All things must pass.
3
Thoughts and prayers much?
Step one: Stop talking about degrees Celsius to people who don’t automatically do the conversion in their heads, i.e. nearly all Americans. 4º C = almost 40º F. It might help.
5
We should have elected Gore. He might have been our last best chance.
37
Great article, thanks Mr Manjoo! Another way to consider the catastrophe that global warming/climate change surely is was printed in this very paper by another correspondent. He reminded us that in fact, the planet will survive just fine (even if it looks vastly different than it does now), but we won't. So if you won't make changes for the planet, do it for your family.
2
Precisely - though (think Matrix 1) Our species is the infiltrating virus, especially those of us who are affluent shopping junkies.
1
I wish that we could discuss the elephant in the room, the root cause of pollution that leads to climate change or just destruction of nature. It's called human beings. And I'm not talking about those driving cars, or heating homes with coal. I'm talking about too many human beings. We have been eliminating rain forests, whole swaths of ancient forests because we have too many people. The more people, the more we can expect to continue to tear apart the natural forces that keep CO2 in check. We've been reduced to talking about cap and trade, pretending that the Paris accord did anything to curb climate change. Or pollution. No regulations on dumping sewage into our limited waterways.
Maybe aliens are impregnating women across the globe?
5
The problem is that you assume there is global warming. Many conservatives and the majority of the GOP will deny that there is global warming. You can't rally the troops to fight a battle if there is no enemy.
1
I am reminded of this terrific quote from former Sierra Club Chairman, Michael McCloskey:
"We are not immortal, but our acts are... The question is not why we exist but whether we deserve to exist as supposedly rational beings if we act like conquerors rather than caring beings willing to share the planet with all those who are less powerful, and to act with restraint in respecting the needs of others and all life to come. As a species, we are on trial to see whether rationality was an advance or a tragic mistake."
3
You know, I’ve been terrified and fighting hopelessness most of my life. Child abuse set the stage, w/the monumental fears of nuclear war framing my elementary and junior high school years. Then in high school and college, air pollution, and earth destruction became the main harbingers of doom.
I do what little I can do—sort my trash, drive as infrequently as possible, and plan on buying an electric car as soon as an affordable, effective model comes along.
Probably, I shouldn’t have had children—but, too late, they are here and have been for 32 and 29 years respectively.
But my response at this point, when the drums of doom are very loud, is to shrug. I’ll continue to do what an individual can do, which is not much. But since these warnings have been loud and clear for at least 50 years, I lay the blame at the feet of lying politicians, a greedy corporate culture, and humans themselves for their willful ignorance.
If the scientists are right, and I have no reason not to believe them, I wonder what it will take to massively mobilize? I don’t know, but I sure wish that some policy-makers, scientists, and yes, those largely useless politicians, would get it together and take a baby step toward the positive. But baby steps have been taken in various states and cities. Funny thing, I don’t read much about the outcomes of those attempts.
I need hope, and stories about methods that work and about people who work together successfully.
Otherwise, don’t bother me.
1
At the end of the superb 1959 movie, "On The Beach," there is a banner gently waving in the breeze over a lifeless apocalyptic landscape that reads, "Brother, there is still time..." "On The Beach dealt with the threat of nuclear apocalypse, and the apocalypse we are facing today with climate change is at least as dire. I find Farhad Manjoo's idea of using aliens as a mobilizing force, an ironic use of mankind's other supreme enemy, tribalism, this time in the service of something actually good. I hate to admit it, but it might be the only way.
1
You sure you hadn't just watched Star Trek First Contact, Farhad? That was the premise - contact with aliens (the non-aggressive Vulcans) united humanity in a way nothing else could. The result was an unprecedented era of peace and prosperity. It also had another gem from Capt Picard which addresses the major resistance to change (greed): "The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our society. We work to better ourselves." He was speaking of the 24th century to someone from the 22nd (I think). We don't have near that long to get our act together unfortunately.
1
On the one hand it is great to see columnist like Mr. Manjoo sounding the alarm on climate change, but on the other hand it is a little discouraging that a lot of this stuff seems new to him. I hope and pray that we get some big wake up call weather event soon so that people will take more notice of where we are at and where we are headed.
2
The Times should include at least one climate article on every front page every day. They should include a graphic, chart or list following political and business efforts updated every day.
If the world were at war it would always be front page news. Remove Trump from the front page unless related to climate change or his indictment or impeachment and make some front page room.
10
Farhad - sorry, but please stick to technology. Yes, we are heading toward a catastrophic climate calamity, brought on by our collective stupidity and self-centered Republican ideology. And, yes, all the countries on earth need to pull together to fight it. But, aliens?
Technology, Farhad. Technology.
If the aliens attacking earth were able to make allies of the Kochs (e.g., We'll make you kings of the ashes!"), American conservatives would declare the attack a hoax.
It's nice to read something in the paper that makes sense.
3
Humanity has yet to demonstrate that its collective intelligence is greater than that of a yeast colony in a petri dish.
1
The only reason I can (and do) get a 'kick' out of the 'funny parts' of Mr. Manjoo's column (other than its very much appreciated 'jibes' at potus ignoramus) is that I am within weeks of my 70th birthday, and ... "as far as I know" ... I have no children.
(Moreover ... being not a 'jerk' -- let alone a billionaire -- my wife of 37 years is an 'age-appropriate partner. And ... not only did I not use my exceptionally good looks and a 'reasonable' level of wealth to 'capture' a 'reverse cougar' ... but I sold my last Porsche when, even before the end date of my mid-life in crisis, my wife was no longer comfortable climbing in and out of it.)
Ergo … I feel for the young and even the younger of 'the boomers' out there, and ... while I cannot 'rejoice' in the recognition that the worst of climate change consequences will not 'visit' me … there is some appreciation that I will more likely only suffer a 'natural' death as "natural" has been considered 'to date' -- and as will be until climate change consequences 'become' "natural."
1
Pretend it's not histrionic hyperbole.
1
If aliens were to invade earth, our President would be first in line to cut deals for them to stay at the Trump hotel.
2
Wait, do we pretend that aliens have taken over the White House and GOP? Oh, got it.
1
"Digital wonderland"?!? No, Farhad, it's EXACTLY like "Monsters from the Id". And they/WE will win!
1
25 holocausts don't put much of a dent in the increase in human population. Random death which slightly mitigates the current 1.09% rate of increase is not much of a tragedy. For the world's wildlife, it's more of a boon. And for human civilization, as well, perhaps.
I'm not advocating climate change, and I'm not a denier, but a minor decrease in the rate of increase in the human population is not a good reason to panic.
Thanks for that Farhad. Geez, I'm a scientist and I knew all that, and we installed rooftop solar in 2012. We have grandkids.
Since 2012, this is what we have saved:
CO2 Emissions Avoided
36.7 tons
Miles Not Driven
79,171 miles
Gasoline Not Used
3,742 gallons
Coal Not Burned
35,716 pounds
Crude Oil Not Used
77 barrels
Mature Trees Grown
853 trees
Garbage Recycled
26,275 pounds
And we don't pay our very corporate utility that just got that obscene tax cut, and charges us for their half-hearted attempts to use renewables. Yep, it's in our bill each month.
Ocasio-Cortez should just recommend that the feds, not the Trump Administration, should subsidize rooftop solar for anyone who wants it. Well, the angry white voters won't want it, just like my Republican neighbors - it's a communist, Nazi, socialist plot...
5
This is exactly what tv series GAME of THRONES is all about. The WHITE WALKERS represent impending, inexorable climate change. It took my wife and I about half way through to connect the dots.
https://www.esquire.com/entertainment/tv/a23863674/george-rr-martin-game-of-thrones-politics-trump-climate-change/
https://www.thrillist.com/entertainment/nation/game-of-thrones-ending-climate-change-global-warming
We need Captain Kirk. And Mr Spock.
Beam me up, Scotty, there's no intelligent life down here.
...I'm waiting for the day all countries of the world stand together - all religions unite under one cause - and all races set aside their differences - everyone around the world is for one cause.....there is no more bias, no more discrimination, we are now truly equals - all human beings living on one Earth....
It's when the aliens invade......
It's been nice knowing all of you. . .
Are they illegal aliens? If so, here's a dilemma for Trump: no wall for climate change deniers. After all, who would want a Monument to Racism if climate change doesn't even exist?
Ooh, wait, I know that one!
1
The aliens will be hostile as they already sent dinosaur form factors which now are dishonored by being dug up and burned .
“...one late night after taking a dose of a kind of sleep medicine that is now widely available in California, I had an epiphany...
If your epiphany persists – try taking two doses of a kind of sleep medicine that was then widely available in California in the ‘60s, and call me in the morning...
By then, your phone will be six feet tall, with kaleidoscope eyes...
And making you an electric smoothie for breakfast, out in the kitchen...
As far as:
“...Oumuamua isn’t just space rock. What if the thing was indeed captained by little green people, gangly and ferocious? And what if their leader let us know her plans for us — perhaps via tweet...
Think about what you just wrote...
What makes you think they’re not Trump supporters – given the exurb from which they hail – and already engaged in thumb-dragging twitter repartee with our big orange people, gangly and ferocious...
Specifically – our biggest, and orangest, and gangliest, and ferociousest...
Or that their ship doesn’t just unfurl like space station solar panels – but into a 2500 mile long slatted structure...
1
Be the change.
Sell your car and buy a bicycle. Keep your home at 60 degrees and buy some more sweaters. Or at least insulate your house and change the windows to triple pane. Stop flying. Are you overweight? Stop eating so much.
Anyone engaged in Apocalypse Porn should be doing these things, and more, before they open their mouths.
I strongly believe the science behind global warming.
I do not believe my friend, 30 pounds overweight, driving all over the place, (over)shopping at Costco, etc., flying across the country, or to Europe every year, when he rails against the system, and claims we're "on the precipice."
Stop telling me about it, and actually do something.
1
Anyone interested in climate change should periodically check in with CO2.earth, since CO2 concentrations seem to be the main culprit. Scientists believe that 350 parts per million (ppm) is a safe level. We passed that in 1988. A few years ago CO2 enshrined itself as the Ted Williams of climatology when it blew past the dangerous "tipping point" of 400 ppm. On 2/12/19, the reading was 411.80. On 2/12/18 it was 408.60 ppm. So the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere is now accelerating.
What level constitutes the "straw that breaks the camel's back?" Is it 420 ppm? 450 ppm? It would seem to be wishful thinking that it is somewhere above 500 ppm given the events of the past few years. And that means all hell breaks loose in less than 25 years.
1
Would you say Sapiens are too smart for their own good? Or too stupid?
Trick question - it doesn't matter.
The weather/ climate doesn't care, it just is. And it's changing in ways that will wreak havoc on Sapiens. If we can't stop creating the conditions that kill us, then, oh well, says the climate, it'll work for other species, just not homo sapiens.
So, to all the deniers: This isn't about saving the planet, or even the environment, so you don't have to worry about the horrors of being thought of as a "greenie" - if you value human life, this should be your top priority. Full stop.
It is unfathomable at this point, that we still have deniers, and worse yet, deniers that are in positions to make huge policy decisions . And even more diabolical, there are many out there, and many high level elected GOP that know climate change is real, but have decided, due to political consequences (read- Oil, coal money), it is better to deny, because to acknowledge would mean they'd have to act. Shameful.
2
You either except science, or you do not. You cannot pick and choose the science you "believe in", while ignoring the foundation of what science actually is. Therefore, for those of you who do not except the science of climate change, you are to be banned from medical science. No doctor visits for you!
@hoffmanje very silly. Science isn't an all or nothing proposition. Do you believe all the social science research out there? If you question some of that does mean you must reject all science? How about biological science, or medical science. Lots of it gets rejected as newer research comes along. Even for the hard sciences like physics?
Settled science is never settled for very long. And the word is "accept" not except.
Sorry, Manjoo, but aliens aren't real. Climate change is, and is a serious threat, which has been recognized by most if not all scientists and most of the general public. Whether oil industry employee Republican and craven right-wing Democrats recognize this is another matter, but then, I assume none of them read this newspaper/website. You don't need to help people understand who have no interest in doing so.
In her book "The March of Folly," an analysis of the history of war, Barbara Tuchman used the term "wooden-headedness" to describe the mental condition of leaders who repeatedly ignore the horrible consequences of their actions--or lack thereof. It's a perfect word to describe the profoundly selfish and clearly stupid mindset that afflicts many of the most powerful political leaders in America today. In the face of this relentlessly awful display of political weakness, our only hope is citizen action on a massive scale. We need to turn the blue wave into a green wave--ASAP.
1
This made me laugh: “Can we save America without saving the earth?” It's a question the president might actually ask seriously!
Great article. Unfortunately, it's far more likely that trump followers will believe him when he says the lack of water is Democrats' fault, and liberals want to steal all the oxygen!
1
I find that replacing "climate change" with "malignancy in your child" in all these stories puts it in the proper perspective.
1
@Jim A more apt analogy would be to compare CO2 to cholesterol. An interesting read about a similar malignancy:
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/apr/07/the-sugar-conspiracy-robert-lustig-john-yudkin
He lost me at the point he said he went to bed high.
I'm not sure sure the people who are already concerned about climate change need yet another mental paradigm in order to be even more terrified. Might have been better to suggest that pretending it's the murderous immigrants, then you might change some hearts and minds from the deniers.
p.s. that was a satirical statement, I do not hold the opinion that immigrants are any more murderous than the rest us (mostly those descended from immigrants).
1
What is ridiculous about NBA players believing the world is shaped like a frisbee? I am surprised they even entertain such weighty thoughts regardless of how wrong they may be.
1
The Trump administration came at the absolute worst time in the history of civilisation. Ive been saying all along that climate scientists have under estimated the magnitude of our changing climate. Earth is fixing to eridicate us humans as if we were a destructive virus which we essentially are. Clinton would have installed policy that would at least have minimized the coming apocalypse. Yet I dont blame Trump. Trump is simply being the conman he has ALWAYS been. I blame the ignoramouses who fell for his con! I wish I were a fly on the wall when a Trump supporters progeny questions why Grandma and Grampa maga supported a conman as our world burned and they did worse then nothing about it. Instead they actually freely contributed to the demise of millions of people.
1
It's difficult to take Mr. Manjoo seriously. He's worried about climate change, yet a month ago wrote an opinion piece for the NYT advocating for the US to have open borders. Can he not see how these views contradict each other? Do I have to explain to him that allowing millions - if not billions - of people into the US would drastically increase carbon emissions and put even more strain on an already fragile ecosystem?
If the US wants to reduce its carbon footprint and tackle climate change effectively, it has to stop letting in more people and to kick out those who are here illegally. It's impossible to decrease future carbon emissions without tackling population growth first.
1
How should we take your failure to consider that immigrants would continue to be humans living on Earth even if we deported them?
3
More alarmist garbage. According to Al Gore in his movie "An Inconvenient Truth," we should all be dead already. Maybe it's just me, but I don't feel dead yet.
And then there's the ridiculous Leftist fantasy that is the so-called "Green New Deal." Regarding this, I have only one question:
How do we force the rest of the world to get on board? Because unless every country on Earth were to adopt the policies outlined in the "GND," it would be a meaningless gesture on the part of the US.
Of course, if your goal is usurping the United States government and stripping the freedom of the American people, then the GND makes perfect sense. Even a cursory glance makes it evident that the *real* purpose behind the GND is the complete and utter subjugation of the people of the US to an all-powerful government.
The GNS makes the Communist Manifesto seem tame.
Using "climate change" as an excuse for despotic, totalitarian rule makes perfect sense from the Left's point of view. This approach cloaks their real purpose. But, not all of us are blind or stupid. We can see what they're trying to do.
And, it is as anti-American as anything that has ever been tried before. I just hope to God that they aren't successful.
If a presidential election can be swung by Facebook advertising (which the media claims happened in 2016), it's possible these people can get away with a takeover over this country through sleight of hand and misinformation campaigns.
And, that's pretty scary right there!
1
Predictions of doom and gloom have been around for ever. From Nostradamus to Malthus. From early Christians, to Muslims to Zoroastrians to Jehovah's witnesses all have their pet theory on how the world is going to end. A few years ago, we were all going to destroy with nuclear weapons. There is still a doomsday clock somewhere at stuck at 10 minutes to mid night, nobody remembers where. The environmentalists are here with their latest doomsday predictions all wrapped up in scientific mumbo-jumbo. Fact checking on the environmentalists show that none of the predictions they made 50 years ago have come true. Yes, a few species became extinct, but that is how mother nature works. Fact checking also shows that the earth spends 99.9 % of its existence in various ice ages emerging briefly in interglacial warming periods that last a few thousand years. Our entire civilization is based on the latest warming period that started 10,000 years ago. If I had to worry about climate change, I would worry about the earth going off into its next ice age which may happen any day.
1
When the crops fail and the coastal cities flood, as most current models predict, remember it was George W Bush who termed this a “liberal problem” and Donald Trump who termed it “a hoax.” Too bad that “I told you so” won’t help the situation.
"we live in an age of delusion"
We sure do. How many readers of the Times actually believe that the world is going to end in 2030? Their new messiah, one AOC, predicted that recently. These same sophisticated readers laugh at those religious end-timers. You know, the ones who keep pushing back their doomsday clock every time their world doesn't end.
1
The paper linked to in the following sentence
"Today, 2 degrees — a level of warming that might induce death from air pollution on the order of “25 Holocausts,” Mr. Wallace-Wells notes — is looking like our best hope."
does not support the claim made in the sentence, as a quick look at the abstract will show. Rather, the paper argues that reducing carbon output will save lives because doing so will have the side-benefit of reducing air pollution.
Maybe the easiest, quickest fix would just be to remove the link?
1
Sounds about right. Time to wake up. The house is on fire and the snooze button = death.
Continuing to degrade our world habitat would be suicidal for the human race. To change course let's keep calm and price carbon now.
Well-designed, revenue-neutral carbon fee-and-dividend legislation has been introduced with bipartisan support in Congress. In the first twelve years it would reduce U.S. carbon emissions by 40%.
Support the Energy Innovation and Carbon Dividend Act (HR 763). Visit: (www.energyinnovationact.org)
4
If I may, a suggestion for the name of the inevitable era we face: The Pogo Times.
The idea that aliens might unite us in an effort was also on someone else's mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7s5IVT0WbI&feature=youtu.be&start=39&end=47
You’re right. Have you ever read James Lovelock’s “Gaia” books? No, they are not fiction. He is a scientist who understood global warming decades ago and has tried to communicate the threat. His latest books published now almost 10 years ago (he is in his 90s now), gave up hope and talk about the kind of cataclysm you refer to, where humanity will go through demographic collapse. I resist this hopelessness and also despair at our human reason’s inability to face up to the problem, instead dwelling on the mundane, or fantasies, anything to avoid the truth. The attraction of the mundane at the expense of dealing with the threat may be a greater danger because it is explicable. We don’t feel the threat. It’s aliens, stupid! Maybe your article, which is politically incorrect in its openness (including your sleeping aid!), will make some people think twice. Thumbs up!
15
@Tony Quintanilla
"Scientist behind the Gaia hypothesis says environment movement does not pay enough attention to facts and he was too certain in the past about rising temperatures...."
Truer words were never spoken.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/mar/30/james-lovelock-environmentalism-religion
3
With so much of the population living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to make ends meet, one illness, injury or layoff away from disaster, you will find no support for raising the cost of energy and transportation to avoid an abstraction.
Economic policies that guarantee basic necessities, provide security, and more equitably distribute the fruits of economic activity would leave people more amenable to change. The existence of a common good is a prerequisite to the acceptance of any public sacrifice necessary for its enhancement.
1
Instead of imagining 'enemies' and 'battling' against toxic output, let's name who is behind the corporate culprits: Mostly men. Men still control the vast majority of large corporations and world, political leadership. It is male behavior to name problems as 'wars and battles'. A different path would be to imagine (and act on) the climate problem as the earth in need of healing. We must nurture the earth, and that means taking away the toxins that are causing the dis-ease. Women would fill that void easier and better than men. And men, perhaps it is time for a global, gender-wide transition. In a word, evolve.
@Rand Raynor There is a lot of truth in what you say, but I think the problem is more complicated and more difficult to solve. Please consider bell hooks' (surely one of our wisest voice on both patriarchy and race) suggestion that "patriarchy has no gender." It is a deep cultural process, a form of mental organization that runs through both genders. All men were once boys, and all boys (or at least most) have mothers, who are routinely and systematically involved in perpetuating and transmitting patriarchal values and behaviors. I'm honestly not in as much disagreement with you as it might seen--I have seen up close the difference between male and female leadership and I completely agree that we need much more of the latter. But if we want to really change things in a sustainable way, I think we need to go further than the suggestion that "men are the problem." (Sorry if that seems a rant, it just seems terribly important and needing to be heard--not least for the innocent young boys in the world who I think are deeply affected by the "men are bad" trope.)
2
Rather than focus on building cities on the moon and Mars we need to focus on building surviving and survivable cities here on Earth. How do we make surviving profitable? This is the real question.
The article in Nature to which Mr Manjoo refers is an outlier among the reputable studies of the economic impact of climate change.
I was surprised by the 2018 IPCC report which stated:
"In sum, estimates of the aggregate economic impact of climate change are relatively small."
I expected a much larger impact, but that's what it said. We won't win doubters by claiming the IPCC is right except when it's wrong.
Trashing the IPCC by forecasting a vastly higher economic impact as Mr Manjoo does, only empowers climate change deniers who ridicule the lack of agreement among experts and use that as a reason for doing nothing.
We are still in the persuading stage, as absurd as that may be. We have to be very careful about getting ahead of the evidence. It matters that forecasts of the Himalayas and the Arctic being ice-free now were so wrong - they are actively used to trash climate change arguments and are powerful weapons in the hands of the deniers.
I don't want to give the likes of President Trump any more material with which to bamboozle the American people - and that's what Mr Manjoo's alarming article seems to do.
Mr. Manjoo's idea is highly reminiscent of the plot of the Watchmen comic book, in which (spoiler alert) one of the characters sets up an elaborate hoax that kills large numbers of people and simulates an alien invasion, in order to prevent nuclear war (which would presumably kill many more people). If there are aliens out there, perhaps they are watching us to see how well we can handle a global challenge like climate change before making contact with us; it would seem like a logical prerequisite for joining a galactic society that the inhabitants of a planet manage to avoid irreversibly damaging it before they become a spacefaring civilization. Otherwise, what would keep us from traveling to other planets and damaging them too? That type of behavior might be grounds for the extermination of humanity, since we under that scenario would be a threat to whatever planet we visited. Let's show those aliens, real or not, that we can behave in our own best interests, at the very least!
1
I believe the human species is not wired and capable of making any big decisions that might ensure its survival of any disastrous event. It is like a virus destroying its habitat. One way or another, be it climate change, nuclear war, blow up of the festering Yellowstone volcano, or a hit by another large meteor, it will go the way of the Dinosaurs.
1
I've sadly concluded human beings may be incapable of changing our behaviors in time to prevent the worst impacts of climate change. We are too selfish and mistrustful as individuals and nation tribes to make the changes needed.
1
I'm just holding out hope that there will be some insects left who will not miss us at all.
1
@lrb945
After they eat what's left of us?
There are far too many people on this planet, thanks primarily to places such as India, Pakistan, Vietnam, Africa and China. They can take a bow. Half of population growth between now and 2050 will occur in Africa.
Population growth drives resource usage, scarcity, migration, and climate change. There is not the political will in the US to reduce energy usage and/or radically change lifestyles so that 3 Billion Africans and Asians can live like rich Americans. There's no way out.
2
@Lilo Seriously? Have you looked at the resource use and carbon footprint of the people in those places? There is really nothing debatable here--unless perhaps all the extant statistics regarding population, consumption, and environment are just wrong. The vast bulk of the problem comes from wealthy countries and economic, not population, growth.
1
It’s called “Childhood’s End” by Arthur C. Clarke. A great read.
A quote for this situation, stated by some wise person at some time seems apropos, “Nothin’ ever changes until it does!”
Wasn’t there an article about Detroit automakers (pickupmakers) seeing an ever expanding market for pickups with bigger engines and more frills?
Chicken Little lives. There is not one storm in the last 15 years that hasn’t been out done by a storm in the last 150 years. The coldest polar vortex occurred in 1899. The longest drought was the dust bowl in the 1920’s. I could go on but you can ‘t argue with irrationality.
1
Report from Oumaumau:
“Pass on making contact with these advanced, intelligent creatures because they’re not ready yet. Well on their way to destruction of their environment. Pity. Be home soon.”
End of transmission.
1
Murderous aliens have long been in the public imagination, but I'm thinking more of Klaatu and his pal Gort. Divine intervention, if you will, on the Day the Earth Stands Still. The "leaders" of this world have always preferred reacting to acting. Perhaps when the first coastal cities are flooded, and it will be ALL coastal cities, the common cause will supercede all nationalistic and economic priorities. Then perhaps we will all go down together, fighting the true enemies: greed, corruption, and willful ignorance.
OK so what would you do Mr Manjoo? Have you strategically retreated from populated areas to try to ensure that at least your own family will survive the coming apocalypse? What is the plan?
The billionaire strategy seems to be twofold:
(1) Establish citizenship in New Zealand and own a lot of land in a place with a lot of space, removed from various catastrophes. Ride it out, rebuild the ruins in a few generations.
(2) Colonize other planets, quickly, because we probably cannot sustain life as a one-planet race. Pay lip service to continued attempts to improve the environment and energy use to avoid scaring people too much with the view that it's hopeless.
It is aliens, or at least that might be a better solution. Read ‘Occam’s Scalpel’ by Theodore Sturgeon, written in 1971.
I wonder if we can find a way to mass-hypnotize anyone who uses Facebook to believe we are under alien attack?
Does the New York Times really want to feed its readership the apocalyptic premonitions of a left wing journalist? The author presents his assertions about the long term consequences of global warming to be scientific fact. None of it is fact, it is all conjecture. Economic damage from the rise in global temperatures? What does the world's economy look like in the year 2100? Perhaps rising temperatures will be a boon to geoengineering, urban planning and agriculture. We humans have a remarkable proven ability to adapt all over the world. Why should anthropogenic global warming be considered a catastrophe? Sure, we need a comprehensive, proactive global program to prevent it, but why is the author pontificating on climate scenarios that are still too wide to make any real predictions about?
Unfortunately, the progressive left are suckers for this dystopian thought. It makes them a cult rather than a group that can reason about real world problems.
@Yankelnevich
You can't be serious.
Completely disrupting the earth's climate might be a good thing?
He is quoting a chilling NOVEL about a worse case scenario.
A scenario that will come to pass if your attitude prevails.
@Yankelnevich
Well yes, conjecture. Based on facts and probabilities. I'm sure you will still be trashing the "progressive left" as you enjoy your delicious Soylent Green in your bunker's 16 sq feet of space. "mmm this is GOOD!".
"The whole thing is tragic and lazy, when what we need is heroism and bravery."
So, Mr. Manjoo, in your next article please consider describing how to cultivate heroism and bravery.
We're going to need an awful lot of both.
Even if you convinced this president that climate change was caused by aliens and we needed to do something about it, his solution would be to build a wall to completely encircle the Earth.
Pretending it's aliens causing climate warming on earth won't cut the mustard. Surely, "The Uninhabitable Earth" isn't the most terrifying book you've ever read, Mr. Manjoo! Brannen's "The Ends of the World" and Kolbert's "The Sixth Extinction" and Harari's "Sapiens" are climate lit's inconvenient truths.
So, what can do about our wobbling Earth warming to such an extent that humankind's goose will be cooked within recorded time? How can we mitigate climate change here in America, especially since many people believe that climate change is a hoax, that the earth is still flat as a flapjack, that fossil fuels will make America free of foreign oil.
President Trump is blinkered to our planetary crisis and humanity. Maybe he's the alien? Senator Mitch McConnell
laughs at the Democrats' Green New Deal climate change resolution. Maybe he's the alien, too? Climate warming isn't a partisan issue.
Every human and animal is born alone and dies alone. We can't mitigate destiny. We need to perceive that we're in a war for Earth's survival. Planetary survival isn't being cooked up by aliens like "Mars Attacks"! As David Bowie ("The Man Who Fell to Earth") sang and sings in our memory, "Ch-ch-ch-changes! Turn and face the strange!"
1
Imagine you could get an honest response from every human on the planet to a single question:
"Do you care what happens to the Earth 100 years after you die?"
That poll would reveal the sad truth - my children should absolutely not have children if they care about the world they'll live in.
Humans evolution requires zero need for a selection process that favors those who plan that far ahead. Our future depends on getting off this beautiful rock that we have parasitized. Farhad, we don't need to fear your aliens, we need to be those alien invaders.
1
I love the tactic, but wonder if a better dark force could be used. I'm thinking about the seasonal Fox-n-Friends favorite, "The War on Christmas." In a warmer world Santa Claus won't make any sense. Why the fur-lined parka? Why reindeer? Why a sleigh? Where's the snow? As an argument for and Aryan master race the whole "white Christmas" meme will no longer be possible.
Aliens are a good idea, but let's get real. "Happy Holidays" is the real enemy.
The one and only potential silver lining here is that we as humans may, in the slightest of possibilities, come together over climate change thus dissolving divisions throughout our societies and thereby curing the psychopathy at the root of this entire problem.
@AJaneG
"...humans may,in the slightest of possibilities, come together...."
This is what passes for optimism these days? Oi.
"It's a hard rain's a-gonna' fall..." Bob Dylan
1
Farhad; take a week or two to read the 1600 pages of Cixin Liu's _Three Body Trilogy_, aka _Remembrance of Earth Past_. The imaginative interpolation from our current reality to our likely endgame is rarely so much fun.
Adapt, adapt, adapt! That's what we're got at in the land of the free and the brave. "Fit in." It's the fit, the fit, the fit: I'm having fits. That's what the ego psychologists - Anna Freud - and the social workers tell us to do. Think? Not so much...
And as far as an adaptive delusion goes -denial, projective identification, regressing into fantasy - it's fun and it's free! If it works, don't fix it. We're living it the Age of Delusion. Just look at our fearless leader and his 40%. They'll straighten you out, tell you what's what.
God's in his heaven and all's right with the world...more or less...
PS: I like this guy's writing...a lot...ever since he got unceremoniously canned at Buzzfeed or wherever...
in the meantime, what is the name of that California medicine?
In the end, and this may come sooner than many think, it doesn't matter whether it's aliens, or us, that are bringing unimaginable death and hardship to the peoples of the earth. This is coming like a freight train, and almost no one, politicians, religious leaders, scientists, are making enough noise about this. We are going down! It's gonna happen, because, not individually, but collectivley we are dumb as posts! It's just too easy to deny, defer, look the other way, you name it. Our children-if they survive, will spit on our graves.
1
'Aliens' lacks the required specificity. This is an 'Invasion of the Brain-Snatchers' which leads otherwise rational people to pooh-pooh the crisis staring us in the face.
That's how they getcha: by first rendering us passive, indifferent and thinking that denial is evidence of superior smarts.
It's how zombie parasites work in nature. Maybe the aliens have been with us all along, and are hatching from the melting polar icecaps.
Walt Kelly, who drew the great "Pogo" comic strip for years, had it right:"We have met the enemy and it is us." In this case, the current generation of "leaders" and consumers is the enemy of generations to come. We continue to debate the reality of global warming, its human cause, and what small inadequate steps to take too late. The aliens have begun their descent to Earth's surface, the asteroid has passed the moon's orbit, the fire is on the first floor of our house and coming up the stairs, choose your metaphor. The Republicans try to squeeze the last dime out of the fossil fuels that will kill many people, and the Democrats make vague greenish statements that appeal to us coasters but lack substance and won't really disrupt our comfortable life. It would be interesting to study why our political and social systems are so inadequate to to the challenge facing us if the stakes weren't so high and the danger so pressing. Keep Googling the best cities to ride out climate change.
1
Great article and a great idea. If aliens ever landed it would be all hands on deck. First panic and then solutions. There'd be great halls filled with scientists and discussion. Emergency "red" code would be called and maintained and everyone would have their orders to take heed and participate in "whatever is necessary" to secure our safety. This is what we need now!
@debra
Probably not. The US would blame the Mexicans, do nothing except rant. Maybe build a wall. And go up in smoke.
As long as millionaires can become billionaires- none of these problems will be solved. Commoditization 101. Everything has value, including clean air, clean water, peace, food and even law and order. Pay more... get more.
3
THERE IS A SOLUTION TO CLIMATE CHANGE that was paid for by U.S. taxpayers with $1 Billion in R&D funds more than 25 years ago. Unfortunately it has since been 'swept under the rug', undoubtedly by fossil fuel interests.
What is that solution? If is a fourth-generation advanced nuclear reactor called PRISM that can consume and destroy long-lived high-level radioactive wastes that have been accumulating at nuclear power plants around the country, and convert that waste into vast amounts of clean, safe, and affordable electricity.
Widespread use of PRISM reactors, powered by nuclear wastes, could provide ALL the electricity we will need for the next 500 years!
SO, THERE IS A WASTE-TO-ENERGY SOLUTION TO CLIMATE CHANGE! Check it out. Google 'PRISM reactor' and 'James Hansen on Nuclear Power."
2
Unfortunately we humans are not so good at seeing slow motion train wrecks. Yes, plate tectonics is a real thing. But buying into it requires a leap of faith that the stake in the ground really did move 3 centimeters over the last five years. Not sure how many people believe that is happening; and that is something with objectively verifiable, unambiguous evidence behind it.
Climate change is a whole other beast, what with fickle weather patterns, small but vocal cadres of scientists claiming counter evidence, and politicization of the issue.
Would that it were aliens - at least then everyone, regardless of political persuasion, would be afraid of being vaporized by a death ray, or some suchlike.
On a more serious note, climate change policy will remain ineffective until climate change itself is seen as an existential threat - like aliens.
The only long-term global policy I’m aware of that was successfully handed off intact across multiple administrations operating in multiple nations was the containment of Soviet Communism - for at least 80 years.
Sadly, climate change just doesn’t measure up.
Our approach must be science based and we should not go beyond it claiming science as our foundation. However, prudence should be our guide. While we can't claim that science predicts these worst scenarios, doesn't it make sense to do the things that have spin off benefits while helping us avoid the worst case possibilities? It's this a reasoned approach -- a Valentine to our children and grandchildren?
We judge maturity by the ability to forego an immediate pleasure for a future gain. The world is currently acting very immature.
In the near future, we will program the human mind in the computer based on a "survival" algorithm, which will provide irrefutable proof as to how we trick the mind with our ridiculous beliefs about what is supposed to survive - producing minds programmed de facto for destruction. These minds would see the survival of a belief as more important than the survival of all. When we understand all this, we will begin the long trek back to reason and sanity.
See RevolutionOfReason.com
1
There's an old episode of The Outer Limits (maybe Twilight Zone) that had a guy go through plastic surgery and skeletal reconstruction to turn him into an "Alien" that the "world" could unite against, that would unite us against a common enemy.
The "Pretend it's Aliens" game is fun, but like lots of Utopic stories, including lots of "isms," doesn't take seriously enough the truth about human nature. Use whatever vocabulary won't stop listening, no problem, but the word that captures the problem most usefully for, I guess, as long as time, is "sin."
Look all around us. If there is a "this is reality" truth set, there are people all over trying to live a "you can have your reality, I'm going to make my own" opposition to even the idea that truth is true.
Regarding human gestation of humans, we routinely say "baby" until there is something going on that triggers an "I/we don't want it" button, and suddenly the baby becomes a "fetus." We like "rule of law" until we don't, until it becomes inconvenient. "Absolutely foolish to play the lotto" becomes, "I'm special; I don't need to plod along and slowly build something intergenerational for my family (compound interest is stupid compared to scratch off).
It's almost as though the best truism is that human beings will flount truth at every turn if it goes counter to something we think will make us happier.
Not even an alien (consider Stranger in a Strange Land, or Jesus (Luke 16:29-31) the Archetypal "Alien") can unite us.
1
There is a 200 mile dead zone at the mouth of the Mississippi River. We put the chemicals that caused that phenomenon on our fields. Those chemicals are also killing the soil. We put herbicides that cause cancer on our fields, We continue to put poison, carbon dioxide, in our atmosphere. It will kill us. How smart are we?
1
You are on the right track. Let me bring it home for you.
In the 50’s and 60’s when I was growing up, alien abductions were rife. You could not stand at a supermarket checkout counter without reading a detailed description of an abduction and probing. These have stopped. Why? Because the aliens have learned everything there is to know about us.
So, clearly these potential alien overlords have an agenda. What might it be? Perhaps they need a warmer climate with more carbon dioxide and less oxygen in the air. Check. Perhaps they might want to reduce trust in and effectiveness of governments, especially any unified human organizations like the United Nations. Check. Perhaps they might want to sabotage the educational system to reduce the ability of the human population to fight effectively when the Overlords arrive. Check. Perhaps they like their meat very well marbled. Check. Perhaps they used their knowledge acquired by all those probes in the 60’s to create clones that were seeded here to do their bidding. Has anyone seen Rush Limbaugh’s birth certificate?
Just saying.
3
For our nation, climate concerns come right after gun reform.
Let’s pretend that the aliens coming to our country won’t increase our population and make it even more difficult to find resources during the resource wars. This country doesn’t need more people from anywhere in the world
1
Huge numbers of polar life forms are rapidly dying off and insect life is also vanishing very rapidly. Once insects are gone extraordinary sectors of other life that depend on insects for food will also suffer and die and humanity as well is very vulnerable in this area. The over population of the planet is forcing humans to consume much of what is left of other wild life and once that is gone more humans will vanish as well. The economic system based on the endless expansion of corporate power is forced to disregard the total smashing of all forms of planetary life so that frightful poisoning of the ecology and rapid destruction of the oxygen producing forests are accepted as necessary to keep the system going. To presume the fantasy of some hidden agenda to radically transform the planet for a different life form somehow seems possible. Any intelligent invader would benefit by encouraging the resident life forms to commit suicide. No doubt it’s a wacky idea worthy of the worst of Hollywood but it’s difficult to dismiss it from my mind. Why would alien invaders want to get involved with a dangerous attack on Earth life when infiltration into Earth’s political systems to encourage the enthusiasm for fossil fuels and energetic massive production of nuclear weapons for Earth suicide would do the job for them without the necessity for them to lift a tentacle? It’s the ony thing that makes sense.
30
Very oddly, this morning I started to wonder about the absolutely ineffective approaches that almost all the major political leaders and systems are engaged in for vigorously combatting the most massive disaster to civilization and the bulk of life on the planet wherein each new study indicates that the catastrophe is approaching faster than it had been previously estimated. Huge numbers of polar life forms are rapidly dying off and insect life is also vanishing very rapidly. Once insects are gone extraordinary sectors of other life that depend on insects for food will also suffer and die and humanity as well is very vulnerable in this area. The over population of the planet is forcing humans to consume much of what is left of other wild life and once that is gone more humans will vanish as well. The economic system based on the endless expansion of corporate power is forced to disregard the total smashing of all forms of planetary life so that frightful poisoning of the ecology and rapid destruction of the oxygen producing forests are accepted as necessary to keep the system going. I started to wonder how any of this could make sense and could only presume the fantasy of some hidden agenda to radically transform the planet for a different life form. Any intelligent invader would benefit by encouraging the resident life forms to commit suicide. No doubt it’s a wacky idea worthy of the worst of Hollywood but it’s difficult to dismiss it from my mind.
1
Hollywood is here to help. There is already a movie about aliens changing Earth's climate to be warmer and more pleasant for them. It's called "The Arrival", starring Charlie Sheen, and it's over twenty years old.
1
Robert Silverberg wrote a story in the 70’s that posited this scenario.
How deeply sad and frightening that we are exterminating the very web of life of which we are a part, on which we depend -- and so many in a position to lead and/or who know better, do nothing to stop the coming catastrophe.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/feb/10/plummeting-insect-numbers-threaten-collapse-of-nature
There is no question that climate change-- in earth's case, warming-- is real, caused by human activity (polluting atmosphere with greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide, methane, etc.), and here now.
https://www.ucsusa.org/global-warming/science-and-impacts/science/scientists-agree-global-warming-happening-humans-primary-cause
The Madouse Effect:
https://www.getabstract.com/en/summary/the-madhouse-effect/30642
The upcoming election offers a stark choice: Democrats know there is a deadly threat and have some plans to address it.
Republicans seem to deny global warming, and the worldwide threat of mass extinction of brings, altogether.
Give it another summer or two...
Let the insurance industry bring the bad news.
Use carbon wisely
Spend time with those you love, doing something that matters.
If you’re looking for “a neat mental trick” ask the IPCC - it’s their specialty.
“The climate system is a coupled nonlinear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.”
FINAL DRAFT REPORT
IPCC WG1 Third Assessment Report
Do Not Cite. Do Not Quote. 22 October 2000. 2. Chapter 14
Soon.....you lost it right there.
Eventually, the earth is going to burn up and disappear back into the nothingness whence it came. Up to some point in the next few billion years, human beings will still be learning things such as how things actually work and how to make predictions that make sense.
There are things that make complete sense in terms of carbon and energy transformation. Those ideas should be pursued at the highest possible rates. Solar converters that are cheap reliable and durable for long periods of time. Moving to more transportation that is powered by the energy of the sun.
Soon? Get a grip. This is the sort of nonsense that results in less than what is possible from happening in the near future. i.e. soon.
My guess is that Manhattan and AOC’s district could do without traffic lights and subways but that elevators which operate when the sun is shinning or The wind is blowing will be a bridge too far
A shot across the bow should suffice. Maybe take out a couple of asteroids. That would get the world’s attention.
Some thoughts on this terrific piece: (a) an excellent metaphor about it taking a threat from (real) aliens to get us going (but see below); (b) Farhad is right about the need for a new politics--even some improvement in business-as-usual, such as briefly in a recent measure to preserve natural lands, isn't going to be enough; (c) his emphasis on fear goes again the current grain to stay far away from that. Instead we're told, always very confidently, emphasize hope, action, flourishing. However, we're going to need a mix of both. Fear can (if not overdone) generate attention and higher levels of motivation, hope can (if not pollyanish) generate actions--and we are going to need many, many of them; (d) the NYT is getting better and better on climate change; but (e) seeing the new NYT blurb on encouraging "diversity" in letter-writers around this article and elsewhere, I wonder what the editors consider as included. Real aliens are getting a bum rap here. After all, they're people too. OK, maybe not. But there's E.T., Spock, and Thor. So Farhad might need to work on his alien sensitivity. Getting serious again, the "mental trick" in the subtitle brings to mind many overlooked mindset barriers to addressing climate change that might also need some "trick" to overcome. I just wrote about them here, http://greeneconomynj.org/2019/01/03/new-jersey-now-gets-climate-change-what-we-are-still-missing-why-were-not-talking-about-what-were-not-talking-about-part-4/. Any ideas?
We have met the aliens and they are us. Each of us with a thousand slaves of fossil in our hands, enslaving the earth to our fossil demands. In the end, enslaving ourselves on the paths of fossil, serving fossil ends.
We need to be much harder on our alien selves.
To change minds, we need a constant barrage of future centered movies and other media programs depicting the horrors to expect from climate change.
Basic risk management dictates that if there is even a relatively small probability of an event happening, but catastrophic consequences if it does happen, then money needs to be paid to avoid the loss or at least mitigate it.
Climate deniers need to be put to the test: either prove that the change is not man-made, or shut up and let's start acting like rational actors.
2
So, we die and we leave a planet inhospitable to human life which was the greatest threat to itself. Sounds like natural selection.
I am comforted by the realization that our demise may facilitate the recovery of species we have dominated. Oh, not the Bengal tigers or elephants. They're doomed as well. But maybe some species of fish, some insects, vermin, which are quite resilient. Maybe some fresh newcomers. Aside from the pointless tragedy and loss of human achievement, could be kind of cool.
1
It occurs to me that this type of hyperbole, and the attempt to be funny about it by suggesting "it's aliens" are both examples of how not to address a problem. As with Erlich's "Population Bomb" in the sixties, we found a way. If one is to believe in humanity at all, which is a prerequisite for dealing with this crisis, then publishing these opinions is counterproductive.
this article begs a question, 'are science believers majority or minority in the nation?' Even if they are majority, their presence in the political arena is almost absent. they are good to raise scientific reasons but not loud enogh to convince science non-believers. Evangilical group is one of them. have you seen a scientist winning the presidency? Those who do get lost in politics for winning sake and forget science. our option to take the charge on our own hand: do not use plastic, do not own a gas car, only electric car -even that less and less to reduce road congestion, do not waste food, convince your friend and neighbor in what you believe in, ask them to help you because it may not cost them much but a little inconvenience, plant a tree when you see one is dead or cut, etc., etc. That is what I and my family started doing.
1
"Pretend it's a giant asteroid". Our blinders to the consequences of climate change in large part are due to the fact they are perceived as happening sometime in the distant future. If the existence of our planet was threatened by a 20% chance that a giant asteroid would impact earth in 6 months, I suspect there would be massive human cooperation to find a way to confront this threat. Think of the incredible accomplishments of a previously discordant population after the outbreak of World War 2. But put the predicted disaster off into a hazy future and it's easy to ignore, even if the likelihood of disaster is far greater. "Come on in, my fellow frogs. The water feels just right."
1
In order to do this we will have to re-imagine society completely. We have to undo every way of living, and start over anew.
How do you undo a culture of driving cars, attending institutions in which promoting human culture is the norm, how do you undo decades and centuries of ways of living, of infrastructure, and of industry developed slowly over time ?
It’s impossible to wipe clean the state, to envision and try to re-imagine humanity anew overnight.
We are very good a co-operating when war is present, as the writer said. And as said: climate change isn’t a war. But it will be, when it wreaks it’s devastation in the decades to come. But we will be fighting over resources, protection and food, not humanity. It’ll be too late by then.
3
Climate change is the great crisis of humanity, of all time, for sure, but if just the voters in this country give our full support to the new green deal, and within the next few years resources move toward green energy and green energy innovation, miracles can happen. There are so many smart people working in science! Now, with the internet, ideas, discoveries and understandings are shared globally--this creates a synergistic explosion of technological answers and solutions. We do not know the things that will emerge in the next years that will help us mitigate the changes coming.
It starts with the belief we can save ourselves. Actions that flow from this are infinitely more powerful than the heart stopping horror that the end is indeed in sight.
Btw, I am a vegan, I have solar panels on my house that paid for themselves seven years ago, and now advocate for solar energy systems, I have driven an electric care for a decade and now ride an e-bike.
1
Bob, from Seattle, has it right. It’s too late to stop it; at this point we need to learn how to survive through climate change. It’s going to be extremely costly, in terms both of lives and lucre, but survival has always been costly. How many of us, humans and/or other species make it, and for how long, will be a question for the ancient history books of the future. It’s actually too bad we will never know!
The Earth has a disease and we humans are it. We have succeeded in covering the planet - nothing yet is keeping us in check and we don’t have the will to reduce our own propagation. Our flourishing (economy) largely depends on exploiting everything around us - the Earth itself & other species. Now our home is burning. The dichotomy is that the U.S. is largely to blame because we invented many of the ideas to do so with cars, planes, manufacturing, etc. yet we are the remaining country resisting fixing our way of life (and we can) because of a minority of folks who have politicized the fact that our house is on fire.
1
It has never been hard for me to imagine an apocalyptic outcome for mankind as we know it. Climate change, disease, population cycles, unknowns. This year, 50 years from now, 10,000 years from now. There is absolutely no reason to think that this will not happen. And please recall that we are imperfect animals, subject to natural selection. We are not at an apex of development, as some still think.
2
This column illustrates one of the basic problems with the discussion of climate change in the Unites States. It gives projected temperature changes in degrees Celsius, when Americans instinctively think in degrees Fahrenheit. Even when you explicitly state "2 degrees Celsius", most Americans will mentally translate that to "2 degrees Fahrenheit" and think "That's not so bad". If your warming projections were translated from Celsius to Fahrenheit (and rounded up), more people in the United States would sit up and take notice, as suddenly they'd realize you're talking about 4 to 8 degrees of warming on their accustomed scale.
4
Let's look at it this way: suppose climate change was a hoax, but we nevertheless labored to reduce CO2 emissions, and managed to contain global temperature rise to 1.5 C in the next 100 years, what do we have to lose? We, and our coming generations, would at the most be slightly less well off in terms of material goods possessed. But as far the environment is concerned, we would in no way be worse off.
On the other hand, if it eventually turns out that climate change was not a hoax, and we continued recklessly on our CO2 emissions spree, and all these disasters that Mr Manjoo came to pass! There would be no going back, we would have condemned humanity to eternal damnation.
1
Really good article. North Americans have been protected by the two/three oceans which surround us, but when climate change renders huge swaths of the earth uninhabitable, it will produce hundreds of millions of refugees, and these will be no barrier for desperate people seeking whatever makes our lands more livable.
1
Well done!
Yes unfortunately the worst news about the current climate change calamity is that we are doing very little about it. I’m sure future generations will wonder and debate what we’re thinking. The truth is we are not thinking. We seem incapable of organizing ourselves so that through collective action we can save ourselves. We’ve all attended school so we understand: Currently we have flunked basic survival and adaptation. We are being pushed to remedial action. If we flunk again, it might be expulsion from earth or as its commonly known extinction for us.
1
Excellent article, but I'm not sure that it would make anybody feel better. I mean, what's worse: destruction of the planet through our own selfishness and ignorance; or destruction of the planet by extraterrestrials (by the way, why can't we get along?). There's actually a pretty decent movie about aliens terraforming the earth. It's called The Arrival, starring Charlie Sheen as an astronomer that discovers that aliens like it hot, and his paranoid flight from them. That movie won't make anybody feel any better, either.
1
The likelihood of humanity tackling climate change, or more broadly the likelihood of society tackling any existential challenge to itself?
Probably a society is slow to tackle every existential challenge to itself. At first society probably naturally selects (biology) and socially selects (culture) against those people who first give warning against an existential threat because they disturb the status quo. Then as the threat increases society slowly mobilizes and selects for the individuals most likely to overcome the threat. Of course all this depends on speed of approach of threat, etc. Science should be able to get a picture of this problem, more or less graph it, base it in mathematics.
This very process is probably what has led humanity to now be a martial, ambitious and exploitative species. Humans, faced with not only a hostile natural environment but other predatory humans, selected for the humans best able to overcome these problems. But now it appears we are tasked with selecting a different type of humanity, one ambitious, yes, but far more intelligently exploitative of the natural environment, one more considerate and efficient and with great stewardship for the planet, and of course a species less martial, less rapacious, less likely to stab the knife into itself.
We seem in the early stages of humanity needing to change itself from what it was, thus we are probably now selecting against those people, the humanity, most likely to represent the future.
3
On the positive side, the ever-increasing probability of human extinction through the growing threat of nuclear war could make the assumed disruptions caused by climate change moot and irrelevant.
Opinions and science and politics don't matter here -- which means delusions of aliens won't matter.
What matters are the multi-trillion-dollar sunk investments into carbon technologies and the manufacturing and transportation networks that rely on them. No knowledge will convince anyone (no less everyone) to voluntarily walk away from those investments. Indeed, smart people like Putin are banking on their increasing value.
So the only choice is to revert back to a benevolent dictator, wipe out the value of those investments, and create significantly more value in climate-friendly technologies.
Or: create a world of opinion utterly against any form of delay, one that make #MeToo or McCarthyism seem tame, one where any objection is shouted down and routed from every corner.
But you realize we deserve all the death and destruction, since we destroyed the vast majority of other species and habitat already. The true shame in climate change is that it's possible that the world will only have bacteria in 500 years.
2
Climate scientists have wasted their time. There is simply no way to get everyone in developed countries to take this threat seriously enough to lower their high-consumption, high-waste standard of living, eliminate greed, give up freedom, pay higher taxes and energy prices and truly care about their fellow humans, next door and on the next continent. There isn't. We can't even agree that every American deserves medical care and that everybody should chip in to make it happen. At this point, the focus needs to shift to preparing for the worst and getting people to do that will be hard enough.
3
Indeed, we are our own worst enemy, on slow boil.
No aliens are coming to help us, or to hurt us.
Perhaps they will observe us? (If they exist at all?)
We are on our own.
That is the scariest thought of all.
1
The What-if-it-were-aliens concept has been applied before. In 1951, Robert Wise directed The Day the Earth Stood Still, probably the greatest science fiction film ever, based on the idea that an emissary from another planet comes to Earth to tell us backward Earthlings to stop developing nuclear weapons - or else. In Wise's film, the Earth's leaders are so awed by the spaceman's powers that they agree to set aside their differences and agree to a nuke-free future.
The concept here is that we humans lack perspective. Our differences seem important until we're faced with a common enemy. Then it's us Earthlings against the aliens. When the Martians come, there won't be time for our petty "us" against "them" divisions. Republican vs Democrat, Sunni vs Shia, Hindu vs Muslim, Israelis vs Palestinians - none of that will matter. Personally, I can't wait.
4
Perhaps the true aliens are not the ones below our border, but those leading us and among us who do not care about this world so precious to most of us. Is Trump the leader of this alien force? After all he has trashed the Paris climate accords, appointed his fellow aliens to destroy agencies that were created to stop the climate change menace and diverted attention from the threat to a useless wall at our southern border. How convenient to have an alien in power that superficially looks like us, but, well, acts strange. Someone aught to check for pods under his desk.
This of course does not take away from our us, those who care, our responsibility to fight in every way we can to save ourselves and our children from coming disasters, but makes it all the more important to do every thing we can. The planet if not ourselves will survive, but at what cost.
I read both versions of the Green New Deal.
One of us pretending is sufficient.
1
To the naysayer commenters who say that climate change may not be catastrophic, as educated as they claim to be, it feels like they are asking me to not believe my lyin' eyes.
We no longer have an air force of busy, happy bees in our neighborhood, each year we see fewer butterflies in the garden, after coastal storms our beaches are filled with plastic and trash churned up from the ocean. I read from equally knowledgeable experts that most insect species are becoming extinct, with many other types of animals disappearing due to man-made pollution and destruction.
Humans will go to all kinds of extremes and mental gymnastics to delude themselves that nothing is really wrong, rather than expending the mental energy to face reality and find solutions. Like ConDon's base...they just keep drinking the Koolaid and believing their own eyes are lying to them.
2
This guy has got it completely right. There is no political will to avert climate change. It’s already too late. What comes next is how will you prepare your children for the coming climate wars. Will your neighbors be as cordial to you and the diversity you bring when their backs are against the wall?
2
This situation is unprecedented in not just our lifetime, but in our whole extended period of life on earth. We are not programmed or evolved to drastically change our whole lifestyle in the presence of something we know only in our mind, but cannot yet see in front of us. Like the rest of earths animals, we will go on with our lives in the best we can, but we will tend not to change them. Like a frog in slowly warming water, we will be parylized before we can see the problem.
We have made this planet angry,so much so that it can and will wipe us off its face. We deserve this because we have lived with arrogance and hubris, believing that we were not a part of the earth, and that the earth is not our mother, but that we are separate and special and our true home is in heaven.
It is a fatal mistake. It separated us from our real home and made us believe we were above and beyond and special. It made us insensitive to the plight of the earth and the other life of the earth and that indifference finished us off.
2
"that will be justified, because we understand the stakes: we are fighting murderous aliens." That would be wonderful were it true. But we're fighting Uncle Joe in his MAGA-hat at the Thanksgiving table. And being too polite to suggest that what he is really angry about is his growing old and feeble, we're going to deep-six the planet.
Being too reticent to insult our aged relatives, we're going to take a stiletto to natures jugular and, by extension, our unborn progeny. It's a matter of priorities.
1
I would also recommend writing by Roy Scranton, who deals less with the science but more on the inability of humans to grasp, at this late time, what absolute ruin is ahead.
1
I get the sentiment, but I fear that blaming "aliens" will just allow climate change denialists to continue denying their own role in this coming apocalypse, while also helpful contributing to the legitimization of their xenophobia. "See, it's not my own carbon footprint, it's aliens! Let's focus all our efforts on building a wall and keep them out, because otherwise they'll steal our jobs!"
Humanity needs 4 things escape the calamitous consequences of global warming.
1. We need to slow emissions and move to carbon neutral technologies.
2. We will need to pull the carbon out of the air.
3. We will need to cool the earth (block sunlight) in the meantime
4. We need the will to achieve all the above.
The first three are absolutely technically feasible, I only worry about #4.
1
@Dan
You forgot that the world population will increase to over 10b by century end.
Thank you for your article. For those who have been working on climate change, it would be helpful to know why Mr. Wallace-Wells' work was so effective in reaching you. Why that writing, and why now? Can you offer any lessons on how we can reach others?
Some people have written that they have given up. We know what will happen if we give up; we don't know what we can accomplish by not giving up, and I appreciate Manjoo's contribution to that.
1
Krugman used the same argument - pretend it’s aliens - in 2008 when arguing for a stronger fiscal response to that crisis. Not a winning argument though this time the crisis is indeed more serious.
I wish it was as easy as pretending it's aliens!
Unfortunately, not even that is likely to work, but it's a clever idea to get people talking about the subject.... Perhaps that type of approach will help some young people make a commitment to the planet and the environment.
2
All the policy strategies needed to solve the climate warming are known to us. We know what must be done (cut emissions drastically), we know where it must happen (20 largest industrial emitting countries), and we know how to do it (market signals, performance standards, R&D). We lack political will.
The author is right about this: this problem requires a spirit of unified resolve. If we are to perish, our inability to find in ourselves that spirit will be the most likely reason.
This is a refreshingly honest article. For far too long people have minimized this issue and relegated it into the land of petty politics. The science on this matter has been settled. We are re-creating to conditions that led to at least several of the 5 major mass extinctions in the past, but we are doing so on a preposterously fast timescale. Yes, humanity will survive, but civilization will not - at least not for a large portion of humanity. Even if one is to take an irrationally skeptical approach to this issue, we still have numerous benefits to stopping our consumption of fossil fuels, from improved air quality, increased longevity, avoidance of the spread of tropical viruses or the emergence of wholly new viral infections, getting out of the Middle East economically and politically, to creating whole new domestic industries and jobs that are not exportable. At this point, the only reason for someone to oppose efforts to combat climate change is if he/she is a billionaire whose riches depend on the fossil fuel industry. As far as I am concerned, those people have had their time in the sun and it’s time for them to step aside so we can fix the existential crisis they have placed humanity in.
5
Scaring people to death is not going to bring about action. Too many people are already paralyzed by despair. The public must be given hope that we can successfully meet this challenge. Otherwise everyone will hunker down, thinking only of how to protect themselves.
2
Perhaps aliens, and maybe they are living in plane sight every time a modern human looks in the mirror. The only organism on the planet to evolve technologically so rapidly as to be incapable of using the primitive mind to focus on anything other than the phone in the face, the unfairness of life, the next feeding, mating, intoxicating libations to forget it all and wake up again the next morning just as they wanted - forgetful, self-interested, focused on the end of their noses. Humans are unintentionally killing our host - Earth. Considering how other organisms interact with their ecosystem interdependently with natural feedback loops human behavior is quite alien on earth. In biology we put two different species with a single food source in a sealed jar of water removing the natural feedback loops. Species A consumed the algae. Species B consumed species A. Species A was able to eat all the algae before Species B ate all of Species A. Then Species B ate all of species A, and all of species B died, except a few, until all the water in the jar was devoid of oxygen and too acidic. Yes, we are species B, and perhaps it is our destiny to consume everything Species A has to offer, our planet, while simultaneously insidiously poisoning ourselves out of existence. Maybe. Think about this-if not another human being was born tomorrow then by 2119 we would be extinct. Our ultimate fate may be similar if our species cannot learn to act less extraterrestrial on our home planet.
1
A while back we learned about the hole in the ozone layer & rallied to repair it. We conquered polio. We went to the moon and even share a space station.
Perhaps the difference is the lack of moral and ethical leadership, the hollowing of the middle class and the fact that we're told that government is dysfunctional every day all day.
But wait! Isn't the earth owned now by just eight men? Surely they will take care of it. We certainly shouldn't feel it's up to us.
1
Great. Here's another: let's pretend it's not overpopulation. Let's pretend that having 7 billion people in the world has nothing to do with our environmental issues and that in the future with 10 billion people things will be even better. Let's pretend that as long as we live "sustainably" (Ride a bike! Go Vegan!) we don't have to ever wonder if the scale of the whole human enterprise is just too big, and can rest assured that everything is awesome on our managed, plantationalized planet.
3
You make a great point about the need for female empowerment, the need for proper access to family planning methods, and the need for education in science and critical thinking. By the way, this need isn’t just for the so-called “developing world”; the need exists greatly in our own great country as well!
1
The raw cost of solar and wind power are lower than any other form of energy production except hydro (which is also carbon free). The only thing holding solar and wind back is a cheap form of energy storage. Electric vehicles are also much cheaper than gasoline cars if you discount the batteries. And the batteries for both of the above will come and come quickly since there is soooo much money to be made in batteries. (That is trillions of dollars, not billions.) Venture capitalists are not going to let that money go by them regardless of what they think of climate change.
What this means is that the age of fossil fuels is almost over and that age won't creep out. It will happen fast as soon as the total cost curves cross.
This means the apocalypse probably won't happen. We will quit using fossil fuels, coal first (already happening), next gasoline (soon) and last natural gas. The speed of climate change will slow down and finally in 40 or 50 years stop.
1
Excellent Farhad! Hope this analogy sticks and might be an early signature moment of your column.
Just not sure much is going to change. Stated it before but the amount of my so called educated neighbors that buy luxury SUVs and barely recycle is pretty great. The people who are responsible for such a threat have the capital and means to protect their families from it.
I'm just not sure any government anywhere let alone ours has the capability to do what's needed.
Twenty or so years ago I was on faculty governance and went to lunch with one of the more optimistic leading climate scientist. I pushed him to tell me the worst possible case. He said we could hit a tipping point and cause a feed forward case where temperatures rise beyond a level that allows for life as we know it. Or, it might not be so bad and in 2100 there is no modern civilization and 1 or 2 million humans scraping out a meager living. Worry about your children and grandchildren. We are doing nothing to stop this train wreck. Maybe one can hope that the military will see the danger and act where politicians cannot or will not. First immediate step, get the world to go on a break from babies and give tax breaks for those with zero children. Allow at the very most one child families. Yes, I'm willing to see drastic actions to prevent catastrophic events and that is what global warming is without all out action.
5
With much of the northern hemisphere blanketed in snow and peaks in Hawaii experiencing snowfall below 6,000 ft elevation, people need to once again recognize that the earth is not dangerously warming. Moreover, a cooler planet means shorter growing seasons and less arable acreage - a difficult problem as the world adds about 70 million new people each year. Too many bureaucrats think they know something about science; too many ‘researchers’ understand that the aforementioned bureaucrats control grant dollars.
4
@Alan The globe is warming. The past five years have been the hottest in the measured record.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/06/climate/fourth-hottest-year.html
As for what to expect from rising temperatures, we're seeing it already, and here's where it leads:
https://web.stanford.edu/~mburke/climate/map.php
2
@Alan
“To bring context to the global goal of limiting warming to 2°C, we compare the global temperatures to an earlier, pre-industrial 1880-1910 baseline. 2018’s global temperatures were 1.90°F (1.06°C) above that baseline — more than halfway there. This made 2018 the second-warmest year on record without an El Niño event, behind only 2017. (El Niño can enhance warming, but it can’t explain all of it). Only 2016 and 2015 were warmer years, and 2014 rounds out the top five. With the five warmest years on record happening during the past five years — and the 20 warmest occurring over the past 22...”
(from ClimateCentral.org website)
Since 1880, the five warmest years on this planet, have been the past five years. 2014-2018
The 20 warmest years have occurred during the past 22 years.
With all due respect, Alan, we are in trouble here. Suspicion and denial are not the answer to this problem.
7
Alan,
You’re confusing temperature and climate.
Copenhagen is on track to become one to the first carbon neutral cities in the world by 2025. As I sat in a rather hot airplane there, waiting for take off, the flight attendant apologized for the hot cabin. "We are not allowed to idle the airplanes in the airport because of environmental laws in Denmark."
Wow, I have been through hundreds of airports and never heard of this. This just seems like one simple, common sense way to reduce emissions, yet no one else is doing it and airplanes add a massive amount of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere. Many cities now have laws that stop cars and buses from idling, but many don't adhere to the policy and enforcement should be policy. It took less than one half hour to board the plane, this may not be practical in places like Dubai, but I would gladly put up with a little discomfort if it meant reducing emissions. If there is no way to make this a global law, maybe we should encourage airlines to take the first step. Ditto bus companies, cruise ships and transport services. Encouraging business to go green won't solve the problem, but this would be an effective marketing campaign and would not only save emissions but also reduce fuel costs.
8
@thewriterstuff
And, less flying is good, too.
https://www.seattletimes.com/business/danish-newspaper-to-cut-carbon-footprint-drops-most-flying/
Why do people automatically react with fear and assume that all aliens would be out to kill us and take over the earth? Too many 1950s sci-fi films might be to blame, but it's at least as likely that any civilization technologically advanced enough to reach here from a distant planet would also have a highly evolved consciousness and perhaps even be kindly disposed to us lesser beings. They might even help us solve our climate challenges. If so, they had better get here soon.
5
Climate change is a serious risk, but not a threat to our survival. A 20% decline in global GDP means going back to 2010. Life was pretty good in 2010, certainly not post-apocalyptic.
We should deal with climate change, but we should do so fairly and in a way that takes other priorities into account. If people start seeing climate change as a survival-level threat, I fear they will use that to justify horrible policies like sterilizing Africa and preventing China and India from industrializing.
1
Everything boils down to per capita GDP and the Gini Coefficient. It’s certainly not getting more egalitarian. 60% of Americand already live paycheck to paycheck. GDP collapse on top of that will bring unprecedented poverty.
2
@Aoy The GDP measurements used are absurd.
A 2C hotter world will be in crisis. Think of Paradise, CA, but happening in ten locations in California at once, while hurricanes batter the Gulf states, and the Northeast struggles to move back from the coast.
And outside the US, there will be mass migrations, as regions of the tropics become too hot to live in.
https://web.stanford.edu/~mburke/climate/map.php
Steve Chu, former energy secretary:
"We can adapt to 1 or 2 degrees. More than that, there is no adaptation strategy."
https://www.newsweek.com/energy-secretary-steven-chu-global-warming-77455
Imagine that all these extreme weather events are simply Mother Nature trying to get our attention, trying to let us know it's time we must ~CHANGE~ . . . change the way we think and act, which means EVOLVE. . . . Mother Earth is communicating in the only way available and it is working - these events force us to change the way we do things or where we live or how we think and feel.
What is needed is to 'flip the switch' from fear to LOVE - to guide ourselves and thereby this change in a postive direction where fear isn't the driver . . . . understanding that no one, no other species or humans or Mother Earth herSelf, want to be disrespected and unheard. It is so simple. . . imagine this is all an attempt towards EVOLUTION of the human species to understand what spiritual leaders from millenia have been teaching: we must love ourSelves, do unto others and understand we are, indeed, all ONE.
Nature replicates itself over and over again - growth, blossom, decay. It has fashioned humanity (us) as cells in a body - now trying to get us to work together like organs do in a body - harmoniously and without effort . . . .and now we need to understand our connections . . . to each other and ALL living beings . . . to act with single focus of caring for ALL as if we were one entity, Planet Earth included. . . . because WE ARE.
1
Atmospheric carbon is a potentially catastrophic problem. The only possible way to eliminate fossil fuel quickly is all out nuclear research and development of various nuclear powered electricity... the deniers of nuclear are just as naive as climate change deniers.
2
@Lane At this point, we have not yet figured out how to deal with the nuclear waste generated since the 40s and we have not yet figured out how to generate nuclear power without using ridiculous amounts of water. There are some research-level projects aimed at addressing those issues, but we are not yet living in the Promised Land of "free" and "clean" nuclear power that was guaranteed back in my childhood by people who clearly knew better. Given the huge amounts of money and risk that have gone into this failed vision on an international level, I am not prepared to dismiss the possibility that other energy sources might provide better solutions.
1
I was an undergraduate researcher when my professors were investigating the effects of elevated carbon dioxide and global climate change on agriculture and plant habitats. That was in 1978. They recognized that growing seasons would be longer and elevated levels of carbon dioxide would increase plant growth but they also recognized that crop plants would need a range of stress tolerance much greater than what they currently have. Increases in weather extremes, drought and flooding, hot and cold temperatures within a growing season would decrease crop yields far greater than the benefits would increase crop yields. Regional crop failures in Africa, the Middle East and South America are contributing to social unrest, human migration and the re-emergence of regional famine. When there is a 25% increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide within my lifetime, and the rate of increase is increasing, we are quickly reaching the end of the buffering capacity of Earth to maintain the climate for successful human habitation.
8
We could quickly and cheaply cool the planet with judicious amounts of sulphuric acid aerosol in the stratosphere, but this would not reduce the carbon dioxide which is acidifying the oceans. The most frightening aspect to me is the mass extinctions from both pollution (pesticides) and climate change. It is like: the insects went extinct but I wasn't an insect so I did nothing; the birds went extinct but I wasn't a bird so I did nothing... By the time it gets to humans it will be because we have forgotten how all nature is interconnected, and normally it is in balance. We must endeavor to restore the balance.
14
Pope Francis recently said to oil men you harm the earth you harm humanity. He has a degree in the atmosphere and knows coal and fossil fuels are dangerous. The climate deniers think it is a Democratic plot to take their money. Very sad they have minds that are smaller and can't comprehend we are in an emergency. I told an ex GOP friend a few days ago why can't he believe the photos of the Artic Glaciers dry . He comes back in reply fake. He is no longer a friend of mine I love this planet they don't.
It is an alien threat. But I'm optimistic about the outcome.
It's alien because it's not natural, not of this earth, just like atomic weapons. Both are a critically dangerous, existential threats to the planet, and both are being ignored as such. We're actually accelerating those threats.
Humans divorced themselves from nature when we invented morality. We have become death, the destroyer of worlds. Our wisdom and maturity never had a chance against the pace of our technology and vices.
But I am very optimistic, and have reason to be. I believe we can start consuming less, and consuming smarter. I believe we can stop the destruction of natural habitat by all becoming vegans. I believe we can stop the power of oil money and leave the rest of the oil in the ground forever. I believe we can vanquish corrupt politicians. Yes, I realize all of those things need to happen by, basically, next week, but I believe that's possible. I'm optimistic.
4
@Murray Bolesta
Whistle a bar for me when you are walking past the cemetery.
Morality was imposed upon us by evolution. We didn't invent it so much as experiment with it. That experiment is ongoing.
For a somewhat quieter but no less urgent take on climate change and its effects, see also Elizabeth Rush's book Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore. Some residents near the coast or wetlands from New York to Florida and Louisiana have already been uprooted--forced to abandon homes and communities--because of encroaching waters and, at best, short-sighted land management practices over the years that greatly magnify the effects of climate change. Rush and several of the people she interviews in the book often make a compelling argument that efforts to restore the ecosystems that we have destroyed or similar measures we are taking to reshape these broken areas are not enough and that it is well past time for an organized retreat inland from many of our coastal areas.
2
The most important thing to keep in mind, and the one thing people have the most trouble with, is that human casualties are not a problem. Not on the small scale nor large, as every human less is more of an opportunity for the world to heal up.
Problematic things are the extinctions of various species that are key to the ecosystem and the food chain. Enough cascading damage could eliminate life on land, readily enough; insects are already on the way out and they're near the bottom of the food chain.
Already the rhino, giraffe, elephant, manatee, gorilla, and many other species of large mammal will probably go extinct this century. We would do better to focus on preventing that, than on saving humans.
This won't be a popular viewpoint at all, but it scarcely matters. The climate is already changed for the forseeable future, and que sera, sera, suckers.
9
We’re in a fix. The changes proposed by the Paris Accords, and the Green New Deal and any other conceivable plan to reduce emissions would not be enough to make the slightest dent in the damages we are doing to the planet. To do that, we would have to transition to a non-combustion energy source today. Also we would have to discover a way to reduce the CO2 buildup in the atmosphere. (Lakes of Blue Green algae - Aphanazomenon flos Aqua - totaling the size of Nebraska would actually do it).
We would need time to transition to a new energy source. Nuclear may be able to buy us time, but the risks, despite the assurances of the pro-nuclear advocates, are probably too high.
But it can’t happen. First, there is no known technology that can replace fossil fuels. Zero-point energy is being researched (Look up physicist Hal Puthoff), and cold fusion is possible, but we don’t officially know how. (By which I mean that there may or may not be government black projects which do know: see siriusdisclosure.com - much of what is on that site is questionable at best, but if even a tiny fraction is true, it would be important). But if such a source were to be unveiled, causing the industries that profit from fossil fuels to collapse, there would be worldwide chaos. Literally everything we live by would have to change. Millions of people would die.
Still, we must try. Doing the impossible is the business of science.
4
Why not borrow a radical plan from China's 20th century playbook?
Limit population growth on a worldwide basis, with a global "one child" policy.
Solves all problems at once. After 5 or 6 generations, all people on Earth could live as first world nations do now -- without ever having a worry in regards to CO2 production. After 10 generations, the world would be a much more open-spaced and enjoyable planet again. Without immigration, the Western Europeans are ahead of us on this already with very low reproduction rates.
There are simply too many homo sapiens on this fragile planet, so the best course of action is to go back to a worldwide population with a much more environmentally friendly impact on resources.
10
OK,I get it.goodness knows I get it;
but we have to stop with these
apocalyptic articles which are designed
to scare us to death. the world will
not end in 12 years nor will humankind
allow our planet to be engulfed in
a climate change nightmare scenario
out of some Hollywood horror film.
what humankind has destroyed, we
can fix and with willpower and realistic
commitment, we can save our planet.
4
@Frank
nopre frank, sorry, just nope.
1
Farhad, if your astrologer says you are going to have a bad week, try to keep it in perspective and not get too panicked.
I'm 62 years old and spent many nights in the 60s fretting about nuclear war, then nuclear winter. In 1970 I was a young teenager when Alvin Toffler turned up to tell me the world was going to freeze over.
As we moved into the 80s the end of days was coming through AIDS and/or acid rain.
What I find puzzling about climate change is that if its so dire, why does nobody talk about, say, nuclear power? If we had AIDS vaccines in the 80s or something that would have protected us against Russian missiles in the 60s we would have used it. Why aren't we building ample nuclear power stations to, say, charge our cars?
The only conclusion I can come to is that climate change is just not that big a deal.
4
If you only use false analogies, climate change sound like it isn’t a problem. (At your age it won’t be tho)
It is tempting of course to see humans as the destructive, polluting menace of the planet, and say the planet wouldn't miss us, that we are a minuscule part in time and space.
I would offer a different perspective. Humans are not just another species on the planet, in the way Earth is not just another planet in the solar system. There is something unique going on here. We humans have become a global species. A global species is one that can foment a global crisis.
In Earth's long history, she has produced just one other global species: bacteria. That species, after tapping into a rich vein of energy (the sun via photosynthesis), began the most lethal pollution the planet has ever seen: oxygen. Oxygen is a toxic and corrosive gas, that stressed all single-celled life on the planet, and altered Earth’s oceans and atmosphere.
Bacteria are promiscuous with genes; they learned to adapt, survive and thrive, eventually bringing forth multi-celled creatures.
We are creating a planetary predicament with our unfettered use of energy, and we are destroying and stressing ecosystems and many life forms. We are also Earth's second global species, whose gift is imagination, a promiscuity with memes.
We have not yet found our way to a partnership with Living Earth that is mutually enhancing. As with the first planetary species, we may see this as a rite of passage, an initiation. We are challenged with our empathy and understanding to adapt, respond, and flower a new Earth.
2
The 5 senses that the animal species Homo Sapiens are in possession of do not equip us to respond to danger that we cannot see, hear, feel, smell or taste.
Instead of imagining aliens, would it not be a better "motivational" idea to develop a (eco friendly) chemical that when added to any combustible fossil fuel, it then causes CO2 emissions to turn the color Red. Then a law requiring that all fossil fuel contain this chemical would need to be passed. A new Red threat!
We suppose ourselves to be an intelligent species, but our lack of mitigating action in the face of what our best scientific minds tell us is (and have for decades) an existential threat to our entire species and all life on the planet .. is mind blowing. I mean, we all wear seat belts even though statistically the chance of dying in an accident are 0.7%. Yet, 90% of Climate scientists tell us we're on the road to extinction and Homo sapiens just look down at their so called Smart phones to watch a Netflix episode. Intelligent species? Where?
If we can see (or smell) the Red threat - we'll respond as quickly as Farhad's imagined alien invasion would. The idea sounds totally crazy - but a species that commits communal suicide is totally crazy to begin with. So, why not?
3
We are frogs in boiling water. I love this color concept. Smart. Thank you!
Fantastic piece! The Times needs more great writing on climate change like this. One interesting policy that seems like it could make a big difference without hurting the economy, low income households, or America's international trading is a carbon tax and dividend program. To really oversimplify, the government would collect a fee on each ton of carbon dioxide. The money would then be distributed evenly to each US citizen or resident in the form of cash dividends, so the money would go back to the people. There is also a tariff and rebate piece to it that would ensure the tax doesn't affect America's international trade. It even has bipartisan support; for example, the Wall Street Journal recently ran a piece where a bunch of economists and other people endorsed it. There is a really good version on Citizen Climate Lobby's (CCL) website (Here is the link to the description as well as benefits and FAQs about it, it's definitely worth checking out: https://citizensclimatelobby.org/carbon-fee-and-dividend/) (For reference, here is the link to the Wall Street Journal piece: https://www.wsj.com/articles/economists-statement-on-carbon-dividends-11547682910)
Please take a look at this. It looks really effective and economically friendly, and since it has bipartisan support it's much more likely to get passed and remain in place than anything else.
1
The question of if aliens attack (or more precisely if they have launched an attack which not occur until a few hundred years from now) has been brilliantly addressed by the Chinese science fiction writer, Cixin Liu. His scenario is anything but promising.
I had the great misfortune of reading the blockbuster article by David Wallace-Wells. Terrifying is too tidy a word to describe the future he envisions.
In our arrogance we have placed ourselves far above the very systems needed for our survival. In our greed we only view the resources of the planet as something to be exploited.
In our idiocy we all think technology will come along to save the day. I don't feel bad about humanity going down because we did this to ourselves but I hate to think of all the creatures we are taking with us.
7
Thank you for writing this, which feels funny even as I say it. Thank you for punching me in the gut, and when I'm down, follow up with a swift kick to my head with your nice steel-tipped boot? The people who Should read this, aren't, or if they do, they scoff. So basically my appreciation is nothing but good natured masochism, isn't it. But do accept it anyway.
Just ONE criticism if I may. Even you, and I take it this is by now simply what is DONE, use the verb "believe." As in
"Even for people who do believe in global warming," - belief has nothing to do with it. It may seem minor, but words matter. Every time the media puts the words global warming and belief in the same sentence, you are reinforcing the misconception that there is a choice in the matter, that you can accept this reality, or maybe a little bit of this alternative reality over here might be more your speed? Just be comfortable, honey, and take off your sweater. You soon won't need it anymore.
Let's stop the coddling of reality-deniers because that's what they are. They live in lala land, and the media allows it by giving them equal air time and the choice to disbelieve.
The track record of predictions of disaster has not been exactly stellar. Remember "The Population Bomb" by Paul Ehrlich that predicted mass starvation in the 1970's and 80's? And in the 1970's before global warming there were many predictions of a new ice age.
I personally believe in anthropogenic global warming, but I doubt the worst effects will be anything like what Mr. Manjoo postulates.
3
@J. Waddell If you have been paying attention you may have noticed that predicted events are not only happening, they are happening faster and more catastrophically than predicted.
Yes, two wrongs definitely will make a right….let’s fight science with woo. Yea, we have evolved. Aliens, in their sooper seeekrit craft, are causing massive CO2 emissions.
At this point, since I am getting closer to the dust phase of existence, I would like to see some of the consequences of the planet’s experiment with fossil fuels. I would like to see parts of Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets collapse and see an ice-free artic during the summer. I also would like to see lake Mead drain dry and parts of Arizona to be uninhabitable.
So, using the GOP’s favored three-word vocabulary memes: Drill baby drill…burn baby burn. Just sayin.
The Republican lethargy surrounding climate change is, I believe, due to the notion that even if there is a catastrophe coming, they will be fine. The poor may suffocate, but the rich will buy their way out.
3
It is very disappointing to read comments from readers who have been given nothing but the climate lie since they were children. If our schools taught real science instead of the climate change lie, then these readers would not have a dooms day view of our planet. Yes, we have very real problems with the environment. And, yes, we have come a long way in the US. But believing, in our arrogance, that anything we do on the face of this planet, can either effect or affect our climate is insanity. Do not worry; not one prediction from the climate change chicken littles has come true. Gore's book was a lie. Every major climate change study has been gamed. Sleep easy tonight for there is a tomorrow despite what AOC has to say.
Oh, for clarity; I'm a grad from the University of Wisconsin Madison. I studied wildlife ecology. I am constantly listening and reading articles both in support of and that challenge man made climate change. The more I read, the more I'm convinced its the biggest lie ever perpetrated on mankind. Its wealth distribution; that's from the IOC, not me. And for politicians like AOC, its all about the power. Self serving, hypocritical, arrogant, entitled, power hungry.
2
Mr. Manjoo,
It is an alien plot! Just watch the movie "The Arrival" with Charlie Sheen. (Yes, that Charlie Sheen.) The aliens are changing the earth's climate in order to suit them better. If we can pass this film off as a documentary, perhaps we can give this issue the serious attention it needs.
2
How about pretending that all those American victims of gun violence were killed by aliens, and I don't mean the outerspace kind.
Maybe Trump and Congress would do something guns instead of just ignoring the deaths unless an alien was the shooter.
1
The problem with this piece is that it's not meant to be taken seriously. Whereas Michael Brownstein's "The Off-Planet Origin of Trump and Co." has no problem considering Trump and his crew as an advance team of aliens ruining the planet so they can move in and take over. How else explain the cynicism behind what Trump is doing? There's no doubt he knows what's going on. No matter what they say, he and the people he's appointed to positions of power know full well that global warming is an actual, real threat. Try thinking about that for a while...
1
But Farhad, this is a point I’ve been trying to make for years now!
They are aliens; we don’t have to pretend.
Their names are Bezos; Zuckerberg; Cook; Bush, Cheney, Zinke, Trump, Kushner, and the many super-rich currently in league to destroy the planet.
We don’t have to make them up. They’re here right now. They’re running our government, with support of their fellows in the energy and technology industries. They start huge wars with no purpose, destroy entire countries in one go, build up military arms supplies at staggering rates, wasting trillions on destruction in place of furthering the interests of life.
They are the enemy, and at war with us, and the planet.
We could change things overnight if we defeated them.
2200 of them, you said? Not a real problem, if we put our minds to it.
2
Generally, people keep doing what they have always done unless and until that something becomes painful. Then they are open to change. By that point, it will be futile.
I think we are on the cusp of or have crossed over the threshold for climate change. I think most people have a "what can one person do" mentality. I know I vacillate there, frequently. Do I contribute to the arbor day foundation to plant trees to try and help when the will likely burn in a wildfire. Do I buy a car I want that runs on gas or get an electric one...solar panels, give up beef. I think the best would be to head north, learn how to live off grid and shoot guns. Oye. I will likely be dead (62 now) but my kids and future grandchildren will be alive.
I love nature. I want my descendants to love it too. We are hosed...
1
Note that the Burke, et. al., paper that you link to on GDP impacts has a major error in its calculations, and the 20% figure is wrong, and much too large! The authors have been told of the error, but have never corrected the paper.
1
Thank you, Mr. Manjoo, for recognizing the gravity of the problem.
Yes, if humanity could focus on a common enemy, we might unite together. But I would not depend on it happening here.
You are wise to consider where to live; the IPCC climate projections are pretty clear on that. Some regions will fare much better than others.
Humans have difficulty dealing with problems that develop gradually (although the climate problems will accelerate); we do better reacting to an acute crisis. That seems to be part of our nature.
We're already deep into uncharted territory. The best suggestion I can offer is that humans will survive better if they take care of each other rather than if they focus on taking care of themselves.
That's a lesson we could all start learning, now.
2
We are a myopic species and we deserve to be wiped out. When I was thinking about this, it occurred to me that every human action causes environmental degradation. We do not possess special physical attributes that would help make a smaller impact on our planet.
Three things need to happen: Switch to clean public transportation, switch to a diet with no meat and dairy and a rethinking of the concept of economic growth.
If they are not worth sacrificing our lifestyle, soon we will only know misery and loss on an unprecedented scale. Did you read the recent article about the rampant global decimation of insect populations? All will soon disappear, may be in my lifetime.
2
First, this is so much more than Trump and the USA. We represent ~350M of a global pop of 7.5B. Yes, our impact per capita is much higher than the average. But others are catching up. While it's already likely too late, any true solution would require a global full-court press... highly unlikely.
Fundamentally though, it's a problem of overpopulation. The system developed to support a global population of 7.5B is collapsing on itself. Carbon-based power is just one piece of the puzzle - albeit the largest piece. Just like other animal populations collapse when they get too large and overwhelm their environment, so will we - through some combination of war, plague and starvation. With nuclear war maybe being the most merciful.
Humans will ultimately survive, just in much smaller numbers. Like a post-plague prairie dog colony.
2
"Good" column, Americans need a little truth for a change.
I'm trying to persuade the people of Paradise, California, to avoid using lumber for rebuilding, and try recycled light gauge steel instead. 14,000 homes burned down there and in surrounding towns in a climate change related wildfire.
Here is the good news, for a change: Residents of that politically conservative area are listening. We cannot give up.
[email protected]
1
@Mike Roddy, very interesting post. Did you know that the British, finding themselves with a lot of unnecessary aircraft after WWII, made aluminum cottages to replace the housing that Jerry bombed? I understand that on US Western deserts airlines have parked hundreds of old planes. A junkyard of jets, potential building material.
At the very least, the tin roof of yesterday could make a comeback.
For the deniers of various species (but mostly those of republican stripe), no data or information or event will convince them of a climate-(intensity)-change problem because they are psychosocially invested in the denial tribe.
Do note, however, that the earth has never experienced the confluence of human-driven geophysical conditions now confronting us: it's not only the vast and unknowable complexity of the disparate processes that we are immersed in (likely irretrievably), it is the sheer rapidity, the speed, of the unfolding events that has foredoomed us.
Exactly who are these "aliens" methodically working day and night to end civilization by killing and maiming us and our children through starvation, interminable wars, plagues and suffocation? While shaving and beautifying yourself, do take a a moment to scrutinize the face of the alien clearly visible in your mirror.
I have long thought the climate change issue is one of those that percolates along just below the radar, gathering steam while few people notice, still not much of an issue, until suddenly it is. Suddenly it bursts out to become a huge issue. That, I hope and believe will happen in 2020.
Don't worry, worriers, we are human beings. Our creativity is unlimited. At some point fairly soon, we will realize we have to get serious, then the proposals in the green new deal will seem like rehearsals for the real thing.
Honestly, it's already too late.
Even a total shutdown of human CO2 emissions right now would not affect the warming, which will accelerate as arctic and sub-arctic permafrosts melt and generate astounding volumes of the 30x more potent Methane gas. Already, millions of sub-arctic lakes are bubbling away, venting methane.
Hothouse earth, soon.
(Not to mention the 10,000 other ways we are destroying the planet)
5
@William Its never too late - its too late to save the climate we had in 1900, but the more we do, the more we will mitigate increasing catastrophe. Fatalism is just the flip side of denial.
2
Human beings as a species are not mentally wired to deal with threats as overwhelming as global warming. We've never ended war or hunger. The only thing that has changed humanity rapidly is technology. The brightest hope is an invention, like something that transforms garbage into renewable energy. In the meantime, let's buy what time we can.
1
We should refer to global warming as climate change, since many folks can’t differentiate between weather and climate, and to many all is local. I’ve had discussions with climatologists who think it’s already gone over the line, and that improvements can only be made regionally, but one day the piper will be paid on a global scale.
1
Climate change is more than an issue. It is the most important issue. Miraculously solve all the problems you see in society but ignore mitigating climate change and you are building a house without a foundation. There have been radical changes in the Earth's climate as recorded in the geologic record. Some of these events were cataclysmic. Others developed over periods of time in the tens of thousands of years. The pace of human made climate change is right up there with volcanic eruptions. It takes a large asteroid strike to beat us.
In a little over one hundred years we have set up a situation if left alone will cause the permafrost to melt, Greenland's and Antartica's ice sheets to shift into major recession. The impacts of the voluminous release of methane and water are dire. If you are still in denial or worse, working actively to enhance the problem, do your children a favor and don't have them. It will be a world they may not be able to inherit.
4
At the very least, we should be declaring a global state of emergency, because that's what we're in for. What must we do to wake people up?
4
As incredible as it seems, there is an issue even more pressing than climate change: the catastrophic collapse of insect populations, which scientists are only beginning to be aware of and understand. There have been a few articles in this and other newspapers, but this really deserves more widespread attention. Everyone MUST read up on this and make their lawmakers and leaders aware of it.
Climate change will severely disrupt our civilization, but at least its possible for some portion of humanity to physically adapt and survive it. The rapid march of insects towards extinction? No way. Without them, the food chain utterly collapses; if they go, WE go. All of us, with no exception. We must pay attention to this NOW.
13
I take exception with two points in this article. First, people have been publishing dire warnings about this for decades. Unsurprisingly, they are only being taken seriously now. We are a reactive, not proactive, species and don't easily admit that our own lifestyles are the problem.
Second, in the list of the litany of woes to be suffered as climate change continues, not one mention was made for the other life on this planet - all the animals that will suffer and die as their environments becomes uninhabitable...just part of the mass extinction event that is already taking place.
I am sad that the math I did for myself several years ago is proving all too true. I am glad that I am unlikely to be alive 20 years from now given my age and health, so will not have to suffer the worst of the coming storm. To any future generations, I'm sorry I did not have the words to convince my peers.
9
@rbyteme
yes i am sorry too that i "did not have the words to convince my peers". . . and i now have two words for you to consider:
reincarnation and karma.
so do everything you can in your own life to mitigate pollution and waste while increasing beauty and positivity....knowing that it all matters and it all comes back around again and it's always about Love.....
Conservative ideology is the greatest risk this planet faces because it keeps us from addressing the other problems we face (it denies their existence). Replace conservative ideology with something that is science-based, and we can solve the other problems.
3
I have said for a long time that my only hope for saving the world is to convince everyone that we're being invaded by martians.
We humans seem to have a very deep, biological view of "us" versus "them."
We are currently facing global threats that we can't solve by thinking about "America first!" or any other xenophobic rhetoric.
Big, bad things are happening, folks, and the only way we can survive them is to pull together as a planet and work together. But, how can we do that?
I agree with the author, let's pretend that it's aliens trying to kill us. That seems about the only way to get everyone on board to help save us all.
2
Having developed a scripting tool for disaster exercises of all scales and against all hazards, using aliens as a surrogate threat is an excellent idea! It would instantly coalesce humanity into an US versus THEM situation, getting everyone's attention worldwide...
Unfortunately, the THEM is US in the case of our failing biosphere. Not very galvanizing.
It isn't JUST the degrees centigrade,
No Human Trajectory is Sustainable, and there are more of us than ever.
We seem to think we're not at the mercy/regulation of nature.
Technology has saved us during every impediment we've faced. This time, it's technology itself that is causing the problem, more of it will only hasten the end.
VHEMT.ORG Be child-free, so fewer will suffer at the end.
5
There are many smart people who work on sustainability (just go to Amazon and look at all the books on how to reduce one's carbon footprint), but the ideas of the top scientists and thinkers aren't getting heard by the people who establish policy.
If President Trump's bedside stand had copies of "A Finer Future" by L. Hunter Lovins et al or "There Is Still Time! To Look At The Big Picture" by Peter Seidel, then he might understand how immigration issues are connected to climate change.
Instead of wanting to build a wall, he might want to construct a consortium that would help poor countries capture and move water so that people could get through drought times without having to flee their homes.
And he might use his global clout to harness the skills of the best and brightest to mitigate the many challenges that we face.
But President Trump doesn't even believe that we have a problem with climate change, so your alien invasion analogy means nothing to him.
How do we get those in power to look at all the sensible ideas that already exist?
2
Trump is driving us towards the climate change cliff - and he just hit the accelerator of global warming.
Regretably, if you pretend climate change is an alien, trump's base will want to build another wall and pretend it will keep them safe from climate change. Perhaps we can pretend an extinction level sized space rock, called Oumuamua, and like one that terminated dinasaures, is coming and we can only move its trajectory if we ALL combine our strengths under and headed by commander in chief trump and Capt. Willis at a planetary level 50 years before it strikes us would work better.
Perhaps we can claim that global warming causes autism - at least the anti-vaxxers would be motivated.
Or for the pro-lifers, we are just accelerating the greatest abortion of humanity's future generations in history.
And trump's real question is "Do we really have to save America and the earth to save Mar de Locos?"
Pretend only works for trump's base. They even believe that a pretend trump wall is almost finished!
The end-of-times-people must really love global warming, and all the businesses that sell to them.
The single best action the world can do to fight global warming is to remove the nation's driver, trump, from accelerating us of the global warming cliff.
2
Mr. Manjoo, you are not far off from something I believed in 2005, the year of Hurricane Katrina. Louisiana is losing land at one of the fastest rates in the world, due to both global warming and the wake from the constant movement of boats and ships associated with the oil industry. Louisiana loses 25 to 35 square miles a year, or the equivalent of a football field every fifteen minutes. Bush was not interested in helping the state nor in global warming in 2005. I used to say, "If Bush thought terrorists were stealing 35 square miles of America every year, he'd do something about that." If it's the oil industry stealing the land, politicians don't care.
Does Trump care that the Gulf Coast is losing that kind of land? Does he even know since he doesn't keep up with the news? Could you imagine what America would do if it were terrorists or aliens or undocumented immigrants stealing the land? Since it's global warming and the oil companies washing Louisiana away, nobody will do anything.
10
Mankind will simply need to change its habits in order to avert a climate catastrophe. That seems unlikely.
1
I am always amused by the cries of "Save the Earth". The earth is going to be just fine up until the point the sun goes nova. The problem should be more correctly stated as "Save the Humans" as climate change is an existential threat to our species. There is only a short window left for us to act to stop this process. As someone in their 60s I really hope my generation is not going to be remembered for its failure.
8
@GE This x 100! The earth will be here. Just with a few billion less humans. Maybe we go from 7.5B back to a circa 1800 1B? Probably enough resources to support that many. But maybe not. Earth will always win!
2
Thank you thank you thank you Farhad!
I'm a baby boomer who has been following this issue for decades (the science really hasn't changed much though the results of our ignoring it are getting worse). The stats are terrifying and many of think we need a moon landing/WWII type of mindset to deal with it. Hopefully your idea of being attacked by aliens will go viral and we will finally, at long last, organize to save our beautiful and beleaguered planet.
6
Not sure aliens will help for those of abrahamic religions who don't read sci fi and (1) want the world to end because they think they've got a ticket elsewhere (2) are too blinded to apply the plot of the Exodus objectively--the people in charge "hardened their hearts" and refused to listen, bemoaning lifestyle changes and economic costs, despite the floods and famine and plagues and deaths that the 'prophets' warned them were coming.
8
The Anthropocine is about vastly more than climate change, though that is certainly a predominant feature.
It's also about the accelerating extinction rate, the degradation of every nook and cranny of our ecosystem brought about by habitat destruction and human settlement expansion, industrial intensive agriculture practices and the laying to waste of lands and oceans to plastics and pollutants that are so persistent and pervasive that they will now forever inform the chemistry of the plant and whatever life survives on it.
That's a pretty big deal, aliens or not.
12
That was meant to be planet, not plant. Would be nice to have edit capability. Time limited is OK.
Framing the argument as climate action versus economic growth guarantees there will be no solution.
A lot of money needs to be spent on "all of the above" -- more energy-efficient transportation, heating and cooling; more renewable energy, improving infrastructure to deal with more extreme weather, and developing technologies to cool the planet if warming gets out of hand. Trillions of dollars. So what?? It is INVESTMENT, not consumption, and it will pay huge dividends. There will be more economic growth, more prosperity, and more opportunities for everyone.
We do need a Green New Deal, but it's critical to keep the conversation about it focused on things like Return on Investment and Risk Management, rather than on social justice. As much as I care about social justice, what matters most now is getting a national consensus for action. If climate change gets framed as a "left wing" issue, America's going to be cooked - literally.
12
As a somewhat but not unusually precocious sixth grader in 1980 it was already clear to me that carbon dioxide levels were rising and making the greenhouse effect stronger, and that we were/are on the brink of a major and destructive era of global warming. Even at that young age I knew that global warming was going to become a serious issue of our time. From that time onward, the fact that we as a society have done little to stop it has felt to me like a gigantic failure of our civilization. And now as a scientist and professor in atmospheric sciences, this is so much more clear. This is NOT a new issue..... our society has been putting its head in the sand for a long, long time. Solutions are obvious from the technical side, but how to overcome the political barriers is a serious problem. I pray the political winds shift in time to prevent the worst of the upcoming damage.
10
Even for people who believe in global warming...." This is the problem, slippage of words like "believe" in contexts like this. "Believe" or "know"? "Believe" may be appropriate in the case of people who "believe" the world is shaped like a frisbee (or there is no global warming), but others, especially scientists, "know" the world is more shaped like a basketball and that there is global warming.
3
I look forward to reading the book discussed.
I may ultimately agree with the author’s statement, “The Uninhabitable Earth” by David Wallace-Wells is the most terrifying book I have ever read.
I have read “The End of Ice” by Dahr Jamail and agree with the opinion contained therein that the Earth’s biosphere is in hospice.
The drumbeat of forecasts of impending doom just seem to make life sweeter.
What can you do but live your life and adapt accordingly?
2
Having immigrants both legal and illegal coming to our country from countries with a much lower per capita carbon footprint to ours with a much high carbon footprint exacerbates climate change, yet you will hear zero discussion of this cause. It certainly wasn't mentioned in the AOC Green New Deal. This is the "Inconvenient Truth" that is always ignored by those who spout off about the urgency of climate change solutions.
1
I’m not sure of your point.
Migration mitigates climate change?
I might be able to see a connection between mass movement and environmental impact, if there wasn’t the known factor of worldwide CO2 pollution.
But, respectfully, I don’t see how a mass movement from a developing country with no EPA to a country with an effective EPA is detrimental to our climate.
Now, if only the US had an effective EPA.
4
As a "sixty plus" observer of the warnings that have slowly become more prevalent and dire over the last 40 years ( Silent Spring, Gaia, Hothouse Earth, Climate Wars, IPCC 1,2,3, "what are we waiting Four?"), the hopelessness and depression are obviously taking their toll on increasing numbers of us. Two thoughts: We have met the Aliens.They are us; and, trying to use humour in the face of calamity, the joke: "As I stood there, the baseball got bigger and bigger and I couldn't understand why. Then it hit me."
15
That metaphor has occurred to me too. There are SO many Americans who would be be delighted and proud to leap heroically into action to battle actual aliens... but somehow they/we can't be bothered to fight a similar existential threat with no little green beings attached to it. Maybe there's some way to pitch it where we could get all those would-be heroes off their duffs? I wish?
6
The big problem with your suggestion Farhad, is that any alien civilisation that could make it all the way from their planet to Earth, is likely to be thousands if not millions of years ahead of us technologically. If their intention is hostile, forget about it, we're done! Sorry - didn't you appreciate that "Independence Day" was a comedy? Tackling human-caused global warming - and its consequences such as climate change and sea level rise - will be like shelling peas in comparison.
But don't despair. I'm also in the school of thought that any alien civilisation that has actually managed to survive for thousands or millions of years, in an advanced state, must be strongly disinclined to violence. The meek eventually inherit Earth and other planets supporting life - don't you know? It's a matter of necessity. So you should think "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" not "War of the Worlds". Nice try - but I'm keeping my Cuban. Smoking's bad for you anyway.
Actually an individual's struggle with addiction is a better analogy for what our species is facing. But for food - not nicotine. In a world of plenty what stops you from eating yourself to obesity, bad health and an early grave? If not self-control, constructive criticism and tough love from others. A big part of our problem is that plenty of people believe in good - but not in evil. And you know it's funny, but those same people tend to believe in hate - but not in love.
Naivety and cynicism is a fatal combination.
1
Climate change is the existential crisis of our time. Of the potential solutions, two don't receive enough attention.
FIrst, we focus on emissions but ignore extraction. Fossil carbon has to stay in the ground.
Second - and this is fundamental - every female on the planet who is of reproductive age now or in the future, needs free, easy access to reliable birth control for the duration of her child-bearing years.
Patriarchal hegemony is a global affliction that prohibits women from exercising agency over their own bodies. Until women are free to take their reproductive destiny into their own hands, all the other potential solutions to climate change amount to nibbling around the edges of the problem. Or throwing snowballs on the Senate floor to prove there's no such thing as climate change.
59
@Claire Elliott this bit on access to birth control absolutely nails it. I’m consistently shocked and dismayed that the topic is not even mentioned in most climate change articles. I guess that would also confront us with the fact that some of the world’s most powerful organizations are actively fighting AGAINST access to birth control... Anyway, good on you Claire
14
As a 17 year old in 1970 I had the insight to put environment as the # 1 problem in a list of problems we were asked to rank in order of importance. The world was in a great deal of turmoil then but I had the good sense to know if we ruin where we live then everything else comes down. I was always taught to leave a place in good order after using it. I also understood the principle of cause and effect. If you don’t believe that humans can change the climate (and therefore weather patterns) then you don’t believe that water will boil when you turn up the flame. We need to do a better job of teaching science.
20
@Laura Lynch
Agree that we need to do a better job of teaching science - and would add, civics and critical thinking as well.
1
I was diagnosed with caner in my mid 30s (16 years ago now) so I know a thing or two about staring down difficult news.
The most useful thing I learned is the denial and despair are two sides of the same coin. Both are lame excuses to do nothing!
I am 100% certain that life on earth will survive and that homo-sapiens will continue to dominate and manage it. So there is no need for the doom and gloom.
The only question is what the quality of life will be, and how many other species will go extinct due to our mismanagement.
We do have important decisions to make. We should be working and planning on 50 and 100 year timescales, rather than the next election cycle (2 years out) for politicians and the next annual report for corporations.
This defeatist fatalism is useless to me, but the "pretend it's aliens" mind trick might help spur people to action, and for that I thank you.
5
@Nobody
You can on top of the food chain, but then what if there is nothing left below, the chain is broken and you are left alone with nothing to sustain you? That will mean food, but first it will be water. (which supports other food/species as well)
There is fatalism on one end of the absolute spectrum, but at the other end is defeatism. (which to offer an absolute anything serves the purpose)
I would use a Jedi mind trick at this point if it spurred people into action, so in that we are in agreement.
5
@Nobody
"I am 100% certain that life on earth will survive and that homo-sapiens will continue to dominate and manage it. So there is no need for the doom and gloom"
Predicting the future is impossible....so, its 100% sure that the above statement is wrong.
1
This comment purports to be scientifically literate but is incorrect. The cause of anthropogenic warming has been understood since at least the late 19th century when the Nobel winning Swedish chemist Arrenhius published an explanation.
The weather is subject to random variations on a time scale of a few years but scientific estimates have been expecting (and announcing) that a discernible signal would soon emerge from the noise for several decades and that has certainly occurred. If you are not impressed by droughts, hurricanes and polar vortices and write them off as fluctuations, then maybe the fate of the insect populations will get your attention. There was an excellent piece about that in the Times a month or two ago. Populations have dropped by more than 50% and more globally over the last couple of decades threatening agriculture and the fate of many organisms that feed on them. I view them as playing a role like canaries in a cold mine, signaling that the ecosystem is dying (and not very slowly). The article may seem alarmist but alarm is what we need.
18
As the North Pole warms and the polar vortex weakens it begins to wobble like a slowing top and arctic air spills into the temperate zones.
The Arctic Seas get warmer and flow of warm water that is the Gulf Stream begins to diminish, making Northern Europe much colder.
Yes, global warming can create colder regional temperatures, colder regional climates, even as the globe is warming. Changes that might occur over millennia are now happening in decades.
And then there is the "Sixth Extinction" to which climate change is but a footnote. Or maybe it's the other way around.
The Apocalypse is nigh! Can the Second Coming be far behind?
3
I believe climate change deniers are either dim wits or have a financial stake in denial. I'll venture that even those with a financial stake in denial suspect they are wrong, yet figure they are better off denying.
As a species, humans are not well suited to dealing with problems that transcend generations. We are called to mount a response that addresses problems that stretch beyond our lifetime and even our children's lifetimes. Few people even save effectively for retirement. Sacrifice luxuries today for your children's children's well being? Forget it. What if something happens that renders the sacrifice worthless? You'd be a fool. Most people are even less likely to sacrifice today for an abstract good in the future.
The forces of rationalism that have revealed and measured climate change work against coherent responses. In the past, humans had religions and beliefs to enforce the value of sacrifice for abstract principles and hopes. But in the rational, scientific 21st century, these social entities have declined in their ability to foster the common good. We are left with rationalism that argues against long term sacrifice and "fight or flight" instincts that are useless in the face of melting ice packs.
I used to think that belief in the values of humanity embodied in democratic principles would carry us through. But November 2016 shook me and I am left wondering.
10
Here's the thing -- in an actual, all out war, like WWII, there would be a draft. Millions would be employed, paid, and their needs taken care of by the government. No government on Earth, much less the US government, is proposing that. So if there are costs to be paid to fight these "aliens," and those costs land on you -- your business collapses, or you can't afford to commute to your job due to higher gas costs, your property value drops into the toilet, etc. -- you're on your own. Mr. Manjoo is correct that really addressing climate change would require sacrifice and make some, possibly most, people worse off. Unless there is some proposal to ameliorate this and share the pain fairly, any such plan is dead on arrival in a democratic nation.
Can you imagine Americans willingly voting to ration beef, for example? Addressing climate change doesn't just mean addressing automobile emissions; another thing it would require is addressing farming practices and dietary preferences. In WWII, people were willing to endure rationing, submit to a draft, donate their own savings buying war bonds, etc. It will be very difficult, if not impossible, to get that kind of buy-in regarding a faceless enemy that many regard as the Will of God. How do you address those who will welcome the catastrophes as signs the Rapture is approaching? They're the ones most resistant to doing anything to mitigate climate change, and there are plenty of them out there.
9
Overpopulation doesn’t seem to get discussed much, but it’s a key driver of climate change. Even if people wake up to the urgency of climate change and we learn to minimize our impact on the environment, there are just too many humans on this planet. My wife and I try to be as environmentally responsible as we can be, and this in part influenced our decision not to have kids. We kind of shake our heads when we see these big families of 5, 6, 7 out and about, gobbling up everything in their path.
23
@Aaron. There are steps that could be taken by anyone - don't add to the population, adopt or foster if you want to be a parent; cut back or eliminate red meat, refrain from using pesticides, vote in every election for the 'greener' candidate...
3
@Aaron
Sad. The more enlightened among us are in the minority. Explains how Trump got elected.
2
@Aaron
Perhaps overpopulation is the infection and global warming is the cleansing fever.
The worst effects will take a long time and look like increased frequency of events within the range of what we are used to. Hot summers all the time, big hurricanes all the time, etc...Over the many decades societies will adapt. Or not. And it's going to happen regardless of what we do because it take centuries for the extra carbon dioxide to be absorbed. In the meantime it's there soaking up heat. If you're in a shaded greenhouse and you stop exploring more windows to sunlight it still keeps getting hotter.
2
@Robert David South
I grew up in Watertown, and my only regret is that I won't live long enough to enjoy that nice warm weather the climate alarmists are predicting. Ask any North Country citizen if he'd rather be there or in Florida right now (where the climate is warm) and it's a no-brainer. This morning my car was encased in a quarter-inch of ice from roof to tires. I needed a screwdriver to chip my way inside. Global warming? WHEN?
1
@Ed L., then how do you feel about record arctic freezes every year in your neck of the country? Is that something you'd like to see more of?
Many deniers assume that climate change only affects warming. They don't realize that the extremes in freezing temperatures experienced through parts of our country this winter are also the result of global warming. Another commenter explained it succinctly: you're experiencing arctic freezing because the polar vortex (think of it as a cyclone encircling the North Pole and corralling all the arctic air) is weakening, allowing arctic air to escape into temperate zones. Your winters are going to get worse, not better. No, you won't live long enough to experience "nice, warm weather." Syracuse will never be Florida.
But then again, much of Florida may be underwater before you realize what's happening. There really are no winners, contrary to what Fox News may tell you.
3
@Ed L. “Climate change,” mate. “Global warming” is an outdated term that fox and friends love to sink their teeth into every time there’s a snowstorm
Humans have predicted apocalypse of one kind or another since the dawn of humanity. I will remain skeptical for the following reasons: 1) Humans are very poor at predicting the future. 2) Climate dynamics are impossibly complex with too many known and unknown variables interacting with unknown relationships. 3) There is no way to formally test the predicted climate change hypotheses and models and so they must be taken at faith. 4) The issue is hopelessly emotional and political preventing any sort of objectivity on the part of the scientists and policy makers. The idea of making radical policy changes on the basis of these predictions seems unwise. It think the hand-wringing is overdone. Yes, we must be good stewards of our environment and more can be done. But let's get a grip on the scare-mongering. Finally, we are all going to die someday, this is certain. If you want children, go for it. Don't let the climate boogieman stop you. Be optimistic. Smile. Do your best for yourself, your family, and your country all the days of your life.
7
@Rain Parade
I would recommend you pass these arguments to a genuine climatologist. I am a scientist (not a climatologist), and I know the level of scrutiny that a model undergoes before it gains enough credibility to be used as a predictive tool.
Or maybe your gut models (yes, you are making your own prediction based on your own models) are just naturally superior to those developed by people who have spent their entire lives studying climate.
16
@Kenneth Brady
Thanks for the reply Kenneth! I appreciate a man of science. I too have published scientific papers but I am surgeon by training.
I would rather not pass these arguments to a climatologist for the reasons I’ve mentioned (bias, politically charged issue etc). If the issue was a theory regarding salamander embryo genomics I’d pass, but since we talking about trillion dollar policy proposals that would affect the entire economy, I thought I’d put forward my viewpoint. I also find it very sad that so many people seem resigned and hopeless over this issue.
My “gut model”, or common sense, is I believe rational. I gave four serious critiques. Please address my four points if you see flaws in my reasoning rather than my lack of background in climatology. Kindly-
@Rain Parade, I agree with Kenneth Brady--I think you're misunderstanding how scientific modeling is done. You say you're relying on "common sense," but then you seem to subscribe to the theory that there's a conspiracy of scientists involved in pulling off a hoax on the rest of us. IMO that's denial, not skepticism.
Humans are getting pretty good at predicting climate change (the future is a different topic, which you can discuss elsewhere). Climate change is complex, but IPCC models have become very good at identifying feedback loops, for example. If anything, these models have underestimated the threat, but they've been right about the trends.
Climate models can definitely be tested through a process called "hind=casting." If you're open to learning more about climate modeling, please visit NOAA's excellent web site. Here's a brief overview: https://www.climate.gov/maps-data/primer/climate-models
4
The headline “Pretend It’s Aliens” is a sneaky journalistic and psychological ploy, associating aliens with those who have doubts about climate change.
Yes, there are climate changes taking place, and, yes, humans undoubtedly contribute in some ways to climate change. However, the climate changes that took place on Earth millennia ago far exceed what we are seeing now. Further, serious scientists do not claim to understand the underlying processes of climate change, and they certainly cannot predict regional (much less local) climate change.
Floods and fires in Australia. Unusual snowfalls and cold in Seattle and the Midwest and eastern US. Yes, these are changes in climate but scientists have not been able to reproduce or control these conditions. That means they really don’t understand what causes these conditions.
As someone trained in scientific method I would like to see more humility and more scientific method in looking at and evaluating climate change.
27
@Mal T - It snowed in Hawaii today - not at the 10,000 foot level as it does occasionally, but at 6,200 feet which is unprecedented. And the wind was clocked at 191 mph.
But that's just a freak, right?
By them time enough people are concerned enough to take the drastic measures that might still save the planet, it will be too late.
I weep for my grandchildren's children.
111
@Mal T
"the climate changes that took place on Earth millennia ago far exceed what we are seeing now."
True, and if human civilization as we know it had existed then, the climate change would have been catastrophic. In its earliest years, Earth was an uninhabitable inferno. Does that mean we shouldn't worry about climate change now?
"serious scientists do not claim to understand the underlying processes of climate change"
Actually, any serious scientist can tell you exactly how it works: Greenhouse gases stifle the escape of heat (infrared light, to be precise) from Earth, like a blanket, so Earth warms up.
185
@Mal T "As someone trained in scientific method I would like to see more humility and more scientific method in looking at and evaluating climate change."
Then read the thousands of research papers written in scientific journals. You can find data on climate change, its causes and effects, in a wide range of scientific disciplines - geology, physics, ecology, limnology, marine science, climatology, atmospheric science, wildlife biology, etc.
"Yes, these are changes in climate but scientists have not been able to reproduce or control these conditions. That means they really don’t understand what causes these conditions."
Since we don't have planets identical to Earth, of course scientists have not been able to reproduce these conditions. Controlling them is the goal, but politics prevents that.
Science relies on the preponderance of evidence. If you read the voluminous research on climate, you will see the huge preponderance of evidence that Earth is warming and that human activities are by far the most likely causes.
"serious scientists do not claim to understand the underlying processes of climate change, and they certainly cannot predict regional (much less local) climate change".
Huh? Climate scientists DO know a great deal about the underlying processes of climate change. See previously mentioned scientific literature. And they've been highly accurate in predicting the currently observed changes in climate. Are you really trained in scientific method?
235
Western Civilization released all of this carbon into the atmosphere and we all now know it was a mistake. But can we ask the billions of peoples in Asia and Africa to forego the cars, food and air conditioning that we've enjoyed for many years? No, we can't. So the only solution that could work would be one that allows the rest of the world to have these things. We need technological advances that allow for transport, food production and air conditioning for all without carbon release. Without it, we might as well start focusing on ways to adjust to the warming world. A plan that relies on the world to go without the things we've had for years and years is a plan that will fail. Peace Out
55
@JEYE
I think we can do both, but that would mean that the 1st world would no longer be able to take advantage of the 3rd (by taking over their resources)
There would have to be a massive restructuring and massive investment, so that anyone, or any country on the planet would have access to any and all green technologies. (especially for energy production)
Doing everything incrementally is not going to get things done and will make it too late to reverse course overall.
Our choice - profit, or sustainability.
17
@FunkyIrishman
Right on.
The problem with capitalism is net present value. When we discounted the future costs of Climate Change to the present, we got the time scale wrong, and we got the costs wrong.
The Green New Deal may be short on specifics, but, figuring out a path forward is going to require long term thinking that our current NPV driven economy values not at all.
7
@JEYE
" A plan that relies on the world to go without the things we've had for years and years is a plan that will fail. "
Exactly. But you appear to be unaware of the mass extinctions currently being observed. We have no idea to what degree our survival depends on the species which have accompanied us throughout our existence, as part of the food chain, as reservoirs of immunity from disease, and so on. They have been our (largely unseen) companions on this journey, and they are falling by the wayside.
Planning to do without those "things" is indeed a plan which will fail.
19
" death by water, death by heat, death by hunger, death by thirst, death by disease, death by asphyxiation, death by political and civilizational collapse."
More accurately, one could say; death by procrastination. This is happening. In our lifetimes.
Remember the derision directed at Mr. Gore and his "Inconvenient Truth"?
I wonder how many are still laughing.
356
@Kevo There's this thing being implied that if we just cut carbon emissions we can avoid this. That's just pure deception. It's happening regardless of what we do at this point. If you're in a speeding car and you take your foot off the accelerator, does it stop immediately? Sure, we should cut carbon emissions anyway, like the captain of the Titanic should steer away from the iceberg even though it's already started cutting into the hull. But don't think we aren't going down.
16
@Robert David South
Some warming is inevitable, but how much warming depends heavily on whether we curb emissions in the coming decades. All climate models suggest as much. Shouldn't we try to minimize the damage?
54
@Robert David South, I think you're setting up a straw man so that you can knock it down. No one is implying that we can stop climate change in its tracks. But we can mitigate many of the worst catastrophes of climate change by reducing our emissions.
I wonder if this kind of naïve fatalism is the next posture of those who can no longer deny that climate disaster is underway.
39
Unfortunately, Farhad, we are the aliens.
4
It is aliens causing global climate change through fossil fuel use. Several decades (probably around the 1930s) that discovered earth and decided to undertake a 150-year project to modify our planet to be more suited to them - and to kill off a large percentage of the human population and destroy our governments so that they would arrive and be our "saviors".
They did this by taking over the oil, coal and gas industries and keeping nuclear power impractical. They kept fossil fuel prices low so that usage would increase.
However, humans were too quick to increase usage, and now they are trying to slow us up so that the global climate change doesn't become too severe to quickly. They want their home to be "just right" like "Goldilocks" and the bears.
What may be happening is that a second species of aliens arrived whom want a warmer Earth than the first aliens. The two groups of aliens are fighting through humans and social media over the setting earth's thermostat.
3
Time to rephrase: The Shining Sea on the Hill.
It is sad to realize that one idea, pursuit of happiness, without abandon has lead us to expect to live underwater, albeit for a few seconds.
That idea is now the example for the world.
Corporations are citizen, but they don't care about citizenship which is a human trait. They don't care about the environment.
Now they are replicating themselves without abandon across the planet in all nations, looking to the last shine from this city.
We have to face reality. A fundamental change, though extremely painful to mind and body, needs to take place. We need to control massive heartless (inhuman) corporations, break them down and give control to people who understand they can't live under water for too long.
It is not irrational to then say that The forefathers were pretty ignorant ignoring human frailty and didn't allow for it. Time to revisit their work beyond words, into the realm of real deeds.
3
The secret to using an analogy is to make sure it's less confusion than the subject. Didn't Trump use aliens to freak us out?
NYT should bring back Dot Earth. A truly excellent nature, people, environment, and energy blog/information relay thingy. The center position taken by Revkin was frustrating at times, but that's what made it good for us readers. It made us follow up and dig deeper into the subject of the day. A learning by doing blog.
1
What frightens me, is that in world heading in such a bad direction, we are more likely to need a massive border defense- which will make Trump seem less a xenophobic nut job, and more like a visionary. The cognitive dissonance of seeing the trajectory of warming head right towards the need to protect one’s own, will lead to another Trump and then another and so on. Trump may be the most reflective amplifier of our most core fears. He’s afraid, we should be afraid- I’m afraid.
5
I can understand why politicians and business leaders may be too self-interested and self-absorbed to worry about the dangers of a warming planet. But if things are as dire as some climate scientists say, why are we hearing about it from a columnist in the New York Times, instead of our military leaders (who, in the event of an alien invasion, would be the ones we turn to for information and advice)?
2
@Jay Orchard Those of us associated with the country's defense hear it from our military leaders all the time. Rest assured they are planning for the effects of global warming to the degree they are able. However, military leaders follow the orders of their commander in chief.
9
@Jay Orchard
Our military leaders work for a guy who claims that anthropogenic climate change is a Chinese hoax.
But if there were an easy way to search for something using keywords such as "Pentagon report on climate change" you might be able find some kind of report on climate change made by the Pentagon. But conducting a search like that would require some kind of technology that was designed to collect, store, and retrieve information in a kind interconnected network that was available to the public. If we ever invent something to fulfill that purpose it will change the world.
7
@Jay Orchard As @Steve points out, the military is very aware of the effects of climate change. In fact, the military considers it a major threat to national security.
However, the role of generals and admirals is not to create national policy, nor even to educate the public about their concerns, but to follow policy and orders from the commander in chief.
The best they can do is plan for various emergency scenarios that occur as a result of non-action on the part of politicians, corporations, and all of us individuals.
Just like generals don't get on TV or write op eds about what we should do about North Korea, Russia, or any other country. They only advise politicians in private and then do what they are told, like good soldiers in a civilian-ruled country should do.
So the fact that we read this in the NYT instead of hearing directly from military leaders is not surprising, and not a reason to take the warnings less seriously.
3
This supposed climate change catastrophe reminds me very much of the Year 2000 catastrophe. Remember that?
1
@CD Do you mean Y2K?
Doesn't remind me of that at all. Y2K was a concern based on the hunches of people knowledgeable about software and how it worked. Then lots of money was thrown at the problem by lots of companies and agencies. There was little disruption when the calendar turned to Jan 1, 2000, maybe due to the preparation, maybe not.
On the other hand, global warming is a fact based on data. Its causes are well supported by data. We can see the predicted negative consequences actually coming true. It's not something we think could happen. It is happening now - we can see it.
And, also quite different from Y2K, not much is being done about it, at least not in the US.
So, no, this does't seem much like Y2K.
8
@CD I do indeed remember the Y2k bug, as I was working in the tech industry back then. Companies recognized the possibility of an impending disaster and invested billions of dollars collectively to address the coding issue and prevent what could have been a catastrophic failure of IT systems. As a result, the coding bug was fixed, and redundancy was built into systems as a precaution, so the millenium changed without incident due to years of work by hundreds of thousands of experts.
What if the Y2K bug really was analogous to climate change? What if Y2k deniers refused to fix their code, and just hoped everything would be OK, ignoring the experts who said that critical software would fail? It would have indeed been catastrophic -- in addition to being very stupid and completely avoidable. But that's what climate deniers are doing.
Why don't journalists use Fahrenheit rather than just Celsius? Most of the public thinks "what's the big deal about 2-4 degrees" when in fact a change in 4 degrees Celsius is a change of over 7 degrees Fahrenheit. But nobody knows that. Writing in Celsius minimizes the problem to Americans.
92
@ronsnyc
I sympathize. Following the song; "' I won't drive 55!'' isn't as catchy as: '' I won't drive 88.51392 Kph! ''
It can be too confusing for some ...
3
@ronsnyc - Good question. Why doesn't the US use metric like the rest of the world? Is it because God doesn't like metric and if Fahrenheit is good enough for God it ought to be good enough for America?
12
@ronsnyc
Yes, that is an excellent point.
4
We probably have better odds for the other half of the sci-if equation: pack up and go live on Mars (or Io or the moon or find a wormhole to a young Earth watched over by mysterious black, oh, forget it).
2
Suppose that the nasty aliens were already among us. Suppose that they have been here, neatly camouflaged, working on a weaponless plan to subvert and conquer by all of the mechanisms Farheed mentions. To reduce humanity to a groveling, defenseless horde of servants, or as Serling had it, livestock.
Suppose that the only way to detect who these aliens are is during those infrequent events when it has been noticed that they appear in public....and vote Republican.
7
When I find myself pulling my hair out because of yet another outrageous statement or act by our President I also pretend that he is an alien and I don't feel so angry.
6
Humanity, and especially our leaders, are like the frog in the pan of water on the stove.
4
We could avoid serious harm from global warming at a cost of around 2% of our economy. We aren't doing this because the people with a lot of money and power in the dominant country, America, don't want to. They don't want to because they would lose some of their money. They get their way because America is set up so that those with money have the power to get their way. The only way for the world to avoid devastating harm from global warming within the lifetime of many people alive today is for America to defeat the power of our most wealthy people and corporations.
40
Climate change due to temperature rise is not the case of a problem with a ready solution. It is the case of a complex problem without a solution at the ready. The conflict between activist proponents for current questionable or incomplete solutions, and resisters and/or deniers, is about handing over power, not climate change. Conversely it is about taking power not about fixing the climate. Climate change "activists" (and you can ask them) do not respect the people over whom they'd like to enforce great change, and those people can smell a totalitarian leftist instinct a mile away. That's wherein lay the problem.
People who have any control over their own lives intend to, first and foremost, to keep it. They will give over some power to entities with which they sympathize, but they are loath to give over any power to entities they revile. So no Americans with lives are not about to be guided by young minds without real solutions who want to change everything as they see fit just because they know better.
Everybody likes a bogeyman with which they might scare their antagonists. That's a rule of politics and punditry. Another rule is that there is a human nature, and it's not going to turn on a dime. As Tuchman noted in "A Distant Mirror, the Calamatous 14th Century," "... the generality of mankind is not made for renunciation."
5
@CK, your comment sums up the problem we face--human nature, which you capture fully.
First, humans tend to be suspicious of change, even paranoid to the point of assuming that scientists are orchestrating a global hoax to put a "leftist" totalitarian regime in power. Humans are tribal, so if their tribe believes that an issue like climate change is purely political, they identify wholly with the tribe. Humans are resistant to critical thinking, so the vast majority will never question, much less do research, on the subject. Finally, the hard right in America seems to see every subject in terms of power--who has it, who wants it, who wins and who loses. They lack the sense of community that we need to deal with global threats.
We are facing the kind of monumental challenge that human nature seems ill prepared to address. May god help us.
1
@CK "So no Americans with lives are not about to be guided by young minds without real solutions who want to change everything as they see fit just because they know better." (The double negative makes this somewhat incoherent.)
OK, so they don't like these "young minds". How about being guided instead by actual data and facts on the ground, and taking actions that would reduce the negative impacts of climate change?
Why do you think that most climate activists and scientists are young????
Renewable, clean energy. That IS a real solution.
What "great change" or loss of power in their lives would they experience from using renewable energy sources instead of fossil fuels? How is this "changing everything"?
"Climate change "activists" (and you can ask them) do not respect the people over whom they'd like to enforce great change"
You know this by surveying the attitudes of a few hundred or more climate change activists? Or just from "asking" a few? The activists I know are quite different from the ones you've talked to. They respect all people, and want to avert the suffering that all will experience if real action is not taken very soon.
2
@CK,
Very well stated!
I'm sort of an agnostic on the whole subject; I'm not really sure what to think. That makes the power dynamic very obvious. Most of the rhetoric is more political than scientific. Most of the available information comes from advocacy organizations of one side or the other.
But the most glaring flaw in the discussion is intellectual. The sense of certainty, on both sides, is completely inappropriate considering the complexity of the subject(s) and the vast amount that we still don't know.
1
"reduce global economic output by more than 20%"
What will be the impact of the remedies proposed - like the near term elimination of hydrocarbon fuels? It will make a 20% decline in output seem utopian.
Actually, responsible ecomomists project that the economic impact of an all-out effort to reduce carbon emissions would be somewhere between a moderate drag on US economic growth, and a significant boost to the same.
Paul Krugman has written a number of columns about this. I'd search for those to see his version of the details, and get the names of other economists whose work you could follow up on.
The idea that radically reducing carbon emissions would impose a huge cost on the US feels like it should be right. The column we're commenting on assumes that reducing CO2 would require "shared sacrifice", and frames that by a comparison to all-out war.
Then this mistaken expectation - I don't think there are any respectable economists who project more than a moderate but far from disastrous hit to GDP - plays right into the hands of those who profit richly from how things are now. The Koch brothers, whose companies derive most of their profits from fossil fuel extraction, have literally billions on the table. Can't recall if they have kids...
Along with the feeling that doing something virtuous should involve sacrifice, outdated estimates of the cost (high) of cutting carbon emissions still have a lot of traction. But innovations that seemed pie-in-the-sky a decade or two ago have changed the picture entirely. To give just one example, the cost of solar panels today is a lot less than "reasonable" estimates around 2000 projected. Plus, installing solar panels *raises* GDP.
1
@Ambrose Rivers
This is an interesting statement. Do you have any calculations to support it?
This piece starts off promisingly, but is quite off the rails by the end.
For sake of argument, assume as valid the author' interpretation of the worst-case climate change scenario being economic output falling "by half — a toll you might better describe as at least one, and possibly two or three, Great Depressions."
The abstract of the linked-to journal article supporting that scenario (available this side of the paywall) makes clear that this is a projection for the year 2100, i.e. 80 years away, which is a good twenty times longer than it took for the actual 20th century Great Depression to reach its low ebb in the early 1930s. Climate change is less like a sudden crisis, and more like a slow growing cancer which weakens the immune system allowing increasing temporary fevers and afflictions, but without ever destroying the host.
Granted, this still makes an increasingly disrupted global climate a very serious challenge, which today's governments generally (even the majority which don't lie as ignorantly about climate science as the current US administration, and its party supporters in Congress do) are woefully failing to address with any effectiveness.
What global climate change manifestly is not, however, by any stretched interpretation of current evidence, nor ever likely to lead to, is some kind of "war" for the "survival" of the human species as a whole.
2
@Sage
Your last paragraph denotes a certainty that goes directly against all of the data available.
If you extrapolate out population growth, pollution and carbon levels with destruction of milieu and species within , then how can you not come to a hypothesis that we will not be able to survive ?
We do have the ability to change course, but the only real question left is whether we will be able to get our act together before the end of the curve overtakes us, and takes it out of our hands.
Me heart will always want to remain hopeful, but me mind is looking at all of that data (again) and seeing a very dark future.
Perhaps the only other question one might ask openly, is even if the data is off, then why would we want to take a chance and gamble against it all ?
It's like walking across a street blindfolded. You KNOW (from having experienced the data beforehand) that there is traffic. You hear it, and you sense it. You feel the wind as cars and the like goes by. You smell the exhaust.
Do you just hope for the best then as you take a step?
12
@FunkyIrishman
I did not suggest and am not recommending doing nothing. Although that is in essence the collective global response so far.
For 95+% of the lifetime of the human species, it was less than 1% of the size of the current global population. Even massive die-off -something worse even than the worst-case scenarios- is not extinction.
I am simply tired of reading, decade in, decade out, sloppy claims that global warming means the planet will die, or humans will go extinct, unless...[add dramatic but hopelessly vague platitude here].
As if an end -for dozens if not hundreds of generations to come- to modern civilization and to the global economy as we have known it for the past several generations, is not enough. And thus the problem has to be magnified and fearmongered into something even scarier.
4
@Sage
Fair enough. I understand where you are coming from, but I come back to me comment yet again.
There may have been many scare tactics used previously, but that STILL does not take away from the data now. (whereas all graphs are going almost straight upwards and off the page)
Perhaps, you are right that ONLY 99% of the population goes extinct, but I do not see how the rest can even support themselves afterwards. (especially if most other species on the planet has become extinct as well)
Why take the chance ?
3
I believe it. Call it fatalism if you will, but this catastrophic vision is a done deal. Society won't embrace change until not doing so causes them either physical or economic discomfort. In this case it is beginning to do both, but I fear it is akin to quitting smoking after a lung cancer diagnosis, or the boiling frog parable: too little, too late. Today's pursuit of pleasure and riches supercedes self-preservation or the protection of our offspring. We must go through the darkness and suffering and if we, as species, survive, I hope future generations will be able to learn from the present neartsighted foolishness.
21
There is strong social science research supporting the fact that people do not change until they experience dissonance to the level of strong guilt or survival fear. Kurt Levine and Edgar Shein are two of those researchers. If they are correct we are likely doomed. Our only hope is finding technology that can actually reduce and sequester carbon. My fingers are crossed for the sake of my grandchildren.
I am no skeptic when it comes to global warming.
That said, I am a little skeptical of apocalyptic pronouncements of the sudden, cataclysmic end of our world.
The idea of a violent, destructive, future apocalypse that would punish [the vast majority of] the human race for their persistent wrongdoing and refusal to reform was coined a couple of millennia ago.
Probably the earliest extant example of an apocalyptic narrative, the Book of Enoch, was written around 300 BCE. Since then, the taste for apocalyptic predictions has only grown.
Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others have produced a vast literature specifying how the world will end, often at length and in great detail.
Secular thinkers are not excepted from the power of apocalyptic thinking. The idea that one day - probably soon - events will prove dramatically and unequivocally that one's own beliefs had been true all along is pretty tempting.
Think of predictions that unchecked population growth would lead to the collapse of... well, just about everything. Didn't happen.
I'm far from certain that global warming won't bring apocalypse-level disaster, and soon.
But alongside the science, books like this also reflect the powerful appeal of apocalyptic narrative in itself.
Personally, my fear is that - like rising economic inequality since the Reagan administration, only worse - global warming will degrade the planet and our standards of living gradually enough that people will hardly notice as things deteriorate.
4
@Reader It wont be sudden. It will be spread over years or decades, but that doesn't mean it won't be (or isn't) happening.
13
@Reader
Chaotic systems, and the climate and the biosphere are chaotic systems, do not change slowly. They proceed in a near steady state until conditions reach a tipping point at which they suddenly transition into another steady state. The classic example is boiling water. It gets warmer and warmer but it is still water, then suddenly it is steam. Simple analogy, however it is accurate.
4
@Reader "Think of predictions that unchecked population growth would lead to the collapse of... well, just about everything. Didn't happen."
I would phrase that slightly differently. Hasn't happened.
No, there has not been total collapse. But there has not been unchecked population growth either. The population is still growing, but more slowly than when these fears were first raised.
So the "experiment" hasn't actually been done yet. Wait till the population doubles - again - in my lifetime and see how smoothly things go.
2
Every day I read or watch horror stories on how our effect on the planet is affecting other species of plants and animals and our own future. Insect populations are dying off, in ways scientists predict will devastate our agriculture and lives in myriad ways. Species of mammals, fish, and birds are being significantly reduced. Species that we might not depend on but whose absence will reduce our world. It is tragic that the President and his party has chosen to abandon true conservative principles- conservation was part of them. Our Earth needs to be cherished and loved, and they laugh when we say that.
27
"Then, one late night after taking a dose of a kind of sleep medicine that is now widely available in California..."
I would be remiss if I didn't make note of this. And concur in the wonderful effects of that medicine.
16
I've given up on anything being done about global warming.
Most people are like me...they're not willing to make immediate and significant economic sacrifices to stop it.
So I've developed my own personal strategy.... now that I've retired.
If the summers in North Texas get any hotter, I'm moving back to Pennsylvania, where I came from.
Or am I missing something here?
3
@Kenneth Johnson
You and I can take that approach -- we're old enough that the worst may not happen in our lifetimes. I don't even have children to worry about. But for those who are younger, the problem is more urgent. Eventually there won't be enough Pennsylvania (or other land still habitable) to go around. That's when the apocalyptic scenario kicks in. Even for us approaching retirement, when North Texas gets too hot, or Long Island gets hit with a Category 4 hurricane that makes what happened to the Florida Panhandle look minor, our properties in these areas will be worthless. There will be no buyers. So how then to acquire a dwelling in the places less affected?
2
@Kenneth Johnson
I don't want to give up but I too, am moving north to escape the incendiary summer heat. I can't handle it.
We've been very fortunate to make it to 2019, the year in which we celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Jets' only Super Bowl victory AND the Mets' first World Series win. If we want to celebrate the centennials, we better get to work now.
1
Political action on climate change at the national level is essential, but we won't see results from it until 2022 at the earliest. In the meantime, we can start implementing a Green New Deal on our own. Acting together, we can make strategic investments in critical gatekeeper industries (e.g., electric utilities, home-building) that will turn them from opponents to supporters of deep decarbonization. This might take billions of dollars, but we could raise billions if the 25% of us who care are willing to redirect even 5% of their liquid assets into an umbrella Climate Action Investment Fund. Many foundations will follow with their large endowments, much of Hollywood will help, universities can direct a portion of their endowment funds, and so can big pension funds and insurers. Collectively, we have far more money than the Koch brothers, we just haven't channeled it effectively yet.
8
Creepily amusing that Trump drives a near panic among his devotees and cites “border experts” who are in favor of a wall. Yet the scientific consensus about what is a real crisis is meaningless to him and those same fanatics. We don’t deserve this planet. Let’s just hand it over to the aliens, those that are not deplorably among us now.
10
Climate change and ecological destruction are a questions of values. As a culture, we value economic growth and little else. We know exactly what the capital markets are doing minute by minute. Until we change that, until we quit measuring everything in terms of money, until we quit consuming and producing waste, these jeremiads will just fall on deaf ears.
18
Thanks for this amazing piece. Hope it is cloned on the front page of every news source on our poor damaged planet, and remains there until something is done to start the healing.
16
Human beings simply do not respond to threats that are not immediate. Climate change is the boiling pot of water and we are the frogs.
If we want to get people to change their behavior we need immediate rewards or punishments that people will react to.
Democrats should stop emphasizing the long term effects of climate change on the planet; and instead, emphasize the millions of new jobs that The New Green Deal will produce immediately (green jobs are already the fastest growing job category in many states).
Economic security (jobs) is the number one concern for the majority of the America people. Jobs is the motivator that will get people to sign up for the Green New Deal, saving the planet is just a bonus.
42
The scenario you outline is very similar to one in the Ursula K. LeGuin novel (and PBS movie) The Lathe of Heaven. The plot centers around a young man who is troubled by dreams that come true, literally; and most disturbingly, retroactively. That's difficult to imagine, but for example: Pollution and climate change has caused a constant rain to fall in the region for years. One night he dreams that the rain stopped, only to wake up and find that the region has instead been suffering a multi-year drought. The unscrupulous psychiatrist he seeks treatment from sees an opportunity to re-engineer some things, and one of the things he suggests to the young man is to dream peace among all mankind. Well, it turns out that the results can be very unpredictable, and what the young man dreams up is an alien invasion which unites the world against it. Check it out; it's a great story.
8
" … Pretend it’s aliens. …"
Thanks, a very interesting article, but one does not really need to pretend anymore. The slow train wreck is picking up speed. Sagan's Cosmos (1981) episode, Hansen (late 1980's to current), and IPCC should be enough to convince.
I guess it is time to post following yet again:
Let us focus on the main issue, and less on the kaleidoscopic array of side effects. The facts demand that we take action, although it is likely already too late.
Population explosion: At 7.7 billion, increasing by 80 million annually.
This drives everything. This alone swamps out any and all attempts at 'damage control'. And we are not going to do anything about it. The population of this planet more than doubled in my lifetime. It's all over folks.
Climate change is simply one of many looming disasters.
The Keeling curve currently at 411 ppm CO2 and rising drives the rise in sea level, temperature, and acidity. This is already baked in, and will continue for many decades to come no matter what mitigating attempts are made.
We have already passed a number of tipping points. I'm not going to enumerate these any more. It is an exercise in futility. I will support any person or entity that will do the right things, even though it is utterly pointless at this point.
32
@oldBassGuy overpopulation eventually affects humans in the same way it affects any other species, from insects to zebras. Trouble is our big brains make us think we’re special and immune
4
I teach meteorology in a community college and the last chapter every semester is about global warming. I can not use the textbook for anything other than for background material. I rely on NOAA and the reporting in the NYT. Less than a week ago the Times published a 4 column wide chart of the global temperature rise on the front page! The chart begins in 1880 and I suspect that the Times has never before devoted that much front page space to this issue. The prospects are certainly bleak. In each of my courses I have used a NYT chart from 1999 where they published a full page width chart of the same alarming trend. It was not on the front page back then. I fear more front page stories to come as the disasters pile up.
31
@Vince
The sad part is that I read a very similar chapter as your students currently do on global warming when I was a Freshman in college in 1974. I fear that no matter what charts are available to document global warming, we simply won't ever respond in any sort of way that will avoid this coming catastrophe.
5
My thoughts about an impending collapse of the ecosystem and the social order were reflected back at me by "The Terror." The depiction of the "Keep Calm and Carry On" crowd devolving into desperate cutthroats wandering in a pitiless and inhospitable environment is an apt metaphor for the world we're bequeathing to the generations to come.
6
It takes a startling lack of perspective to state that "climate change is an all consuming emergency" and in the same piece to present as one of the key pieces of evidence the fact that "there is a strong chance that [climate change] will reduce global economic output by more than 20%" So a 20% decrease in economic growth is what should keep us up at night? Isn't world economic growth the main contributor to greenhouse gases? Are the upcoming droughts, floods, mudslides, and hurricanes expected to cause suffering on the scale of what we humans do to each other directly via war and violence? What should the people dying in Yemen and Syria and other places suffering from direct human killing think about this? Hundreds of thousands have died in these conflicts and few of us have batted an eye. Wouldn't a full blown war with China (surely a nonzero probability event) be more damaging to the planet, eco-systems and human lives than a 4 degree rise in surface temperature? For those who have ever traveled to the Persian Gulf states, it becomes clear that even the most inhospitable hot and humid climate can be inhabited by millions of people by choice (millions of expats) for the right price and resources expended. Again, the environment and our planet are important but driving an agenda to protect it through fear can backfire. Let's keep a healthy perspective.
5
@MG
Chicken or the egg. Conflict breeds scarcity breeds conflict. The war in Syria was precipitated by drought. The carbon footprint of war is enormous.
6
@MG
What Albert Ross said.
Also, the problem is that politicians and corporate America seem to only understand money, not science or ethics. So pointing out the drop in economic growth is one way of getting the attention of that crowd.
1
You’ve got a reasonable point but the 20percent figure is the output of economic models that are flawed in their treatment of uncertainty (some people may call it fat tail or black swan risk). The result is stupid outputs like a 20% fall in gdp at the same time as Miami is underwater, central India is uninhabitable (forcing 100 million to move) and the Netherlands overwhelmed in a “freak” winter storm. Check out this paper https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/weitzman/files/fattaileduncertaintyeconomics.pdf
It’s not going to be a “turn up the AC” kinda world.
An existential threat hovers over the nation and the world
as many non-believers in climate change sleepwalk towards
impending doom.
The need to take action in reducing the climate threat is
paramount and must be placed near the top of any
environmental program.
Narrow minded political leaders that provide industrial
cover for campaign payback must be punished at the
ballot box while we reward responsible business that
plays with the proper rules.
4
When I was a kid and avid sci-fi reader, I read a chilling short story called "Occam's Scalpel" by Theodore Sturgeon. The reader is left with the conclusion that the Earth's atmosphere is being polluted by aliens, in the guise of industrial titans, intent on transforming it into a place more similar to their home planet and suitable for conquest. Would the Koch brothers be willing to take a DNA test?
158
@stan continople
A DNA test will prove nothing. The aliens are inside their minds, controlling their bodies.
13
I also read that story and it recently occurred to me, we may be terraforming Earth on behalf of another species. Maybe we could crowd fund 23 and Me tests and add Mr. Murray to a list of climate change deniers, which includes the Koch’s and “Clean Coal” supporters, to ascertain if they are human. You know Rod Serling would have a field day with this!
6
@stan continople
Love it!
I remember a story about our Earth being a lab of an alien PhD. Student. At the end only a few humans were rescued from the devastated Earth to become “sidlings” for a new planetary lab experiment....
"Not long ago, a planet that warms by 2 degrees Celsius over the course of the coming century was considered an unimaginable catastrophe to be avoided at any cost." - This is nonsense. It was 2 degrees warmer than today during Egyptian and Minoan times. Humans flourished. It was 5 degrees warmer than today during the last interglacial, when hippos swam in the Thames. The author bemoans scientific illiteracy. Perhaps he should drink a good dose of skepticism and examine both sides of the climate argument.
4
@Carol Gebert No one's ever doubted the degree variance you cite, though during the time period that "humans flourished" there were only around 50 million of them compared to the 7.6 billion today. The concern with the temperature change is that it's occurring at a rate about six times that of any previous era. That gives species too little time to adapt, including, perhaps, our own.
56
@Carol Gebert
"...examine both sides of the climate argument."?
Help me understand your"both sides".
Hardly even-sided, science has overwhelmingly established the FACT of human induced Climate Change.
No argument supports otherwise.
Indeed one can cherry pick to find a tiny number of studies that support your POV; however, far from wise to ignore.
We are but frogs swimming in a gradually boiling pot.
15
@Carol Gebert, the last interglacial period occurred 116,000 to 129,000 years ago, so modern humans had not yet left Africa. If you're talking about the Mid-Holocene, temperatures were indeed higher--at Arctic and Northern European latitudes--but not higher as you got closer to the equator. In fact Northern Africa was awash in monsoon rains, and the Sahara was temperate and populated by nomadic tribes. You seem to be conflating both these periods with the rise of civilizations across the Mediterranean during the Bronze Age, when ancient civilizations experienced significant climate upheaval. Your argument is based on faulty information.
There aren't two sides to man-made climate change at this late date. There are those who believe in science and those who don't.
5
The United States is near an all time low of births per female. Around 1.8. This trend is occurring in most "first world" countries as negative information about prospects for our children seems to be preached day and night.
Everyone can and must have smaller families. By reducing our numbers,
voluntarily, we can reduce the burden
on our planet.
Or we can do it the hard way with starvation, wars, disease, climate events and the like. One way or the other Mother Nature will reach an equilibrium with a lot less of us around.
50
@Joe yep, “help save the Earth!” was always a misguided way of putting it
There is a famous decades old cartoon by Sydney Harris that shows two men, maybe scientists or mathematicians, looking at a blackboard filled with complicated equations. In the middle of the equations there is a line of text: "Then a miracle occurs".
One of the men points to the line and notes "I think you should be more explicit here in step 2"
The problem with climate change solutions is that everybody is waiting for a "miracle to occur".
Maybe it's a miracle of political will to do what is necessary. Or a miracle of international cooperation as no one country can do it alone (or will sacrifice much more than the others).
Maybe it's a miracle of invention where carbon can be taken out of the air, or all energy produced cheaply (and really soon) without fossil fuels.
Right now, it would seem to be a minor miracle just to have a President that wasn't so ignorant as to confuse climate with weather and think that commenting on a snowstorm is a witty rebuke to climate change concerns.
Whatever miracle(s) we are waiting for, we can be certain of one thing: the climate isn't waiting on anything. All the rhetoric in the world will have no impact without action, miraculous or otherwise.
185
We in Australia have had record heat and dry in the south and catastrophic record breaking floods in the north.
For the sake of our children we must act.
67
You read a hysterical piece -- one that was noted as being overly alarmist - and you're ready to set your hair on fire.
The hurricanes etc. etc. we've had since 2017 have all happened before. 2017 had some bad hurricanes but we've had years with as many major hurricanes (possibly more, in the pre satellite era) with as many major hurricanes. And in the 12 years prior no major hurricanes hit the continental US.
Fires -- you might check that out -- we've had big fires that burned millions of acres and killed thousands in N America before 1900.
Polar Vortex -- we've never had cold snaps before? I think we have. There has been a desperate attempt by alarmists to explain away cold spells when it's supposed to be warming -- but this is nothing more than business as usual.
Devastation everywhere if we go up 2 degrees C? And abject horror if it's 4? Who says? These are computer projections. If, and that is a big if, we are abnormally warming, there may be benefits as well as problems.
Economic problems? That's a joke. You can't project what the GDP of the US or Globe will be in 100 years.
So, relax. And I'll give you some hope. The alarming warming trend since 1880 is based on nothing more than estimates that have been highly adjusted. The global temp collection network was a figment of the imagination in 1900 as there weren't but a handful of stations, mostly on the coasts. It's still severely lacking now.
9
Photographic evidence from the late 1970s to the present day clearly showing ice loss on a mass scale in the polar regions as well as glacier areas throughout the globe dispute the idea that climate change is not happening.
47
@Ralphie
You are leaving out one very important variable in your offering - population.
If you look at any graph (any), the effects of population growth (7.5 billion + and going up exponentially) is having devastating consequences.
It has increased carbon output, heat and other pollution, while dramatically using finite resources, land (trees that produce oxygen) and of course water.
We are running out of space, and the space we are using is becoming uninhabitable. The data is not lying.
Only the defenders of the status quo.
20
@Ralphie
What is the harm of acting?
What is the harm of inaction?
Even if we acted and we were eventually proven wrong where is the harm in acting as stewards of our gifts?
12
Well done. The climate deniers in the GOP, and the dirty corporations that sponsor them, have no idea the destruction they are creating for humanity. I wonder what can be done to make them care?
14
James Lovelace, Gaia ‘inventor’ and independent environmentalist, predicted that by the end of this century, earth’s population will be reduced to one billion people – about the population of India. It will occur as David Wallace-Wells suggest again years later. Kill the bees? We won’t eat. Kill the forests and jungles. We won’t breathe. Raise earth’s temperature? All those terrifying viruses won’t be just in Africa; dormancy? Ha! Prayers won’t save us. Money won’t save us. Read the books. Believe the science. I’ll be long gone, but Trump in his willful ignorance is intent on killing his own grandkids.
108
@Rachel Hoffman
What primary sources or scientific metastudies, not popularizations, have you read?
Nice to know about the book. However I have long ago came to the conclusion that the effects of climate change will act as a catalyst for war, mass migration, starvation, etc. long before we are choking on our own effluent. There is no escape. We will have turned the world upside down from one where children bury their parents to one where parents will be burying their children....that is if we have the time and luxury to bury the dead.
20 years.....max........
8
It was not long ago that I would have not thought twice about this analogy. But after reading about Avi Loeb, I found my way from a comment to a documentary called "I Know What I Saw." This, as well as "witness testimony" on the YouTube channel Sirius Disclosure give me pause.
I do not know if it is possible for humankind to reverse course and counter vested economic and political interests in the status quo. I hope so. Don't worry about other life forms from other places or times - we are our own threat.
11
I live in Washington State, which has strong green aspirations and elects progressives. We just voted DOWN the second carbon fee bill in two years.
I can't get my head around it. Our young, wealthy (tech) and motivated population couldn't vote in a very modest carbon fee IN THIS ECONOMY? Hopeless doesn't go far enough to describe how I feel.
Onto Round 3.
107
@suzanne An architect friend here in PDX has written a brilliant, clean, efficient, affordable solution to Portland General Electric having to close down Hanford in two years. It recycles un-recycleables and produces clean energy. PGE has been sitting on it for months. We live in situational panic; the wealthy will do nothing until THEIR children's children start dying young. Then panic sets in and, even if action is not too late, the cost is hundreds of times higher, all the way around. Biology will survive, but we won't evolve sufficiently fast. Maybe homo sapiens has earned extinction?
7
@suzanne What you don’t seem to grasp is that there are actually two Washington States: blue and liberal/ progressive, and red and conservative/right-wing. The great divide is the Cascade mountain range. Initiatives like the modest proposed carbon tax was defeated by the eastern right-wing half, which pretty much voted as a bloc against it. The blue western half had enough “conservatives “ and apathetic non-voters, for its defeat. I happen to live in one of only two counties where it passed.
5
@suzanne. Wasn't this carbon fee killed by outside oil and gas interests? It was reported that millions of $ were coming into Washington State to kill the bill. And it died. Go figure.
2
Thanks for this frightening and very well written piece. A cynical part of my soul wonders just who is planning to exploit this horrible, precarious situation. Are our oligarchs, home-grown or otherwise, frankly planning to use climate change to their own advantage?
5
These days I'm so desperate about the state of the planet and about the sheer idiocy of the global political class in the face of impending doom, that I'm always looking up in the sky wishing for the arrival of a gigantic fleet of alien spaceships.
I'm counting on the fact that aliens so advanced to have mastered interstellar travel will also be so enlightened to want to preserve and protect the amazing ecosystem of our little pale blue dot. To them we will be little more than goofy apes run amok with technology we can't possibly understand, but I'm still hoping they will provide us with the guidance and technologies needed to save the planet.
Unless of course they decide that the most efficient and economical way to save our planet is simply to wipe us out of existence, and leave it to our ecosystem to repair itself.
243
@Andy
I am of the mind that if there is indeed higher life out there (a very true and mathematical possibility, if not a likelihood) that they are staying away.
We have nothing to offer, nor does our planet.
In the scheme of time (a human construct) that has no bearing whatsoever on any other life form, we are but a spec. We are nothing more than a wavelength on a singular dimension across multiple dimensions. We are less than a small wringing aquatic creature in a fishbowl being gawked at from afar. We squabble over finite resources, multiply at alarming rates and have the hubris that we are at the top of food chain.
We will disappear soon enough in a wisp of smoke...
44
@Andy
simply to wipe us out of existence, and leave it to our ecosystem to repair itself.
That pretty much sums up the human end game.
13
@Andy: You're assuming smart = wise. Why would they be any different from us?
8
My idea is a little different and its already working. We convince climate deniers to move to the hottest, disaster prone places in America. We load up Arizona, Florida and the Gulf Coast and empty out a bunch of other Red States of deniers. No matter how big Florida gets, they still only get two Senators.
The fastest growing cities in the country are Phoenix and Las Vegas. Its already working.
I call it "The Lemming Project".
125
An alien attack would be much easier to deal with, because we understand how to deal with an assault by force. But a quiet, gathering disaster that threatens entrenched interests and requires knowledge and critical thinking skills from average people is another thing entirely.
53
@Pat
That is why the aliens are using fossil fuel emissions to change our planetary climate.
1
Let's make it about opportunity, not costs. Imagine how much money can be made in creating new carbon dioxide extraction technology, building better batteries and more efficient and reliable renewable power. Climate change should drive innovation.
49
@Steve
I am all for being optimistic (contrary to other comments I have made), but opportunity usually denotes free markets, capitalism and other such private affairs. I think we are way past that and way past ''radical'' means required to survive the curve of destruction we are on.
It is going to take not just one or two governments (especially superpowers) to come and work together - it will take 200 governments. There will have to be a culling of the population (at least the net birthing rate), a drastic downgrading of using up finite resources and massive works to make it all stitch together across the globe.
This is to EVEN HAVE a chance at surviving.
By all means, stay positive, keep pushing and conserve, while innovating at the same time, but out of 7+ billion people (and counting), we are going to need at least 75% of everyone being on the same page, and working towards the same goal now. Not incrementally down the road, and on a scale, or whatever else allows people to gouge out profit.
I mean now.
17
I have been considering my life as a horror story inspired by H P Lovecraft. There is invisible stuff in the air that is slowly changing the environment of the planet and making it uninhabitable by human beings.
7
It's a pretty tough sell - climate change/global warming/catastrophe when the average citizen is hard pressed to put food on the table. Take a look at what happened in France when neolibera Presidentl Macron, having recently given more tax breaks to the wealthy, tried to add a gas tax to "help combat global warming". After years of austerity, with jobs for the working class now requiring long commutes from local villages to urban areas, many French (the Yellow Vests) just said "non".
14
It's sad, but at this point, I have given up any hope for a future where we have solved these problems. Is it wrong as a twenty-something to have given up so completely on the future? I want to have kids, a family, but how can I in good conscience bring life into a world so doomed?
It is most frustrating when these apocalyptic level problems are being squabbled over by a generation that will not be around to see the consequences. The Green New Deal while non-specific, is a desperate attempt by a young majority to cry out for immediate change because we are desperate for a future...any future, that doesn't end in fire and ice.
253
@Woodhous When I was your age we had this thing called the Vietnam war. We took to the streets in protest, and ultimately the powers that were pulled us out. This is your generation's Vietnam, only with far higher stakes. And while I understand and somewhat share your resignation, I urge you and your generation to take to the streets. Demand change. Because that's the only way it will come about. If you will, I am sure millions of us old timers will join you. It may already be too late, but in another few years it most certainly will be.
128
@Michael - And thankfully, that is happening.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez represents the future, if we are going to have one.
23
@Woodhous More than hope, in my opinion we need courage. What else are we to do, lie here and bleed?
And if you want to have kids but don't want to bring another life into a doomed world, please consider fostering or adopting. Plenty of kids already here need good parents.
26
As Walt Kelly observed (about climate issues almost 50 years ago): "We have met the enemy and he is us." And as Farhad Manjoo correctly observes, it will be very difficult for humanity to overcome short-term selfishness and prioritize the long-term common good. The climate change crisis requires collective action and wise leadership -- not strongly represented in humanity's historical record.
93
@Mke0007
50 years ago, Pogo was referring to pollution and poisoning ourselves. We knew our emissions were bad for our health, but we didn't know the extent of the damage we were doing.
I can't see any outcome other than the deaths of many human beings, but we have to accept that this is what is needed to restore Nature's balance. In one hundred years, there are all new people. Let's make that number low enough to survive sustainably on our only life-support planet.
1
@Mke0007
It also requires Evolution - not just wise leadership but WISER everyone which will/is happening. Waking up to all the wonderful benefits of putting others first, of the collective good, of the fact that we humans are nothing but LOVE, which is THE strongest force on earth.
And then the issues that caused climate change, as well as most all of the current societal ills, will just dissolve. So come on folks - get with the program and do whatever it takes to EVOLVE your own self: meditation, yoga, selfless service, etc. . . . you will be glad - blissful even - that you did~~
1
Who needs aliens? Just convince the Koch Brothers, Rebekah Mercer, the American Enterprise Institute and Bret Stephens that without drastic action to reduce rising temperatures, taxes on wealth will go through the ceiling, Bernie Sanders will be president for life and Denmark-style socialism will be entrenched for at least 3 generations.
73
@jrd
We're going to need ceiling-high taxes on the wealthy either way.
In the words of Rutger Bregman, "Taxes, taxes, taxes!"
17
@jrd - We are the Fossil Fuel addicts. Oil companies are only our pushers, the Kochs and (R)s in Congress are only our enablers. We keep sucking up fossil fuels and, in the US, wasting more than half of it.
If we wait for Congress or the Koch's to fix this, we're toast. Probably, we're toast anyway, but:
We choose to use too much of it, we choose to waste most of it, we can choose to change our consumption habits.
1
@jrd
The Kochs funded a study to disprove climate change, and instead it confirmed it and it's seriousness. They continue to act in their own interests.