A close friend insisted I see the “documentary” An Inconvenient Truth, starring Al Gore. So I finally downloaded it and watched it twice.
As an analysis of what is happening to the world, the movie is excellent. Al Gore has taken a page from Tom Barnett and gives flat rhetoric some spice with a powerful media presentation. Humans are affecting climate change, and it has consequences.
But on top of the science is a healthy dose of fear. That the same people who insist the War on Terrorism is based on fear then found this movie a “wake-up call” strikes me as tragically ironic. The movie is essentially a slick propaganda piece, with vivid images of glaciers falling into the sea, pictures of big waves, hurricanes, the spectre of millions of refugees, and a poor CGI polar bear swimming in a vast ocean. (Don’t believe me? See the trailer below.) It’s propaganda, plain and simple, and knowing propaganda’s effect on weak minds, it doesn’t surprise me that so many bloggers write of the movie, “I feel so empowered. I want to go do something!” While it’s inappropriate to compare the film with Goebbels, that is what critics meant when they dismissed the film as Nazi-esque.
So yes, the earth is getting warmer. Of course, the earth’s weather has never been static. Mr. Gore notes in his presentation that North America used to be covered with glaciers. That the American midwest is now entirely glacier-free is seen by most to be a good thing, but it was a result of climate change. Why climate change is only bad when it happens today is not addressed in the film.
But beyond those niggling details, the film is most frustrating because while it is an excellent explanation, it does not address a solution, at least not within the realm of reality. The film’s bumper-sticker slogan is “People not cars!” Yes, the sum of the film’s solutions honestly can’t even muster a complete sentence. While you watch the credits, you are invited to go to Carbusters.org. And lower your thermostate. And insulate your house. Oh yeah, and pray. (No, I’m not kidding. Not surprising when you consider that environmentalism has become the religion for people desperate to believe in something that doesn’t require them to kneel in a pew.)
I’d encourage all readers to take energy saving measures to protect themselves and conserve energy resources, not abstractly “protect the environment” (which these methods will not do). These habits are great for the reasons I give. But anyone who thinks that it will put even the smallest dent in climate change has got to be kidding.
Not that personal responsibility isn’t important. But the hypocrisy and hubris of this man is galling beyond words. He gripes that the earth’s population is too big, exploding from two billion people to when Gore was born to more than six billion today. Since Gore is going on about how “you can make a difference,” perhaps he’d like to explain why he decided to have four children if he knew/believes the population explosion to be such a threat?
For macro-solutions, Gore grumpily notes that every developed country but America and Australia have signed the Kyoto Protocol, ignoring the two solid reasons for rejecting it. First, the agreement imposes a _vastly_ disproportionate burden on the United States, which the United States Senate duly noted in its rejection of the treaty by a whopping 97-0 votes. Not John Kerry, Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer or any other liberal Democratic Senator voted to approve it. (Would Senator Gore have voted differently? If so, let him say it.) Second, it calls CO2 “pollution,” which is about as retarded as an environmental policy can be. Nature produces the vast, vast majority of the CO2 in the atmosphere, anywhere from 80-97%. Why we need to speed trillions of dollars to reduce the anthropogenic CO2 is absurd when we consider that CO2 is the same whether it comes from an SUV, Al Gore’s lungs, or a swamp in the Amazon. That the causes of climate change are more complicated than just CO2 is not a discussion that could be had with the feverish environmental evangelical crowd.
Gore finishes the speech with a passionate plea for action (with no answers) by vaguely asserting that we can “defeat” global warming (how this would happen he does not say). He invokes previous progressive accomplishments as evidence that we have the power to cool the earth:
Women earned the right to vote, first in New Zealand, then in Scandanavia, and it spread from there. The entire world defeated fascism in both Europe and the Pacific simultaneously!
Actually, Mr. Vice President, women first “earned” the right to vote in Wyoming in 1869, a solid quarter-century before New Zealand, from where it spread to Colorado and Utah. You’ll have to explain to me your views of geography and 19th century transit if you want to make me believe that women’s suffrage started in New Zealand only to spread to northern Europe. Indeed, if you know anything about the Women’s Suffrage Movement you know it built its momentum for decades in several separate regions across the Western world, and the actual right to vote didn’t really “spread” from anywhere, although the US played an enormous role in spreading the franchise in the modern era, such as Japan, Kuwait, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.
And the world didn’t defeat fascism in Europe and the Pacific simultaneously, the US did. From a point of both historical accuracy and pride as an American I’d sort of expect Mr. Gore to emphasize these things, but this just goes to show how warped this man’s moral compass is. He’s eager to give anyone credit for an achievement as long as its not the United States. If the US is involved, he’ll do as much as he can to downplay its role. So I’m not surprised that of all the things to be concerned about in the world today, Mr. Gore decides to pick a cause where the US, as the largest economy in the world, may be the greatest contributor.
UPDATE: You can see the movie trailer below. Sort of has a _Dawn of the Dead_ feel to it. And I like the ending.
Snaaap!
Spot on, Lord Curzon.
The “Captain Planet” part was a bit of a _deus ex machina_. Nonetheless, this seems like a decent film. _The Economist_ had a recent issue confirming many of the fears about climate change. Climate change is bad nowadays for a variety of reasons. First, most of Earth’s flora and fauna has adapted itself to current conditions since the end of the last ice age, so any sudden change would be disastrous, massively disrupting established ecosystems. Second, much of Earth’s human population and economic activity takes place on the coasts, so even a moderate rise in sea levels would be devastating in the extreme. And finally, because of today’s comparative warmth, any increase in heat has the possibility of setting off a positive feedback loop as carbon sinks become carbon sources and carbon locked up in the glaciers is set free. This would cause Earth to adopt conditions not seen in millions upon millions of years, and over a very short geological timescale.
Kenneth: you’re missing the point. Climate change is probably bad, but there are no steps we can take that will stop global warming. And the incessant focus on CO2 is not helping. Kyoto, despite being absurdly expensive (many trillions of dollars), wouldn’t even make an ounce of difference in the grand scheme of things.
Hear, hear!
Al Gore would love to get back into politics, perhaps as his party’s candidate in 2008. He may be trying to ride global warming to his party’s nomination.
His personal hypocrisy regarding his “carbon footprint”:http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-08-09-gore-green_x.htm is fairly well known. Curzon is absolutely right about taking energy saving measures to protect ourselves and conserve energy resources. In business and industry, taking energy-saving measures often improves the bottom line.
You want global warming? “55 million years ago”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5034026.stm the North Pole was an ice-free zone with tropical temperatures. The culprit? The “the Earth released a gigantic fart of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.”
Did you get the feeling that Al Gore wants everyone to feel sorry for him, or sorry for themselves, for him not being President? It’s like he wanted us all to walk out of the theater saying, aw shucks, what a great guy, then congratulate ourselves for not being a part of the problem. He seems pretty self-absorbed.
These are one of those posts you find yourself saying. “I should keep this somewhere and the next time someone talks to me about the subject matter, show it to them.”
I think I will. Tip of the hat Curzon…
I’ve read and enjoyed cominganarchy for a long time. I’ve never felt the need to add a comment before, but this thread is misguided enough that I feel compelled to respond.
I agree that An Inconvenient Truth is propaganda. And while I’m an engineer – not a climatologist (IANAC?) – I know enough about complex systems and emergent properties to know that we may never be able to establish a causal link between CO2 and global warming. (On the other hand, the correlation between the two is more than a tad suspicious. I’ll not debate the relationship here.)
Neither of these points negates the fact that climate change is for real, as Curzon himself accepts at the beginning of his posting. One need not believe any of what Al Gore says to understand that the probability of climate change over geologic timescales is 100%. Nor is it important, frankly, if the root cause of climate change is human, animal, mineral, or supernatural.
What is important is that we have a habitable planet in ten, one hundred, and a thousand years from now. Actually, I’d like to raise the bar a bit higher; I’m not just interested in the Earth being habitable, I’m interested in it being _comfortable_. Climatologically stable wouldn’t hurt either.
Is engineering the climate beyond us? To quote Curzon: “Climate change is probably bad, but there are no steps we can take that will stop global warming”Â?. Poppycock. Perhaps Curzon and I will have to disagree, but I firmly believe that we _are_ in an anthopocene age. We _can_ alter the climate. I, for one, believe that we are already doing so, and perhaps not in ways that are in our best interests. Even if you do not believe in restricting carbon dioxide emissions, there are other ways of cooling the globe. Emitting more aerosols is one example, launching satellites to reflect solar energy is another. Raising the albedo of the surface of the Earth is not beyond our capabilities, and would reflect more energy back into space. Perhaps all of these things should be investigated, in the interests of keeping our coastal cities above water and our farmlands fertile.
In summary: whether or not you happen to believe that humans are at the root of global warming, whether or not you happen to agree with Citizen Gore, it seems to me profoundly reasonable to take steps to ensure that our lives (and our children’s lives) continue without great climatological disruption. I believe that it’s in our power to do so, and I’m not afraid of exercising that power in attempts to secure our future.
Here’s what baffles me…
Scientists all agree that climate change is a natural phenomenon ( in general, I don’t necessarily mean the current one). Correct? It has happened many times in the past.
Scientists also agree that throughout the natural history of the world, there have been mass kill-offs of flora/faun with entire ecosystems sometimes obliterated in various manners and time spans. Correct?
So why do so many scientists and so called “naturalists” insist it is “bad” that the climate is at risk of getting warmer – even if it happens dramatically? Even if this means some (even many) animal/plant species die off, so what? I thought that was the course of natural history. Aren’t scientists supposed to be objective about this stuff. Obviously nobody cherishes the thought of themselves or their children suffering/dying because of natural catastrophes … however, natural catastrophes can and will happen and humans will likely perservere. No species lasts forever – even the cute ones die off – but Homo sapien just might (but prob not) be the one to break the mold.
I’d also like to bring up another point..
If global warming is indeed caused by humans, why is it consistently referred to as “unnatural”? Are we humans somehow separate from nature? Are not all things that exist inherently natural, regardless of whether they were created in a lab or factory? Science and politics need to get over the idea of “natural” and “unnatural”. A great example is the misconception that “natural” products (like drugs) are better for you. Aren’t hemlock and funnel web spider venom as natural as it gets?
Sorry for the overlong rant that might not be appropriate to this forum but Curzon got me thinkin’…Please, all “naturalists” feel free to set me straight.
Alex: I am totally open to review a policy that outlines 1.) exactly what steps that need to be taken place to combat climate change, along with 2.) metrics that indicate how to measure success, and 3.) explain how much it will cost and how we will pay for it.
How’s this for a reality check: if the US and Australia joined the other countries that have signed Kyoto, it would cost worldwide a whopping £80bn a year for the rest of the century. That’s like reinvading another Iraq every year between now and the 22nd century. What would the end result be? It would postpone global warming by six years over this century. That’s right, for such a collosal cost you would barely have any impact on climate change.
Compare that with all the good we could be doing for far less money, measured in combatting malaria, malnutrition, AIDS/HIV, clean water, starvation, and all the rest, all of which come with a specific benefit. Kyoto and similar measures slow global warming by six years for an absurdly high cost. That makes no sense, not by any stretch of the imagination.
Bottom line is that it’s simply not worth it. I’m willing to listen to a policy conceived through a practical look at the facts, based in intellectual rigor and public policy realism. I think lots of skeptics such as myself feel this way. But the reason Mr. Gore and his ilk can’t summon up anything more than “we have to do SOMETHING” is because that’s all they can say, they are aware of what I’ve written, and the fundamental motivations are more based in what I talk about in the last paragraphs than anything else.
I agree with you that we need to be personally responsible in energy consumption and our personal habits. But be prepared that even were we all to lead clean, green, recycled lives, the earth will continue to get warmer at the same rate.
Apologies in advance for the overly long posting. Hopefully it will be sufficiently interesting to enough people to justify the verbiage.
Curzon: I am in complete agreement with you that many of the measures put forward by the environmental lobby are at best impractical and uneconomic, at worst potentially harmful. Hybrid vehicles (at least as for typical use in N. America) come to mind as an example of the former and possibly the latter. As far as the Kyoto Protocol is concerned, it seems to me that China by itself is going to make a mockery of all other countries’ attempts at limiting carbon dioxide emissions, £80bn a year or otherwise. So please do not think that my writing is an appeal for ratification of the Kyoto Protocol (or various malformed successors) or for everyone to put on a sweater and turn down the thermostat. The challenges of global climate change are not going to be solved by U.N.-style international consensus, such as it is, nor by conscientious greenies bicycling to work.
The position that I’m trying to articulate is altogether different than the view of mainstream environmentalism, and perhaps could be distilled down to this: let’s make it the planet that we want it to be, not just yoke ourselves (at great expense, nonetheless!) to remain subject to the whims of nature. As Rommel pointed out, lots of “naturalists”Â? despise this idea, because it means that we finally give up the idea that the Earth can be preserved in some sort of static state for our amusement, with “nature”Â? on one side of the fence and “humanity”Â? on the other.
In a bit more detail, what I’m proposing is that:
1) We should decide what constitutes comfortable climate for us (and for the other species upon which we rely) – not merely select some arbitrary climate state as the status quo.
2) We should then undertake *active* measures in attempts to bring about what we’ve decided is acceptable climate. By active, I mean climate _control_, rather than simply limiting our environmental impact in the hopes the earth continues (or returns to) being as comfortable as it has been since our ancestors crawled out of the swamp. The natural history of extinction tells us that expecting the Earth to remain habitable (for us) is a losing bet. We have technologies that can be used to change the climate today. The challenge is controlling what is an exceptionally complex system. But I believe that we’ll have the computer capabilities necessary to actively manage the Earth’s climate in the next few decades, not centuries.
3) Those same active measures should take into account our using substantially _more_ energy in the future, per capita, than we use today, especially if any progress is made towards sustained fusion reactors.
What’s the cost of all of this? Difficult to say. Could it be in the billions of pounds per year? Perhaps. I would argue that some of that cost would be offset by worldwide gains in productivity, and by improved living conditions for many. Malaria, malnutrition, clean water, starvation, and many of the other ills that you mentioned could be alleviated in part or in whole by improved climate.
Rommel starts off by trying to use the logic, and really working hard at making an apologetic for, continuing the bad behavior which all scientists also know is NOT good for the environment. Of course climate change is natural as the climate is part of nature. The point is not to add to something if you know it makes it worse. Doesn’t take much of an Einstein to figure this out either. It’s a non-issue. We either do something about it, or we assist in the planet dying faster than it already is. True, it may die anyway due to a variety of things, but a smoker should rationalize his continuation of smoking because he might die in a car accident eventually. I think a better way to think about it is that we know scientifically how very small changes can have great consequences. For instance, water stays a liquid to a certain point, and then just the slightest lowering of a degree changes it’s composition to ice. Do we wish to take the chance that we may put just enough garbage into the ozone so that one day we wake up to the news that the air level is going to be gone a few hours later? Why the hell take the chance? I mean, yes, some business may suffer. So what? Change the business. There’s no economic law that says we have to make CEO’s of car and oil companies millions of dollars a year instead of paying the money, more rationally, to folks trying to save the planet. You don’t change the planet to fit the economics, you change the damn economics.
Now, regarding what Cuzon said above about there being a 97-0 vote against Kyoto, well, that, too demonstrates that the problem lies NOT with the protocol, but with the U.S. system. As much as some supposed “patriots” believe that the world revolves around U.S. decisions, I’m afraid it doesn’t. Change the system.
And since Cuzon has mentioned propaganda, one of my favorite subjects, here’s one of my favorites which also comes from a Nazi:
“Why of course the people don’t want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don’t want war neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.” (H. Goering)
ps. Can just add environmentalists to the mix, too!kb
@Curzon: “Alex: I am totally open to review a policy that outlines 1.) exactly what steps that need to be taken place to combat climate change, along with 2.) metrics that indicate how to measure success, and 3.) explain how much it will cost and how we will pay for it.”
Sounds like a plan to me. What bothers me is this is not how the Bush Administration appears to have been dealing with the EPA or other federal agencies on the environment. Apparently enforcement of existing policies such as the Clean Air Act, such as scrubbers for coal-fired plants, have been slapped down due to anecdotal complaints, which are used to question the science behind the policy. Placing scrubbers on coal-fired plants is a perfect example of the sort of climate change controls we can actually do today, and has been outlined as clear and effective steps since the first Bush Administration. How do we pay for it? The market ought to, and effective political leadership would both police companies on inflating costs passed on to consumers and asking them to do their bit by paying higher prices. Mind you, it’s a one-time cost to upgrade, not a perpetual price hike.
This Berkeley panel discussion, not made up of tree huggers despite the venue, has more. Check out Bruce Buckheit’s talk.
The recent explosion in North Carolina, by the way, is decent micro-example of how the U.S. government could be tougher on environmental issues. We may not stop the ice caps from melting, but we sure as hell could drive a market in pollution reducing and safety technologies at the very least for our own citizens comfort and security. Ever hear of Cancer Alley down in Louisiana?
Disagree with your first sentence, no time to go into detail (must sleep sometime)
but you might be interested in the following wich is essentially a reprint of a letter to the Economist correcting them about thier science ussage.
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/10/carl-wunsch-the-economist-and-the-gulf-stream/#more-356
Its a good site, technical, but if you read it slowly theres no problem.
This posting about the Gore film, which I have not seen, is indeed itself a fine piece of propaganda. Argue ad hominem, please, but let us examine the argument:
human production of greenhouse gases is believed (by a vast majority of climatologists, not merely sixth grade science teachers or “scientists,” as our non-”scientist” friends pain themselves to articulate) to play a role in this increase in the earth’s climate that we are observing.
1. The costs of the war in Iraq must be reexamined by goodly Lord Curzon, and assessed in a more rigorous manner for cost comparison with Kyoto.
2. The biosphere, as a matter of a natural dynamic equilibrium (which we are upsetting), produces upwards of 90-95% of the cyclical carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. There is no “scientist” or “injun” or “treehugger” arguing that there is something to be addressed here, so that laborious pontifications thereupon are irrelevant.
3. We reverse our contribution to non-cyclical carbon dioxide by reducing hydrocarbon combustions as a source of power, and by refixating the carbon in plant-life in the biosphere.
4. The impending environmental doom is a slow process. I am willing to wager that nery a one of us here would like to be subject to the environment of the ice ages, nor its warm analog.
5. The extinction of species may be natural (acceptable), or man-cause (unacceptable), just like the concentration of carbon in the atmosphere.
6. Clausula rebus sic stantibus … vigilantibus non dormientibus aequitas subvenit … we must act. Not because Göring commands us, nor Tsar Nikolay II, nor Helmuth Karl Bernhard Graf von Moltke, nor even Carl Philipp Gottlieb von Clausewitz, but because we are all affected … our farms will become fallow.
Augustinius, you can say that again!kb
To me Gore is an idiot. To think dry-humping your wife on national TV will get you elected is the ideology of an idiot. Also he seems to think that global warming, instead of nuclear war, could lead to the extermination of life on earth, which is ridiculous. Nuclear energy represents the adding of acceleration to the planet earth; global warming represent the extinction of the human race, maybe an inconvenient truth, but hardly the same thing at all.
When I took geology in college, our professor had a very interesting scheme to combat rising sea levels. He argued that we should dig canals and allow Death Valley, the Dead Sea and other areas below sea level to be filled in with ocean water. This would take some of the excess water out of the ocean, and turn otherwise arid regions into more tropical ones, contributing to the absorption of excess CO2 from the atmosphere.
I’m skeptical as to whether this would actually help keep Florida from drowning, but putting some of these areas under water sounds like a good idea to me. My grandkids could scuba dive to view the ruins of the West Bank settlements…
Hey Joe, don’t forget scuba diving the remains of western Holland and New Orleans.
The notion that it is impossible for us to combat global warming is clearly false. We have managed to drastically alter the planet’s biosphere and ecosystem through our development in myriad ways, and with the correct computer models and techniques we do have the potential to enact climate control as a deliberate policy, instead of an unintended consequence.
Unfortunately, as Curzon says, measures such as the Kyoto protocol, conservation, or alternative fuels will not be sufficient. We seem to have already broken the climate equilibriam of the past few centuries, and simply cutting down our rate of change to the system, even to zero, will not reset it to its previous state. While conservation, clean energy, etc are extremely good things on any number of environmental, economic, geo-political metrics, they are most likely far too minor to fix the climate mess that we have caused.
However, this does not mean that action is impossible, it merely means that pro-active measures must be taken. Unfortunately, the long term solutions that seem most effective based on what I have read (and I am far from an expert) are things that seem like science fiction to most people, and are beyond our current technology. Luckily, technology moves quite quickly, and I do believe that with a concerted effort we can easily develop the technologies needed for large scale climactic control over the next few decades, before the worst of the danger has arrived.
For example, Joe mentioned one fairly low tech method of climate alteration, through redistribution of seawater through canal digging. While this is almost a trivial task-moving lots of ground, after all we have already built many large canals and dams-we still lack the computer models that would allow us to redistribute water in the correct ways.
There are also other, more high-tech, technologies that could allow us to alter the climate in deliberate ways, such as any number of bio-engineering projects, seeding the oceans or soil with algae or bacteria that can alter the atmosphere in a certain way, or reflect sun light away. An even more futuristic, but arguably safer technique would be large mirrors of translucent and reflective sail like material, in space. Unlike an organism introduced into the ecosystem, which could easily mutate or grow beyond our control, a network of solar reflectors could be redistributed in response to other variables or more sophisticated climate simulations. I believe that for a civilization that is preparing to visit Mars in the near future, this system would not be as fantastic as it seems in the next half a century or so.
Of course, any climate engineering requires VERY good computer models, and VERY good data, or you may just make things worse instead of better. I think that in the near term, this should be our priority: Developing and deploying a vast global network of climate sensors, in land, sea, air and space-and then using that data to build increasingly good climate models. Luckily, computer power continues to grow at a geometric rate and there is little doubt that we will have the computational resources to run the required simulations, as long as we have the data to build the required mathematical models.
There is a place for classic environmental action, and the importance of clean air and water, healthy ecosystems, combatting soil erosion, fighting extinction, etc. should not be underplayed, but I think that climate control will require more dramatic tactics. And let’s not mince words- the phrase “stopping climate change” is fairly meaningless. Most of the articles I have seen in recent years on climate change admit that even if we stopped burning fossil fuels today it would only slow down the humanity-induced climate change that has begun. What we want, and need, to be able to do is to affect the global climate such that the entire global ecosystem-including humanity-can survive in comfort into the coming centuries.
Oh, and I haven’t seen the movie. I’m not particularly interested. As this post should make clear, I already believe that human induced climate change is a problem, and don’t really want a preachy introduction to the issue, even if it MAY be one I largely agree with.
I for one propose that we unite with, instead of fight, global warming. Our enemies wouldn’t have a chance against the US-Global Warming Alliance!
“I believe that for a civilization that is preparing to visit Mars in the near future, this system would not be as fantastic as it seems in the next half a century or so.”
Tell that to the people in New Orleans! Oh, I forgot, those on the ship to mars will not be from there.
“Our enemies wouldn’t have a chance against the US-Global Warming Alliance!”
When you say: “our enemies” do you mean countries like Canada, Mexico, and, I don’t know, the rest of the world. I get it; they are either with us or against us!
Yes, like the Clean Air Act we use a reverse-o foreign policy making process. We start sanctioning nations who meet their environmental standards instead of those who don’t. Instead of declaring war on North Korea for testing a nuke we declare war on those who don’t test nukes.
Sorry, but I think that is our foreign policy!!
Catholicgauze: Hmmm, how would we use global warming against North Korea? It could have the unfortunate side effect of giving them nice beach resorts to draw Chinese tourist dollars, which they would in turn spend on their missile program, and Tokyo would be obliterated, and it would all be your fault!
Oops, did I say dollars? I meant euros. Silly me.
Curzon: thank you for starting the discussion. I hope that you will bring this theme up again.
In the Sept 9th edition of the Economist, the special edition called “The Heat is On” http://www.economist.com/surveys/displayStory.cfm?story_id=7852924, there is an article that addresses the cost of adopting policies to mitigate climate change. The gist – it does not have to be as expensive as all that. Costs, of course, should be weighed against benefits. I think that envirnomentally sound policy is a better investment than a war any day.
I think the climate change question can be seen as a starting point for a broader discussion.
To create order in a closed system (i.e., creating an industrial society on earth with a lot of comfort for everyone, which requires energy), there are costs that go beyond the simple calculations of extraction. Whenever we create order in the closed systems of our civilization, we draw upon energy from outside the system, and sowing disorder, or entropy. In my view, any policy that aims at mitigating entropy is a more sustainable one, that has a better chance of leaving behind a habitable world for those who come after us. So before one labels such solutions as “anti-growth”, one should factor in the sustainability of that growth. Forgive the metaphor, but perhaps it is better to burn slowly and steadily than to flame out in a big flash of light?
Another question you raise has to do with if change is natural, why is it bad? That is a question about society and politics, and it is interesting. There has been climate change throughout human history. Some students of history have pointed to a link between the wetting and drying cycles on the Eurasian Steppe, for instance, as a factor that triggered the waves of Great Migrations of steppe nomads into Europe, China and the Middle East, with the enormous impact on civilization that followed. I think there is enough historical evidence to allow us to infer that indeed climate change was a major factor in the rise and fall of complex societies (as Jared Diamond points out in Collapse). The question for us is how will our civilization come with rapid climate change?
One thing that is different from the days of the Great Migrations past is that now we have nation-states, and a different notion of citizenship. Sea levels have risen and fallen before, deserts have expanded and shrunk, but the planet was never so crowded by people as it is now, and there were not so many well-defined borders in the past. Now we have a nation-state, the Maldives, that could actually disappear in the next century. They will become real “envirnomental refugees”. There is no international instrument to deal with this phenomenon of people displaced by the environment – the definition of “refugee” as it stands has to do with a well-founded fear of persecution in the home country, not a well-founded fear that the country will physically disappear. I think the next 10 years will see the adoption of a new Convention to deal with people displaced by environmental change.
We have cities on coasts that are much larger than any city in the past. So the impact on people will be different than before, in scale at any rate.
Will spending money on reducing emissions prevent the pain that might lie ahead for these people? It may help mitigate the pain. Even if it does not, if it results in the preservation and better use of the land and resources that we have left, it must surely be worth the effort.
To sum up, I think that a good policy must try to reduce the rate of entropy on our planet; that may mean slowing industrial growth; it may mean that most of us have to do with less in the next century. But the harm of a faster rate of the increase of entropy seems much more serious to me. War, in my view, is the greatest accelerator of entropy that we have.
AA: Regarding point (4), “The impending environmental doom is a slow process…” – How do you know that? This does not mean that I am taking you up on your wager. I just don’t know. There is a body of literature that asserts that climate change can occur very quickly.
Curzon: You seem to be saying that Mr. Gore’s (the ex- US vice president, and, presumably, patriot) moral compass is haywire when he says that the world (not the US) defeated facism. Since I am not a US citizen, I guess I can afford the morally-off-kilter compass to say that I always thought that the UK (with Canada, who joined WWII against the Nazis in 1939) and perhaps even more to the point the USSR (with massive battles at Stalingrad, Kursk, etc) had a lot to do with defeating fascism too. I guess I must be wrong, I must be saying the equivalent of “well we loosened the stuck jar-lid before you came along with your rubber kitchen glove and just twisted it off with a ‘pop!’”
So whatever we may think of Al Gore, a lot of readers probably don’t see how his WWII analogy demonstrates moral-compass-dysfunction.
Chief Wiggums: the point about Gore’s “carbon footprint” being hypocrisy seems to come straight out of the Competitive Enterprise Institute http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5425355. That campaign is one of the funniest things (almost enough to make you cry) that I have come accross since the “Duck and Cover!” approach to surviving a Nucular war.
Sounds like Gore wants everyone riding a donkey.
I’m ready.
Actually, Curzon, I have thought about it some more, and I do find Gore creepy; but my counterpoint about the Competitive Enterprise Institute still stands.
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