Climate Change and the Carbon Bubble

Image links to Andrew C. Revkin's article for the NYT from May3, 2013

Readers of my blog and website understand that I am deeply concerned about climate change and its impacts on the future of humanity.  I have been struggling with a good way to frame all of this into the larger context of geopolitics when I came across this excellent article:

Trump, Putin and the Pipelines to Nowhere

You can’t understand what Trump’s doing to America without understanding the “Carbon Bubble”

I strongly encourage you to take a few minutes to sit down and read this article because it lays out the big picture very clearly.  For instance, here is what he has to say about the carbon bubble:

"This means we must limit the total amount of CO2 and other greenhouse pollution we put into the sky: we have to meet a “carbon budget.” To do meet that budget, we have to radically cut greenhouse gas emissions — burning way less oil, coal and gas — in the next two decades, and set the global economy on a steep path to zero emissions.

If we can’t burn oil, it’s not worth very much. If we can’t defend coastal real estate from rising seas (or even insure it, for that matter), it’s not worth very much. If the industrial process a company owns exposes them to future climate litigation, it’s not worth very much. The value of those assets is going to plummet, inevitably… and likely, soon."

From my perspective, if Trump's oil oligarchy cabinet of horrors fails to slow our use of fossil fuel, he will be directly responsible for more Climate Change related deaths than Hitler or any other major world war.