Let me ask you something: Can you name an experience you’ve had, something that affected you or your family in the past year or so, that you would attribute to global warming? Maybe you recall that you couldn’t fly somewhere because of torrential rains, or that last summer was especially hot, or maybe you have a vacation home in Florida that was damaged by a hurricane. But you can’t be sure that those events were related to global warming. Such things have been going on for a long time. Chances are that if you’re concerned about global warming, it’s not a result of personal experience with it, but rather because you’ve read reports written by scientists that point to the existence of greenhouse gases and the manner in which they contribute to warming of the Earth’s surface. If you accept their reports, and the conclusions they draw from their data, that the Earth is warming as a result of human activity, you could be concerned—even a climate change activist. Or not, depending on your political and social history and present situation.
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| Paul Hawken |
Ten years ago Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger authored an article in YaleEnvironment360, entitled Apocalypse Fatigue: Losing the Public on Climate Change. They attempted to explain survey results pointing to a significant decline in the public’s belief that global warming is occurring, or that human activities contribute to climate change. For the most part their proffered explanations for the tepid responses to Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth revolve around notions of political psychology: “many people have a psychological need to maintain a positive view of the existing social order, whatever it may be. This need manifests itself, not surprisingly, in the strong tendency to perceive existing social relations as fair, legitimate, and desirable, even in contexts in which those relations substantively disadvantage the person involved.” In other words, unless the driving forces are staring us in the face, we’re inclined to stick with the status quo, if departing from it requires sacrifices and uncomfortable changes that we’re forced to acknowledge.
As we greet the New Year we might ask whether things are different from a decade ago. The reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have definitely grown more urgent. The special report recently published is decidedly sharper in tone than those preceding it. It carries a sense of urgency and specificity that reflects the most recent results from the field: we will be experiencing the effects of global warming much earlier than previously assumed. If we don’t take substantial actions soon, things will get very bad a few decades down the line. And people still yawn and say, “more doom and gloom!”. That’s too bad, because the scientists are right.
Those involved in the effort to arouse the public to a heightened awareness of climate change find themselves struggling with how to do it. What will it take to get things moving toward mitigation? The tenor of many articles that deal with this question is surprisingly similar to Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s. For example, Laurence Tubiana, a former French ambassador to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and CEO of the European Climate Foundation, echoes their sentiments in an article in Project Syndicate. However, she goes on to emphasize the vital role that expectations play in human behavior. She writes of a convergence of expectations as an enforcement mechanism in changing human behavior. As an example, enormous progress is being made in implementing solar energy. In the state of Florida, where I live, Florida Power and Light is in the midst of one of the largest solar expansions ever in the southeastern U.S., with more than 3.5 million new solar panels added in the last two years alone and millions more on the way. Next year, solar will outpace coal and oil combined as a percentage of FPL’s energy mix. I doubt that most of the people in Florida would have predicted that shift, or that Google is close to supplying all its energy needs from renewable sources. That’s a pretty big deal; Google consumes more electricity in all its operations than San Francisco. To borrow a phrase from Tubiana, society is moving from a mindset of Impossible to Inevitable. Without question, large-scale implementations of existing technologies such as wind, solar, electric cars and vast improvements in energy storage capacity are moving from impossible to inevitable.
Social forces are very important. The idea of global warming is becoming a meme, an element of culture that spreads throughout society like something infectious. Nongovernmental agencies are peppering the developing world with devices and tools to confront climate change. People don’t always get it right, about what global warming will entail, but when they associate the occurrences of more powerful hurricanes, or forest fires in California, or flooding in Wilmington, North Carolina with global warming, they’ve moved a step closer to accepting the immediacy of climate change. That’s good, but it’s not good enough. If the developed world is to effectively counter the long-term consequences of global warming, we’ve got to stop thinking only in terms of what it might do to the resale value of a condo in Florida, or whether New York City will be a good place to live in twenty years. What happens in Bangladesh doesn’t stay there. We’ve got to think wide.
The present political climate across the globe does not look promising for fostering cooperation between nations. But we must have it if human society is to rescue the planet from global despoiling of its resources. If we’re fortunate, we’ll come to realize in time that justice and fairness, coupled with respect for nature, give us what we need. Which brings me to note that on January 7, one of my heroes, Paul Hawken, Executive Director of Project Drawdown, will receive a lifetime achievement award of the National Council for Science and the Environment, one more in a long list of recognitions for all that he’s accomplished. Let’s help celebrate by reading the book he's been instrumental in creating.
As we greet the New Year we might ask whether things are different from a decade ago. The reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have definitely grown more urgent. The special report recently published is decidedly sharper in tone than those preceding it. It carries a sense of urgency and specificity that reflects the most recent results from the field: we will be experiencing the effects of global warming much earlier than previously assumed. If we don’t take substantial actions soon, things will get very bad a few decades down the line. And people still yawn and say, “more doom and gloom!”. That’s too bad, because the scientists are right.
Those involved in the effort to arouse the public to a heightened awareness of climate change find themselves struggling with how to do it. What will it take to get things moving toward mitigation? The tenor of many articles that deal with this question is surprisingly similar to Nordhaus and Shellenberger’s. For example, Laurence Tubiana, a former French ambassador to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, and CEO of the European Climate Foundation, echoes their sentiments in an article in Project Syndicate. However, she goes on to emphasize the vital role that expectations play in human behavior. She writes of a convergence of expectations as an enforcement mechanism in changing human behavior. As an example, enormous progress is being made in implementing solar energy. In the state of Florida, where I live, Florida Power and Light is in the midst of one of the largest solar expansions ever in the southeastern U.S., with more than 3.5 million new solar panels added in the last two years alone and millions more on the way. Next year, solar will outpace coal and oil combined as a percentage of FPL’s energy mix. I doubt that most of the people in Florida would have predicted that shift, or that Google is close to supplying all its energy needs from renewable sources. That’s a pretty big deal; Google consumes more electricity in all its operations than San Francisco. To borrow a phrase from Tubiana, society is moving from a mindset of Impossible to Inevitable. Without question, large-scale implementations of existing technologies such as wind, solar, electric cars and vast improvements in energy storage capacity are moving from impossible to inevitable.
Social forces are very important. The idea of global warming is becoming a meme, an element of culture that spreads throughout society like something infectious. Nongovernmental agencies are peppering the developing world with devices and tools to confront climate change. People don’t always get it right, about what global warming will entail, but when they associate the occurrences of more powerful hurricanes, or forest fires in California, or flooding in Wilmington, North Carolina with global warming, they’ve moved a step closer to accepting the immediacy of climate change. That’s good, but it’s not good enough. If the developed world is to effectively counter the long-term consequences of global warming, we’ve got to stop thinking only in terms of what it might do to the resale value of a condo in Florida, or whether New York City will be a good place to live in twenty years. What happens in Bangladesh doesn’t stay there. We’ve got to think wide.
The present political climate across the globe does not look promising for fostering cooperation between nations. But we must have it if human society is to rescue the planet from global despoiling of its resources. If we’re fortunate, we’ll come to realize in time that justice and fairness, coupled with respect for nature, give us what we need. Which brings me to note that on January 7, one of my heroes, Paul Hawken, Executive Director of Project Drawdown, will receive a lifetime achievement award of the National Council for Science and the Environment, one more in a long list of recognitions for all that he’s accomplished. Let’s help celebrate by reading the book he's been instrumental in creating.
My first doubts about AGW were with the 97% of scientists agree. You cant get that level of agreement on Newtons Laws! My next doubt was that the solutions offered cost trillions of dollars, could only be accomplished by govt action, yet there was no analysis of whether or not there was a higher priority for such public spending (medicine, starvation, disease, third world energy production, etc). There are never any uncertainties given nor any admission that all the predictions are based on models for which some of the largest sources n sinks are ynknown or very poorly known. Last, climate science is not being critically evaluated, or at least this is no apparent. 30 years ago, the fear was global cooling, another ice age. Now that same science, if not the same scientists, says the opposite. It looks too much like advocacy for government power and less about science.
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