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ADAPTATION: Adrift in a
Cloud of Fantasy
January 2012
There is virtually no aspect of
human affairs that is not affected by the cloud of uncertainty enveloping the
earth as the climatic disruption proceeds. The density of the cloud varies with
the beholder. At one end there is imaginative and vigorous denial based on financial interests in the commerce
of energy. Among scientists, too, there is a range of views
from skepticism to hyper-objectivity bordering on denial, to deep concern. Many
of these latter recognize that changing climate out from under all life,
including oceans, forests and agriculture, presents a lethal threat to this
civilization in the short term of years to decades. They understand that the
current slide can easily become a cascade into a chaos that will reduce the
human population to a fraction of its current
seven billion. That slide may be anticipated as the large pools of
carbon stored in the Arctic peats and in the trees and soils of the Boreal
Forest are mobilized by the warming and cook the planet. The fuse of the potential
carbon bomb of high latitudes in the northern hemisphere is now lit. The only sure cure is stabilizing, and then
reducing, the temperature of the earth.
The most common response appears to
be exasperated cries for “realism” and for simply adapting to the changes as
they occur: business as usual. “Realism”
as envisioned by economists and an increasing number of scientists asserts no
chance of success in abandoning fossil fuels. In that view there is the
necessity for adaptation, accepting the changes already experienced and
anticipating more. That process becomes the policy, sustained by the hope of
muddling through. But the “policy of
adaptation” is blind to the lethal feedbacks that take the climatic disruption
to new and unacceptable extremes. A
limit on the extent of the warming has already been established in the public
eye as a two degree C rise in the average temperature of the earth. That limit
was a compromise established as a political and economic convenience, not a
scientific consensus. The possibility of allowing the earth to warm to that
level and not higher has never been established, only asserted on the basis of
dreams supported by wishful thinking. The warming that has already occurred is
at least marginally controllable by bold action now. Would control still be possible after an
average change in the temperature of the earth of two degrees and the Arctic
warmed by as much as 4-6 degrees? Almost
certainly not.
Despite the success of the
Framework Convention on Climate Change signed in Rio in 1992 and subsequently
ratified universally, seventeen Conferences of the Parties have failed to
produce progress. Progress would
constitute effective action toward
stabilizing the composition of the atmosphere with respect to the heat
trapping gases, especially carbon dioxide.
Over the years immediately following such a success, emissions from
fossil fuels would have to be reduced further to maintain the equilibrium and,
if the concentration in air were to be lowered further as it should be, fossil
fuels would have to be substantially abandoned over several years.
While an honest judgment may
require skepticism as to the possibility of political action in abandoning
fossil fuels, this skepticism should not be confused with skepticism towards the evolving facts of climate
science. Basing policy on political or
corporate opposition and the myth of adaptation amounts to an abandonment of
hope and is a commitment to runaway climatic disruption. The response to such
an assertion is, of course, denial: “we shall take every opportunity to reduce
emissions and deflect the course of the warming”. Meanwhile, that policy
accedes to the skeptics’ position and reduces substantially to zero any
possibility of success in deflection. It assures the economic, social and
political chaos of environmental collapse.
The only viable stance for
scientists and politicians is persistent, relentless optimism supported by
imaginative and equally relentless efforts in research and public affairs: insistence that the
remaining primary forests globally be conserved as is, that 1-2 million square
kilometers of normally naturally
forested land be reforested with natural
forests, and that fossil fuels be systematically abandoned within the decade
before 2020. The transition can be to a new world, one our children can, and
will want to live in. It will not be the analog of Haiti and Somalia of this
moment, but a variant of new “green cities” and “transitional towns”
set in an environment wherein forests
and fertile soils and all other life are as protected as in a park. We must
envision, design and start building them now. There is no other way.
George M. Woodwell
Woods Hole, Massachusetts
January
2012
