August 25th, 2009
Colbert heats up global warming
The Colbert Report interviewed author Bill McKibben. He mentioned the 350PPM standard, and now the UN’s Nobel Prize winning climate scientist has endorsed that standard. So here’s what happened.
McKibben has written Deep Economy, The End of Nature, and Fight Global Warming Now. He’s a big supporter of 350.org. That group says that 350 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere is the threshold for environmental disaster.Here’s video of McKibben supporting that positon on Colbert.
After that Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), endorses 350ppm as a wise global goal. Pachauri won a Nobel Prize for his work on global warming as head of the IPCC. The IPCC re-convenes in Copenhagen this December to wrestle with global warming issues and a possible new global agreement. Here’s a report on Pachauri’s statements.
35Oppm is actually below the current agreed estimates of CO2 levels: 385-390 ppm. To get back down to 350ppm would require serious changes in energy use, economies, environmental politics, coal-burning, agriculture and diet, how we brew beer, using the bar-b-que and other crucial issues.
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This verbiage will now be attached to any blog I do about global warming. It’s amazing to me that somebody who can apparently read and then post comments still wonders in public why global warming matters on a technology web site. But I am naive, always assuming everybody’s paying attention.
It’s because of money. If global warming has enough acceptance among corporations, the public and even pols, there will be more money spent on green tech, wisely or unwisely. If oil prices stay low and most people don’t care a fig about global warming, green tech will have a difficult time succeeding, regardless of its merits. Not every good idea succeeds. VCs usually invest where they think there’s best chance for a good return. In greentech as in any tech the winners will often be determined by luck, brilliance, timing, happenstance and even marketing. Behind it all will be the money and behind that: whether the evidence for global warming and curtailing pollution drive action or is written off as claptrap.
A newsman since 1969, Harry Fuller has worked for CBS, ABC, CNBC Europe, CNET and was founding news director at TechTV. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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