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Some of you may have been reading the words against a grey background appearing at the top of recent LOTRW posts:
Living on the Real World is joining the AMS Headlines content hub. This site will stop being updated as of December, 2025. Please visit AMS Headlines for science and community news from AMS!
AMS Headlines is a big deal. The Society is taking an important step to augment the access, breadth, quality and timeliness of the resources it provides the community. This starts with an unbundling of the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society. For years, each issue of BAMS has blended peer-reviewed science articles with a mix of other material that might better be characterized as news (upcoming meetings, chapter activities, 45-Beacon Street updates, etc.). Those latter bits matter to the broader Weather, Climate and Water Enterprise, but sit awkwardly in a technical journal. They can also often be perishable; they’re most valuable when input and made accessible continuously and in near-real time, versus monthly after a delay of two months or more. Going forward, this- and additional news material will be available through AMS Headlines (see About and FAQ’s.) Access will be free even to non-AMS members.
The month some years ago when BAMS started publishing one of my posts in each issue was a happy day – I will always remain grateful. But in this new AMS Headlines format, the posts will receive greater exposure, and more quickly.
Thus fifteen-plus years of quasi-independent WordPress support have come to an end. The site will no longer be updated, but the posts from that period will remain accessible. Thank you, thank you, WordPress (and AMS)! Thanks as well to all the readers who have provided feedback and encouragement over the past fifteen years (and the more-than-1100 posts). Most of all, thanks to the community that has done so much through research and services to tap the Earth’s natural resources, to foster more sustainable and equitable societies, to protect the environment, and at the same time build resilience to Earth’s natural hazards – all to the benefit of Earth’s eight billion human beings, and the natural world on which we live and depend.
More needs to be done in each respect. For its part, LOTRW will stay true to its focus going forward. It will continue to address the human relationship with the real world, that is, the solid Earth, the oceans, the atmosphere, and the plant and animal life that enable all human affairs – a real world that we merely live on (as on that outermost skin of 197 million square miles), not in (as in that 260 billion cubic miles of crust, mantle, and core). But the transition requires we review some historical context and tie up some loose ends, even as we identify and spin up new topics. The next post – the first to appear on the new platform – lays out a road map for LOTRW in January.
Remain mindful – LOTRW is only the tiniest speck of this much bigger AMS story. AMS Headlines will offer all of the larger community, not just AMS membership, additional means and opportunity to reflect-, to celebrate-, and to build upon the far-reaching implications of our essential work.
Good reason in itself to look forward to 2026. More soon on the fuller rationale for hope.
With that in mind, my first post on the AMS Headlines website provides a plan/overview for Living on the Real World posts for January.
May thecoming years bring each of you fulfillment and satisfaction as you work to build a better world.
“6And God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” 7 So God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. And it was so. 8 God called the vault “sky.” And there was evening, and there was morning—the second day.” – Genesis 1:6-8 (NIV)
Loosely interpreting the Book of Genesis, atmospheric rivers weren’t God’s first creative act, but they were maybe a close second. These days, scientists and broadcast meteorologists are all over the subject and its vivid name – which happens to be descriptive at the same time it conveys a whiff of danger. The term triggers the same shiver in a Californian that “tornadoes” provokes in an Oklahoman or the mention of hurricanes arouses in a Floridian. Today, December 23, one such atmospheric river is producing inches of rainfall and flooding in northern California. It is threatening more of the same for the middle and southern parts of the state over coming days. (Interested readers can access up-to-date information at NOAA’s Atmospheric Rivers Portal.) The current threat is only one in a continuing series. Last week a similar atmospheric-river event pummeled the Pacific Northwest (see also here).
Of course, atmospheric rivers are not the world’s or even the Nation’s only flooding threat, and the Pacific Northwest is not the only location at risk. Three weeks ago, cyclonic flooding focused minds throughout south and southeast Asia (devastating rainfall in Asia claims hundreds of lives). New York Times coverage of the events included this summary: Three cyclones happened simultaneously across South and Southeast Asia this week, the latest of several huge storms that have battered the region, killing at least 1,350 people, with hundreds more still missing and millions displaced.
Since the start of this year, there have been at least 16 cyclones and dozens of depressions in the Pacific and Indian oceans. Even moderate cyclones now produce extreme rainfall and can cause widespread flooding, said Roxy Mathew Koll, a climate scientist at the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology.
“It is the rainfall and the cascading impacts — landslides and flash floods — that stand out this year, not necessarily the number of storms,” Dr. Koll said.
These events, and others like them, have prompted some to speak of a new era of floods.
Contributing causes to such departures from the norm are many and varied. One example receiving much publicity these days – possible effects of global climate change on the hydrologic cycle. Another, which my hydrologist- and geologist friends tend to emphasize, is that the historical records available for most sites worldwide aren’t sufficiently long. With oversimplification, over a 100,000-year period, a once-in-a-1000-year rainfall doesn’t happen once every thousand years, roughly equally spaced. If we had actual records, we’d discover that thousands of quiet years would separate irregular outbreaks of such events across the period.
Problem is, such extreme rainfalls are not mere geophysical curiosities. Their impacts on human life are dire – that is; consequential, and requiring immediate response. In every instance, the loss of life is unacceptably large, with effects beyond mere dollar value. But that’s just the start. For every life lost, dozens more are shattered. Property damage and economic disruption are usually monetized, but accompanying these statistics are other losses – with respect to quality of life, jobs, schools, physical and mental well-being, community social fabric, aspirations, hope itself.
Social safety nets designed and nominally available to compensate survivors for losses are woefully inadequate. What’s more, those safety nets are fraying. In June, the administration announced an intent to dismantle and reduce the size of FEMA, devolving responsibility for hazard mitigation and recovery back to the states. (A FEMA Review Council had been ready to release detailed guidance along these lines earlier in the month, but withdrew its report after a leaked version caused an outcry.)
Appreciation for the scale of natural-hazard risk to property is growing. As a result, riverine- and coastal floodplain property insurance and reinsurance rates are rising rapidly, even as the nominal values of such properties are decreasing; as a result, Susan Crawford, in her excellent Substack blog Moving Day, drives home the point in her November piece New data shows insurance costs rising and home values sinking as climate risks grow.
As a result, increasing numbers of owners of such properties are finding that their mortgages are underwater. That is, they owe more than the risk-devalued worth of their property.
Underwater loans? These are more than just a problem for a few unlucky individuals. Vulnerability of critical urban infrastructure to floods puts the viability of entire cities at risk. Take New York City. As noted recently by the Washington Post, The NYC subway is drowning. Here’s how to save it. But New York is not alone. The article’s subtitle states that Subway systems around the world are struggling to cope with flooding as the planet warms. London, Tokyo, and Zhengzhou are specifically mentioned.
The NYT subway system has expenses hovering around $20B/year. The system operates in deficit; fares recover only half that figure. In this frame, the costs of needed flood protection are enormous (one US Army Corps of Engineers study puts the estimate at some $50B. By contrast, New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) plans to invest $6B in flood resilience over ten years. Other MTA renovations and efforts from other NYC agencies may contribute to the total needed; NYC is investing another $10B in improvements to its sewage system, for example. But comparison paints a picture of too little, too late.
The NYC economy is huge, some $2.7 trillion dollars per year, some 10% of US GDP (!). Losses occasioned by subway shutdowns alone, such as occurred in the face of a 2015 snowstorm, were put at $200M/day (and that’s apart from any costs necessary to repair and bring the system back to operation). It might seem that the incentives and money should be there. Property tax increases would seem to be one solution. But the recent mayoral campaign and outcome suggest that New Yorkers do not see their city as affordable. Costs of living and doing business there are prompting employees and their employers to consider relocation; resistance to mooted tax increases is high.
Following Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the city of New York received $15B in federal aid; following FEMA realignment, such levels of aid may not be forthcoming the next time around. The timing of any future disaster is uncertain (one of the barriers to action). But as New York has allowed its critical infrastructure to age and weaken, the threat is no longer confined to rare, once-a-century type events. Garden-variety heavy rains have become a source of worry.
In these respects, New York City is hardly alone. Miami-area infrastructure, its roadways and sewage system, are vulnerable to heavy rains, not only those resulting from hurricanes. Each and every day, wherever you live, similar flooding disasters are drawing one day closer to a city near you.
Hmm. Where to find a bright spot in all this? Susan Crawford, again from her Substack blog Moving Day, offers one, entitled A small state with a big climate plan. Her narrative focuses on Rhode Island, but her lessons – about governance, planning, novel financing methods and more – are generalizable.
Civilization exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice. – Will Durant
Disaster safety nets are inadequate internationally and fraying here in the United States.
A month has passed since Hurricane Melissa first made landfall in Jamaica, then tracked north, striking glancing blows on Haiti and Cuba. Here are the statistics (still subject to change). About 100 fatalities: including 46 in Jamaica; 43 in Haiti; 2 in the Dominican Republic (information sparse from Cuba). Financial losses were greatest in Jamaica, which sustained a direct hit and had the most vigorous economy (therefore the most to lose, in absolute amount). The Jamaica sums included $9B damage to physical property, affecting 100,000 homes and thousands of other structures; these and other costs amounted to some 40% of Jamaican GDP. Losses elsewhere added a few billion dollars more to Melissa’s total. Over 75,000 homes were damaged in Cuba. Haitian circumstances were dire even prior to the hurricane’s arrival; Melissa was merely the latest in compound disasters hitting the country over an extended period of years.
Some of the dollar losses were covered by insurance. Moody’s (an American business and financial services company) estimates private insured losses from Hurricane Melissato be between US$3 billion and US$5 billion, with a best estimate of US$3.5 billion. This estimate represents insured losses associated primarily with wind impacts in Jamaica, the island hardest hit by the Category 5 hurricane. Insured losses for other impacted Caribbean islands, including the Bahamas, Haiti, and the Turks and Caicos Islands, are expected to be minimal. A further bit of detail: according to Insurance Journal, wind and storm surge damage triggered a $70.8 million payout from the Caribbean Catastrophe Risk Insurance Facility (CCRIF) to the Jamaican government.
For comparison, here are figures for the outside international aid that has been forthcoming for nations lying across hurricane Melissa’s path. The United States has so far provided $24M for the region, including $12M for Jamaica and $8M for Haiti. The United Nations has not yet released figures, but one UN agency, the World Food Program is seeking $18M in food aid from donors. These numbers are uncertain; different sources provide a range of estimates, but one thing is clear: outside international aid is making up little more than a puny 1% of the loss.
Bottom line? In the face of natural disaster, countries are largely on their own.
To deal with this challenge, nations can pursue at least two policy options: purchase of catastrophe bonds (as in the Jamaican case); and planning and investments in building resilience (as also in the Jamaican case).
(In this latter respect, Haiti is too poor and disorganized to develop such plans in-house; plans extant are those of the United Nations’ World Food Program and the International Organization for Migration, as well as the World Bank.)
Jamaica had a plan for building resilience. Vision 2030 Jamaica, covering the years 2009-2030, comprised four national goals. The fourth – Jamaica has a healthy natural environment – included an outcome labeled Hazard Risk Reduction and Adaptation to Climate Change. The country clearly recognized the risk.
But it was too little. Planning and the available resources were inadequate in the face of Melissa’s scale and intensity.
As well as too late. In the context of the historian Will Durant’s warning, Melissa arrived “too soon.” One of the biggest barriers to preparing adequately for such events is the uncertainty in the timing of the next natural extreme. Planners ask: do we have 5-10-year window to prepare (in which case the annual drain on national resources each year is unpalatably large) or might we have 30-70 years to get ready (allowing a smaller rate of investment and freeing up funds to address competing national priorities)?
The return on resilience investments is uncertain in large part because no one can forecast the time frame. (By contrast, consider the global kerfuffle with the approach of Y2K. Potential for loss was great though uncertain – some have argued post-hoc that the risk was hyped – but the timing was known to within seconds. This certainty sharpened minds; after years of world preparation, Y2K disruption was minimal.)
Natural-disaster risk is particularly great for small-island nations. A single tropical storm, an earthquake, a volcanic eruption can overwhelm such countries in their entirety. There’s no larger, unaffected portion of the population and the economy to help shoulder the burden of the needed recovery. Haiti provides a stark reminder of what concatenated natural disasters can do when they recur before recovery from prior disasters has been completed.
In principle, larger nations with stronger economies should be better able to withstand such localized events. A single earthquake, flood, or the like generally affect only a small fraction of the country and the population. Such countries can readily self-insure. Historically, in the wake of disaster, the larger, unaffected populations chip in to help those in need.
However, the United States seems to be taking steps to make such dependence on federal-scale generosity less dependable. Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in 2005 causing about $100B in direct damage and totaling more than $200B in economic loss. Of this, insurance covered about $100B. At the time, voices raised concern about the seeming lack of attention and help the administration was providing local leaders of a different party. But in the end, the federal government supplied about $100B. Some detail:
According to the LSU Law Center, The most significant deliberate response was additional appropriations of more than $100 billion targeted to disaster-affected areas. The largest share of those appropriations ($50 billion) was for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Significant funding also went to the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD, $20 billion), the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ($16 billion), and the Department of Defense ($9 billion).
By contrast, according to JP Morgan, the Altadena fires this year caused $50 B in losses, of which $20B was insured. The Small Business Administration made $2B available; FEMA provided and additional $140M; but these sums were for the entirety of the fire-season damage in the larger area; not just Altadena proper. Across the country, towns like Asheville and Canton NC, hit by hurricane Helene more than a year ago, sustained losses exceeding $50B. Like Cave City, Arkansas (hit by a tornado last spring), they all are still awaiting federal help. To date that help has amounted to no more than $3B. (Compare with current NC Governor Josh Stein’s request this past fall for another $13B in aid for Hurricane Helene recovery.)
It could be argued that the smaller scale of these losses justifies a policy of requiring the states to do more. It could also be argued that for these more recent disasters, it’s early days yet. Federal support will accumulate over time.
But with apologies to an old adage (about justice), aid delayed is aid denied. And there are further signs that the federal supply of aid to states is increasingly at risk of being politicized. The damage that trend may do the country could extend far beyond mere dollar sums. The key to nation-building-and-maintenance is unity, a sense that “we’re all in it together.” – a spirit of E pluribus unum. And there are some big, existential disasters drawing one day closer each day for some of our larger, marquis cities. Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Orleans, Miami, and New York come to mind. Each has experienced major disaster in the past. Each has grown economically and at the same time more vulnerable since. Absent a strengthened national-level commitment to disaster reduction, any one of these could be reduced to tomorrow’s Jamaica – or Haiti. The stakes are too high to let the vagaries of nature determine our common destiny. And the same holds true with respect to our hemispheric neighbors. We benefit in the long run by being more generous to our neighbors in need.
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A closing note. Space doesn’t permit a detailed look at the vulnerabilities of each of our major cities or individual states. But here’s a link laying out an emerging realization of what heavy rain can now do to New York City.
The target of the criticism – the Belem Declaration on Hunger, Poverty, and Human-Centered Climate Action – made no mention of the threat posed by fossil-fuel use; did not provide a timetable for its broad elimination, as the Brazilian host had hoped; abandoned the aspiration of the 2015 Paris agreement to hold global warming to 1.50C.
Some brighter aspects to the picture? The assembled nations were able to reach an agreement, however weak. Countries agreed to triple the funding available for climate adaptation. There was a shared awareness of the challenges that remain. A statement by UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterrez (short; worth reading in its entirety) provides a more nuanced assessment.
Any reason for hope lies in a different direction. Now that the COP30 participants have returned home, what will nations, institutions – and eight billion people – do?
Here the picture is brighter. Three aspects deserve a look: the world writ large; China; and the United States.
The EU, and many smaller nations. At COP30, apart from the petrostates, nations generally supported accelerated progress towards renewables. Some eighty countries (though slightly less than a majority) sought detailed, firm plans to move away from fossil fuels. Brazil (the meeting host, who had hoped for but failed to achieve this outcome from COP30) announced it would lead this contingent to continue work to develop timelines.
China. China was criticized for its failure to step up and fill a leadership gap left by the pointed official absence of the United States. But China didn’t really need to make dramatic promises. Other nations tacitly acknowledge Chinese leadership. Given the facts on the ground, there’s little other choice: China currently produces about 80% of global solar panels and 60-80% of the world’s wind turbines. Though still using large amounts of coal, it is installing vast amounts of renewable power domestically, and marketing renewable power to countries across the world.
But these are more statements of position than actions. The states in question are likely to mount legal challenges. In addition, the private sector is also skeptical. Oil and gas major producers, seeing worldwide energy demand shifting way from fossil fuels, are showing caution, if not actual reluctance, in making the significant long-term investments needed to tap such new resources. US tech companies, though anticipating large energy demands to support artificial intelligence, are focusing their search on renewables and nuclear.
The conclusion? Just as the optimism about the 2015 Paris agreement may have been premature, so may the pessimism in the aftermath of Belem prove unfounded.
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A closing note, about the opening quotes. As quotes go, these appear to be accurately attributed. The first, by Benjamin Franklin, appears to be generally accepted. Quote Investigator tells us that Emerson’s original words, from his 1875 essay Social Aims, were Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. The link goes on to provide word-smithed versions attributed to Emerson that appeared in later years. As for actions speak louder than words, that apparently goes back toSaint Anthony of Padua, who in the 13th century said Actions speak louder than words; let your words teach and your actions speak. Lincoln apparently used the short phrase in 1856 as his guide to interpret the intent of the southern U.S. states. Mark Twain indeed seems to have provided the added twist.
Recently, in the run-up to COP30, Bill Gates weighed in on this topic. Specifically, he suggested shifting the emphasis from stabilizing the climate per se to reducing poverty and improving public health for those peoples and nations in greatest need. In this thinking, he hasn’t been alone.
Should we be dismayed? Or should we welcome these changes in perspective that Gates and others are proposing?
Some observers are appalled. They see climate change as an existential threat. They see efforts to mitigate and adapt to climate change as already dangerously behind schedule. Now, in the face of these realities, they find national leaders worldwide seemingly throwing-in-the-towel versus redoubling their efforts. They view this as tragic.
But the shift in how the world sees this problem would be a hopeful sign, for two quite different reasons.
(An apology: this is the point in LOTRW posts where I often say “the original paper is worth a thorough read in its entirety.” However, click on the above link and you’ll be taken to a web site that claims to offer a PDF of the talk, but click on that link and you’ll get a “page-no-longer-exists” message. Best I can do is offer you a link to an LOTRW post from 2010 that summarizes Rayner’s paper and gives some commentary from that time. A sobering reminder of the perishability of web links. If someone knows of an active link to Rayner’s paper, please let us all know.)
In any event, Rayner made a compelling case in 2006 (and in his other works) that climate change has the nature of such a wicked problem. Wicked problems yield (grudgingly at best) to coping strategies; they lack actual solutions. This lack forestalls needed cooperation. Instead, it motivates acrimonious debate. Factions holding entrenched interests, and fearing redistributive impacts, invoke contradictory certitudes. Meanwhile, nothing gets done. In the “clumsy solutions” part of the title and the paper, Rayner called for seeking and being content with “partial, not-quite” solutions – in essence, breaking up the holistic problem into pieces that individually are less value-laden. These bits submit to approximate fixes before the fixers have time to grow impatient and lapse into partisan-based recrimination. An important example? Current international public- and private-sector efforts to electrify as much of the global economy as possible and meet present and future energy needs through solar- and wind renewables. Initially, the switch to renewables was highly controversial. But the cost of solar energy is rapidly declining and production is ramping up. The profit motive[1] – not subsidies, not politics – has become the driver. In this instance, Bill Gates and others are recognizing a positive trend more than they are starting a negative one. We can only hope that similar opportunities will emerge with respect to other dimensions of mitigation and adaptation to climate change.
Second, it emphasizes the ends that matter most. A second reason for hope is the revival of interest in reducing poverty and improving public health as end goals. These dimensions of the climate challenge date back to the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) or the “Earth Summit,” also held in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro). They form the starting point. Principle 1 of the Rio Declaration states:
Human beings are at the centre of concerns for sustainable development. They are entitled to a healthy and productive life in harmony with nature.
The Rio summit is in the DNA of much subsequent progress. It established the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), initiating the current international efforts to cap greenhouse gas emissions, and stabilize the climate. The United Nations sustainable-development Agenda 21 and the recent (2025) UN Convention on Biological Diversity also trace their origins to the Rio Conference.
Ethical and moral imperatives for coping with climate change have always been a focus for faith-based institutions. (Among these the Catholic church, first in Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical Laudato si’ and then in his 2023 Apostolic Exhortation Laudate Deum, has provided a particularly compelling framing.)
Such motivations go back further – at least four centuries. Francis Bacon, the father of empiricism and the Lord High Chancellor of Great Britain and thus encumbering a political position between Parliament and royalty, had this to say about the purposes of science[2]:
“Lastly, I would address one general admonition to all — that they consider what are the true ends of knowledge, and that they seek it not either for pleasure of the mind, or for contention, or for superiority to others, or for profit, or fame, or power, or any of these inferior things, but for the benefit and use of life, and that they perfect and govern it in charity. For it was from lust of power that the angels fell, from lust of knowledge that man fell; but of charity there can be no excess, neither did angel or man ever come in danger by it.”
Hard to say it any better. Science, and policy, to be pursued for the benefit and use of life (not just human life, but all of life)? Bill Gates, Pope Francis, and Francis Bacon in agreement? Might be something to the idea. Spanning nearly half a millennium? Could prove enduring.
Time for us to do our bit.
[1] As well as the visible need for augmented energy sources to fuel the frenzied development and application of artificial intelligence now underway.
The previous LOTRW post took a look at Bill Gates’ recent suggestions for COP30 participants in their run-up to next week’s meeting. (Oversimplifying), Mr. Gates argued that the current focus on carbon emissions per se should be re-balanced; nations should give more priority to relieving world poverty and improving world health more directly.
In a sense, his thinking channeled triage: the practice of doctors facing overwhelming patient loads in warfare and emergencies. They quickly assess patients, binning them in one of three categories: those who are beyond saving; those who can wait; those who might be saved if given attention now. Doctors then give priority to that latter group.
Which raises a question: is Mr. Gates’ assessment an outlier? Or does it reflect or is it consistent as well with the diagnosis of others? Recent media coverage provides some answers. David Wallace-Wells provided an excellent summary in September, in a lengthy column with a correspondingly drawn-out title:It Isn’t Just the U.S. The Whole World Has Soured on Climate Politics. The article is behind a paywall but covers a lot of ground and is worth reading in its entirety if you can access it. It contains notes of pessimism and optimism. He begins on the negative side, noting that the initial enthusiasm for the 2015 COP Paris agreement has largely dissipated over the ensuing decade, as country after country has failed to reach its commitments. He cites the United States as a primary backslider (a view supported by subtle policy hints such as recent efforts to claw back funding for elements of the Inflation Reduction Act supporting renewal-energy development[1] and the US decision to send no high-level officials to participate in COP30. (In fairness, this second decision reflects a general worldwide decline in high-level attendance.) He also cites continuing (even increased?) ambitions to extract natural gas and fossil fuels on the part of multiple nations worldwide, again including the United States.
Wallace-Wells also notes the negative impact of the pandemic. Covid-19 exemplified triage at work – and not just in hospital ER’s. In the face of the global emergency, governments shelved efforts to reduce carbon emissions (and more broadly to maintain fiscal responsibility) in order to protect their populations from the accompanying economic slowdown. They have only-partially, if at all, restored fiscal order in the years since. Wars in the Ukraine, the middle East, and Asian threats to national security haven’t helped. Countries are ramping up their defense expenditures at the expense of other priorities. The United States has cut foreign aid – but much of that foreign aid has proven ineffective anyway. For a variety of reasons, international attention to improve conditions for the poor has long been lacking.
On the positive side of the ledger, Wallace-Wells and others have noted that with the declining cost of renewable energy, decarbonization has developed a momentum of its own. The International Energy Agency forecasts that renewable energy generation will surpass coal in 2025. That momentum will likely be maintained and even accelerated on purely economic grounds. As renewable energy use is internalized by corporations and utilities, as it weans itself from government subsidies, it will hopefully be less politically visible and divisive.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but taken literally, the message of the article and its title wasn’t that the world is souring on the climate issue – only the climate politics.
A closing observation: the Catholic church has connected the climate change issue to the plight of the poor all along. It’s been ten years since Pope Francis published his encyclical Laudato si’[2] and two years since his exhortation Laudate Deum. Both documents were rooted in climate science but emphasized climate change as a moral or ethical issue more than a technological one. Both cited the devastating impacts of climate change on the world’s poor (and included the planet itself and nature among the poor- and threatened). And the Catholics are not alone. Other denominations and faiths made similar arguments.
Which leaves the final question raised in the previous post: Is a shift from climate change per se to priority on human welfare more broadly – especially the welfare of the poor and vulnerable – on balance a positive trend or a negative one? More soon.
The United Nations is the final stages of preparation for COP 30, the 30th Climate Change Conference of the Parties, scheduled for Belem, Brazil November 10-21. In the run-up, Bill Gates has released a note on his website. listing Three tough truths about climate he wanted COP participants (and presumably the larger world) to know:
Climate change is serious, but we’ve made great progress. We need to keep backing the breakthroughs that will help the world reach zero emissions.
But we can’t cut funding for health and development—programs that help people stay resilient in the face of climate change—to do it.
It’s time to put human welfare at the center of our climate strategies, which includes reducing the Green Premium to zero and improving agriculture and health in poor countries.
His following material provided context and merits a careful reading in full. Some snippets, to whet your appetite: Mr. Gates went on to downplay the doomsday rhetoric of recent decades. He stated:
…Although climate change will have serious consequences—particularly for people in the poorest countries—it will not lead to humanity’s demise…
He continued: …the doomsday outlook is causing much of the climate community to focus too much on near-term emissions goals, and it’s diverting resources from the most effective things we should be doing to improve life in a warming world.
and argued that …Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease, just as they always have been. Understanding this will let us focus our limited resources on interventions that will have the greatest impact for the most vulnerable people.
His post sharpened minds. As of this writing (Saturday), googling the phrase reaction to Bill Gates’ three tough truths about climate surfaced a raft of on-line commentaries. Some interpreted his word as revealing a decline in Gates’ personal support for coping with climate change, and expressed dismay.
Gates anticipated this. His counter included this:
I know that some climate advocates will disagree with me, call me a hypocrite because of my own carbon footprint (which I fully offset with legitimate carbon credits), or see this as a sneaky way of arguing that we shouldn’t take climate change seriously.
To be clear: Climate change is a very important problem. It needs to be solved, along with other problems like malaria and malnutrition. Every tenth of a degree of heating that we prevent is hugely beneficial because a stable climate makes it easier to improve people’s lives.
How do we make sure aid spending is delivering the greatest possible impact for the most vulnerable people? Is the money designated for climate being spent on the right things?
I believe the answer is no.
Sometimes the world acts as if any effort to fight climate change is as worthwhile as any other. As a result, less-effective projects are diverting money and attention from efforts that will have more impact on the human condition: namely, making it affordable to eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions and reducing extreme poverty with improvements in agriculture and health.
[Again, the boldface/emphasis is his.]
Writing in the New York Times, David Gelles summarized a few possible interpretations of Bill Gates’ motivation and intent. Gelles notes that Bill Gates’ actions over the years and up to the present show continuing commitment to reducing emissions. Gelles cites opinions that Gates is trying to reframe the climate change issue; to make it less political during a very polarized time. He also notes that social science has shown that upbeat messaging is more effective in motivating societal action than alarmism.
Gelles’ thoughtful piece moves us in the right direction. Gates’ article in question makes plain that his philanthropy has roots in addressing poverty and disease public health that go back decades. To the extent that they are interwoven with the climate change issue, his thoughts last week represent less a new departure than a return to basics.
We are left with a multitude of questions, but here are two:
Are Bill Gates’ reflections isolated, or do they represent broader worldwide thinking?
Suppose they do represent broader views. Is a shift from climate change per se to priority on human welfare more broadly – especially the welfare of the poor and vulnerable – on balance a positive trend or a negative one?
“Here beginneth a treatise how the High Father of heaven sendeth Death to summon every creature to come and give account of their lives.” – Narrator, Everyman; Section 1 (Prologue)
Come October of each year, the world is treated to the announcement of a special set of awards. Such rituals are underway year-round, of course, and are a feature of every field of human endeavor. But each October’s Nobel Prizes have a unique brand recognition and reputation. That starts with the award categories:
Or – distilled to their essence – innovation for human benefit, whether that be in the sciences, or the arts, or the effort to bring about peace on a warring Earth. (The previous LOTRW post looked at one example in a bit more detail – this year’s Economics Prize.)
The prizes are a big deal. Nobelists are luminaries in their fields. Among their number over past years we find Albert Einstein (physics); Marie Curie (once for physics, again for chemistry); Linus Pauling (chemistry, again for peace); James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins (physiology or medicine); Albert Camus (literature); Toni Morrison (literature); Nelson Mandela (peace); and Mother Teresa (peace); and many more, several of even greater stature. About 1000 honorees overall.
So the same must be true of Alfred Nobel himself, right? Surely he was a larger-than-life figure.
That’s certainly borne out by his resume. Wikipedia provides a crisp bio. A 19th-century Swede, he was a chemist, inventor, engineer, and businessman. He was born into poverty but died rich, amassing a fortune of more than 30 million Swedish kroner (which would be worth perhaps $200 million dollars today). He was clearly brilliant; he became fluent in half a dozen languages, was granted his first patent when he was only 24 years old. His most famous invention was dynamite, an explosive derived from nitroglycerin. (This patent would come ten years later.) He amassed 355 patents over his lifetime.
If we do the math, most of us will discover that this is 355 more patents than we can claim. Larger than life indeed.
But a closer look reveals a Nobel as a more human figure. About the time of Alfred’s birth in 1833, his father, Immanuel Nobel, was indeed bankrupt, but he moved to Finland and then Russia where he found success developing and building weaponry for the Russian military and other ventures. He would bring his family (wife and seven children) from Sweden to Russia in 1842. At the conclusion of the Crimean War, the business went into decline. Immanuel Nobel returned to Sweden in 1859, and established a nitroglycerin factory there. Alfred Nobel, who had been studying nitroglycerin chemistry all the while, simply went into the family business. In essence, like so many of us in our lives, he did no more than follow the path of least resistance. (As a scientist, the son of a scientist, I know a little about that glide path; perhaps you do as well.)
Nobel’s focus was on ways and means to make the handling of nitroglycerin safer. He pursued this work with added intensity after the Nobel factory explosion in 1864 that killed his brother Emil. His 1867 patent for dynamite was the result. Dynamite and the invention and manufacture of even more powerful explosives and detonation technology would make him rich.
There was one problem. Dynamite offered many civilian applications – in mining, and civil engineering tasks such as building railroads and canals, tunneling, etc. However, it was also quickly adopted for use in warfare – a weapon of mass destruction (WMD). Nobel is said to have thought that dynamite weaponry would be so devastating that it would mean the end of warfare – peace through deterrence[2]. Any such hope, if he ever held it, was short lived. Nobel knew all too well the source of his wealth.
How did that make him feel? A story (probably apocryphal) is that when another of Alfred’s brothers, Ludvig, died in 1888, some newspapers published obituaries of Alfred in error; one was headlined the merchant of death is dead. Alfred was supposedly appalled to realize this would be his legacy and established the Nobel prizes as a result. He had never married, and his will, signed in 1895, a year before he died, left virtually his entire fortune to this cause.
A more compelling narrative involves one of the only two women in his life, the Austro-Bohemian Countess Bertha von Suttner. Her checkered origins and life and its ups and downs are powerfully moving in their own right; if you’re someone who is constantly sampling the internet’s clickbait, you can do far worse than read her life story in this Wikipedia article. What an amazing person!
The Countess became Nobel’s housekeeper and secretary in 1876, but only briefly. However, she then corresponded with him throughout the rest of his life. A strong, visionary, and articulate pacifist, she’s credited with influencing Nobel’s decision to establish the Peace Prize in his eponymous stable of honors. In 1905 she herself would be awarded that Nobel Peace prize “for her sincere peace activities”, becoming only the second woman recipient of a Nobel Prize after Marie Curie.
Which brings us to that famous late 15th-century morality play, of uncertain origins, entitled The Summoning of Everyman. This play deals with the near universal sense of guilt we all experience when we look back over our lives (and how we can set ourselves free of that guilt). To emphasize, the guilt and regrets doesn’t stem so much from the standpoint of any external yardstick like the ten commandments, but more fundamentally – from our own judgment that we have fallen short of our potential. It’s only natural to flinch from such self-assessment. We didn’t all invent dynamite. But – the possibility that our life’s work and effort and much of its potential significance has either been misdirected or squandered – that is a thought that nags us all.
In light of this sobering reality, Nobel’s experience should give us cheer in several respects. First, and this might seem peculiar initially, the negative thoughts that nag us most greatly don’t come from the outside – even given the remarkable dysfunction, unfairness, and evil in the larger world. Our most painful negative thoughts come from awareness of our own shortcomings. This means they’re in our circle of influence. We can make some of those things right[3]. Second, it’s not so much a stricken conscience that guides you or me. Rather it’s more like a sensitized conscience. Our consciences don’t just push us away from the bad; they pull us toward the good. And if we each listen to our conscience, it can ennoble us, or even enNobel[4] us (as in make us more like Alfred Nobel), inspiring us to build positive legacies upon our life’s work for good[5]. And finally, many if not most of us (even the unmarried Alfred Nobel) have significant others in our lives. Often, if we let them in, listen to their encouragement, they can help us get in touch with the better angels of our nature.
A final thought experiment. We’re not all in a position to endow a prize. But if you could, what attributes, accomplishments, contributions, efforts, values would you choose to honor? Annually, you would award an Everyperson prize for…?
[1] The first four prizes have been awarded since 1901and are funded by the Nobel Foundation. This latter one was established separately, in 1968, and is funded by the Sweden’s central bank.
[2] Something similar has unfolded with respect to the invention of nuclear weapons, though the deterrence has the drama (and potential for catastrophe) of a geopolitical high-wire act.
[3] Recall Stephen Covey’s first habit of highly effective people: be proactive.
[4] Apologies. Couldn’t help myself. My conscience should have stopped me but didn’t.
[5] From Stephen Covey’s second habit: begin with the end in mind.
By Martin Maack – “Die Novelle” Ein kritisches Lexikon über die bekanntesten deutschen Dichter der Gegenwart mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Novellisten, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=13286706
“It’s the innovation, stupid.” (paraphrasing James Carville, with apologies).
In the 1990’s James Carville continuously and famously advised Bill Clinton to focus on the economy in his campaigns and while in office (with only partial success.)
Fact is, innovation and the economy are closely tied. This week’s reminder? Monday morning the world awoke to the news that Joel Mokyr was awarded a share in the 2025 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. According to Eshe Nelson, writing for the New York Times:
The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences was awarded on Monday to Joel Mokyr at Northwestern University, Philippe Aghion at INSEAD and the London School of Economics and Peter Howitt of Brown University for their work on innovation-driven economic growth.
The three economists were awarded for showing how technological progress had led to sustained economic growth, which leads to a better standard of living, health and quality of life.
Mr. Mokyr was awarded the half of the prize “for having identified the prerequisites for sustained growth through technological progress,” the committee said.
Mr. Aghion and Mr. Howitt shared the other half of the award for what the committee described as “the theory of sustained growth through creative destruction.”
The article quoted a committee member:
The laureates’ work shows that “we should not take progress for granted,” Kerstin Enflo, a member of the Nobel committee, said during a news conference.
“Instead, society must keep an eye on the factors that generate and sustain economic growth,” she added. “These are science based, [sic?] innovation, creative destruction and a society open for change.”
Congratulations all around! And well said! Let’s take a closer look at these three pillars of economic growth.
Science-based innovation. Politicians and business leaders of every stripe have long understood that science and innovation are the keys to prosperity. America is Exhibit A. At the moment, America’s four percent of the world’s population accounts for a third of global GDP. Talk about punching above our weight!
Creative destruction. There’s creative destruction and then there’s plain-vanilla destruction.
Creative destruction (German: schöpferische Zerstörung) is a concept in economics that describes a process in which new innovations replace and make obsolete older innovations. The concept is usually identified with the economist Joseph Schumpeter.
In short, innovation must replace what it’s made obsolete instead of merely running alongside of it; otherwise it doesn’t pay off. Suppose that today American factories were still churning out tens of millions of buggy whips annually, that Americans all had a two-horse stable next to their two-car garage, and a carriage-house alongside that, situated on the two acres of grazing-land for the horses. Imagine separate carriage-lanes adjacent to the bike lanes on streets and roads, and livery stables downtown adjacent to the parking garages.
Less a vision of progress than dystopian nightmare.
Simple, unadorned destruction – the action or process of causing so much damage to something that it no longer exists or cannot be repaired – is no better.
(Chasing a rabbit: I used Google search to get the above definition of destruction. Just what I needed for this day’s post. Then I was guilty of overreach. I tried going back to the source, which Google gave as the Oxford English dictionary, only to find this entry:
What does the noun destruction mean?
There are seven meanings listed in OED’s entry for the noun destruction, one of which is labelled obsolete. See ‘Meaning & use’ for definitions, usage, and quotation evidence.
Entry status
OED is undergoing a continuous programme of revision to modernize and improve definitions. This entry has not yet been fully revised.
Apparently, the OED is undergoing continuing creative destruction of its own.)
Which brings us to the Nobel Committee’s last point:
A society open for change. Until a few years ago, the United States not only led the world in innovation (and therefore the prospects of future wealth) but also showed signs of widening the gap. American universities and corporations were accomplishing the research; developing and commercializing the new technologies. They were poised to maintain and extend leadership in harnessing artificial intelligence to the whole of the innovation agenda. The federal government was providing needed seed funding and formulating policies to foster this work. The success was unique, and so visible globally that students and early career professionals from every discipline and from all over the world were clamoring to immigrate here and join in (coincidentally, refreshing and bringing youthful vigor to America’s aging demographic).
The entire enterprise was humming. Today, however, the people of the United States are taking steps in the other direction. Even as the global race to advance artificial intelligence and its applications demands massive additional amounts of electrical power, the government is making policy decisions to reduce investment in renewable energy infrastructure. We’re slowing the rate at which we are bringing cheap, renewable solar power and wind power online just as the rest of the world (aka the economic competition) is ramping these up. We’re attempting to increase our extraction and export of fossil fuels (akin to shipping oats abroad to satisfy a non-existent need for non-existent foreign horses), just as our foreign customers are cutting back their usage. We’ve disrupted the flow of R&D funding to universities and corporations, dangling partial restoration of these funds, but only contingent on political realignment, and with no date for restart or guarantee that funding will be dependable. We’re turning our back on vaccinations and other means of preventive, affordable healthcare the American people need. Our public education, instead of equipping the coming generation of American professionals with the analytical-thinking and tools they need to contribute to a better world future, are attempting to turn back the page of education (not just to the past, but to an impoverished, distilled vision of that past). The bottom line? A slowdown in innovation, inviting the rest of the world to catch up and consign us to the second-rate world status our puny fraction of the world population will justify. In particular, we’re encouraging the world’s best AI minds to align their aspirations, their residences, and their allegiances with other countries elsewhere.
Bottom line? The desired order of things has been reversed. No longer is innovation leading creative destruction. Instead, pure-and-simple destruction has made innovation imperative.
The good news? The current American lead in innovation, though stalled, is so large that it can’t be erased overnight. And necessity remains the mother of invention. Awareness of the need is growing among the general population. Some of the research and application that had been cut short will be restarted. Some will be redirected, tweaked (and appropriately so – there’s always been room for improvement). Truly new innovation will continue to spring forth worldwide and in the United States – though at a slower rate domestically, diminished by the smaller source population, and the aging of that population. There’s time and incentive for Americans to get our collective second wind.
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A bittersweet postscript. I failed to take any real advantage of my year of freshman-level economics at Swarthmore. As a result what little economics I have at my command is fragmented and fragile. But over my career I have received help from several economists. Can’t adequately thank them all (and apologies to those omitted here) but three stand out. In alphabetical order, they are: Heywood Fleisig, Jeff Lazo, and Molly Macauley. It was Molly who introduced me to some of Joel Mokyr’s work a decade or more ago: The Lever of Riches (1992) and The Gifts of Athena (2002). Shortly thereafter I invited Professor Mokyr to meet with the AMS Summer Policy Colloquium, but we couldn’t make the arrangements work. An opportunity missed.
What a great tagline! Four great dimensions to the world’s aspirations.
And how’s this for some supporting fine print? Improving lives around the world.
The organization behind both? The United Nations, now eighty years old.
Given the highly visible ructions of this past September’s General Assembly, some might be tempted to question the United Nation’s effectiveness. Some have done just that, even some of the speakers during the High-Level Week. And a few of those have questioned its effectiveness even while they’ve been beaverlike undermining its work. Worldwide, we find that crises abound, inequity and injustice persist, seemingly unabated.
But take a look at the scale. The United Nations annual budget is a shade less than $4B US dollars. Its corresponding peacekeeping budget is less than $6B. Compare with world GDP, put at about $100 trillion dollars, which is greater by a factor of 10,000. The world’s eight-billion population outnumbers some130,000 UN employees[1] by a factor of 60,000-to-1. These contrasts make clear that the United Nations cannot by itself solve any world problem of any size that matters. Those responsibilities rest, as they always have, with the efforts of the 193 UN member states and their peoples.
The most that the United Nations can do is lightly guide a world conversation towards needed consensus. And, again, given the scale, it’s easy for that conversation to be drowned out by the current global turmoil – the wars, terrorism, famine, disease, the natural and manmade disasters, and general upheaval; and the accompanying hubbub – the yelling, screaming, sobbing, disputes.
How, then, can the United Nations claim any contribution to improving lives around the world? At least three ways come to mind (readers can easily see others).
Peacekeeping. Conflicts, whether between nations, or in-country, between warring tribal factions, or in failed states, ultimately must be resolved by the combatants. But in some cases, a cooling-off period is needed, and in some of those cases, UN peacekeeping forces can help.
Such efforts, by their nature, are reactive. (Hence the separate, ad hoc financing.)
Providing a venue for quiet, structured, sustained discussion. The resolution of big, complex issues starts with thought and conversation. Again, that effort and any resulting agreement lies in the hands of the parties involved. But where stakes are large and feelings run high it can help to have a disinterested party provide neutral ground for such conversation, a systematic structure to bound and support it, and the staying power needed to keep the discussion going and to arrive at a useful outcome.
By helping the world set agendas and goals. There’s a saying in the management/leadership world that goes like this: Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things.
On the world scene, much of the pervasive disagreement centers on whether the states are behaving well. The United Nations finds itself embedded in a great deal of this. But it’s at its best when it’s helping the world focus on doing the right things. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) and their predecessors, the Millennial Development Goals (MDG’s) are good examples of this. They make the UN tagline concrete and progress measurable.
These venue-providing/goal-setting portfolios are more proactive.
Closer to home for most LOTRW readers, here are some specific areas where there is reason for cheer.
Climate change. The IPCC efforts of the last three decades is a good example. Most recently, it’s become clear that the promise of the Paris agreement has largely failed to materialize. Moreover, there’s an emerging sense that worldwide political enthusiasm for dealing with the issue is starting to cool. But progress is being made, notably with respect to development and use of renewable energy sources. What’s more, this is happening in response to abiding economic realities versus fickle political support.
Law of the sea. Last month saw Morocco become the 60th nation to ratify the UN High Seas Treaty, putting it into effect. The groundwork took two decades, but nations are now establishing extensive marine conservation zones in order to maintain ocean biodiversity. Meanwhile the United Nations is continuing to help nations work through more contentious issues relating to ocean mining outside territorial waters.
Plastics. Talk about setbacks! The United Nations began negotiations on a global plastic-pollution treaty in 2022. Most nations participating in the talks favor some form of curb on plastic production. But ten days of debate this past summer failed to reach an agreement after pushback from plastic- and petrochemical-producing nations. Yet here’s the thing. Most likely this is only success delayed, not success denied. Although no firm date has been set, the talks are scheduled to resume. The problem is not going away, but neither is the UN.
Such perseverance in the face of opposition is a signature feature of the UN and a major contributor to its value proposition. The UN keeps the world talking about the right things. If the UN didn’t exist, it would have to be invented. (And imagine the difficulty of trying to do that in today’s political climate!)
A closing comment. Science non-profits and professional associations such as the American Meteorological Society should see parallels and much to learn from the UN example. Like the UN, NGO staffs are negligible in size and reach compared with the communities they serve. That applies not just to financial resources and infrastructure, but also intellect. Sheer numbers dictate that the brainpower needed to solve societal problems lies in the larger community. What science societies can contribute – where they can and do punch above their weight – lies in their convening power. Peer-reviewed journals and scientific meetings are the means by which scientists get together, hash out the pros, the cons, and the implications of their work, and accelerate their contributions to the larger society. NGO’s also provide means and opportunity for institutions – government agencies, corporations, etc. – to pause organizational infighting and competing views and conflicting objectives, and seek and develop common ground.
All this, in ways large and small, contributing to peace, dignity, and equality on a healthy planet.
[1] The UN secretariat proper is smaller, numbering only some 37,000.
