Community action on Global Warming is Not Enough

7/7/08's On Point program about community efforts to cut carbon emissions is inspiring. It is great to hear that an entire community of 4500 people can become carbon-neutral, and I look forward to reading more about how they did it, and to bringing those lessons home to my community. Community efforts are incredibly important, as publicity, as inspiration, and as laboratories; they tell us what can be done as well as how. There are, however, two huge (and related) reasons why ground-up efforts will not alone solve the problem.

The first is the market. Ms. Kolbert pointed out that $4/gallon gas is the most positive step she's seen toward climate change mitigation -- but it's nowhere near what we really need. $4/gal is what we pay with stable 2007 oil production; but to realistically cut carbon emissions 80% by 2050 (as per the IPCC recommendations), we must cut production of oil, coal, and natural gas by 80% by 2050 (carbon sequestration is not well-tested and its capacity is unknown). Businesses have a legal obligation to keep expenditures down -- and individuals naturally have that incentive -- so until fossil fuel prices rise above the cost of alternatives, there's no reason to expect the market on its own to cut demand to that extent.

In spite of the "peak-oil" doomsayers, it does not appear that the world's oil (or other fossil fuel) resources will run out in the next 40 or even 100 years. Russia has barely begun to enter the world market; Iraq has been out of the market for a few years; we haven't really started drilling off of the U.S. coasts; and there's more oil under the melting Arctic ice cap that will become accessible soon. We are like addicts in a room full of heroin; to save our own lives, we must ween ourselves from our addiction, even though there's no other reason to do so. And it may hurt, a lot or a little -- we're not sure.

For some, it will hurt a lot. Iraq has been out of the oil market for a few years, and is just sticking its toe in again now; Russia has been (relatively) free only a couple of decades, and is enjoying its oil income and anticipating more; and Russia, Canada, the nordic counties, and the U.S. are all salivating for the oil reserves becoming accessible under the melting Arctic ice cap. How can we convince all of these parties that although they can get at this oil, they mustn't? How can we tell Russia it must forego its oil income, and the political power it brings? How can we tell Iraq (and ourselves) that they may not be able to sell enough oil to pay for the war? How can we convince our own coal-producing states -- including Obama's home state of Illinois -- that they must cut coal production?

Which brings us to the second huge obstacle -- education. If you're bothering to read this, you probably already accept that man-made climate change is a reality; but there are industries that don't want us to believe that, and people who don't want to believe that, and people who just haven't heard the truth. And, to be honest, even we, the converted, are reluctant to speak the truth. Ms. Kolbert talked of "catastrophic climate change" and "epochal change", but what does that mean? Most news reports suggest "much warmer temperatures" and "rising sea levels"; journal articles speak of "ocean acidification", "mass forest extinction". But these do not approach the truth. If I am correct in my assessment of Ms. Kolbert, by "epochal change", she is speaking of a mass extinction event such as those that identify the ends of the Permian or Triassic geological epochs. Recent evidence suggests that these events were preceded by a build-up of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, possibly followed by a build-up of methane. At our current rates of CO2 emissions, we will reach the same range of CO2 as seen in these events by about 2100; and scientists are already warning that too much CO2 build-up will warm the climate sufficiently to release massive quantities of methane from the Russian and Canadian permafrost, and perhaps warm the oceans enough to release methane from undersea clathrate deposits.

During the Triassic-Jurassic extinction event, 50% of all land species, and 20% of all marine families, went extinct. During the Permian-Triassic event, 70% of land and 90% of marine species went extinct.

This is what "catastrophic climate change" means: The collapse of the oceanic food chain; the collapse of food crops; massive death of livestock; massive starvation; war. Change from a world that can feed 7 billion people to one that can feed fewer -- far fewer. Possibly the extinction of our species.

Our reluctance to talk about this is understandable. It's hard to comprehend. It's hard to listen to ourselves without feeling like we're raving maniacs. It's easier to speak of the extinction of the polar bears, or the sinking of Florida -- but these are prices that many would be willing to pay. Shying away from the worst impacts of global warming makes it seem that doing nothing may be acceptable. The truth, here at the end of the Holocene epoch, is that this is the choice we face: Recognize the truth; act on the truth; speak the truth to the world; or die.