climate of untruth

Some people still don't believe there's a strong scientific consensus on the climate crisis. There is, rivaling our confidence in gravity. This is not "only a theory."

Yes, there are also dissenting voices to be found, somewhat misleadingly formatted here to imply much more division than the scientific community has in fact expressed. Al Gore's explanation of why there's so much public confusion about this, and how it amounts to nothing less than an assault on reason, is still compelling... and his 2006 TED Talk was sobering, persuasive,and funny. (What a great presidential candidate this guy would've been!)

Here are new Gore slides; here's Elizabeth Kolbert pointing out that many of us who are already persuaded have been less than honest with ourselves, talking more about taking action than acting; and here's what Bill McKibben's been up to:

"350 parts per million is what many scientists, climate experts, and progressive national governments are now saying is the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere." Here are some reputable sources reflecting the present state of unanimity on this issue:

• Hansen, James, et al. Target Atmospheric CO2: Where Should Humanity Aim? Submitted April 7, 2008. NASA climate scientist James Hansen's paper about the 350ppm target. Hansen also writes: "The press and television, despite an overwhelming scientific consensus concerning global warming, give equal time to fringe 'contrarians' supported by the fossil fuel industry. Special interest groups mount effective disinformation campaigns to sow doubt about the reality of global warming. The government appears to be strongly influenced by special interests, or otherwise confused and distracted, and it has failed to provide leadership. The public is understandably confused or uninterested."

• Hansen, James, et al. Target Atmospheric CO2: Supporting Material. Submitted April 7, 2008.

• The IPCC 4th Assessment Report – link to the latest report by the Nobel-prize winning United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, supported by the world's leading climatologists.

• Baer, Paul, Tom Athanasiou and Sivan Kartha. "The Right to Develop in a Climate Constrained World: The Greenhouse Development Rights Framework" - an important policy framework for how to mitigate climate change while ensuring an equitable path to development for the Global South.

• The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change - link to the official UNFCCC website with information about the UN climate policy process.

• NASA - scientific reports, interactive maps, resources for kids, and more

• RealClimate.org - a blog of climate science, written by climate scientists

• Climate Safety - a very useful new report about current climate science, policy, and solutions

1. Pew Center on Climate Change - helpful information about climate science and international policy

If all that doesn't persuade, maybe James Garvey's Ethics of Climate Change will. We read it in Environmental Ethics. The evidence it assembles, and the case it makes for more serious reforms than almost anyone is even talking about, is not easy to ignore... unless you choose to ignore it.

"Lifestyle changes aren't too much to ask"

NASHVILLE, 5.15.09 Both Presidents Bush notoriously refused to cooperate with the world, at Kyoto and in general, to address the climate crisis. Their rationale? The American way of life - our "lifestyle" - is non-negotiable. We'll consume and emit and befoul as much as we want, whenever and however we want, period. We'll take as much of the pie as we can slice.

And so it is refreshing, in the lead-up to Copenhagen and the drafting of a new global climate treat, to learn from this morning's Tennessean that participants at a "Climate Project Summit" here yesterday applauded Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, for responding to a question about the American lifestyle this way:

Lifestyle changes aren't too much to ask, Pachauri said.

"Why not, if this way of life is imposing a huge burden on the rest of the world?" he said to applause.

Emissions from fossil fuels are rising faster than projected, former Vice President Al Gore told hundreds gathered Thursday night for The Climate Project's North American Summit in Nashville.

"Temperatures are rising more rapidly," he said. "The ice is melting more rapidly."

Still, he said at the kickoff event of the three-day gathering, hope looms large.

A bill in Congress, expected to come out of committee soon, would be effective in reducing emissions in this country, he said. "Exciting" new developments are taking place with solar cells, wind and wave power and electric cars. New commitments are being made to mass transit.

"This is our time," Gore said. "This is our opportunity."

Joining Gore was Rajendra K. Pachauri, chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The panel and Gore shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 for building knowledge about climate change and bringing it to the attention of the world...

Lifestyle changes aren't too much to ask, Pachauri said.

"Why not, if this way of life is imposing a huge burden on the rest of the world?" he said to applause...

Getting the U.S. to commit to legislation before negotiations begin this December on a Copenhagen Treaty to slow climate change was considered key at the summit. It would take the place of the Kyoto Protocol, which both the U.S. and Australia refused to sign in years past...

In Environmental Ethics this past semester we read James Garvey's excellent Ethics of Climate Change, which led to a constructive and cordial email exchange with the author - who at my suggestion promises to read some John Dewey. Dewey, for my money, has the best general answer to those who would challenge the idea that we have some obligation to our successors on this planet. (Nigel Warburton raised this challenge in a "Philosophy Bites" interview.) More on this later.

Hope

I have a bumper sticker on my car: "Evolve - every day is Earth Day." It's a message of hope. A better, cleaner, safer world inhabited by evolved, evolving humans who care deeply about the conditions of life for themselves and their progeny is imaginable. But we must not be content merely to dream it. The inestimable Wendell Berry says if we care about creating a livable future we must "give all to the present."

And so, it's very sad to learn that many young people say they're presently hopeless. That's what Earth Day can and must address: the need to give children authentic grounds for hope. "Yes we can" etc. Just as Al Gore says political will is a renewable resource, so is a spirit of hopefulness. Expect the worst, hope for the best, Berry says:

Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.

And consider the fact that our own hopeful disposition, even in the teeth of disappointment and setback, may be one of the conditions of ultimate success.

Unplugged

"We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."

19th century communications technology had already outpaced the human capacity to generate content worth communicating when Thoreau wrote that. Imagine what he'd make of the blogosphere.

Every year about this time, coincident with the end of the school year and the beginning of summer travel, I feel an irresistible urge to unplug from the grid. (It has something, too, to do with the incomparable allure of gorgeous May mornings when there are no school bells to beat, no urgent emails to open, no kids to rouse from bed and compel to eat soggy oatmeal.)

We spent Memorial Day weekend in Atlanta (the Chattanooga aquarium is better, btw). I resolutely left the laptop behind, and steered entirely clear of the hotel's "Business Center" computers. That's not exactly a retreat into the Walden woods but I still find it restorative of something vital and personal, and preservative of what I like to think of as my sanity.

And so, I'm happy to report that my primitive, unwired Little House office is working out quite nicely for me so far. I'm not going to boost my signal just yet.

My unsolicited advice to all who daily spend their freshest hour(s) immobilized behind a small screen: unplug. Check the email when you have absolutely nothing better to do. Don't be in such haste to publish your every thought to an inattentive world. (When David Brooks writes something stupid http://select.nytimes.com/2007/05/29/opinion/29brooks.html about Al Gore, for instance, someone else will be sure to call him on it. To wit: http://buchanan.blogs.nytimes.com/
(and also see: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steven-g-brant/al-gore-urges-us-to-think_b_49371.html)

In other words: notch the hours on your stick instead of your keyboard, at least now and then.

The days will be growing longer for just a few more weeks, and I don't want to miss them. I'll be back, but -- for now -- I'll catch you later.

"Gaia"

We've been reading James Lovelock in the environmental ethics class. He first introduced "Gaia," the Earth Goddess metaphor of a living and self-regulating planet that so many of the "scientifically correct" hastily rejected as mystical and New Agey, decades ago. Now, in Revenge of Gaia, Lovelock has gone apocalyptic: humans have plundered the planet and must consequently receive Mother Earth's harsh version of Tough Love. He predicts an 80% "culling" of the population in the next century, followed by a period of adjustment when the human survivors -- like those Irish monks -- will once more have to reinvent civilization.

Lovelock may be right, but I don't like his tone. I much prefer the perspective of Michael Pollan, whose Botany of Desire is our next read. Pollan, too, affirms that we are a part of nature; but his version of the relation between humans and non-human nature also acknowledges its "co-evolutionary" character. Our interests and desires have not just injured Gaia, in important ways they have defined her. We don't have to think of ourselves as forever harboring a toxic threat to the arc of our planet’s evolutionary destiny; we are one of its adaptations, and the only one capable of articulating a planetary point of view that recognizes planetary health as inseparable from human self-interest.

Al Gore made clever use of the Gaia metaphor in his testimony before Congress this week, noting that when your child is sick you don't ignore her condition because a scif-fi author [Michael Crichton, of course] said it wasn't a problem; you treat it.

I like Gore's tone more than Lovelock's, too. As Senator Gore wrote, way back when:

"For civilization as a whole, the faith that is so essential to restore the balance now missing in our relationship to the earth is the faith that we do have a future. We can believe in that future and work to achieve it and preserve it, or we can whirl blindly on, behaving as if one day there will be no children to inherit our legacy. The choice is ours; the earth is in the balance."