February 28, 2013

The New Abolitionists

These mugshots from the Guardian of the "climate change abolitionists," a.k.a. "climate hawks,"  show the leading figures, from Bill McKibben in the upper left to Jeremy Grantham on the lower right. Clicking on the picture will take you to the Guardian site, where there are brief biographies.


Andrew Winston, in the accompanying piece at the Guardian, writes of the new abolitionists:  "Climate abolitionists are not fighting to eliminate growth. Eradicating slavery did not rid the world of cotton or tobacco, and moving away from carbon will not mean abandoning human and economic development – in fact, it will help ensure it. What we want to abolish is our outmoded, broken economic and energy systems that threaten our survival, in part because they put no value on human and ecosystem inputs and impacts. We're seeking a new way of powering our world that will save vast sums of money (variable costs of near zero), avoid the significant health impacts of burning dirty fossil fuels, and conserve our planet's ability to support not only our entire $70tn economy, but our very existence."

See also Joe Romm's take on the "new abolitionists," of which he is one (just to the left of Grantham).

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