Jim Hansen, scientist and economist
June 6th, 2008 by Jim JustHere’s Jim Hansen’s latest PowerPoint presentation, “Climate Threat to the Planet: Implications for Energy Policy”, given on June 3 at the PACON 2008 conference in Hawaii.
Hansen’s bottom line: we’ve got to stop the rise in atmospheric CO2 and then get on a track to get it back down to 350 ppm if we’re to avoid “tipping points” beyond which temperatures will keep rising without any additional forcing – and rising to levels that will result in an end to the world as we know it.
Getting back down to 350 ppm is technically feasible – but not if we continue business as usual. What’s critical is a quick phase-out of coal (without sequestration, which has yet to be proved feasible).
Hansen argues for a stiff carbon tax with a 100% dividend – all of the proceeds would be returned directly to taxpayers. This element of his argument seems to me to be not only unrelated to any underlying science, but driven by the anti-tax, anti-government, free market ideology that is responsible for our predicament in the first place.
Large investments in our communities and in public infrastructure will be necessary to recreate communities that can function with lower levels of energy from renewable sources while enabling people to live more equitable, more satisfying, and more fulfilling lives.
Asserting that the “free market” can allocate resources more wisely than people through democratic institutions and community decision making isn’t science. It’s nothing more than blind faith.
Joseph Romm at his blog Climate Progress has provided a link to a pdf version of the presentation, available here.