a lot of media are writing/talking about the economy

[ensho]

nowhere have I seen any of them add climate change to their stats.

when climate change is bankrupting countries one after the other.

are economists in denial? or is it that climate change is constant but random and can't be predicted?

economists, reporters should REPORT that their economy stats don't take into account climate change.

[TreasonousBastard]

1. How would they do that? The Russian drought might be...

due to climate change, or it may not. The proximate cause is the jet stream, which has slipped around before.

More to the point is that economists have taken into account droughts, monsoons, and every other weather change that has affected output.

[ensho]

3. they can add what has already happened, climate wise, but not

what will happen in the future.

so they can do their states, and talk their talks, but they have to say "these stats do not include what economic damage future climate change will cause.

like a disclaimer.

climate change will not go away. it is getting worse and worse.

[slampoet]

2. That kind of story requires more than a Google search.

I have YET to see a story the media has done recently that requires more than that.

[Blue Meany]

4. There's a new academic discipline called

Environmental Economics that deals with this. I know a professor in this field whose conclusions are similar to those that I have arrived at as a historian looking at the patterns of development over the last few centuries: we are at a turning point and in the future we in this country, and those in other developed countries, are going to have to use a fraction of the resources we currently consume. Greater efficiency and new energy resources will not fill the gap; we will have to do with much less. Because we will have to we will do this, but the road can be made easier by preparing for it or harder--with resource wars and massive die-offs from famine and other perils--if we try to maintain the status quo. Right now most of our national efforts are aimed at the latter course.

This of course is not news, it is the meta-story behind the droughts and climate change that are covered as discrete stories in the news. But connecting the dots between the decline of fishing, droughts and famine, oils spills, unsustainable agriculture (that depends on oil for fertilizer and pesticides), and wars over oil isn't too difficult.

[ensho]

5. kick

nt

[TreasonousBastard]

6. All of those things aren't due to climate change, but...

they are due to overpopulation and the older concept of "highest and best use" which only looked at return on investment.

Finding an economic model for the commons, parks, rivers that aren't fished or dammed, fish that aren't marketed... ain't so easy.

(Previously, economists saw nothing wrong with a world without bluebirds.)

[ensho]

7. when I lived up in Maryland and saw a bluebird I was thrilled

didn't see them often. and that was 30? yrs. ago.

what has happened hurts the heart, doesn't it.