In this clip, economist Paul Krugman tells Bill that America is on the road to becoming a society controlled not by self-made men or women, but by those with inherited wealth, like “Gordon Gekko’s son or daughter,” he says, referring to the character in the film Wall Street, who became a symbol of unrestrained greed. He also talks to Bill about what he’s learned from economist Thomas Piketty’s new book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
This week Bill talks with economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman about the French economist Thomas Piketty’s “magnificent” new book.
“What Picketty’s really done now is he said, ‘Even those of you who talk about the 1 percent, you don’t really get what’s going on.’ He’s telling us that we are on the road not just to a highly unequal society, but to a society of an oligarchy. A society of inherited wealth.”
Krugman adds: “We’re seeing inequalities that will be transferred across generations. We are becoming very much the kind of society we imagined we’re nothing like.”
Our understanding of future Arctic change is informed by the history of past changes, which often have been both large and abrupt. The well-known ice-age events such as the Younger Dryas show how sea-ice changes can amplify forcing to produce very large responses, with wintertime sea ice especially important. These changes are increasingly seen to have played a central role in the ice-age cycling through their global impact on CO2 storage in the deep ocean.
The Heinrich events reveal processes of ice-sheet/ocean interaction, some of which are being played out in Greenland and Antarctica now, and which may have large future effects on sea-level rise. The paleoclimatic record plus physical understanding greatly reduce the worst worries about instabilities from methane stored in cold places, but tend to support a role in amplifying future warming.
Overall, the very large impacts of past Arctic changes, and the likelihood that future changes under business-as-usual fossil-fuel emissions will be unprecedented in combined size and speed, raise important questions.
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Speaker: Nicholas Stern — Author, “Stern Review Report on the Economics of Climate Change”, and IG Patel Professor of Economics and Government, London School of Economics
Lord Nicholas Stern, Chair of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics, shares his thoughts on The Climate Institute’s latest report, the Global Climate Leadership Review 2013. “The key message from this review is important and clear: a great competitive margin in the world is going to be over carbon and energy productivity. Countries that slip behind…are going to damage themselves and their competitiveness and prosperity in the coming years,” he says. A core component of the report is The Climate Institute/GE Low-Carbon Competitiveness Index which ranks the G20 on their preparedness for a low-carbon future. Both the report and index are available at www.climateinstitute.org.au/global-climate-leadership-review-2013.html.
Welcome to Transition Studies. To prosper for very much longer on the changing Earth humankind will need to move beyond its current fossil-fueled civilization toward one that is sustained on recycled materials and renewable energy. This is not a trivial shift. It will require a major transition in all aspects of our lives.
This weblog explores the transition to a sustainable future on our finite planet. It provides links to current news, key documents from government sources and non-governmental organizations, as well as video documentaries about climate change, environmental ethics and environmental justice concerns.
The links are listed here to be used in whatever manner they may be helpful in public information campaigns, course preparation, teaching, letter-writing, lectures, class presentations, policy discussions, article writing, civic or Congressional hearings and citizen action campaigns, etc. For further information on this blog see: About this weblog. and How to use this weblog.
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