In some previous essays, especially “Fear and Hope”, “Models of the Future”, and “Night Fog Lifting”, I have done too much feeling and not enough thinking. It is time to restore some left-brain activity to the balance. In view of the story of the two little girls in the boat drifting out to sea (essay on), we need to do more paddling and less praying.
Talk of hope and despair comes cheap, but is fundamentally unhelpful. We can work for our future without either hoping or despairing, just doing our best.
Cutting down CO2 emissions by 20% by 2200 seems like a modest goal; not entirely sufficient to counteract the greenhouse effect. Yet it is extremely difficult to achieve when one considers the economic measures needed and their repercussions. Very difficult and yet not sufficient — we are having trouble “making ends meet”. There is a gap between the need and the possibilities.
Cutting by 20% by 2020 would be costly in terms of GNP decrease, especially for countries like China (see Scientific American May 1990), which are still on the rising curve of development. How can this cost be exacted? Can it be spread over the rest of the countries? Would the rest be willing, since they would suffer themselves from the cuts (though not as much)? Many are antagonistic to China right now, for political reasons. Would this be used as an excuse? Would we use the “Lifeboat Ethics” (according to Hardin) and let some people drown? (Perhaps literally, in flooded Maldives and Bangladesh.)
In the rest of this essay, I will state some of our difficulties with the global change problem in point form, though the considerations overlap somewhat. I am deliberately limiting this essay to the global change problem alone, in order to simplify somewhat, although I am aware that in real life we have to deal with many problems at once, so that the difficulties are really greater than outlined here.
(1) The 20% drop in using fossil fuels would mean economic hardship – no use glossing over that fact. But in time fossil fuels will run out anyway and then the hardship will be unavoidable, and will be even more severe, because we would face a 100% drop, not 20% (though perhaps not suddenly overnight). We would be forced by circumstances to quit “cold turkey” on our long-time addiction, and suffer whatever withdrawal symptoms there might be.
(2) In spite of subjecting ourselves to this economic hardship, we may be “too late with too little” to prevent a flip in global climate, if there is a positive feedback between CO2 build-up, temperature rise, increased evaporation of ocean water, more greenhouse effect from the water vapour, etc. If this chain reaction starts, we won’t be able to stop it, even if we quit cold turkey on fossil fuel use. It will be like going beyond the point of no return on the upper Niagara river in a boat without a motor or oars.
(3) The scientific uncertainty in modelling and predicting climate change and its consequences are still very large. We cannot confidently say what it is that we are facing. It could turn out to be quite minor and we could easily adapt; or it could be major and drastic, depriving us of the ability to grow enough food for the 10 billion people we will have by then. Not knowing what to prepare for, even if we could prepare, is a major problem – but caution requires preparing for the worst even if its probability is low.
(4) In the drastic case, how would we respond to a mass famine? By attempts to share dwindling supplies with some equity, or to provide for the most sensitive groups like pregnant or lactating women and small children, or like walruses on the beach when the fish come in, by each grabbing what we can? I would expect us to act like walruses, in which case war and violence would result in further loss of life on top of the starvation. If we add disease resulting from lessened resistance due to malnutrition, we have the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse – a death process in which positive feedbacks accelerate the downward spin-out. Yet this might not happen – either the environmental stress will not be as severe, or our response may not be so inappropriate.
(5) Besides the scientific uncertainty about physical nature, we thus have the other great uncertainty – concerning human nature and behaviour. We don’t know how we would react to a demand for preventive sacrifices of economic benefits (no politician has yet dared to suggest it), nor do we know how we would respond to extreme stress – by fratricidal conflict or closing ranks in solidarity and cooperation. There are even fewer models of “social climate” than of physical climate – none that we could use for even approximate testing in computer simulations.
Our problems thus are aggravated by ignorance and uncertainty. While there is pressure to act with urgency, there is no sure way to predict the efficacy of the actions advocated; and so our urgings may lack credibility in the view of a public eager for clarity and crisp certainty.
The picture I have painted prompts more despair than hope, but many surprises are possible. Who would have predicted that the Cold War in Europe will end so suddenly, or that Mandela would be released and the ANC recognized in South Africa? Certainly not the “realists”. Humanity may have inner resources as well as inner weaknesses; and the resources and strengths may come into play under adversity, just as surely that People Power has come into its own in world politics. This kind of hope is possible, but not certain. We are also the species that perpetrated Belsen and Hiroshima.
So what do we do, in a nutshell?
(1) Think hard; this is our evolutionary strong point, and, if I may use a military metaphor, every commander in the battlefield tries to use his army’s strengths to greatest advantage.We must pursue vigorously the physical science of climate and the social science of human behaviour.
(2) Act even before all the facts are in. Don’t ever let the need for more research be an excuse for inaction or delay. This is a situation in which the “worst case scenario” must be achieved, to give us a safety margin.
(3) Aim for a long-range future, not immediate advantage; and for the general good, not that of our own exclusive group.
(4) Stop expecting success or failure; instead, just work tirelessly in the face of uncertainty. Hope is not essential for effort.
(5) We might occasionally pray as well as paddle.