All else being equal, we wouldn't want to change global temperatures much, since we have created cities, farms, and nature areas around current temperatures.
But all else isn't equal. Emissions are a by-product of modern energy, which reduced extreme poverty from >90% to <10%
If we had to choose, we'd rather the world got warmer than cooler, since more people die of cold than heat, and because warmer temperatures make more rather than less land available for farming, but too much heat creates new risks.
To put 2.5-3°C in perspective, Yale economist William Nordhaus, who won the Nobel Prize in 2018, calculates that the "optimum" temperature rise, when accounting for the costs & benefits of both climate change & energy use, would be between 3.5°C and 4°C
I am not wild about cost-benefit analyses because a lot of assumptions are buried within them. I prefer instead to think about energy & environmental progress in the context of progress from matter-dense (carbon-dense) fuels to energy-dense (hydrogen-dense) fuels.
Nonetheless, the Nordhaus cost-benefit model is helpful because it reminds us that we can't consider "how bad" certain temp increases are outside the context of considering "how good" fossil fuels have been, not just for lifting people out of poverty but also reducing wood use.
I recently noted that emissions are declining, and there is no longer a serious risk of a significant rise in temperatures.
The word "significant" was imprecise and triggered confusion, and so I revised the sentence to be more precise.
The meaning of what I wrote is the same. The news on climate change is overwhelmingly good. Human resilience to weather is higher than ever. Emissions may rise again but will peak & decline soon as we continue the transition to natural gas & nuclear
Many progressives insist police don't prevent crime, but a large body of research, and rising crime amidst widespread police shortages, offer strong proof that they do.
We should be more skeptical of the claims made by criminal justice reformers
Clarence and Jacqueline Avant may not be household names but they are giants of black American music and philanthropy. Clarence is the former chairman of Motown Records, and responsible for the careers of some of America’s greatest African American musicians.
Jacqueline, 81, was president of Neighbors for Watts, an early child care organization, and a much-loved philanthropist. Netflix last year produced a film about Clarence and in October he was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the love of his life at his side
Many say climate change threatens economies but a major new report by the New York Fed says the impact of extreme weather events has been & will remain trivial
The real threat, the authors warn, comes not from climate change, but from climate policy
Over the last two years, some of the world’s most powerful and influential bankers and investors have argued that climate change poses a grave threat to financial markets and that nations must switch urgently from using fossil fuels to using renewables.
In 2019, the Fed Reserve Bank of SF warned climate change could cause banks to stop lending, towns to lose tax revenue, & home values to decline.
Last year, 36 fund managers representing $1 trillion in assets said climate “poses a systemic threat to financial markets & economy”
It’s fine to disagree with me but I’m raising a serious question: is the plan here to just maintain the fentanyl & meth addictions of people made jobless, family-less, and homeless by their addiction? If that’s the goal be honest about & don’t claim Europe did the same, it didn’t
In Netherlands & Portugal they pressure homeless street addicts to quit. They shut down the open drug scenes. They required people to live in shelters, not the street. Housing is earned. There’s less than 150 people the Dutch govt let’s shoot heroin bc methadone didn’t work.
Where the New York experiment appears to be headed is to have thousands of people administered fentanyl, heroin, meth, whatever, with no regard for getting people off those debilitating drugs so they can re-unite with families, work, and be independent, not chemically controlled
We considered civil disobedience and decided against it because SF is experiencing an acute police officer shortage, which is contributing to rising crime. Moreover, there is greater awareness of the urgency of the problem. And so our protest will focus on demanding action.
Progressives have long claimed homelessness is just a result of poverty, but a growing number of insiders are admitting that the unsheltered homeless live in tents to support their addiction, and that so-called "homeless advocates" are making the problem worse
In my new book, San Fransicko, I describe why progressives create and defend what European researchers call “open drug scenes,” which are places in cities where drug dealers and buyers meet, and many addicts live in tents.
Progressives call these scenes “homeless encampments,” and not only defend them but have encouraged their growth, which is why the homeless population in California grew 31 percent since 2000. This was mostly a West Coast phenomenon until recently.
Not that long ago progressive cities like Seattle and San Francisco held conferences promoting themselves, smugly, as models of “livable, walkable cities.” Now, their downtown stores are boarded up and open drug scenes have taken over the sidewalks