false hope revisited

This makes me angry... exasperated...

The UK government commissioned a report on the economics of climate change. It was released on Monday.

The headlines were as such:

Climate change fight 'can't wait'

Warming 'may cause economic chaos'

British Report Warns Global Warming Could Cripple World Economy

£3.68 trillion: The price of failing to act on climate change

Inaction spells a world of floods, drought and economic disaster

This last one makes my point...

It should be re-worded to read:

Action as suggested by Stern spells a world of floods, drought and ecological disaster

As Mark Lynas points out succinctly, aiming for 550ppm carbon dioxide equivalent is basically condemning 50% of life on the planet to extinction.

But instead we see things like:

"A report by economist Sir Nicholas Stern suggests that global warming could shrink the global economy by 20%.

"But taking action now would cost just 1% of global gross domestic product, the 700-page study says."

It's equivalent to reading James Lovelock's book and running the headline "Nuclear power will save civilization" rather than "Less than one billion humans will be alive by 2100" or "More than five billion humans will starve to death".

They're leaving out the REAL news. The difficult news. They seem to think we need false hope of Business As Usual, even though the report clearly spells out that BAU is suicidal.

It's irresponsible to mislead with false hope. And it's irresponsible for them to ignore our emotions when they tell it to us straight.