A Response on Global Climate Change

Left Coaster became aware last Friday that most climate scientists are growing more certain that global climate change is occurring. The article closes with a plea, presumably to the readers, “[s]o now what do we do?” I checked the comments to find that noone rose to the bait – the progressives were too busy squabbling with the climate skeptics and blaming the President.

I suspect that lot of people are having a hard time coming to grips with “what to do”, because the changes are so big and life-changing. As you read this, absolutely everything around you took energy to make and transport to your doorstep, energy that ultimately results in greenhouse gas emissions. We’re simply not willing yet to change substantially that pattern of behavior to prevent significant adverse environmental effects that are probably two generations or more out in the future. Depending on how bad things get then, our grandchildren may judge us harshly for that choice.

At least we all could get a little better informed. The U.S. Global Climate Research Program published a few years back the National Assessment of Climate Change, which provided some scenarios that evaluated the regional implications of climate change to the U.S. Some examples can be found here. One concrete thing to consider doing is moving somewhere that isn’t going to be subjected to hurricanes or flooding. Other things may come to mind as you read the report. Tony Blair has been advocating taking action to mitigate global climate change, and the British government was a sponsor of the “Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change” conference, back in February. The steering committee report (16 pages) is about as tight a summary of the issues as can be found. If you want to follow things in more real time, you might click over to realclimate.org, though my brief look didn’t see a lot on mitigation or preparedness. It’s still worth checking into, if nothing else for the dummies guide to the hockey stick.

As I said before, most of the real impacts of global warming are decades out (unless you live, say, in Florida). The mitigation for those impacts also will take decades to implement and have any effect, which is the reason for the call to start now. The impacts may become more pronounced even with our best efforts at mitigation, see here. Going back to the question on Left Coaster (now what do we do), I feel that because the consequences are so far out in the future, they are unlikely to inspire too many people, and enough of the right people, to start efforts at mitigation. What might be more inspiring is resource depletion, particularly the peaking of petroleum production. If you can put a national security veneer on it, you might even get those who speak to power to develop an environmental consciousness, though we’d want to be a bit careful about what we wish for.

I recall something that Jay Hanson wrote when he signed off from Dieoff.org, along the lines of “what to do”. I’ve lost track of it, but the sense I recall from it included doing things such as move from places that are overly dependent on the technology infrastructure (such as Manhattan – remember James Burke’s Connections series?); find a career that’s resistant to resource shocks, pay off your credit card debts, get in shape and eat properly so you’re less reliant on the healthcare system, start a garden, get involved in your community, join a church (if you’re an atheist, there’s always the Unitarian-Universalists), find a job that doesn’t involve a long commute, learn how to fix your own stuff around the house, make more careful purchases and don’t buy so much stuff.

You may have noticed that I didn’t include writing letters or lobbying your Congressional representatives. However, after seeing this yesterday and watching Congress roll over on bankruptcy protection, I’m starting to wonder about the relevance of Congress in contributing to solutions to complex problems such as resource depletion or global climate change.

Hats off the Left Coaster for paying attention to this issue. Too bad more of their colleagues don’t follow along.