Some of the world’s politicians, as well as its celebrities and interest groups, are speaking in very alarmist terms about what needs to be done about global climate change.
Recent promises by the United States and China to reduce their carbon emissions in the coming decades were widely criticized by environmental activists for not going far enough.
The evidence for climate change is compelling and pervasive, and I don’t think it needs to be discussed here. The proposed solutions, however, deserve some scrutiny, or at least qualification.
Many decades of pollution or millennia of natural causes (or more likely both) have left the climate in its current warmer state. The damage is already done.
Emissions caps are politically hollow and too little too late scientifically. Capping emissions is horridly expensive, especially when no renewable resource is ready to step in and replace fossil fuels as of 2009.
This is not armageddon. Climate change impacts are conceptualized in centuries, not decades. It is a long, slow, complex process that affects nearly everything on the planet.
The global average temperature and sea level will rise, but it will be over a very long time, with positive effects in some areas of the world, negative ones in others. Unlike an asteroid hurtling toward Earth, climate change gives us time to adapt to its negative impacts.
In the meantime, there are other ways for the world to fight climate change with more immediate benefits. Solar power, wind power and other renewable resources have the potential to be much more efficient than their fossil-fuel counterparts with further development. Oil is a commodity that fluctuates with business cycles, destabilizing economies and political systems. You can’t say that about wind or sunlight. These reasons should be enough to garner investment in new technologies, regardless of what they do to temperatures.
By 2012 there will be 7 billion humans on this planet. More than 2 billion more will be added by 2050, mostly in developing countries. Ensuring that these fragile nations can handle the influx will be paramount to how we deal with climate change. If these countries can’t manage their environments and resources, there will be severe, relatively immediate consequences. America doesn’t generally have to worry about things like water and food shortages or disease. We need to create an economic environment where poorer nations can achieve that kind of stability.
Even though the world’s climate is changing, and human activity is contributing, there are much better ways to tackle the problem. Emissions targets are abstract and simplify the climate change phenomenon and its effects. The debate needs to be refocused from improving statistics to improving lives. My guess is that solutions framed this way will also find a lot more support, no matter what your political views.
