Climate Change – Probable Socio-Economic Systems (SES) Implications And Impacts In The Anthropocene Epoch

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[10] Ibid.Search in Google Scholar

[11] Ibid.Search in Google Scholar

[12] Op cit., p. 23.Search in Google Scholar

[13] Op cit., p. 25.Search in Google Scholar

[14] Op cit., p. 26.Search in Google Scholar

[15] Ibid; To see discussion of the varied stances of the “Club of Rome” (which calls for limits to growth to obtain ecological balance since human-made climate change is real and serious) and the “Club of Growth” (which denies that climate change is serious even if human-induced) and its implications for the adoption (or not) of sustainability policies. (See: Owen, S. M. 2007. Project demonstrating excellence: Power, culture, and sustainability in the making of public policy in an Appalachian Headwaters Community; Thesis (Ph.D.), Union Institute & University). In it, Owen quoted Herman Daly (Beyond Growth: The Economics of Sustainable Development 1996, p. 215), who said that in the United States, limits-to-growth debates stopped “precisely when people [i.e., the economic elite] realized that limits to growth implied limits to inequality . . . [so] let us therefore reject the premise of finitude and entropy and return to the unlimited-growth vision that does not call for political impossibilities . . . [t]hat it called for physical impossibilities instead can be overlooked since most [US] voters have never heard of the laws of thermodynamics” (in Owen, p. 55).Search in Google Scholar

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[18] See, for example: Podesta, J., and Ogden, P. 2007. The security implications of climate change. The Washington Quarterly 31 (1): 115-38. They state, that however optimistic or pessimistic the science of climate change in the Anthropocene epoch may turn out, poor countries will bear most of the burdens: “That said, science only tells part of the story. The geopolitical consequences of climate change are determined by local political, social, and economic factors as much as by the magnitude of the climatic shift itself. As a rule, wealthier countries and individuals will be better able to adapt to the impacts of climate change, whereas the disadvantaged will suffer the most. An increase in rainfall, for example, can be a blessing for a country that has the ability to capture, store, and distribute the additional water. It is a deadly source of soil erosion for a country that does not have adequate land management practices or infrastructure” (pp. 115-16). Even so, publics in developed countries, the authors claim, face a unique danger driven by their media surplus of constant “scare” messages about climate change, of sensory overload and subsequent desensitization [if not outright disinformation]. “Ultimately, the threat of desensitization could prove one of the gravest threats of all, for the national security and foreign policy challenges posed by climate change are tightly interwoven with the moral challenge of helping those least responsible to cope with its effects. If the international community fails to meet either set of challenges, it will fail to meet them both” (p. 134).Search in Google Scholar

[19] Taleb, N. N. 2007. The black swan: the impact of the highly improbable. New York: Random House.Search in Google Scholar