All the world beaters are dedicating their attention to the collapse of the international banking system, the thumb wrestling between Keynesians and austerity-preaching Calvinists, and the cage match between Know-Nothing Republicans and ineffectual Democrats stuck in the 1990's, still fighting Reagan. And of course what the hell Occupy Wall Street means, and will the NBA ever play again.
Meanwhile, back at on planet Earth, the weather continues to spiral into madness, and we are spewing CO2 out at an increasing pace. The human race is on a fast track to destroying the planet.
Elizabeth Kolbert via The New Yorker
On Wednesday, the Paris-based International Energy Agency released its annual “World Energy Outlook.” Among the report’s key findings is that, in spite of a shaky economy, global carbon-dioxide emissions rose by five per cent last year, to more than thirty billion metric tons. Meanwhile, energy efficiency—defined as the amount of energy used per unit of economic output—declined for the second year in a row. According to the I.E.A., “The door to 2°C is closing.” The group warned that unless dramatic action is taken by 2017, so many additional billions of tons of emissions will effectively be “locked in” that a temperature increase exceeding two degrees will become inevitable.
“If we don’t change direction soon, we’ll end up where we’re heading,” the report said.
One of the (many) obstacles to engaging the public on the issue of climate change is that, in the context of daily life, a temperature increase of two degrees Celsius (or even the larger number in Fahrenheit) sounds like no big deal. The problem, of course, is that daily life is a poor guide when the issue you’re dealing with is the global average. In that context, an increase of two degrees spells—at the very least—massive disruption. In fact, many scientists have warned that holding the average global temperature increase to “only” two degrees Celsius is a bit like limiting yourself to “only” a few rounds of Russian roulette: unless you’re uncommonly lucky, the result is not likely to be happy. As a group of climatologists put it on the blog RealClimate,
Even a “moderate” warming of 2°C stands a strong chance of provoking drought and storm responses that could challenge civilized society, leading potentially to the conflict and suffering that go with failed states and mass migrations. Global warming of 2°C would leave the Earth warmer than it has been in millions of years.
Meanwhile, other scientists have already turned their attention to a future beyond two degrees. Earlier this year, Britain’s Royal Society devoted an entire issue of its journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A to this topic. One of the articles in the issue posed the question “When could global warming reach 4°C?” (Which is to say, an increase of more than seven degrees Fahrenheit.) The answer, it concluded, was fairly soon. If the world continues on its current emissions path, then by the 2070s, the authors calculated, average global temperatures should be about four degrees higher than they were before the Industrial Revolution. If certain carbon “feedbacks” turn out to be stronger than currently predicted, then that four-degree rise could occur by the 2060s. A second article looked at what this might mean for society. The author, Rachel Warren, a researcher at the University of East Anglia, observed that in a 4°C world, the limits for human adaptation are likely to be exceeded in many parts of the world, while the limits for adaptation for natural systems would largely be exceeded throughout the world.
Since we can’t know the future, it is possible to imagine that, either through better technology or more creativity or sheer necessity, our children will be able to find a solution that currently eludes us. Somehow or other, they will figure out a way to avoid “a 4°C world.” But to suppose that an answer to global warming can be found by waiting is to misunderstand the nature of the problem. Once you’ve dumped CO2 into the atmosphere, there’s no getting it back, at least not on a human timescale. When it comes to global warming, the future really is now.
Meanwhile, even if it’s only self-interest in the narrowest possible sense that moves people, global warming still ought to be high on almost everybody’s list of concerns. Between here and 4°C, or now and the 2070s, there are all sorts of potential calamities of which the punishing drought in Texas, the flooding in Thailand, and the famine that has recently killed tens of thousands of Somalis are just a foretaste.
But our political discussions and public discourse is dominated by getting the economy 'back on track' by increased manufacturing, increased consumption, and rebuilding infrastructure: all based on a cheap oil economy. Look at the forces pushing to open the oil sands in Canada and new areas in the Arctic ocean for oil drilling.
We are in a car racing at 100 miles per hour toward a cliff a few hundred feet ahead. At this point the only recourse is for the driver to turn the wheel so hard that the car will roll over, and to pray that it will come to a stop -- totaled -- before flying off the edge.
The world we are now living in -- and which will be around for thousands of years -- is not the world of 20 years ago. We are already doomed to increasing violent weather: more storms, more floods, more hurricanes, more tornadoes, more drought and desert. We can't stop that: we have totaled the car.
And China, Brazil, India, and other developing economies are heating up, and spewing more CO2 every year.
So: we can total the car by rolling it, and barely surviving, or total it by going off the cliff, where we die.
4º C will be a terrifying world:
James Randerson, Climate change: Prepare for global temperature rise of 4C, warns top scientist
Globally, a 4C temperature rise would have a catastrophic impact.
According to the government's 2006 Stern review on the economics of climate change, between 7 million and 300 million more people would be affected by coastal flooding each year, there would be a 30-50% reduction in water availability in Southern Africa and the Mediterranean, agricultural yields would decline 15 to 35% in Africa and 20 to 50% of animal and plant species would face extinction.
Sub-Saharan Africa would become unlivable with an increase of 4ºC, as reported in that Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society :
Phillip K Thornton, et al, Agriculture and food systems in sub-Saharan Africa in a 4°C+ world
The prognosis for agriculture and food security in SSA [sub-Saharan Africa] in a 4C+ world is bleak. Already today, the number of people at risk from hunger has never been higher: it increased from 300 million in 1990 to 700 million in 2007, and it is estimated that it may exceed 1 billion in 2010 . The cost of achieving the food security Millennium Development Goal in a +2C world is around $40-60 billion per year, and without this investment, serious damage from climate change will not be avoided. Currently, the prospects for such levels of sustained investment are not that bright. Croppers and livestock keepers in SSA have in the past shown themselves to be highly adaptable to short- and long-term variations in climate, but the kind of changes that would occur in a 4C+ world would be way beyond anything experienced in recent times. There are many options that could be effective in helping farmers adapt even to medium levels of warming, given substantial investments in technologies, institution building and infrastructural development, for example, but it is not difficult to envisage a situation where the adaptive capacity and resilience of hundreds of millions of people in SSA could simply be overwhelmed by events.
We are talking about the migration or death of hundreds of millions, or even billions, of people. That's who is riding in the back seat of the car.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, our elected leaders can't agree whether we should even have an Environmental Protection Agency, or if climate change is real.
