One of the most provocative approaches to this question comes from Friedrich Nietzsche, whose doctrine of the eternal return asks this: “What if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more’”? To ask myself the question of the eternal return is to wonder about the worth of what I have done, to inquire whether it would stand the test of being done innumerable times again.
.. Had Hitler not come to power in Germany, the Holocaust and World War II would not have happened. Had World War II not have happened, my father would not have signed up for officer’s training school. Had he not signed up, he would not have gone to college, majored in economics, and then moved to New York for a job. And so he would not have met my mother. In short, without the Holocaust I would not be here.
.. It’s unfortunate that our existence had to arise this way, but since that’s the way it happened, affirming our existence requires affirming the past that led to it. It is no wonder that he calls his position one of “modest nihilism.”
.. If we would be willing to sacrifice our existence for the sake of preventing past horrors, what would we be willing to sacrifice of ourselves to prevent horrors now and in the future? And why are so many of us (and I include myself here) not doing so?
To cope with its recurrent flooding, Miami Beach has already spent something like a hundred million dollars. It is planning on spending several hundred million more. Such efforts are, in Wanless’s view, so much money down the drain. Sooner or later—and probably sooner—the city will have too much water to deal with. Even before that happens, Wanless believes, insurers will stop selling policies on the luxury condos that line Biscayne Bay. Banks will stop writing mortgages.
.. John Morales, the chief meteorologist at NBC’s South Florida affiliate, was moderating the discussion. He challenged the Mayor, offering a version of the argument I’d heard from Wanless—that today’s pumps will be submerged by the seas of tomorrow.
“Down the road, this is just a Band-Aid,” Morales said.
“I believe in human innovation,” Levine responded. “If, thirty or forty years ago, I’d told you that you were going to be able to communicate with your friends around the world by looking at your watch or with an iPad or an iPhone, you would think I was out of my mind.” Thirty or forty years from now, he said, “We’re going to have innovative solutions to fight back against sea-level rise that we cannot even imagine today.”
.. Of all the world’s cities, Miami ranks second in terms of assets vulnerable to rising seas—No. 1 is Guangzhou—and in terms of population it ranks fourth, after Guangzhou, Mumbai, and Shanghai. A recent report on storm surges in the United States listed four Florida cities among the eight most at risk. (On that list, Tampa came in at No. 1.)
.. Driving across South Florida is like driving across central Kansas, except that South Florida is greener and a whole lot lower. In Miami-Dade County, the average elevation is just six feet above sea level.
The total value of all this infrastructure is on the order of US$10 trillion, or nearly two-thirds of US gross domestic product. Nothing that huge and expensive will be replaced in a year, or even a few years. It will take decades.
Yet there is good news, of a sort, in the fact that all infrastructure eventually wears out. A 2010 study asked: what if the current energy infrastructure were simply allowed to live out its useful life, without being replaced?
The surprising answer: if every worn-out coal-fired power plant were exchanged for solar, wind or hydro, and every dead gas-powered car replaced with an electric one, and so on, we might just stay within our planetary boundaries.
According to the study, using the existing infrastructure until it falls apart would not push us past the 2 degrees Celsius global warming that many scientists see as the upper limit of acceptable climate change.
The problem, of course, is that we aren’t doing this yet. Instead, we’re replacing worn-out systems with more of the same, while drilling, mining and building even more.
.. In Queensland, Australia, over 20% of homes now generate their own electricity. This example suggests the possibility that a “tipping point” toward a new social norm of rooftop solar has already been reached in some places. In fact, a recent study found that the best indicator of whether a given homeowner adds solar panels to a house is whether a neighbor already had them.
That means some big changes. The United States should resist any binding international commitments to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Surrendering any economic sovereignty for the sake of climate action is a foolish choice. Similarly, the president’s actions so far on the climate are poorly designed, economically destructive, and beyond his constitutional limits.
.. Directly pricing carbon, adjusting that price at the border, creating a technology-agnostic research and development agenda, and using our massive development engine to bring U.S. technological achievements to a broader market form the heart of a policy that conservatives can and should get behind. Couple any price on carbon with corresponding reductions to or the outright elimination of existing taxes, as well as the rollback of redundant regulations, and a conservative carbon policy can shrink the government and emissions alongside positive economic growth.