, industrial carbon dioxide emissions are estimated to have reached about 37 gigatonnes2. This puts them on track with the highest emissions trajectory the IPCC has modelled so far. This dark news means that the next 25 years are poised to warm at a rate of 0.25–0.32 °C per decade3. That is faster than the 0.2 °C per decade that we have experienced since the 2000s, and which the IPCC used in its special report.

Second, governments are cleaning up air pollution faster than the IPCC and most climate modellers have assumed. For example, China reduced sulfur dioxide emissions from its power plants by 7–14% between 2014 and 2016 (ref. 4). Mainstream climate models had expected them to rise. Lower pollution is better for crops and public health5. But aerosols, including sulfates, nitrates and organic compounds, reflect sunlight. This shield of aerosols has kept the planet cooler, possibly by as much as 0.7 °C globally6.

Third, there are signs that the planet might be entering a natural warm phase that could last for a couple of decades. The Pacific Ocean seems to be warming up, in accord with a slow climate cycle known as the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation7. This cycle modulates temperatures over the equatorial Pacific and over North America. Similarly, the mixing of deep and surface waters in the Atlantic Ocean (the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation) looks to have weakened since 2004, on the basis of data from drifting floats that probe the deep ocean8. Without this mixing, more heat will stay in the atmosphere rather than going into the deep oceans, as it has in the past.

These three forces reinforce each other. We estimate that rising greenhouse-gas emissions, along with declines in air pollution, bring forward the estimated date of 1.5 °C of warming

It's too late to brace for impact. Tom Lewis. Dec. 10, 2019.


Cascading regime shifts within and across scales. Juan C. Rocha, Garry Peterson, Örjan Bodin et al, Science. Dec. 21, 2018.

Abstract
Regime shifts are large, abrupt, and persistent critical transitions in the function and structure of ecosystems. Yet, it is unknown how these transitions will interact, whether the occurrence of one will increase the likelihood of another or simply correlate at distant places. We explored two types of cascading effects: Domino effects create one-way dependencies, whereas hidden feedbacks produce two-way interactions. We compare them with the control case of driver sharing, which can induce correlations. Using 30 regime shifts described as networks, we show that 45% of regime shift pairwise combinations present at least one plausible structural interdependence. The likelihood of cascading effects depends on cross-scale interactions but differs for each type. Management of regime shifts should account for potential connections.

Risks of 'domino effect' of tipping points greater than thought, study says. Jonathan Watts, Guardian. Dec. 20, 2018.

Scientists warn policymakers not to ignore links, and stress that ‘every action counts’


Policymakers have severely underestimated the risks of ecological tipping points, according to a study that shows 45% of all potential environmental collapses are interrelated and could amplify one another.

The authors said their paper, published in the journal Science, highlights how overstressed and overlapping natural systems are combining to throw up a growing number of unwelcome surprises.

“The risks are greater than assumed because the interactions are more dynamic,” said Juan Rocha of the Stockholm Resilience Centre. “The important message is to recognise the wickedness of the problem that humanity faces.”

Most Oil Sector Emissions Will Be Exempt From Federal Carbon Pricing: Report. HuffPo.ca. Dec. 10, 2018.

The report said Canada's climate framework does not include policies that adequately address oil and gas industry emissions. Therefore, any emission reductions in the plan are expected to be overwhelmed by emissions from oil and gas production increases. 

Documents obtained under freedom of information requests in Saskatchewan show oil companies advocated for delayed, weakened, and in some cases voluntary methane regulations. 

It also found that thanks to lobbying, oil and gas companies will have an average of 80 per cent of its emissions exempt from federal carbon pricing. 

The report said between now and 2030, oil sands emissions are projected to grow to become 40 per cent of Canada's total emissions.

...

Environmental Defence national program manager Dale Marshall says it is incredibly frustrating that federal and provincial governments keep throwing themselves at the industry with huge subsidies and now a $4.5-billion pipeline purchase, and yet the industry continues to claim it doesn't get any federal support.

Energy Revolution: A Global Outlook. Dr Iain Staffell, Dr Malte Jansen, Imperial College London; and Adam Chase, Eloise Cotton, Chester Lewis, E4tech. Dec. 5, 2018.

The global energy revolution 

As a contribution to COP24, this report informs the debate on decarbonising the global energy system, evaluating how rapidly nations are transforming their energy systems, and what lessons can be learned from the leading countries across five energy sectors. 

It was commissioned by power utility Drax Group, and delivered independently by researchers from Imperial College London and E4tech. 

Clean power 

• Several countries have lowered the carbon content of their electricity by 100 g/kWh over the last decade. The UK is alone in achieving more than double this pace, prompted by strong carbon pricing. 
• China is cleaning up its power sector faster than most of Europe, however several Asian countries are moving towards higher-carbon electricity.
• Germany has added nearly 1 kW of renewable capacity per person over the last decade. Northern Europe leads the way, followed by Japan, the US and China. In absolute terms, China has 2.5 times more renewable capacity than the US. 

Fossil fuels 

• Two-fifths of the world’s electricity comes from coal. The share of coal generation is a key driver for the best and worst performing countries in clean power.
• Coal’s share of electricity generation has fallen by one-fifth in the US and one-sixth in China over the last decade. Denmark and the UK are leading the way. Some major Asian nations are back-sliding.
• Many European citizens pay out $100 per person per year in fossil fuel subsidies, substantially more than in the US or China. These subsidies are growing in more countries than they are falling. 

Electric vehicles 

• In ten countries, more than 1 in 50 new vehicles sold are now electric. China is pushing ahead with nearly 1 in 25 new vehicles being electric and Norway is in a league of its own with 1 in 2 new vehicles now electric, thanks to strong subsidies and wealthy consumers.
• There are now over 4.5 million electric vehicles worldwide. Two thirds of these are battery electric, one third are plug-in hybrids. China and the US together have two-thirds of the world’s electric vehicles and half of the 300,000 charging points. 

Carbon capture and storage 

• Sufficient storage capacity has been identified for global CCS roll-out to meet climate targets, but large-scale CO2 capture only exists in 6 countries.
• Worldwide, 5 kg of CO2 can be captured per person per year. The planned pipeline of CCS facilities will double this, but much greater scale-up is needed as this represents only one-thousandth of the global average person’s carbon footprint of 5 tonnes per year. 

Efficiency 

• Global progress on energy intensity is mixed, as some countries improve efficiency, while others increase consumption as their population become wealthier.
• Residential and transport changes over the last decade are mostly linked to the global recession and technological improvements, rather than behavioural shift.
• BRICS countries consume the most energy per $ of output from industry. This is linked to the composition of their industry sectors (i.e. greater manufacturing and mining activity compared to construction and agriculture).

Pliocene and Eocene provide best analogs for near-future climates. K. D. Burke, et al, PNAS. Dec. 10, 2018.

Significance 

The expected departure of future climates from those experienced in human history challenges efforts to adapt. Possible analogs to climates from deep in Earth’s geological past have been suggested but not formally assessed. We compare climates of the coming decades with climates drawn from six geological and historical periods spanning the past 50 My. Our study suggests that climates like those of the Pliocene will prevail as soon as 2030 CE and persist under climate stabilization scenarios. Unmitigated scenarios of greenhouse gas emissions produce climates like those of the Eocene, which suggests that we are effectively rewinding the climate clock by approximately 50 My, reversing a multimillion year cooling trend in less than two centuries. 

Abstract 

As the world warms due to rising greenhouse gas concentrations, the Earth system moves toward climate states without societal precedent, challenging adaptation. Past Earth system states offer possible model systems for the warming world of the coming decades. These include the climate states of the Early Eocene (ca. 50 Ma), the Mid-Pliocene (3.3–3.0 Ma), the Last Interglacial (129–116 ka), the Mid-Holocene (6 ka), preindustrial (ca. 1850 CE), and the 20th century. Here, we quantitatively assess the similarity of future projected climate states to these six geohistorical benchmarks using simulations from the Hadley Centre Coupled Model Version 3 (HadCM3), the Goddard Institute for Space Studies Model E2-R (GISS), and the Community Climate System Model, Versions 3 and 4 (CCSM) Earth system models. Under the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) emission scenario, by 2030 CE, future climates most closely resemble Mid-Pliocene climates, and by 2150 CE, they most closely resemble Eocene climates. Under RCP4.5, climate stabilizes at Pliocene-like conditions by 2040 CE. Pliocene-like and Eocene-like climates emerge first in continental interiors and then expand outward. Geologically novel climates are uncommon in RCP4.5 (<1%) but reach 8.7% of the globe under RCP8.5, characterized by high temperatures and precipitation. Hence, RCP4.5 is roughly equivalent to stabilizing at Pliocene-like climates, while unmitigated emission trajectories, such as RCP8.5, are similar to reversing millions of years of long-term cooling on the scale of a few human generations. Both the emergence of geologically novel climates and the rapid reversion to Eocene-like climates may be outside the range of evolutionary adaptive capacity.

Welcome to the Eocene, where ice sheets turn into swamps. Eric Holthaus, Grist. Dec. 11, 2018.

The private sector’s climate change risk and adaptation blind spots. Allie Goldstein, Will R. Turner, Jillian Gladstone & David G. Hole,  Nature Climate Change. Dec. 10, 2018.

Abstract

The private sector is already experiencing the impacts of climate change, from increased operational costs to disrupted production. Investors are increasingly asking companies to disclose these risks as the physical consequences of climate change become financially material. In reviewing more than 1,600 corporate adaptation strategies, we find significant blind spots in companies’ assessments of climate change impacts and in their development of strategies for managing them. Adaptation approaches that consider broader climate change risks to supply chains, customers and employees, and that integrate ecosystem-based strategies, could limit the ‘tragedy of the horizon’ characterized by inadequate and too-late action.

Beef-eating 'must fall drastically' as world population grows. Damian Carrington, Guardian. Dec. 5, 2018.

Current food habits will lead to destruction of all forests and catastrophic climate change by 2050, report finds

Creating a Sustainable Food Future. World Resources Institute.

By 2050, nearly 10 billion people will live on the planet. Can we produce enough food sustainably? 

The synthesis report of the World Resources Report: Creating a Sustainable Food Future shows that it is possible – but there is no silver bullet. This report offers a five-course menu of solutions to ensure we can feed everyone without increasing emissions, fueling deforestation or exacerbating poverty. Intensive research and modeling examining the nexus of the food system, economic development, and the environment show why each of the 22 items on the menu is important and quantifies how far each solution can get us. 

Creating a Sustainable Food Future has been produced by World Resources Institute in partnership with the World Bank, UN Environment, UN Development Programme, and the French agricultural research agencies CIRAD and INRA.

You, too, are in denial of climate change. David Wallace-Wells. intelligencer, nymag. Dec. 14, 2018.

You, too, are in denial.

We all are, nearly every single one of us as individuals, even those of us who are following the bad news that suggests “the climate change problem is starting to look too big to solve”; every nation, almost none of them meeting their climate commitments, and most (not just the United States) publicly downplaying the threat; and even many of the alliances and organizations, like the IPCC, endeavoring to solve the crisis. At the moment, negotiations at the organization’s COP24 conference, meant to formalize the commitments made in the Paris accords two years ago, are “a huge mess,” perhaps poised to collapse. Last month, scientists warned that we had only about 12 years to cut global emissions in half and that doing so would require a worldwide mobilization on the scale of that for World War II. The U.N. secretary general has warned that we have only about a year to get started. Instead, on Election Day, voters in deep-blue Washington rejected a modest carbon tax and those in crunchy Colorado rejected a slowdown of oil and gas projects. In France — conservative America’s cartoon of unchecked left-wing-ism — the worst protests in 50 years were provoked by a proposal to increase the gasoline tax. If communities like these won’t take action on climate, who, in the next dozen years, will?

Winter Solstice 2018. George Mobus, Question Everything. Dec. 21, 2018.

What I had thought to do was to remind everyone why our societies, western and eastern, northern and southern alike are failing in providing a meaningful life for all humans without destroying the ecosystem. We are in a no-win scenario. Most people on the planet are either already in poverty or many are headed in that direction with the pace accelerating.  

There are too many of us. Our access to free energy is being strangled. The pollution from our prior use of energy is converting our climate into a nightmare. Water is becoming a serious issue in many places. Climate-forced conflict and migration has become plainly visible. And on and on. 

Over the last three decades I developed a true systems analysis process (which I will publish in my next book) and applied it to the human social system and its subsystems. And I applied it to humanity itself. What I have found is a species embedded in a cultural cocoon that has broken free of the normal bounds for living systems in ecosystems. 

But also, a species that has just recently undergone a transition to what I think is the next stage of evolution - from the great apes to a sapient (or perhaps pre-sapient) but clever one capable of creating and developing more powerful ways to extract material goods from the environment. We are an evolutionary experiment that could go either way. 

One thing I am sure of. The socioeconomic system we currently have is completely unsustainable. But there will have to be some further development in the human brain in order for a species of humans to regroup and have any kind of society at all. 

Meanwhile I have a book recommendation. Tyler Volk's "Quarks to Culture: How We Came to Be" is one of the best systems books I have ever read.

Winter Solstice. Sabine Hossenfelder, Back Reaction.

The clock says 3:30 am. Is that early or late? Wrapped in a blanket I go into the living room. I open the door and step onto the patio. It’s too warm for December. An almost full moon blurs into the clouds. In the distance, the highway hums. 

Somewhere, someone dies. 

For everyone who dies, two people are born. 7.5 billion and counting. 

We came to dominate planet Earth because, compared to other animals, we learned fast and collaborated well. We used resources efficiently. We developed tools to use more resources, and then employed those tools to use even more resources. But no longer. It’s 2018, and we are failing. 

That’s what I think every day when I read the news. We are failing. 

Throughout history, humans improved how to exchange and act on information held by only a few. Speech, writing, politics, economics, social and cultural norms, TV, telephones, the internet. These are all methods of communication. It’s what enabled us to collectively learn and make continuous progress. But now that we have networks connecting billions of people, we have reached our limits. 

Fake news, Russian trolls, shame storms. Some dude’s dick in the wrong place. That’s what we talk about.

And buried below the viral videos and memes there’s the information that was not where it was supposed to be. 

Hurricane Katrina? The problem was known. The 2008 financial crisis? The problem was known. That Icelandic volcano whose ashes, in 2010, grounded flight traffic? Utterly unsurprising. Iceland has active volcanoes. Sometimes the wind blows South-East. Btw, it will happen again. And California is due for a tsunami. The problems are known.  

But that’s not how it will end. 

20 years ago I had a car accident. I was on a busy freeway. It was raining heavily and the driver in front of me suddenly braked. Only later did I learn someone had cut his way. I hit the brakes. And then I watched a pair of red lights coming closer.  

They say time slows if you fear for your life. It does. 

I came to a stop one inch before slamming into the other car. I breathed out. Then a heavy BMW slammed into my back.  

Human civilization will go like that. If we don’t keep moving, problems now behind us will slam into our back. 

Climate change, environmental pollution, antibiotic resistance, the persistent risk of nuclear war, for just to mention a few – you know the list. We will have to deal with those sooner or later. Not now. Oh, no. Not us, not now, not here. But our children. Or their children. If we stop learning, if we stop improving our technologies, it’ll catch up with them, sooner or later.  

Having to deal with long-postponed problems will eat up resources. Those resources, then, will not be available for further technological development, which will create further problems, which will eat up more resources. 

Modern technologies will become increasingly expensive until most people no longer can afford them. 

Infrastructures will crumble. Education will decay. It’s a downward spiral. A long, unpreventable and disease-ridden, regress.  

Those artificial intelligences you were banking on? Not going to happen. All the money in the world will not lead to scientific breakthroughs if we don’t have sufficiently many people with the sufficient education. 

Who is to blame? No one, really. We are just too stupid to organize our living together on a global scale. We will not make it to the next level of evolutionary development. We don’t have the mental faculties. We do not comprehend. We do not act because we cannot. We don’t know how. We will fail and, maybe, in a million years or so, another species will try again.

Are we there yet?