Copenhagen Failed, Mexico is Already Doomed - What's Next?

An unsurprising but still deeply depressing article from the Guardian observes that not only was Copenhagen, billed as "the last, best hope for change" a dismal failure (duh) but that Mexico City is already a dismal failure.

Dozens of politicians, diplomats, economists, scientists and campaigners contacted by the Guardian agreed that while a global, legally binding treaty remains by far the best way to prevent global warming wreaking havoc on our civilisation, the chances of that treaty being achieved in 2010 are almost nil.

The energy has gone out of the negotiations, said some, with the momentum that drew well over 100 global leaders to the Danish capital in search of a deal now lost. The UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which runs the negotiations has drifted into a procedural vacuum and its head, Yvo de Boer, has lost all credibility, said others.

The list of problems cited was long: the US political machine is unlikely to pass the climate laws other countries want as proof of intent; the willingness of China and India, the new climate change superpowers, to compromise is unclear; the erstwhile climate change leader, the European Union is failing to lead. And all the while, what climate secretary Ed Miliband yesterday called the "siren voices" of climate sceptics sing more loudly, encouraged by leaked emails and dodgy details in important reports.

Simon Retallack, head of climate change at the Institute for Public Policy Research, reflected the thoughts of many: "We need to be honest and recognise that the national political conditions in the countries that matter most on climate change just weren't conducive to a deal in Copenhagen and if anything they have become worse since."

The truth is that short term national interest is primary in every nation's agenda. While all nations have an interest, in the long term, in preventing climate change, none of them have an interest in bearing the costs of dealing with climate change - and the fact is, those costs are substantial. And herein lies the problem - because most nations, and indeed, many people, recognize this to be true. The lie accepted by almost all climate thinkers has been that the shift to more renewable energies and green jobs will be a happy thing, fueling a new economic growth. This story has been told over and over again, but its falsity can be seen in the fact that no nation seems to want to take part in this remarkable new economic opportunity.

The truth is this - almost analysis that estimates that we can make money and not take an enormous hit by addressing climate change fudges the numbers - the begin from old political targets like 450ppm or even 550ppm, rather than the ones supported by contemporary science. They then postulate a world that is not enduring an economic crisis (counterfactual) and a whole lot of optimistic scenarios. Yale, for example, has a friendly program that will show you how we get richer the more emissions we regulate. The problem, of course, is that it isn't true - the assumptions that underly the program are just false. Given that the aggregate of the evidence is that climate change is proceeding more quickly, rather than less than expected, the odds are that the economic cost is higher even that we would expect if we did an honest analysis today.

Almost no one (James Hansen and George Monbiot are useful exceptions) wants to admit the blunt truth - that dealing with climate change will cost us, and cost us big time. It will require sacrifice on a tremendous scale. And IMHO, climate activists who refused to acknowledge this, who fudged the numbers to promise an economic benefit that no one really believes in did more harm than good. I understand the attraction of the politically palatable - I really do. But when the politically palatable solution is unviable, the only solution is to pave the way for the politically unpalatable. It was always tremendously unlikely that nations would work together when told they had to make tremendous sacrifices until some crisis was already present - but setting the stage for that reality couldn't have produced fewer results than this did.

For simple honesty's sake, it is time to abandon the unadulterated bullshit that we can get rich mitigating climate change - dramatic reductions in emissions, if ever undertaken, will hurt the economy. The only argument for making them is that it will hurt the economy vastly more to edure the realities of climate change - and odds are, that's what we're going to do.

Short of praying for volcanic activity to mitigate the harm of climate change, the best options are these. First, tell the truth, even when it sucks. Second, at least start paving the way for an ethic of sacrifice, so that people who are eventually forced by either events or the sudden arrival of new political realities - or most likely, both - actually have had a little time to prepare and are not wholly betrayed by the realization that this will cost us. Third, since the international political sphere has failed us, we've got to stop kidding ourselves. I find it desperately unlikely that grassroots response will transform our society - but it is demonstrably not much less effective than international response. At least get the fuck off the planes and go home, turn down the heat and plant the damned trees.

Sharon

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Why will it hurt the economy "vastly more to endure the realities of climate change"? This statement may be true but it is the real sticking point that no one has ever convincingly shown. Would the best policy be to accept the 30000+ year bump and associated changes. I have seen no report or such that compares in any sensible way the real costs vs benefits.

Personally I am assuming we will be off the top end of the IPCC scale for carbon in the atmosphere. There will be millions of refugees from the Maldives, Bangladesh, Florida and elsewhere. But what else is new?

I'm sure this question is going to be frustrating to people who know way more about this then me. (First, I garden profusely, I ride my bike to work when it is warm enough, I probably don't do enough but I'm not a climate change denialist.) But I have read that increased CO2 is making plants more drought resistant (reduced tanspiration due to less need to open stomata for CO2 exchange). Rainfall patterns may go to increased extremes, but many areas will receive additional rainfall and higher latitudes may have increased growing season. I'm not saying that climate change will be all good by any means, sea level rise for instance would be devastating, I guess, but I just wish the argument could get past whether climate change or increasing CO2 are happening (because, duh) and more work could be done to determine the repercussions, or to popularize that work so I could read it.

In response to Jason - CO2 is rarely the limiting factor in plant growth. There's been a lot of work on this. The bottom line is that higher CO2 levels will make it easier to grow weeds, but not food. So people will be hungrier, but they'll care less. :-)

187 nations have ratified the Kyoto Protocol to date, yet carbon emissions have increased 37% worldwide since 1990. Only a handful of ex-Soviet states have managed to reduce carbon emissions during this time and one can be sure that this reduction was anything but voluntary. This being the case, even "success" in the form of "a global, legally binding treaty" coming out of Copenhagen or out of Mexico City later this year would make not one bit of difference. It would be ignored just like Kyoto has been. It's all posturing on the part of politicians who have no intention of jeopardizing the GDPs of their respective nations by implementing meaningful climate change mitigation. The oil will go first, then the natural gas, then the coal, then all the wood & plastics will be burnt. Why not be honest, then, and forget about any kind of carbon emission reduction or stabilization treaty? I guess because diplomats enjoy traveling to exotic cities where they can avail themselves of hookers, of which both Copenhagen & Mexico City are in no short supply.

By darwinsdog (not verified) on 02 Feb 2010 #permalink

I've come to suspect that the best thing that could happen would be for the North Atlantic Conveyor to shut down soon.

That's so not a happy thought on so many levels.

By D. C. Sessions (not verified) on 02 Feb 2010 #permalink

Just in case you didn't know (which seems hard to believe truth be told, making me hesitant to post), the illustrious journalist Gwynne Dyer is now more or less convinced that climate geoengineering is inevitable. I'd say that while economic collapse might make it a bit more difficult, the technology is cheap enough that it won't stop everyone from finding a way to make it happen.

Mr. Dyer's reporting on delaying tactics:
http://gwynnedyer.com/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20Time%20for…

and assessment of where we're at now:
http://gwynnedyer.com/articles/Gwynne%20Dyer%20article_%20%20Climategat…

Nice, Sharon. Here is what I am thinking...

It does not make sense to me that mitigating all these things would be uneconomical in the old fashioned, real sense of the word. If a person discovers how to heat their house with less wood and less work, everybody benefits: earth, humans, all.

Now in the economy of job-creation (TM), hysterical hucksterism, and infinte growth, well that economy will suffer when people do anything -- anything at all -- that reduces that growth. But this economy is not an economy at all. It is simply plunder.

So... that brings me to my recommendation: pay attention to the real economy. That's where survival lies, if it lies anywhere at all. :-)

I give Al Gore a lot of credit for putting himself out there with his movie, but in many ways, he set the tone for the politically correct stance that was delusional. I remember watching at the end of it his chart and list of things we can do and being totally disappointed. Once again nobody will say the hard truth. You said the word sacrifice but no one else will say it.
Karen

"....get the fuck off the planes and go home, turn down the heat and plant the damned trees."

I can do that!

By Rosalie in Missouri (not verified) on 02 Feb 2010 #permalink

What is so hard for me to comprehend is this: Don't these folks have chilren and/or grandchildren? Do they want them to have any kind of quality of life? Don't they have any sense of responsibility to be good stewards of the earth? Don't they feel any sense of responsibility to repair what we humans have damaged or at least stop the bleeding? In my humble opinion it just all boils down to very simplistic values and responsibilities. So obviously, this is not that kind of crowd - So - Forget the values and responsibilities for a minute, how about the fact that there are also very dangerous consequences to the future of the human race? So what planet do they live on? It does appear that a grassroots campaign may be the only real hope. But also, I can't stress enough how each of us must live as substainably as we can. Our examples will give others pause to reflect and think about their use of resources and relationship with the earth. Thank you Sharon. Blogs like yours, give some of us hope just to know there are other reasonable, caring voices out there.

I hate to say this, but I am dismally afraid that all these summits and attempts at binding treaties are only so much Kabuki theatre in any case.

Sure, okay, of course, all nations should publicly commit to reduction targets....

I'm sorry I don't have specifics right now, but a few years ago I listened to an interview on NPR with the author of a book about historical resource extraction and collapse... this very articulate author said he was not able to find a single example (to date) of a society choosing to cease exploitation of a resource before it waned to below the point of economic extinction. In other words, we, as a species, have never yet let a single fish live or tree stand if it could make us money.

That's almost too depressing to contemplate- but can we ignore it? If in fact it is our nature to overextend ourselves to the point of extinction - hadn't we better admit it and start plotting methods of overcoming that nature?

Kabuki theater is right.

And you know what? The Kabuki players will go home if folks stop watching...

Sharon,

I know it is scant consolation, but it seems likely that Peak Oil will involuntarily accomplish what Copenhagen wanted to do - reduce oil and coal consumption. Everyone that you help prep for Peak Oil - will be reducing their carbon footprint. And that isn't a bad way to carry forward.

Blessed be.

@ Jason,

I figure in relationships, that all change is measured in pain. No matter what the benefit, the amount of change is measured in discomfort - loss, disorientation, yearning for what you used to know, used to depend on. It doesn't seem that lifestyles are any different.

While a scientific programmer I moved around a bit, and was stationed in several places while in the US Navy. My experience is that it takes two years before you start to really learn a new city or place. We know, for instance, that almost every experiences depression to some extent when changing jobs, no matter whether the job is a promotion or step down. Sharon, I think, commented on increased suicides after Russia's collapse.

It is only realistic to think that any significant change will be uncomfortable. Now please excuse me. I need to put on another sweater since I turned the thermostat down. And don't ask about showers since I turned off the water heater. ;-)

Vera has made a great point. We need to start playing on an entirely different field. The bureaucrats will not be the ones to solve this. I find it hard to imagine but I have to believe that a new paradigm will emerge (hopefully non-violently) that will provide the means to begin to stop the madness and usher in a time of healing and peace. It's time for everyone to wake up, we've been pushing the snooze button for hours...

MarkK - Sir Nicholas Stern's "Stern Report" is the gold standard at this point for economic costs. It isn't perfect - it also uses older numbers. But it does make clear the tremendous costs of climate change - the estimate is that in an unchecked scenario 20% of world GDP will be need to mitigate chronic, overwhelming natural disasters - drought, famine, flood, refugees, etc...

Jason - plants seem to be even more sensitive to temperature and water shifts than they are to CO2 - one estimate suggests that rice (which feeds half the planet) yields will drop by as much as 15% per 1 degree of temperature rise. The net picture for climate change and food is the destruction of a lot of the world's best non-irrigated grainland, all the irrigated grainland (only 17% of the land area but they produce 30% of the food) and a disproportionate shift from areas already food stressed to areas that aren't - ie, Canada gets more grainland but doesn't need it, Africa gets totally hosed. So no, nothing good here, I fear.

Calvin - I'm a geoengineering skeptic - don't get me wrong, I don't doubt it will be tried. My concern is that just as all of our most intractable problems (global warming, peak oil, our economic crisis) are all symptoms of things we did to mitigate older problems, I have real doubts that the unintended consequences of geoengineering won't be a whole lot worse.

Sharon

If we are already able to predict that geoengineering will keep white people's habitat nicer while inducing drought that will cause starvation in West Africa, that wouldn't be an unintended consequence. It would be an intended consequence, deliberate mass murder. If we start down that road, the best hope for the rest of the world will be if the Chinese have the courage to launch a full-scale nuclear war. Sooner or later they would be faced with a choice of fighting us or dying, and fighting sooner would leave them in a better position.

@aimee: I don't know whether you were thinking of Jared Diamond's Collapse or some other book on that general topic, but Diamond did name some counterexamples. The reforestation of Japan under the Tokugawa shoguns. The elimination of cattle from Iceland, which allowed the Icelanders to survive while the Greenland Norse, who kept their cattle, died out. The protection of forests in the Dominican Republic under Trujillo and Balaguer, which prevented the country from turning into an economic basket case as Haiti (which occupies the other third of that island) did. One of the Polynesian islands (I don't recall which one) got rid of pigs once they realized it was that or die out.

Unfortunately, at least three of those four counterexamples were imposed from the top down in societies where top-down implementation was possible. Among leading greenhouse gas emitting countries today, only China could impose a top-down solution, and their present leaders do not seem inclined to do so.

By Eric Lund (not verified) on 03 Feb 2010 #permalink

In regards to the failure of the international political sphere: I happened to be at the COP-15 in Copenhagen, and was actually impressed at the sensible things a lot of people inside the Bella Center were saying. The intelligent comments just don't get much press; I've noticed the same thing when at testimonies on Capitol Hill. There are a lot of compassionate, intelligent people in these circles, but they need the support of civil society to get anywhere. We had 100,000 march here in Copenhagen, but it's not anywhere near enough: people, especially Americans, need to take to the streets. For that we need 1) media reform; 2) climate change and climate justice to be framed as a moral issue, and involvement of religious communities; 3) a new sense of ownership of and participation in the political process-- a sense that participation is even possible; 4) probably a lot more stuff.

But political involvement is our only hope, as I see it: getting the fuck off the planes, turning the heat down, and planting trees will not be enough, because individual consumption isn't the only issue. Industrial production, shipping, the defense industry, etc: all these will outweigh the brave & valiant North Americans who are choosing to power down. These must be regulated, and government is the only actor who can force regulation, and government won't do that unless civil society absolutely demands it. It's not easy to mobilize politically in a culture of individuals who are disenchanted by politics, but what other choice is there?

Regarding peak oil: George Monbiot did some number-crunching from some papers published in Nature last April, and figures "that we can use a maximum of 60% of current reserves of coal, oil and gas if the average global temperature is not to rise by more than two degrees." In other words, climate change will become devastating before oil peaks.

@Susan(10): My former roommate is one of those people. She has chosen to not have children (for other reasons), but dotes on her nephew. She very much wants him to have a wonderful future, and therefore cannot believe in the predictions that the future will be as awful as some of us are suggesting. She told me once that my climate/oil/economic expectations were too depressing, that if she believed me she would be paralyzed by her inability to prevent such catastrophes. Therefore, she chooses to believe that such catastrophes will not come about.

I think this reaction is, and is going to continue, to get stronger as the situation appears to worsen.

I am reminded of Sharon's story about Eric's grandparents as children, and the rumors of what was happening to Jews, and the difficult decisions to put their children on the Kindertrains. So few people alive now remember those days, and those days were so horrible that many did not talk about them afterwards. These are only things we read about in books, or hear about third (or fourth) hand, giving them similar impacts as tales of Paul Bunyan or Baba Yaga.

Our current culture lives in optimism that things (*any* things) can't possibly get that bad, that such a sacrifice isn't necessary. After all, we *won* WWII! And decades (centuries?) from now, people will look back and wonder how we couldn't see what was happening, and how we didn't do something, anything, to prevent it.

Another analogy - how many trees do we have left on our modern day Easter Island?

By curiousalexa (not verified) on 03 Feb 2010 #permalink

curiousalexa - There may also be difficult decisions for those who suspect that their ingroup is about to be the perpetrator rather than the victim of atrocities (as the U.S. would be in the geoengineering scenario). More than a few people have remarked that America now resembles Weimar Germany in the 1930s, and the ultraright has many of our countrymen so sunk in ignorance and rage that they openly fantasize online about torture and mass murder of outsiders. What if we go over the edge altogether? People used to say, "I love my country but fear my government"; well, increasingly, I fear my country. But we have family here, and no prospect of employment anywhere else. How much can reasonably be expected of an average sane person when the rest of the herd goes crazy?

ooh, Dewey, you have a really good point! That's something I hadn't realized, and I thank you for pointing it out. I love the discussions and perspectives we have here!

By curiousalexa (not verified) on 03 Feb 2010 #permalink

Allow me to disagree with a number of points in your post.

First, I don't think the political problems in adopting a better energy policy are due to people discovering that they will have to pay a huge premium on energy. How could they, since it has never been tried, at least in the U.S.? The only places where people have seen (small) increases in electricity bills are countries like Germany and Spain, and these are among the countries with the greatest support for renewable energy.

Secondly, I would also question the claim that we have been promised that cutting CO2 would make us richer. Most opinions I have seen have been that reducing CO2 would cost money but that it would be fairly limited.

The claim is more that there will be a boost in some industries and that this would translate into public support when a lot of people have a stake in renewable energy (including energy efficiency). Of course, there will also be losers, especially the existing energy companies, and they have been very active in the denial industry.

Third, is it really true that it will be so astronomically expensive to change to a non-fossil-fuel economy? The mindless way we use energy now means that probably the first 20% reduction would actually save money. Compact flourescent lamps have a payback time of about 6 months. I don't have precise numbers for house insulation, but especially for new construction, the payback time must be very short. Buying a fuel-efficient car of a realistic size instead of the armoured personnel carrier you mistakenly think you need will save you money when you buy it AND when you drive it.

In Europe, wind electricity is now cheaper than that from gas-powered stations. And unlike fossil fuels, prices are still coming down. That is probably the reason why new wind power installations grew by 20% in Europe in 2009, in the middle of the crisis. This new capacity will produce nearly 1% of Europe's electricity needs in the next 15-20 years, at a price of about 0.2% of the GDP in 2009. We need to do a lot more, but it's not unfeasible.

Tomhuld, but look at your numbers - wow, with all that exponential growth, wind will produce - woah...1% of Europe's need. Don't get me wrong, I'm pleased about that - but the scope of what's needed is quite vast. The Hirsch Report, commissioned by the US DOE from 2005, for example, imagined that you could convert over the US's entire energy needs in 20 years - if you did nothing else. That is, a project whose scale was on the order of WWII, with the entire nation's production devoted to that one goal. Moreover, at this point, because of limitations in battery storage, the fossil fueled supplemental capacity for most renewables is close to 60% - that is, it takes 3/5 of a coal or diesel or other fossil energy plant to compensate for the intermittency problems associated with renewables.

Given the political road block, the need to make substantial reductions within the next few years and the economics costs, I think it is unlikely to imagine we will make a renewable transition rapidly. It isn't impossible - and neither is it probable. I've also argued (George Monbiot wrote a column about this argument, and while he disagreed with me in some respects, he admitted this is possibly actually) that the actual renewable build-out might push us past a tipping point - that is, we're sufficiently close to the critical margin that engaging in a massive scale industrial build out might actually have the opposite result - long term reduction in emissions, but too late.

I agree with you that the people are only partly worried about the cost of energy - but I think our leadership is pretty deeply worried about it. As for the argument about cost - that's been used more or less constantly in the literature I've seen, and I flatter myself that I've seen a lot of the literature. Carl Pope of the Sierra Club, for example, recently made precisely the argument that Bill McKibben was an alarmist for daring to imply that sacrifice of any kind would be required for addressing climate change, and when he was criticized for it, argued that we simply have no choice but to say that it will not hurt the economy.

Sharon

Holly Jean - I have no doubt that much of what was being said there was very thoughtful and intelligent. Unfortunately, it isn't a matter of just what's published by the media, but also what intelligent thoughts actually occur. Some years ago, I was invited to brief a significant public figure on the national scale during a major election about peak energy (I signed an agreement not to identify this person or discuss it). You know who this person is and so does everyone else. This person was incredibly thoughtful and articulate in private, and I was deeply impressed by this person and their advisor's seriousness and commitment - in private. In public, this person has made political moves that were deeply opposed to an agenda this person supports, and according to their staff, this was necessary. I don't doubt it - I really don't. But the truth is that intelligence and wisdom in private, in conversation, at good moments are insufficient. You can know something, and not be able to do anything about it, or not really KNOW it.

I agree with you about many of the things that are needed - but we're not going to get them - people aren't going to take the streets to say "raise my electric bill, I've been unemployed for five months and my kids have no insurance, but definitely, shut down those cheap coal plants..." At some point they may - but by then the window for effective action will largely be shut. I support and encourage those movements, in the same way that I support and encourage a lot of things that are doomed to failure - but I don't think it worth lying. The reality is that some activists will still be saying "Can we fix it? Yes we can!" until long after it is past fixing. I understand the value and necessity of this - but I think along with lying about the economic costs, lying about the viability of solutions, the project of professional optimism (in which I also engage) is failing.

I agree that personal actions are insufficient - but then, so has all political action up to this point been. Even the most drastic proposals on the table are not sufficient. So we could hardly do worse with a grassroots movement - moreover, I think demeans private action to imply that it has no effect on defense and industrial production. If you don't buy shit, industrial production goes down. If you don't make much, tax revenues for spending on colonizing other nations go down. Just as the political sphere is an imperfect fulcrum, so is the private one - but it does no one any good to understate the possibilities.

As for Monbiot and peak oil, I remember that article generally, but not well enough to recall if it is he or you who are misunderstanding what I would argue is the relationship of peak oil to climate change ;-). No, we can't rely on peak oil to save us from climate change in the sense of magically cutting off our stash of fossil fuels. For all his faults, Kjell Aleklett has already proven that. What we can do is watch peak oil and the energy price volatility that are likely to accompany it make the process of adapting to climate change that much harder - all the assumptions about the costs of a major energy shift have assumed stable and reasonably cheap fossil energies will be widely available - but price fluctuations are the likely outcome of being on the leading edge of the peak. Across the board, if you don't know whether the concrete construction for a major solar project will cost 15 billion or 22 billion because of energy costs, or whether you are a homeowner who never knows what her winter heating bill will be, and thus can't afford to invest some of her money in insulation - because it won't totally offset her heating costs, and she may need that money to keep warm - at every step an oil peak makes things more difficult. It is a myth that peak oil's real impact is mostly going to be about disappearing oil.

Sharon

Sharon: " First, tell the truth, even when it sucks."

I find I'm on the "situational" side there. It really depends who is listening.

There are many for whom the sucky truth is an instant turn off- you've lost them; they are not listening to you now, and will never listen to you again.

I don't really see the point there.

If your goal is to get more people to "see the light" - turning them off forever is not useful. It may, actually, be just a little self righteous to "always tell the truth". It can feel good inside; but what are the actual results?

I'm very much of the "herd" concept of human civilization, as most lucidly propounded by Stoneleigh, over on TAE.

If your goal is to move the herd- all history will tell you that rational discourse is of no utility whatsoever; other forces prevail. Show me please one historical disagreement where suddenly a voice has risen and explained it all- whereupon all sides now saw the light, and found happy agreement. "Oh!" they all cried, "Now I understand!"

Alas, it does not happen.

Long long conversations. Another one to put on the agenda for the locked room. :-)

I don't have precise numbers for house insulation, but especially for new construction, the payback time must be very short.

In 1982, the cost of doubling the insulation in the walls of my new 2200-sqft ranch was less than $200. Just sayin'.

By D. C. Sessions (not verified) on 04 Feb 2010 #permalink

Sharon,

Sorry for the late reply, I'm too many timezones away. I hope I'm not responding to a dead thread.

1% of electricity consumption doesn't sound like much, but that was only one year, and a year where funding had to be wrung from shell-shocked banks, with no new political initiatives, and with almost total paralysis in the country with the best wind resource (U.K.). At a constant rate of installation, this would be enough to ensure (for electricity) the EU goal of 20% renewables by 2020. I KNOW this goal is too timid by far, but to the best of my knowledge it is the most ambitious among any of the large economies in the world.

Then again, *I* never argued that decarbonizing the economy would be without cost. My argument was that the first part (~20%) could come at a low cost, which might even be negative, mainly from increased energy efficiency.

The claim about 60% fossil capacity needed to back up renewables must rest on a number of assumptions, especially about the quality of the electricity grid. Europe is now investing in high-voltage DC grid lines to better distribute renewable electricity, and to give access to hydropower storage.

In any case, that capacity is already installed, the important thing is that it should be used less and less.

Of course, the debate depends strongly on the time frame. Are we talking 30 years to switch away from fossil fuels, or five? I agree that a very short timeframe would also mean large sacrifices. The trouble is that it could take more than five years just to convince people that it is necessary.

I'm not sure I understand your comment about tipping points. Are we talking climate or economics? In energy terms I've seen studies saying that the energy payback time of wind turbines is a few months. That means you can double production of wind turbines every few months with no negative (or positive) impact on fossil fuel consumption. If you go slower (and you're bound to) the impact will be increasingly positive right from the start. If we are talking about an economical tipping point into deep crisis, that would most probably come about because of fossil fuel price shocks. But this would on the other hand be very conducive to investments in renewable energy. Even in crisis times there are always people looking for a business opportunity.

It may be too late, but we must try to move away from fossil fuels, whether because of climate change or peak oil. Personal sacrifices are fine, and if you can inspire other people it's even better. But if there isn't a political will to make sacrifices for investment in renewables or energy efficiency, I see that as a sign that a majority of people will also not be willing to make personal sacrifices. Better to start relatively gently, promoting energy efficiency (especially in transport), and renewable energy, even if it doesn't make us richer.

tomhuld: "Personal sacrifices are fine, and if you can inspire other people it's even better. But if there isn't a political will to make sacrifices for investment in renewables or energy efficiency, I see that as a sign that a majority of people will also not be willing to make personal sacrifices."

I think you may want to examine exactly where "political will" comes from. A bit of pretty well documented information, primarily originating in marketing- neither politicians nor corporations "lead" - both follow "early adopters", or if they're not too smart, the herd.