Planet Restart: Living With Climate Change

Climate change as an issue is afflicted by two major difficulties when it comes to gaining public acceptance of the urgency of the problem.

First, climate is the product of many interconnected events whose interactions are only dimly understood. We know that cause and effect are constantly in operation but it is devilishly hard to say which cause lead to which effect. So if we want to assert a direct connection between human activities, greenhouse gases and climate it is easy to demonstrate the logic of that claim but harder to point to any one thing and say "Yes, this is directly due to human activities that have lead to climate change."

Second, climate change is easy to challenge because of the very uncertainty that attends any statement about climate. This makes it easy for those who have a vested interest in business a usual to create a climate of doubt and uncertainty in the debate about climate change. Bjorn Lomborg is a good example of someone who says on the one hand that climate change is real but who then goes on to argue against doing much of anything about it because after all we can't be sure exactly what effect human activities are having whereas there are many problems we are sure of so why not spend the money on those.

This is a very alluring argument, especially to policy makers who must spread ever decreasing resources among an ever increasing array of problems. The fact that the effects of climate change are not expected to be felt for another 20 or 30 or maybe 50 years doesn't do anything to build the case for urgency.

So we continue our vast experiment with the atmosphere and adopt and wait and see and let's hope for the best approach while continuing to pump out greenhouse gases that we know are not good for humans or for the atmosphere.

If there is any truth to the idea of the butterfly effect - small changes can lead to large results - then what can we expect from 150 years of pumping what now amounts to billions of tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere?

Somehow the term butterfly effect seems inadequate. I suggest a new term, the albatross effect. For those unfamiliar with the species, an albatross has a vast wingspan and can travel hundreds of miles over sea without resting. It was considered by ancient mariners to be a good luck charm.

That didn't stop them from killing them and eating them. We are human, after all. It is in our nature to destroy the very things that sustain us. Certainly what we have been doing to the earth is on a scale that is perfectly suited to the physical and mythical properties of the albatross.

A new report by the National Research Council of the National Academies of Science paints a bleak picture of the future that lies ahead.

The Executive Summary begins with a simple statement of fact: Emissions of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels have ushered in a new epoch where human activities will largely determine the evolution of Earth's climate.

After documenting the extent to which human activities have added to the concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the report further states that the carbon dioxide will remain in the atmosphere for many centuries.

According to this study, for every rise of 1 degree Celsius, there is 5% to 10% less rain, 5% to 10% lower river flows, 5% to 10% smaller crops, 5% to 10% more wildfires. Not to mention more extreme weather, rising sea levels and mass human, animal and plant migrations.

Here's the killer sentence in the report: Emission reductions larger than 80% (relative to whatever peak global emission rate may be reached) are required to approximately stabilize carbon dioxide concentrations for a century or so at any chosen target level. Even greater reductions in emissions would be required to maintain stabilized concentrations in the longer term.

Is there anyone reading this who thinks that any government at any time will ever come close to achieving emissions reductions larger than 80%? You sure as hell won't hear any politician making that kind of commitment. So what does that tell you?

If the science and the scientists are right, we are doomed to a major change in the planet's climate, one that will persist for centuries unless massive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions begin now. Our grandchildren will be living in a world that will be very different from the one we see around us today. And they won't be thanking us for the change.

This is a blog about climate change. Those who believe that climate change is real foresee a world of increasingly extreme weather, rising sea levels, shifting patterns of rainfall, changes in agricultural planting zones, shifting populations of animals and people ... the list goes on and on.

For most of us here the United States, most of the impact of these changes will be dealt with by state and local governments. I know when we got 5 feet of snow last winter our city and state budgets for snow removal were hit hard.

The financial collapse of 2007 and 2008 put many state and local governments into a very deep financial hole. Tax revenues fell while entitlement payments went up. Less tax dollars plus greater expenditures equals massive deficits. Unlike the federal government, which can borrow money to cover its deficits, state and local governments are required to have balanced budgets, which means cutting costs to meet falling revenues.

The bottom line is that state and local governments are barely able to keep up with routine requirements. If you look at natural disasters like tornadoes or earthquakes or hurricanes, you see two things. They are enormously expensive and take years even decades to recover from. What happens when something like climate change comes along?

Who will design and build levees along the East and West coasts to protect our major cities from rising sea levels? Who will upgrade the power grid and the cooling systems to deal with longer and more intense heat waves? Who will renegotiate the water rights agreements among states increasingly squeezed by declining annual rainfall levels. Who will cope with new waves of climate refugees?

All these things are coming at us with the inevitability of the next high tide. Will we do what it takes today to get ready? Not a chance. The cupboards are bare in most states, and what little there is must be used for things that are coming at administrators right now. Local, state and federal elected officials are not going to worry about what might happen 20, 30 or 50 years from now when the next election is just months away.

And so we continue with business as usual, going from day to day, missed opportunity to missed opportunity, our negligence and denial allowing today's ounce of prevention to become tomorrow's pound of cure.

If Earth was an empty sphere, devoid of any life, then climate change wouldn't matter. The periodic bouts of warming and cooling that have occurred over the last few billion years for the most part were played out on an empty stage.

The advent of life changed that in two ways. First, there was now something that we see as having value that was affected by changing climates. The word extinction has meaning only in the context of a life, be it plant or animal. Second, living organisms became a part of the process of climate change by either dampening or accelerating the process.

The current episode of climate change is unique not in the fact that it is happening but in the circumstance that life forms are playing a major role in creating and accelerating the process. While some will deny it, the evidence seems overwhelming that human activity relating to the tremendous burst in economic growth over the last 150 years has lead to a rapid and accelerating rise in average global temperatures largely due to burning fossil fuels.

The consequences of all this human economic activity go beyond just global warming. Population levels are climbing at a rate equally as alarming as global average temperatures. Fossil fuel supplies are declining at an equally rapid rate, forcing the exploitation of ever more difficult to get at sources. This in turn leads to aggravated assault on the environment, be it mountaintop removal or oil spills or pollution.

Anyone who thinks we can just keep going on like this, extravagantly exploiting and despoiling the environment to feed our hunger for the better things in life, is deluded. It isn't fair that those of us lucky enough to get to the banquet first have ruined for everyone else. We had roast beef; everyone else will have to get by on tofu. It is either that or we all go down together.