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the Baiji, one of four freshwater dolphins, now extinct.
Hope in a Darkening Age... news, comment, arts, ecology, wisdom, obsessions, the past, the future... "THE END OF ALL INTELLIGENT ANALYSIS IS TO CLEAR THE WAY FOR SYNTHESIS."--H.G. Wells. "It's always a leap into the unknown future to write anything."--Margaret Atwood "Be kind, be useful, be fearless."--President Barack Obama.
He concludes:
Until now, most public discussion about global warming has focused on how to prevent it -- for example, by implementing the Kyoto Protocol... But prevention is no longer a sufficient option. No matter how many "green" cars and solar panels Kyoto eventually calls into existence, the hard fact is that a certain amount of global warming is inevitable.
The world community therefore must make a strategic shift. It must expand its response to global warming to emphasize both long-term and short-term protection. Rising sea levels and more weather-related disasters will be a fact of life on this planet for decades to come, and we have to get ready for them. "But that strategic shift hasn't yet been made, partly because the deniers are still trying to cast doubt on the basic premise of global heating caused by greenhouse gas emission with catastrophic long-range consequences if continued, and so everyone else is still trying to refute their denial. But delaying the realization is dangerous: the Climate Crisis is two crises. And if we don't understand this, and if we don't act simultaneously on both crises in the next 30 years, there may well be no continuous human future on planet Earth.
I say that because the lag time of what's already going to happen because of past greenhouse gas emissions and their effects is estimated to be from 30 to 50 years for the processes that might decline and eventually stop in the next century or so, if we do what's necessary to stop it.
In other words, most of what's being talked about now to address the Climate Crisis--reversing the growth of greenhouse gas emissions through individual, corporate and government action, and instituting clean energy--won't make any difference for the next 30 years, apart from social, cultural, economic and health changes not directly related to climate changes.
We're talking almost exclusively about what I call the Stop It strategies--efforts that are necessary to save the future, not the present or the next 30 years. But sometime soon, almost certainly in the next five years, that's going to change. When devastating phenomena--deadly heat waves, droughts, floods, hurricanes, epidemics, famine--finally get recognized as being caused by global climate shifts, then the hue and cry will be to Fix It --and fix it now.
There are already preliminary tremors, noted here on this blog in August: a debate between Fix It and Stop It advocates. Sterling Burnett, of a conservative "free market" think tank, wants to concentrate on the Fix It crisis: like building seawalls on threatened coasts and innoculating people in Africa who are in greater danger of malaria because of the spread of mosquitos in the regions getting hotter. Environmentalist Drake Hamilton wants to concentrate on the Stop It crisis: reduce greenhouse gases by 60% by 2050 to "protect against the most dangerous consequences" farther in the future, which according to scientists could include the end of civilization and a planet scoured of most life as we know it.
The answer is obvious: we must Fix It and Stop It simultaneously. But don't underestimate the difficulty of conceiving that commitment and the courage that will be necessary to insist on it. First of all, Burnett is likely not the last business-oriented conservative who will drop the global heating denials and insist that we devote all our efforts to fixing the effects of past emissions. There is a lot of power in that position, and a lot of money to be made by companies and their powerful lobbyists. The same fear tactics that got Halliburton all those contracts in Iraq can do the same for that company and others.
The temptation to drop long-term efforts will be given additional strength when those efforts to cut fossil fuel emissions and to develop and use clean energy, all of which may entail sacrifices, lifestyle changes, economic dislocations and stress, aren't paying off in any obvious ways. In other words, what happens when we've cut emissions way back, and the climate keeps getting hotter, the droughts, hurricanes, diseases, etc. continue? And people are desperate and dying?
What happens when the cry arises to forget that useless activity, power up the generators and get to work on fixing the crises of the present? Does the future lose? If society doesn't understand the lag time involved in the Climate Crisis, and the need to simultaneously work to Fix It now and Stop It for the future , then one or the other is going to lose, and lose big.
Consider how difficult it's been, how long it is taking, just to accept the need to address the Climate Crisis at all. And we've hardly begun doing anything more than arguing. (There's substantial innovation, of course, and that may pay off very fast with the right leadership.) Consider how easy it's been to panic the American public by invoking 9-11. Consider that we're still fighting over Darwin vs. the Bible. And most of all, consider how our politics, our media and our way of thinking is all predicated on either/or choices. The leap to "both" is even more necessary than it is to understand the concepts of lag time, feedback and the tipping point, although a general public understanding of those concepts can go a long way to getting us to both Fix It now and Stop It for the future.