Red, Green & Blue: Is It Time to Just Live With Climate Change?
An article in this week’s Time magazine raises an interesting point about climate change. While there’s a growing consensus that global warming is real, the author writes, there’s also an emerging body of opinion that says it’s either too late to stop it or it’s not worth trying to stop. We’d be better off, these pundits say, investing in ways to make it easier to deal with the effects of climate change: build stronger dams, dikes and levees; do more to prevent the spread of diseases like malaria; provide more aid to help the poor live with increasingly hotter, or damper, or drier, or stormier conditions; etc.
While my initial reaction to people like Bjorn Lomborg, who has written, Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming
Tags: Bjorn Lomborg, carbon emissions, climate change, Cool It, global warming, greenhouse gases, Red, Green and Blue
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October 10th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
The reality is, we have to do both, we have to stop global warming and deal with the effects. It is true that some of the damage is already done, but it is also true that the longer we keep going the way we are the worse it is going to get.
Sooner or later we have to stop warming the planet, we don’t want to make the planet inhospitable to humans after all.
October 10th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
I don’t know that one group always has to lose for another to win, Wolfy. I don’t think we are in a zero sum trap.
October 10th, 2007 at 8:23 pm
Lomborg is an especially slipperly critter. For detailed information on the controversy over his first book (The Skeptical Environmentalist), and a collection of the best reviews and critiques of his current book, Cool It, check out Putting the Health on Lomborg, http://www.postcarbon.org/lomborg.
(Disclosure: I work for Post Carbon and edit this site.)
Lomborg’s book is the number 1 book on Amazon in the categories Public Policy, Conservation, and Climate Change. His arguments for inaction are poisoning the well of public policy. It’s hard for interviewers to catch him out in just a few minutes, but the written critiques are devastating, showing the pattern of misleading and cherry-picked facts that Lomborg uses to construct his arguments.
October 11th, 2007 at 7:02 am
There is a very simple reason, why we can’t sit it out: from a certain point on, there will be runaway feedback mechanisms.
And, yes, it already happened (250 Mill. years ago, killing between 95% and 99% of all life on earth) and there is no way a single human being is going to survive it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clathrate_gun_hypothesis
October 11th, 2007 at 7:24 am
Well, it is all relative.
I live in one of the more northern countries: Canada
Most of our population live within 100 miles of the US border.
Not because we love Americans all that much,
but due to the fact that most of our country is
too cold to live comfortably in, work, grow crops, etc.
Frankly, global warming is already making our lives better.
I know, as in my lifetime I have seen the effects.
They are real.
They are also most pleasant for many people in many locations.
Remember, if we really DO screw it all up really
badly, what will the worst possible thing
that could happen?
Extinction of mankind?
Doubt that. Humans, cockroaches and coyotes are very adaptable, and will likely survive.
Reduce the human population by 9/10 ?
And please explain to me exactly how that would be a bad thing?
October 11th, 2007 at 11:50 am
It’s not likely to be fun for the 1 of 10 folks who live, and certainly won’t for the other 9. Wars start when resources get tight, and resources will certainly be tight when essentially every coastal city is lost to the sea amidst the mounting slow emergency that is and will be peak oil….
October 11th, 2007 at 1:28 pm
We’ve always got limitless nuclear energy in our back pockets for any energy shortage eventuality. Coal and oil are simply the cheapest options now plus battery/capacitor technologies have not reached practical utility yet. When we’ve got nanocapacitors that will give us 60 - 120 miles on a 2 minute charge up then oil will be moot. Then it will be about mining/coal politics; and Robert Byrd can’t live forever.
That’s the one thing Malthus and all of his followers to this day never, ever, ever consider; man is resourceful and innovative. Technology always bridges the gap between these linear projections of eminent doom and the survival / thrival of mankind. We live in an improving world. The global warming followers are nothing more than our generation’s ‘the end is upon us!’ fatalists of the past.
October 11th, 2007 at 7:20 pm
Jimmy, there’s a difference between standing on a street corner with a cardboard sign and a microphone, and looking at the facts and trends and calling for meaningful change now.
To get back to my much-referred-to example: many people warned for years that if the levees weren’t built to the real standards needed that New Orleans would one day drown just the way it did after Katrina. I was in New Orleans the day before Katrina, and my husband and I spent much of the day trying to tell people just that: Get out now because the city will flood and you won’t want to be here when it does. Of course, some people believed the "end is upon us" message, and some people thought we were alarmists. Guess which people made the right decision?
By the way, Richard, thanks for the great link on Lomborg — I’ll be sure to check that out!
October 12th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Have to sat thay I am very impressed with this thread. An open discussion with very little hysteria and no name-calling.
Shirley, I liked your lead article and the basic questions it raised. I agree with your point about pre-Katrina New Orleans and levees, and I also agree with Jimmy Hogan’s point that living below sea level with poor levees is an invitation for disaster, with or without anthropogenic global warming. The answer to a potential flooding problem is obvious: the Dutch have been coping with it for centuries. It’s a matter of setting the right priorities, as the Dutch have done. And I think this is basically Lomborg’s message.
If we truly believe that human CO2 emissions are going to lead to a “runaway global warming” that will destroy most of the life on Earth and we think we can avert this disaster by doing something now, then that becomes our first priority.
I just don’t happen to believe that this is the case.
I do believe, along with Lomborg, that there are lots of more urgent problems that need attention and funding to resolve.
For example, I agree with Jimmy Hogan that “There’s a lot we can do in the world with basic nutrition and sanitation that is 1000 times more effective than carbon reduction.” In addition to nutrition and sanitation, I believe we need to make sure the hundreds of millions of people who live today without electrical power or clean water (which requires electrical power for treatment and distribution) are no longer deprived. And, yes, I think this will probably result in more fossil fuel burning short term, because there are no viable alternates today.
Regards,
Max
October 16th, 2007 at 5:44 am
Unless that “Marshall Plan” is to cease all green house gas emissions immediately… then sounds like this author is shooting for the worst scenario that came out of the IPCC’s report… No really don’t worry.?!
+6.4°: Most of life is exterminated
Warming seas lead to the possible release of methane hydrates trapped in sub-oceanic sediments: methane fireballs tear across the sky, causing further warming. The oceans lose their oxygen and turn stagnant, releasing poisonous hydrogen sulphide gas and destroying the ozone layer. Deserts extend almost to the Arctic. “Hypercanes” (hurricanes of unimaginable ferocity) circumnavigate the globe, causing flash floods which strip the land of soil. Humanity reduced to a few survivors eking out a living in polar refuges. Most of life on Earth has been snuffed out, as temperatures rise higher than for hundreds of millions of years.
Please people. It’s time for a change and it begins with you.