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+--- Thread: Article Climate crisis fades out (Anthony Downs style) (/thread-16022.html)
Climate crisis fades out (Anthony Downs style) - C C - Jun 13, 2024
The ‘climate crisis’ fades out: As the energy transition inches through the ‘issue attention’ cycle, a wiser approach should emerge.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-climate-crisis-fades-out-5944bd44?st=2l84khcdn7ysjjc&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
EXCERPTS: After nearly a decade, it’s timely to ask how that energy transition is progressing and how it might fare in the future. A useful framework for that assessment is the “issue attention cycle” described in 1972 by Brookings Institution economist Anthony Downs. The five phases of that cycle mark the rise, peak, and decline in public salience of major environmental (and other) problems. It’s spooky to see how closely the energy transition has so far followed Downs’s description.
During Phase I, the issue of “global warming” bubbled among climate scientists through the 1980s with little public attention. Phase II began about 35 years ago when the issue—eventually rebranded “climate change”—burst into public consciousness, with global media coverage growing tenfold over the past two decades. Those years were marked by a fervor for doing something to “solve” the problem.
But the significant global emissions reductions envisioned in Paris are now a fantasy. Emissions grew to an all-time high in 2023 [...] fossil fuels continue to provide about 80% of the world’s energy. ... emissions in 2030 will be almost twice as high as a level compatible with the Paris aspiration.
The challenges in reducing emissions have long been evident to the few who cared to understand demographics, economics and energy technologies....
In Europe, consumers are rebelling against measures to reduce emissions (fiascoes of home heating requirements had electoral consequences in the U.K., Germany, and the Netherlands), and industry is decamping in search of cheaper energy. Despite generous subsidies, U.S. deployment of low-emission technologies can’t meet near-term goals, let alone the projected surge in electricity demand owing to data centers, artificial intelligence and electric vehicles. “Green” investments aren’t yielding competitive financial returns...
What could revive this flagging transition? Perhaps connections between human influences on climate and the disastrous effects of more frequent severe weather. But despite claims to the contrary, the U.N. finds such connections haven’t emerged for most types of weather extremes...
The energy transition’s purported climate benefits are distant, vague and uncertain while the costs and disruption of rapid decarbonization are immediate and substantial. The world has many more urgent needs...
U.S. and European governments are trying to induce an energy transition [...] Promoting technological innovation is a worthy endeavor, but such efforts face serious challenges as costs and disruptions grow without tangible progress in reducing local, let alone global, emissions...
We should welcome, not bemoan, the energy transition’s passage through the issue-attention cycle. It means that today’s ineffective, inefficient, and ill-considered climate-mitigation strategies will be abandoned, making room for a more thoughtful and informed approach to responsibly providing for the world’s energy needs... (MORE - missing details)
RELATED: New study finds Earth warming at record rate, but no evidence of climate change accelerating