The Climate Crisis Future

Maybe it's hard to think through the prospects of a Climate Crisis future. People seem to leap from "nah, it won't happen" or "nah, we'll fix it before it gets bad" to "we're doomed! I don't want to think about it!"

But here's part of what we're not thinking about. As Climate Crisis-related problems and phenomena grow, governments and entire societies will be spending more and more time and money on dealing with those problems and phenomena. Eventually it's at least possible if not pretty likely that a lot of society, a lot of life, will reorganize to deal wih them.

This links you to a couple of interactive map that begins to graphically illustrate the landscape of that future. And then there are the same old stories about the consequences, that seem to run in a rotation of repeating studies, like this reinteration of the relationship of hotter climate with more disease and less food and water, with the Washington Post's shocking headline, Ailing Planet Seen As Bad for Human Health. How many times do we have to hear this before it starts to sink in?

Another consequence of dealing with the Climate Crisis problems is that the resources to do a lot of other stuff will be less, much less or just won't be there. That's going to be difficult, but it may have its up side. It's is kind of why I don't worry so much about gene-designed humans or the Internet version of a 1984 total survelliance culture. Because they will cost too much, and the money won't be there.

Neither will the energy. People are virtually blind to the cost in energy of the virtual worlds of the Internet, of GPS, cell phones and BlackBerries and all the other interlocking electronics. But it is huge. And the infrastructure is pretty fragile.

The energy cost of massive survelliance alone is incredible. In James Banford's revealing look at the dubious recent history of U.S. "intelligence," he notes that a new data-mining National Security Agency facility in Salt Lake City will use "the same amount of energy as every house in Salt Lake City combined."

So nobody's geeky toys are going to be worth much, especially if we don't get a better and greener energy infrastructure. It's the heroic struggle of the age, and President Obama was out there on Tuesday, standing in front of solar collectors and reminding everyone that his Recovery Act stimulus includes about three and a half billion bucks to modernize the country's energy grid, matched and exceeded to the tune of nearly five billion bucks from the private sector. This is small stuff so far that can make a big difference. It's a start. (Update: Another link to NPR report on other administration announcements.)

President Obama also used the occasion to assert that consensus is building for a climate bill in Congress, and a climate treaty in Copenhagen. He is using the true and often effective strategy of making this a fight between the future and the past. You can say a lot of things about the Obama administration so far, but it's hard to dispute that symbolically in just about every way, this guy stands for the future. He's out there trying hard to make it happen. Keep hope alive.