« The Rich Get Richer Much, Much Faster | Main | Today's Bush Joke »
December 18, 2007
| Past The Tipping Point | Environment Future |
Ross Gelbspan, author of The Heat is On and Boiling Point, thinks it's no longer possible to prevent catastrophic climate change. It's too late. We need, therefore, to stop thinking (only) about how we're going to avert global warming and start thinking about how we're going to deal with its consequences. It's quite a long piece, but worth excerpting at length (Grist):
As the pace of global warming kicks into overdrive, the hollow optimism of climate activists, along with the desperate responses of some of the world's most prominent climate scientists, is preventing us from focusing on the survival requirements of the human enterprise.The environmental establishment continues to peddle the notion that we can solve the climate problem.
We can't.
We have failed to meet nature's deadline. In the next few years, this world will experience progressively more ominous and destabilizing changes. These will happen either incrementally — or in sudden, abrupt jumps.
Under either scenario, it seems inevitable that we will soon be confronted by water shortages, crop failures, increasing damages from extreme weather events, collapsing infrastructures, and, potentially, breakdowns in the democratic process itself. [...]
[If] humanity decided tomorrow to replace its coal- and oil-burning energy sources with noncarbon sources — it would still be too late to avert major climate disruptions. No national energy infrastructure can be transformed within a decade. [...]
The truth is that we may already be witnessing the early stages of runaway climate change in the melting of the Arctic, the increase in storm intensity, the accelerating extinctions of species, and the prolonged nature of recurring droughts.
Moreover, some scientists now fear that the warming is taking on its own momentum — driven by internal feedbacks that are independent of the human-generated carbon layer in the atmosphere.
Consider these examples:
- Despite growing public awareness of global warming, the world's carbon emissions are rising nearly three times faster than they did in the 1990s. As a result, many scientists tell us that the official, government-sanctioned forecasts of coming changes are understating the threat facing the world.
- A rise of 2 degrees C over preindustrial temperatures is now virtually inevitable, according to the IPCC, as the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide is approaching the destabilizing level of 450 parts per million. That rise will bring drought, hunger, disease, and flooding to millions of people around the world.
- Scientists predict a steady rise in temperatures beginning in about two years — with at least half of the years between 2009 and 2019 surpassing the average global temperature in 1998, to date, the hottest year on record.
- Given the unexpected speed with which Antarctica is melting, coupled with the increasing melt rates in the Arctic and Greenland, the rate of sea-level rise has doubled — with scientists now raising their prediction of ocean rise by century's end from about three feet to about six feet.
- Scientists discovered that a recent, unexplained surge of carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere is due to more greenhouse gases escaping from trees, plants, and soils — which have traditionally buffered the warming by absorbing the gases. In the lingo of climate scientists, carbon sinks are turning into carbon sources. Because the added warmth is making vegetation less able to absorb our carbon emissions, scientists expect the rate of warming to jump substantially in the coming years.
- The intensity of hurricanes around the world has doubled in the last decade. As Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research explained, "If you take the last 10 years, we've had twice the number of category-5 hurricanes than any other [10-year period] on record."
- In Australia, a new, permanent state of drought in the country's breadbasket has cut crop yields by over 30 percent. The 1-in-1,000-year drought exemplifies a little-noted impact of climate change. As the atmosphere warms, it tightens the vortex of the winds that swirl around the poles. One result is that the water that traditionally evaporated from the Southern Ocean and rained down over New South Wales is now being pulled back into Antarctica — drying out the southeastern quadrant of Australia and contributing to the buildup of glaciers in the Antarctic — the only area on the planet where glaciers are increasing.
As one prominent climate scientist said recently, "We are seeing impacts today that we did not expect to see until 2085."
The panic among climate scientists is expressing itself in geoengineering proposals that are half-baked, fantastically futuristic, and, in some cases, reckless. Put forth by otherwise sober and respected scientists, the schemes are intended to basically allow us to continue burning coal and oil. [...]
Climate change won't kill all of us — but it will dramatically reduce the human population through the warming-driven spread of infectious disease, the collapse of agriculture in traditionally fertile areas, and the increasing scarcity of fresh drinking water. (Witness the 1-in-100-year drought in the southeastern U.S., which has been threatening drinking water supplies in Georgia and other states.)
Those problems will be dramatically intensified by an influx of environmental refugees whose crops are destroyed by weather extremes or whose freshwater sources have dried up or whose homelands are going under from rising sea levels. [...]
One frequently overlooked potential casualty of accelerating climate change may be our tradition of democracy (corrupted as it already is). When governments have been confronted by breakdowns, they have frequently resorted to totalitarian measures to keep order in the face of chaos. It is not hard to imagine a state of emergency morphing into a much longer state of siege, especially since heat-trapping carbon dioxide stays in the atmosphere for about 100 years.
Add the escalating squeeze on our oil supplies, which could intensify our meanest instincts, and you have the ingredients for a long period of repression and conflict.
Ominously, this plays into the scenario, thoughtfully explored by Naomi Klein, that the community of multinational corporations will seize on the coming catastrophes to elbow aside governments as agents of rescue and reconstruction — but only for communities that can afford to pay. This dark vision implies the increasing insulation of the world's wealthy minority from the rest of humanity — buying protection for their fortressed communities from the Halliburtons, Bechtels, and Blackwaters of the world while the majority of the poor are left to scramble for survival among the ruins.
The only antidote to that kind of future is a revitalization of government — an elevation of public mission above private interest and an end to the free-market fundamentalism that has blinded much of the American public with its mindless belief in the divine power of markets. [...]
There needs to be a vision that accommodates both the truth of the coming cataclysm and the profoundly human need for a sense of future.
That vision needs to be framed by the truly global nature of the problem. It starts with the recognition that this historical era of nationalism has become a stubborn, increasingly toxic impediment to our collective future. We all need to begin to think of ourselves — now — as citizens of one profoundly distressed planet.
I think that understanding involves a recognition that a clean environment is about far more than endangered species, toxic substances, and the "dead zones" that keep spreading off our shorelines. A clean environment is a basic human right. And without it, all the other human rights for which we have worked so hard will end up as grotesque caricatures of some of our deepest aspirations. [...]
At the level of social organization, the coming changes imply the need to conduct something like 80 percent of our governance at the local grassroots level through some sort of consensual democratic process — with the remaining 20 percent conducted by representatives at the global level. [...]
The key to our survival as a civil species during an era of profound natural upheaval lies in an enhanced sense of community. [...]
As the former Argentine climate negotiator, Raul Estrada-Oyuela, said, "We are all adrift in the same boat — and there's no way half the boat is going to sink."
To keep ourselves afloat, we need to change the economic and political structures that determine how we behave. In this case, we need to elevate the ethic of cooperation over the deeply ingrained reflex of competition. We need to elevate our biological similarities over our geographical differences. We need, in the face of this oncoming onslaught, to reorganize our social structures to reflect our most humane collective aspirations.
The triumph of the ideology of private self-interest over a shared sense of public responsibility came at the worst possible time, historically speaking. The last couple of generations of Americans have had it ingrained in them that greed is good and unrestrained markets are the only way of organizing human activity that actually works. Unfortunately, the total here is qualitatively different from the sum of its parts: countless acts that each advance individual self-interest add up to collective suicide. If there ever were a refutation of naked, unregulated capitalism, this is it. But the Titanic steams on.
Posted by Jonathan at December 18, 2007 03:13 PM
Comments
It's hard to conceive of, or accept that this is really happening.
Evolution really flipped it's wig with the appearance of humans on the scene.
Posted by: Clay at December 19, 2007 09:53 AM
More from the article and why I believe the human race will fail horribly at meeting the challenge of global warming.
“An acknowledgement of the reality of escalating climate change plays havoc with one's sense of future. . . [and opens] one's self to a morass of conflicting impulses -- from the anticipated thrill of a reckless plunge into hedonism to a profoundly demoralizing sense of hopelessness and a feeling that a lifelong guiding sense of purpose has suddenly evaporated.
“This slow-motion collapse of the planet leaves us with the bitterest kind of awakening. For parents of young children, it provokes the most intimate kind of despair. For people whose happiness derives from a fulfilling sense of achievement in their work, this realization feels like a sudden, violent mugging. For those who feel a debt to all those past generations who worked so hard to create this civilization we have enjoyed, it feels like the ultimate trashing of history and tradition. For anyone anywhere who truly absorbs this reality and all that it implies, this_realization_leads_into_the_deepest_center_of_grief.”
It's human nature to avoid this realazation, and it's easy to do so because this threat is moving so slow. To get some 4 billion adults of our species on the same global-warming-solution-page is an impossible feat. This isn't pessimism; it's a recognition and acceptance of human behavior. Poor countries can't solve this problem, only the wealthy ones can. And we rich folk have gotten far too comfortable with our cozy lifestyles to give them up voluntarily. Once you've experienced the bliss of air conditioning, yo don't go back to hot'n sweaty without a fight, not even with Al Gore at the helm.
Posted by: at December 19, 2007 02:46 PM
I'm not confident that we as a species, particularly us Amerikans, can regain an enhanced sense of community, as we have become a mobile society, and probably a surprising percentage of us no longer live in the state where we were born. I live in Pennsylvania, an ex-pat from Georgia as a result of my husband's job, and after 13 years of being a good neighbor, we are still strangers in a strange land. Clannish bunch, these Pennsylvanians. The only reason I know who lives next door is by my looking at the on-line real estate records for Allegheny County.
I have found more "community" on the internet, and that is a very sad thing to admit.
Many times of late, I have wished I were Amish and living in Lancaster County. They will be the ones who will survive the climate crisis.
A very good book on how we lost our sense of community is "Refrigerator Rights: Creating Connections and Restoring Relationship " by Will Miller and Glenn Sparks. I haven't finished it yet, but so far it is an eye-opener.
Posted by: Lane_in_PA at December 19, 2007 02:54 PM
Much the same as the previous posts, if this is the scenario we are facing, I don't see how we can get out of this deadly future. I do not want to give the impression of being defeatist but we humans have just gotten too complacent and the chickens are regrettably coming home to roost. I really feel for what my children are going to inherit.
Posted by: Malcolm at December 19, 2007 03:59 PM
Lane wrote:
"Many times of late, I have wished I were Amish and living in Lancaster County. They will be the ones who will survive the climate crisis."
Yes, the Amish or the Mennonite lifestyles will be the most resilient to economic and fuel crises; however it’s unknown if their farmland will remain viable. I believe those lifestyles need to be coupled with nomadism, and a willingness to explore untraveled routes and new territories when necessary. I see mobility, global mobility, being a key to survival for non-elites in just 20 years, not only to find food and drinking water, but also to avoid areas of civil unrest.
On my wish list this Christmas is for somebody to write an in-depth article on climate models written in laymen terms with a focus on data. I want to know how much data is used, how the data is collected, how long it takes to collect and input data, and how much of the data being used today is out of date. Scientists are cautious creatures, as they should be, so I continue to believe that global warming forecasts are far too conservative. I think this thing is going to hit us much faster than anyone imagines and believe that an in-depth analysis of climate model data would bode us all well.
Posted by: at December 19, 2007 11:38 PM
You could start with climateprediction.net. This is a distributed computing project where you can run your own model. They have papers and discussions of how the data is used. Might be a place to get started.
On the Amish discussion, don't idealize these groups. They have no modern medical or scientific knowledge, and their birthrates are ridiculously high. If they did not have modern society to lean on, they'd look like something out of Dickens pretty quickly.
Posted by: Derek at December 20, 2007 10:53 AM
Thanks for the link to climateprediction.net, looks like another seti@home type project. I only spent 10 minutes there and didn't find what I was looking for, but thanks.
I'm interested in the Amish and Mennonite lifestyles minus the religion and any notions of supernatural entities and events, so I have no qualms with birth control. I look at all sorts of groups, past and present, and get future lifestyle ideas by combining desirable aspects from each.
Posted by: at December 20, 2007 01:56 PM
Just for the sake of clarification, I have no unrealistic admiration for the Amish/Mennonites. But I do recognize they are more capable of surviving without central air conditioning and heating than I am. They live with Nature, they aren't trying to destroy it. After a little more thought, I realized that they won't survive much longer than we will because the thieving, starving thugs from the surrounding towns and cities will overrun them, take all their stored foods, kill their livestock and scatter their generations of knowledge of how to live without electricity and iPods to the four winds.
It bothers me a bit when I go to the grocery store and the cashier holds up a cantaloupe or an avocado or some common vegetable, and asks, "What's this?" Just what do they teach in school these days?
Basically, I concur with the poster prior to this comment about combining the most desirable aspects from other societies for ideas about our future survival.
Posted by: Lane_in_PA at December 21, 2007 08:39 AM