Earlier, I reported on the searing critique of the media’s coverage of global warming, especially climate economics, by a leading journalist (see How the press bungles its coverage of climate economics — “The media’s decision to play the stenographer role helped opponents of climate action stifle progress”).

Now the award-winning Eric Pooley, former national editor of Time, has a must-read piece in Slate, “Surprise–Economists Agree! A consensus is emerging about the costs of containing climate change. So why is no one writing that?” Pooley notes that among climate economists “there is a broad consensus that the cost of climate inaction would greatly exceed the cost of climate action–it’s cheaper to act than not to act.” There is also a consenus that preserving a livable climate is not a budget buster.

If I have one critique of the Pooley piece is that he doesn’t note that the IPCC, which reviews the whole literature in its definitive 2007 Fourth Assessment report (see here), concludes:

In 2050, global average macro-economic costs for mitigation towards stabilisation between 710 and 445ppm CO2-eq are between a 1% gain and 5.5% decrease of global GDP. This corresponds to slowing average annual global GDP growth by less than 0.12 percentage points.

But how is that possible? How can the world’s leading governments, scientifists, and economic experts agree that we can avoid catastrophe for such a small cost?

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Another holiday-themed post — from the Center for American Progress’s “It’s Easy Being Green” series.

“The Obama family is setting a great example by taking the train to the inauguration instead of a private jet. After all, taking mass transit when possible is something we can all do to help reduce pollution and end our dependence on foreign oil,” said environmental journalist Lori Bongiorno in an article posted on Yahoo’s Green Blog prior to the inauguration.

While not all of us traveled to the nation’s capital to watch the new president’s swearing in, we can take steps–such as taking a cue from Obama and riding mass transit–to make our travels more eco-friendly.

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I think science has mostly told us what it can about the urgent need to act swiftly and strongly to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and avoid destroying the planet’s livability for the next thousand years.

Yes, more observations and more analysis are valuable — and I will keep reporting on the ever-worsening climate outlook — but right now we need much more persuasiveness (see Why scientists aren’t more persuasive, Part 1 and Part 2: Why deniers out-debate “smart talkers”). Since

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Our nation’s top climate scientist, NASA’s James Hansen, has submitted a blunt op-ed, “The Sword of Damocles,” to The Observer. He makes many points worth underscoring, such as:

How can [the public] distinguish top-notch science and pseudoscience — the words sound the same? Leaders have no excuse….

The dirtiest trick that governments play on their citizens is the pretense that they are working on “clean coal” or that they will build power plants that are “capture ready” in case technology is ever developed to capture all pollutants….

The German and Australian governments pretend to be green….

The full piece is below. Remember, it is aimed at the UK. He has issued many similar challenges to this country’s leaders (see links at end):

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