5055

Also any price controls

5056

Also, incentives for business to do it better. Why should a coal plant care about reducing waste if I pay the taxes? But they might care more if they had to pay the taxes and had competition that didn’t have to pay the taxes.

5057

Here’s a twist.

At a conference in Houston earlier this week, Gretchen Watkins, president of Shell’s U.S. division, told Reuters that methane leaks are “a big part of the climate problem” and that she wants the EPA to establish more aggressive regulations that plug leaks. Methane, the primary component in natural gas, packs more than 80 times the warming power of carbon dioxide. (And leaks mean Shell “has less product to sell,” Watkins wrote in a LinkedIn post).

“We don’t usually tell governments how to do their job,” Watkins reportedly said, “but we’re ready to break with that and say, ‘Actually, we want to tell you how to do your job.’”

5058

It’s a little strange that they would list “less product to sell” as a reason to be regulated. If the lost production was important to them, why would they have to be forced to plug the leaks?

5059

No idea!

5060

I presume it’s because they have better technology/processes to prevent leaks than smaller competitors (the sheer number of fly-by night oil/gas companies in the US amazes me), so tighter rules help their position. Doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen though.

5061

That makes a lot of sense. Thanks! Often big companies like regulation to impose more barriers and costs on smaller competitors. Usually I don’t like that but in this case it definitely needs to happen as you say.

5062

I don’t know if this particular cyclone can be directly attributable to climate change, but Mozambique’s second largest city (500,000, about the size of Atlanta or Sacramento) is 90% destroyed. Death toll there is now 1,000 but I suspect that’ll go much higher. It’s getting next to no coverage in US media.

Cyclone Idai has ravaged parts of Mozambique, Malawi and Zimbabwe in what the UN says could be the worst weather-related disaster ever to hit the southern hemisphere. Entire cities have been destroyed. Millions of people were in the direct path of the cyclone.

5063

Thanks for posting this. Though no country will be unscathed, this definitely seems like an example of how poorer countries are even more vulnerable and have fewer internal resources to fall back on.

5064

Dear lord. Yeah there is no real coverage on this here.

5065

The humanitarian crisis from events like this in the coming decades are going to be unfathomable.

And from our last real President:

5066

Of course the human suffering from the cyclone is the first consideration.

But considering the much lesser subject of realpolitik, the inevitable total failure to assist from the US (and most likely from Europe too at this point) leaves yet more opportunity for China to spend a token amount on aid and show the flag here. They may be exploiting Africa for its resources just as Europe used to do, but at least they would be present and visible.

5067
5068

I’m thinking about Mozambique and the flooding in the Midwest in the context of the Atlantic article Dan posted about how people tend to normalize weather changes over a fairly short period of time. They’re saying Idai may be the worst weather related disaster ever to hit the Southern Hemisphere. Think about the number of unprecedented natural disasters just in the period since Hurricane Harvey. There have been so many it’s hard to even keep track:

Harvey, Irma, Maria, Michael, Florence, Typhoon Manghut, the California wildfires, the wildfires in Greece, unprecedented flooding and landslides all over the world including major events in India, North Korea, Nigeria and Japan, and some of the worst, most deadly heatwaves on record.

As with the outrages and scandals of Trump and his administration, the cumulative effect of event after event is that our expectations shift and we start to accept these events as normal.

One point David Wallace Wells makes in The Uninhabitable Earth is that folks who are paying attention will sometimes say that these sorts of events are the new normal but the truth is actually much much worse because that implies a steady state moving forward. The truth is that these events represent the beginning of a new era that will be completely unlike any period in the history of our species. It only gets worse from here and the rate if change will continue to accelerate.

5069

Yeah that’s one of the more chilling arguments from the part of the book I’ve read so far.

5070

I was curious so I started researching the major weather related disasters since Harvey. I started to feel dirty after a while, as if I was engaging in disaster porn but my intent was to pull together a list of unprecedented weather events over the last year and a half, just because they start to blur together as our collective memory of one event is erased by the next. This is since August 2017 in roughly chronological order:

Hurricane Harvey – 60" of rain. $125 billion in damage, costliest hurricane in US history

Sierra Leone floods and landslides – 1000 people killed.

India floods – Worst floods to hit South Asia in decades, 24 million people affected

Hurricane Irma – Most intense hurricane since Katrina. Barbuda virtually destroyed. Cuba, St Martin, Virgin Islands and Florida all saw significant damage and flooding

Hurricane Maria – Puerto Rico devastated. Close to 5,000 dead, $94 billion of damage

Northern California wildfires – $14.5 billion in damage, 44 dead, close to 100,00 evacuated. Worst fires in California history at the time.

Southern California wildfires – Including the Thomas fire. New most destructive fire in California history. $3.5 billion in damage, over 300,000 acres burned, over 230,00 evacuated

Montecito mudslides – 21 people killed. $200 million in damage

Maryland flooding – 9.7’ of rain in two hours. A “thousand year storm.”

Pakistan heat wave – Temperatures above 104 degrees for several days. 180 dead.

Wildfires in Greece – 126 dead. 6th most deadly wildfie event in recorded history

Japan flooding and landslides – Highest rainfall totals in Japan’s history. 225+ killed. Almost $10 billion in damage

India Floods – Worst floods in 100 years. 483+ dead. Over 1 million people evacuated.

North Korean flooding and landslides – 151 people dead

Nigerian floods – Over 200 people dead, massive cholera outbreak killing another 100+, nearly 600,00 homeless

British Columbian wildfires – Over 3.3 million acres burned (worst in Canadian history). Smoke from fires disrupted air travel and reached as far as Ireland.

Hurricane Florence – 43 dead. 36 inches of rain in North Carolina. Wettest hurricane in recorded history for the Carolinas, $24 billion in damage.

Hurricane Michael – 3rd most intense hurricane in US history based on pressure, fourth highest winds in US history. 72 deaths, $25 billion in damage.

2018 California wildfires – Deadliest wildfires in California history. 89 people killed in the Camp and Woolsey fires. 1.9 million acres burned. $3.5 billion in damage. Town of Paradise virtually destroyed.

Record high temperatures throughout 2018 included highest every temperatures recorded for Aremenia, Japan, Russia, Belfast, Montreal and on and on. Oman was over 109 degrees for over a day, the hottest low temperature in recorded history. Worst droughts on record for Germany and Hungry.

2019 Midwest flooding – Record flooding expected to last well into May. 200 million people affected. Damage already at $1.6 billion for Iowa, $1.4 billion for Nebraska. Missouri, Kansas, South Dakota, Minnesota and Illinois also likely in the billions already.

Cyclone Idai – Worst tropical cyclone on record for Southern Hemisphere. 600+ dead, 2.6 million affected, 90% of Beira, Mozambique’s second largest city, destroyed.

“Lesser” disasters (bad but not unprecedented):

Typhoon Marey – 142 dead, widespread flooding

Cyclone Mora – Over 200 dead, 40 million affected by flooding across South Asia

5071

Excellent point.
And none of this seems to be sinking in:

5072

Someone should tell him we aren’t in the Garden of Eden anymore…

5073

How fucking stupid does he think…

Wait, republican voters. Yeah, they are. More people will magically solve climate change caused by excessive human industrial activity is certainly a novel take.

5074

That’s my Senator! kazoo noises