100% Alarmism » Climate Resistance

The Guardian, meanwhile, barely notice the real significance of the story of pop stars and Environmental NGOs collaborating while making up statistics and reinventing Mayan prophecies about the end of the world, to become part of the phenomenon. There is an unholy trinity here — the newspaper, the popstar and the NGO — each of them elevating themselves by this spectacle. They are 100% alarmists. And this 100% alarmism has nothing to do with the real state of the planet, but all to do with the fragility and arbitrary nature of their ascendency. They have extraordinary privilege, wealth and influence, yet, as Cocker points out, ‘c**ts are still running the world’. The only argument for their ascendency and roles as ambassadors for higher causes that the vacuous pop star, the vapid journalist, and the hollow NGO can offer is the portrayal of the world as a place which is terrible, and can only get worse without them. That’s what 100% alarmism is about: having nothing to offer, but being unwilling to negotiate. Hence, as the authors of culture, they invent fictions: 75% ice loss, 3 years to save the planet, and the idea that ‘something must be done, now’. The only comfort in all this is that, if the world really does end, at least it will take them with it.

Climate damages in the FUND model: A comment

I am surprised that Ecological Economics has chosen to publish a paper with partly meagre, partly wrong results. Mr Ackerman has previously published with one of
the editors (Ackermanet al. 2009), but that of course is not a reason. AM’s literature review is incomplete in that it does not refer to the work of anybody who has prior experience in working with FUND. Perhaps the editor was unable to identify experts to review the paper, although I have reviewed a fair number of papers for Ecological Economics.