permaculture

["Nicholas Roberts" <nicholas@themediasociety.org>]

Think Again: Climate Change

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4585&print=1
By Bill McKibben

January/February 2009
Act now, we're told, if we want to save the planet from a climate
catastrophe. Trouble is, it might be too late. The science is settled,
and the damage has already begun. The only question now is whether we
will stop playing political games and embrace the few imperfect
options we have left.



STAN HONDA/AFP/Getty Images
Tall Order: It may already be too late to save the planet from a
human-made catastrophe.
"Scientists Are Divided"

No, they're not. In the early years of the global warming debate,
there was great controversy over whether the planet was warming,
whether humans were the cause, and whether it would be a significant
problem. That debate is long since over. Although the details of
future forecasts remain unclear, there's no serious question about the
general shape of what's to come.

Every national academy of science, long lists of Nobel laureates, and
in recent years even the science advisors of President George W. Bush
have agreed that we are heating the planet. Indeed, there is a more
thorough scientific process here than on almost any other issue: Two
decades ago, the United Nations formed the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) and charged its scientists with synthesizing the
peer-reviewed science and developing broad-based conclusions. The
reports have found since 1995 that warming is dangerous and caused by
humans. The panel's most recent report, in November 2007, found it is
"very likely" (defined as more than 90 percent certain, or about as
certain as science gets) that heat-trapping emissions from human
activities have caused "most of the observed increase in global
average temperatures since the mid-20th century."

If anything, many scientists now think that the IPCC has been too
conservative—both because member countries must sign off on the
conclusions and because there's a time lag. Its last report
synthesized data from the early part of the decade, not the latest
scary results, such as what we're now seeing in the Arctic.

In the summer of 2007, ice in the Arctic Ocean melted. It melts a
little every summer, of course, but this time was different—by late
September, there was 25 percent less ice than ever measured before.
And it wasn't a one-time accident. By the end of the summer season in
2008, so much ice had melted that both the Northwest and Northeast
passages were open. In other words, you could circumnavigate the
Arctic on open water. The computer models, which are just a few years
old, said this shouldn't have happened until sometime late in the 21st
century. Even skeptics can't dispute such alarming events.
"We Have Time"

Wrong. Time might be the toughest part of the equation. That melting
Arctic ice is unsettling not only because it proves the planet is
warming rapidly, but also because it will help speed up the warming.
That old white ice reflected 80 percent of incoming solar radiation
back to space; the new blue water left behind absorbs 80 percent of
that sunshine. The process amps up. And there are many other such
feedback loops. Another occurs as northern permafrost thaws. Huge
amounts of methane long trapped below the ice begin to escape into the
atmosphere; methane is an even more potent greenhouse gas than carbon
dioxide.

Such examples are the biggest reason why many experts are now
fast-forwarding their estimates of how quickly we must shift away from
fossil fuel. Indian economist Rajendra Pachauri, who accepted the 2007
Nobel Peace Prize alongside Al Gore on behalf of the IPCC, said
recently that we must begin to make fundamental reforms by 2012 or
watch the climate system spin out of control; NASA scientist James
Hansen, who was the first to blow the whistle on climate change in the
late 1980s, has said that we must stop burning coal by 2030. Period.

All of which makes the Copenhagen climate change talks that are set to
take place in December 2009 more urgent than they appeared a few years
ago. At issue is a seemingly small number: the level of carbon dioxide
in the air. Hansen argues that 350 parts per million is the highest
level we can maintain "if humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar
to that on which civilization developed and to which life on Earth is
adapted." But because we're already past that mark—the air outside is
currently about 387 parts per million and growing by about 2 parts
annually—global warming suddenly feels less like a huge problem, and
more like an Oh-My-God Emergency.
"Climate Change Will Help as Many Places as It Hurts"

Wishful thinking. For a long time, the winners-and-losers calculus was
pretty standard: Though climate change will cause some parts of the
planet to flood or shrivel up, other frigid, rainy regions would at
least get some warmer days every year. Or so the thinking went. But
more recently, models have begun to show that after a certain point
almost everyone on the planet will suffer. Crops might be easier to
grow in some places for a few decades as the danger of frost recedes,
but over time the threat of heat stress and drought will almost
certainly be stronger.

A 2003 report commissioned by the Pentagon forecasts the possibility
of violent storms across Europe, megadroughts across the Southwest
United States and Mexico, and unpredictable monsoons causing food
shortages in China. "Envision Pakistan, India, and China—all armed
with nuclear weapons—skirmishing at their borders over refugees,
access to shared rivers, and arable land," the report warned. Or Spain
and Portugal "fighting over fishing rights—leading to conflicts at
sea."

Of course, there are a few places we used to think of as possible
winners—mostly the far north, where Canada and Russia could
theoretically produce more grain with longer growing seasons, or
perhaps explore for oil beneath the newly melted Arctic ice cap. But
even those places will have to deal with expensive consequences—a real
military race across the high Arctic, for instance.

Want more bad news? Here's how that Pentagon report's scenario played
out: As the planet's carrying capacity shrinks, an ancient pattern of
desperate, all-out wars over food, water, and energy supplies would
reemerge. The report refers to the work of Harvard archaeologist
Steven LeBlanc, who notes that wars over resources were the norm until
about three centuries ago. When such conflicts broke out, 25 percent
of a population's adult males usually died. As abrupt climate change
hits home, warfare may again come to define human life. Set against
that bleak backdrop, the potential upside of a few longer growing
seasons in Vladivostok doesn't seem like an even trade.
"It's China's Fault"

Not so much. China is an easy target to blame for the climate crisis.
In the midst of its industrial revolution, China has overtaken the
United States as the world's biggest carbon dioxide producer. And
everyone has read about the one-a-week pace of power plant
construction there. But those numbers are misleading, and not just
because a lot of that carbon dioxide was emitted to build products for
the West to consume. Rather, it's because China has four times the
population of the United States, and per capita is really the only way
to think about these emissions. And by that standard, each Chinese
person now emits just over a quarter of the carbon dioxide that each
American does. Not only that, but carbon dioxide lives in the
atmosphere for more than a century. China has been at it in a big way
less than 20 years, so it will be many, many years before the Chinese
are as responsible for global warming as Americans.

What's more, unlike many of their counterparts in the United States,
Chinese officials have begun a concerted effort to reduce emissions in
the midst of their country's staggering growth. China now leads the
world in the deployment of renewable energy, and there's barely a car
made in the United States that can meet China's much tougher
fuel-economy standards.

For its part, the United States must develop a plan to cut
emissions—something that has eluded Americans for the entire
two-decade history of the problem. Although the U.S. Senate voted down
the last such attempt, Barack Obama has promised that it will be a
priority in his administration. He favors some variation of a "cap and
trade" plan that would limit the total amount of carbon dioxide the
United States could release, thus putting a price on what has until
now been free.

Despite the rapid industrialization of countries such as China and
India, and the careless neglect of rich ones such as the United
States, climate change is neither any one country's fault, nor any one
country's responsibility. It will require sacrifice from everyone.
Just as the Chinese might have to use somewhat more expensive power to
protect the global environment, Americans will have to pay some of the
difference in price, even if just in technology. Call it a Marshall
Plan for the environment. Such a plan makes eminent moral and
practical sense and could probably be structured so as to bolster
emerging green energy industries in the West. But asking Americans to
pay to put up windmills in China will be a hard political sell in a
country that already thinks China is prospering at its expense. It
could be the biggest test of the country's political maturity in many
years.
"Climate Change Is an Environmental Problem"

Not really. Environmentalists were the first to sound the alarm. But
carbon dioxide is not like traditional pollution. There's no Clean Air
Act that can solve it. We must make a fundamental transformation in
the most important part of our economies, shifting away from fossil
fuels and on to something else. That means, for the United States,
it's at least as much a problem for the Commerce and Treasury
departments as it is for the Environmental Protection Agency.

And because every country on Earth will have to coordinate, it's far
and away the biggest foreign-policy issue we face. (You were thinking
terrorism? It's hard to figure out a scenario in which Osama bin Laden
destroys Western civilization. It's easy to figure out how it happens
with a rising sea level and a wrecked hydrological cycle.)

Expecting the environmental movement to lead this fight is like asking
the USDA to wage the war in Iraq. It's not equipped for this kind of
battle. It may be ready to save Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife
Refuge, which is a noble undertaking but on a far smaller scale.
Unless climate change is quickly de-ghettoized, the chances of making
a real difference are small.
"Solving It Will Be Painful"

It depends. What's your definition of painful? On the one hand, you're
talking about transforming the backbone of the world's industrial and
consumer system. That's certainly expensive. On the other hand, say
you manage to convert a lot of it to solar or wind power—think of the
money you'd save on fuel.

And then there's the growing realization that we don't have many other
possible sources for the economic growth we'll need to pull ourselves
out of our current economic crisis. Luckily, green energy should be
bigger than IT and biotech combined.

Almost from the moment scientists began studying the problem of
climate change, people have been trying to estimate the costs of
solving it. The real answer, though, is that it's such a huge
transformation that no one really knows for sure. The bottom line is,
the growth rate in energy use worldwide could be cut in half during
the next 15 years and the steps would, net, save more money than they
cost. The IPCC included a cost estimate in its latest five-year update
on climate change and looked a little further into the future. It
found that an attempt to keep carbon levels below about 500 parts per
million would shave a little bit off the world's economic growth—but
only a little. As in, the world would have to wait until Thanksgiving
2030 to be as rich as it would have been on January 1 of that year.
And in return, it would have a much-transformed energy system.

Unfortunately though, those estimates are probably too optimistic. For
one thing, in the years since they were published, the science has
grown darker. Deeper and quicker cuts now seem mandatory.

But so far we've just been counting the costs of fixing the system.
What about the cost of doing nothing? Nicholas Stern, a renowned
economist commissioned by the British government to study the
question, concluded that the costs of climate change could eventually
reach the combined costs of both world wars and the Great Depression.
In 2003, Swiss Re, the world's biggest reinsurance company, and
Harvard Medical School explained why global warming would be so
expensive. It's not just the infrastructure, such as sea walls against
rising oceans, for example. It's also that the increased costs of
natural disasters begin to compound. The diminishing time between
monster storms in places such as the U.S. Gulf Coast could eventually
mean that parts of "developed countries would experience developing
nation conditions for prolonged periods." Quite simply, we've already
done too much damage and waited too long to have any easy options
left.
"We Can Reverse Climate Change"

If only. Solving this crisis is no longer an option. Human beings have
already raised the temperature of the planet about a degree
Fahrenheit. When people first began to focus on global warming (which
is, remember, only 20 years ago), the general consensus was that at
this point we'd just be standing on the threshold of realizing its
consequences—that the big changes would be a degree or two and hence
several decades down the road. But scientists seem to have
systematically underestimated just how delicate the balance of the
planet's physical systems really is.

The warming is happening faster than we expected, and the results are
more widespread and more disturbing. Even that rise of 1 degree has
seriously perturbed hydrological cycles: Because warm air holds more
water vapor than cold air does, both droughts and floods are
increasing dramatically. Just look at the record levels of insurance
payouts, for instance. Mosquitoes, able to survive in new places, are
spreading more malaria and dengue. Coral reefs are dying, and so are
vast stretches of forest.

None of that is going to stop, even if we do everything right from
here on out. Given the time lag between when we emit carbon and when
the air heats up, we're already guaranteed at least another degree of
warming.

The only question now is whether we're going to hold off catastrophe.
It won't be easy, because the scientific consensus calls for roughly 5
degrees more warming this century unless we do just about everything
right. And if our behavior up until now is any indication, we won't.


Bill McKibben is scholar in residence at Middlebury College and author
of Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future (New
York: Times Books, 2007).

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Nicholas Roberts
[im] skype:niccolor