TIRACHOSII: This really isn’t about climate change or science, is it. Maybe that’s why it’s in the New Scientist, because it’s not about science
Mark Carney interview: Rethink capitalism to solve the climate crisis
The ex-governor of the Bank of England is now a key figure in international climate action talks. Progress requires radically reimagining how financial markets value nature, he says
MARK CARNEY made his name as a sound steward of money. He entered the public eye in 2008 when he was appointed governor of the Bank of Canada at the age of just 42, and his swift and decisive interventions there are credited with helping the country weather the storm of the global financial crisis better than any other rich nation. From 2011 to 2018, he was chair of the global Financial Stability Board, established in the wake of that crisis to strengthen oversight of the world’s banks and try to avoid a repeat. In 2013, Carney was appointed governor of the Bank of England, the first non-Briton to oversee the UK’s central bank since it was established in 1694.
So, he got his money, and damned sure isn’t giving up his big carbon footprint lifestyle. Anyhow
Since stepping down from the governorship in 2020, he has turned his focus to the tricky interface of economics and the environment. He has returned to the private sector as a vice chair and head of impact investing at Canada-based firm Brookfield Asset Management – a role that recently garnered some controversy for that firm’s definition of its net-zero climate investments. Carney is also the UN special envoy for climate action and the finance advisor for the UK government’s presidency of the UN’s COP26 climate change conference, a crucial point for the world’s climate plans, scheduled to take place this November in Glasgow. He has just written a book called Value(s): Building a better world for all about how we can and must rework capitalism to help solve the crises we face.
I think you have the idea, which is good, because the rest is behind a real paywall, one which cannot be gotten around by using something like Pocket.com (it’s a great workaround for most paywalls, like NY Times, Washington Post, Twitchy, LA Times, and more. Not WSJ and some others). Why do Warmists always want to change capitalism, especially when they’ve already made their money with it? Would be nice to see how far Carney goes in describing exactly how he wants to change it. Warmists usually avoid those details.
Along the lines of this isn’t about science
Scientists need to face both facts and feelings when dealing with the climate crisis
As a scientist, I was trained to be calm, rational, and objective, to focus on the facts, supporting my claims with evidence and showing my reasoning to colleagues to tear apart in peer review. I was trained to use my brain but not my heart; to report methods and statistics and findings but not how I felt about them. In graduate school, I was surrounded by brilliant, serious men who spoke in even, measured tones about the loss of California snowpack and crop yields; I tried to do the same.
My dispassionate training has not prepared me for the increasingly frequent emotional crises of climate change. What do I tell the student who chokes up in my office when she reads that 90% of the seagrasses she’s trying to design policies to protect are slated to be killed by warming before she retires? In such cases, facts are cold comfort. The skill I’ve had to cultivate on my own is to find the appropriate bedside manner as a doctor to a feverish planet; to try to go beyond probabilities and scenarios, to acknowledge what is important and grieve for what is being lost.
Only in the most recent decade of my life have I realised that feelings, manifested as physical sensations in the body such as my stomach clenching or my heart lifting, have their own wisdom. I don’t have to react to these feelings in any dramatic way if I don’t want to; all I have to do is make eye contact, wave, and not run away. Like all feelings, sadness is valid; it need not dictate my actions singlehandedly, but it deserves acknowledgment.
Science doesn’t care about your feelings.
Elsewhere
RI House approves climate change bill; goal is net-zero emissions by 2050
After a lengthy debate, Rhode Island House lawmakers on Tuesday night approved legislation that calls for reducing the state’s greenhouse-gas emissions and strengthening its clean-energy policies.
The Act on Climate bill, sponsored by Rep. Lauren Carson, builds upon the Resilient Rhode Island Act of 2014 by toughening emission reduction targets. Supporters say it also adds accountability to make sure the state’s emission goals are met by 2050.
Why almost 30 years from now? If they care they’d implement immediately, and give up their own use of fossil fuels.
Capitalism is not going away, being the engine of both production and widespread wealth. But clearly unlimited capitalism can be improved. Capitalism is predicated on there being economic winners and losers and generates a number of “negative externalities” that a compassionate/responsible nation must consider. – One: What does a compassionate society do about the those that lose at capitalism? Do we toss them aside as worthless? Two: Who should pay for pollution associated with money-making? We’re better now at restraining frank pollution from dumping pollutants into the air and water but haven’t figured out how to constrain CO2 emissions.
Conservatives don’t “believe” in restrictions on CO2 emissions. They claim CO2 is harmless or even beneficial, contrary to evidence.
It is beneficial, or harmless. There’s evidence for that. No evidence it’s harmful other computer models