Op-Ed Columnist
Cassandras of Climate
Published: September 27, 2009
Every once in a while I feel despair over the fate of the planet.
If you’ve been following climate science, you know what I mean: the
sense that we’re hurtling toward catastrophe but nobody wants to
hear about it or do anything to avert it.
And here’s the thing: I’m not engaging in hyperbole. These days, dire
warnings aren’t the delusional raving of cranks. They’re what come out
of the most widely respected climate models, devised by the leading
researchers. The prognosis for the planet has gotten much, much worse in
just the last few years.
What’s driving this new pessimism? Partly it’s the fact that some
predicted changes, like a decline in Arctic Sea ice, are happening much
faster than expected. Partly it’s growing evidence that feedback loops
amplifying the effects of man-made greenhouse gas emissions are stronger
than previously realized. For example, it has long been understood that
global warming will cause the tundra to thaw, releasing carbon dioxide,
which will cause even more warming, but new research shows far more
carbon locked in the permafrost than previously thought, which means a
much bigger feedback effect.
The result of all this is that climate scientists have, en masse,
become Cassandras — gifted with the ability to prophesy future
disasters, but cursed with the inability to get anyone to believe them.
And we’re not just talking about disasters in the distant future,
either. The really big rise in global temperature probably won’t take
place until the second half of this century, but there will be plenty of
damage long before then.
For example,
one 2007 paper in the journal Science is titled “Model Projections
of an Imminent Transition to a More Arid Climate in Southwestern North
America” — yes, “imminent” — and reports “a broad consensus among
climate models” that a permanent drought, bringing Dust Bowl-type
conditions, “will become the new climatology of the American Southwest
within a time frame of years to decades.”
So if you live in, say, Los Angeles, and liked those pictures of red
skies and choking dust in Sydney, Australia, last week, no need to
travel. They’ll be coming your way in the not-too-distant future.
Now, at this point I have to make the obligatory disclaimer that no
individual weather event can be attributed to global warming. The point,
however, is that climate change will make events like that Australian
dust storm much more common.
In a rational world, then, the looming climate disaster would be our
dominant political and policy concern. But it manifestly isn’t. Why not?
Part of the answer is that it’s hard to keep peoples’ attention
focused. Weather fluctuates — New Yorkers may recall the heat wave that
pushed the thermometer above 90 in April — and even at a global level,
this is enough to cause substantial year-to-year wobbles in average
temperature. As a result, any year with record heat is normally followed
by a number of cooler years: According to Britain’s Met Office, 1998 was
the hottest year so far, although NASA — which arguably has better data
— says it was 2005. And it’s all too easy to reach the false conclusion
that the danger is past.
But the larger reason we’re ignoring climate change is that Al Gore
was right: This truth is just too inconvenient. Responding to climate
change with the vigor that the threat deserves would not, contrary to
legend, be devastating for the economy as a whole. But it would shuffle
the economic deck, hurting some powerful vested interests even as it
created new economic opportunities. And the industries of the past have
armies of lobbyists in place right now; the industries of the future
don’t.
Nor is it just a matter of vested interests. It’s also a matter of
vested ideas. For three decades the dominant political ideology in
America has extolled private enterprise and denigrated government, but
climate change is a problem that can only be addressed through
government action. And rather than concede the limits of their
philosophy, many on the right have chosen to deny that the problem
exists.
So here we are, with the greatest challenge facing mankind on the
back burner, at best, as a policy issue. I’m not, by the way, saying
that the Obama administration was wrong to push health care first. It
was necessary to show voters a tangible achievement before next
November. But climate change legislation had better be next.
And as I pointed out
in my last column, we can afford to do this. Even as climate
modelers have been reaching consensus on the view that the threat is
worse than we realized, economic modelers have been reaching consensus
on the view that the costs of emission control are lower than many
feared.
So the time for action is now. O.K., strictly speaking it’s long
past. But better late than never.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times
Company To subscribe or visit go to:
http://www.nytimes.com
|