Captain Future's Log

Best News So Far

The best news so far this year comes from an Australian scientist who estimates that the world has maybe twenty years to drastically cut greenhouse gas emissions or the Earth=Venus (or Earth=Mars, if that's more graphic for you) doomsday scenario becomes inevitable.

The Reuters report on the actual conference at which he said action must be taken is disappointing at best: Six of the world's major polluters launched a multi-million dollar fund on Thursday to develop clean-energy, but stressed they will be reliant for generations on polluting fossil-fuels that underpin their economies. Green groups, which have labelled the talks a sham, said the two-day meeting failed to make serious commitments in fighting global warming.

The Washington Post report on the just-ended conference noted: The six members, comprising nearly half of humanity, are responsible for about half the greenhouse gases pumped into the atmosphere, a figure likely to increase rapidly as the economies of China and India draw in vast amounts of coal, oil and gas.

[Australian Prime Minister]Howard said an economic and energy outlook, to be released by the Australian Bureau of Agriculture and Resource Economics (ABARE), showed clean development technology could cut greenhouse gas emissions from the six nations by 20 percent by 2050.

But the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said in 1990 that stabilizing carbon dioxide concentrations needed eventual emission reductions of 60-80 percent. A British report in 2000 said a developed nation such as Britain needed to cut carbon emissions by 60 percent from 1990 levels by 2050.

So not so good. Pretty much the maddening business-as-usual of politicians and corporations who care more about making money than the future, although it's probably true that their greed blinds many to the point that they actually believe there is no climate crisis.

So why do I say the Australian scientist's prediction is hopeful news? Because he said the world has up to twenty years to make these changes. Whereas the climate science news as 2005 ended was tending towards the conclusion that the jig is up already. Or, as the International Climate Change Taskforce found late last year, the world has perhaps 10 years before it reaches the crisis level, and perhaps the point of no return.

The truth is nobody really knows the timeframe, and nobody knows the ultimate outcome. What reputable scientists do know is that current global heating is the result of human activity during the industrial age (thanks to several important findings last year, this is now as irrefutable as scientific knowledge gets.) They know that the climate crisis has already begun, and it will continue for the forseeable future. It has already begun having consequences on health, ecosystems and their animals and plants, and on people who live in clearly affected areas, such as the Arctic and in parts of Africa.

But as damaging as these effects are, they might be manageable if we begun paying attention to them and to the other problems the climate crisis is likely to cause in the near future---like this year, next, and so on. Dealing with this phase means dealing with the effects, while understanding that their causes in the past (emissions of past decades), if continued in the present, will destroy the future.

And what scientists also know is that at some point, global heating is likely to set off huge changes, affecting many parts of the world, that could very well result in many, many human deaths as well as completely changed ecosystems, or much worse--the end of human civilization and life on earth as we know it. We may be talking about a much hotter planet, or parts of it plunged suddenly into a deep ice age. It may take a hundred years of inexorable change, or a single decade of sudden catastrophic change. Whatever happens, no human effort will stop it or protect against it, and if past major climate changes are any guide, the planet will not return to a more moderate climate (or habitable for our kind of life) for thousands of years, perhaps more than a hundred thousand years. This is what I call the Earth=Mars scenario, although some science types prefer the closer physical analogy of Earth=Venus.

In terms of hope I'm clutching at straws, no kidding, but a ten year opportunity is not enough, whereas a twenty year opportunity to change might be. Why? Because in those first ten years, the climate crisis may very well become so obvious that no one will be able to ignore it. Assuming that nations fighting over resources of water and energy, or fighting because of radically shifting agricultural zones, doesn't lead to major nuclear war, or that too many governments unresponsive to suffering don't fall to violence and the chaos spreads---in other words, that functioning civilization in the technological age doesn't fall to pieces by 2016--humanity might wake up in time to save itself.

Humanity and human civilization might therefore have a future. And believe me, this is something I was seriously doubting as the year ended.

This may be wishful thinking in a personal sense---not because I expect to live long enough to know for sure (assuming the 20 year scenario is correct; if it's ten it's still possible I'll see it, though I'm not counting on it) but because it means that my intermittent and tenuous work of the past decade on focusing what the future needs to succeed, body and soul, is worth trying to get right and complete.

When you're working with no resources, no support, little comprehension out there of what you're saying or what you're trying to do, while just trying to stay alive, relatively sane and stable, every little bit of motivation helps.